But what about companies away from the epicenter like Nichia? On their website    (http://www.nichia.co.jp/en/about_nichia/2011/2011_031802.html), Nichia has the following statement:

• There have been no damages to our equipment and buildings.
•  Meanwhile, in the affected areas, the unprecedented earthquake had a great impact on essential services and industries. (We have been struggling to make contact with some of the companies doing business with us in the aftermath of the earthquake.) 
• One of our critical issues is to understand the current situation (i.e. availability of major raw materials, components and parts) of our suppliers in the affected areas. We will continue to provide updates as new information becomes available.

So even IF your supplier’s factory is intact and undamaged, THEY may have problems getting RAW MATERIALS from THEIR suppliers in Japan. Japan has long been recognized for its high quality silicon and gallium wafers and other raw materials.

With the Republican majority in the US House of Representatives and a new feeling that the rampant government spending in Washington needs to be cut, one of the targets identified by the GOP committee for possible elimination is the Energy Star program of the EPA. According to the report, the Energy Star Program cost $52 Million a year. Also on the chopping block: Applied Research at Department of Energy for a $1.27 billion annual savings.

link

www.usnews.com/news/washington-whispers/articles/2011/01/20/house-gop-lists-25-trillion-in-spending-cuts

But like the progression of their conventional brethren, the LED, they are following the path to another big volume application: Solid State Lighting. To date they have been hindered by a two major factors: (1) Relatively limited life compared with conventional LEDs (about 5,000 hours to the L50 (50% decrease in output) point compared with about 20-50,000 for conventional HB LEDS and (2) significant lower light output than HB leds ( about 25 lumens  versus 100-150+ lumens for LEDS). However, their physical form is so radically different from conventional LEDs that their advantages for future lighting technology make them the next disruptive technology in SSL.

1) They are made in thin SHEETS as opposed to a die. Hence they look like glowing “paper” instead of a lighted transistor. The light is spread uniformly across the surface, eliminating the hot spots of multiple led lights. While they look like the old electroluminescent sheets that operated at high voltage/low current AC, these are true low voltage DC devices with drive requirements similar to LEDs.

2) They dissipate relatively little heat which is spread across the entire surface instead of a high density power point that requires often elaborate heat sinking in HB LEDs

3) Since they are not a POINT SOURCE of light, the optical problems and lens are eliminated. While not completely quite omni-directional, their inherent wide-pattern radiation make them logical replacements for fluorescent lights, a problem that HB LEDS have struggled with. Also this will make possible lighting “sheets”, to form lighted walls or lighted floors that are relatively inexpensive and could potentially revolutionize how we view lighting products and enable products never before possible.

4) The manufacturing process promises to make them at low cost in volume.

Now 5000 hours for a battery device that only lights a display for a limited time is fine for a cell phone. But a recent announcement states that  Chinese OLED company Visionox and Tsinghua University have teamed up to develop a proprietary technology to increase the life of the panels. According to China Daily, the company has developed a new structure that delivers emission through a composite light emitting layer that prolongs the operational life of OLEDs by 20 times.

“Current commercially produced high-definition screens have a luminance ranging from 450 to about 1,000 cdm. However, though now used in small displays on cell phones and other devices, experiments show the technology provides a lifespan of up to 100,000 hours at a brightness of 1,000 cdm, one of the best records in the global industry.”

So the problem of life seems to solved and the brightness is making dramatic progress.

Also it should be noted that  OSRAM  introduced its Orbeos product recently as the first lighting product of its kind,  a “Light Tile”. It has a an output of about 23 L /W     http://www.osram-os.com/osram_os/EN/Products/Product_Promotions/OLED_Lighting/index.html

The typical Vf is very white LED-like 3.4 Vdc at 186 mA  which is about 0.650 watts. The Color Temperature is warm white 2800K and the CRI is a lighting friendly 80.

It also appears that General Electric and Konica Minolta have been spending significant R&D resources in this field and have achieved the highest reported brightness so far:

56 lumens-per-watt efficiency achievement proves that flexible, white OLED lighting devices can be made at low cost using “solution-coatable” materials 

NISKAYUNA, New York & CLEVELAND, Ohio (July 15, 2010)—GE Global Research, the technology development arm for the General Electric Company (NYSE: GE), GE Lighting and Konica Minolta (KM) have achieved a major breakthrough that brings the companies closer to making high-efficiency organic light-emitting diode (OLED) lighting devices a reality. GE and KM scientists have demonstrated illumination-quality white OLEDs using “solution-coatable” materials that are essential for producing OLEDs at a low cost.

Anil Duggal, GE’s OLED lighting technology leader, announced the efficiency milestone this week during a presentation at the International Symposium on the Science and Technology of Light Sources being held in Eindhoven, Netherlands.

 
“GE and KM have done what many in the OLED research community thought was not possible,” noted Duggal. “We have produced high-performance white OLED lighting devices with a commercially viable lifetime using ‘solution coating’ rather than ‘vacuum coating’ processes. This allows us to make use of the high volume roll-to-roll manufacturing infrastructure that already has been perfected in the printing industry.”

Lighting Industry, get ready for the next Big  Thing!

1) Accent and Cove Lights are moved from Residential to Commercial Spec

2) SSL under 5 watts only have to meet a Power Factor requirement greater than 0.5.

3) They have backed off the flicker definition for PWM  LED’s

4) Products certified BEFORE January 1, 2011 will be grandfathered until October 1, 2011 after which they must pass the V1.0 specification.

ENERGY STAR Luminaires V 1_0_Final Draft Luminaires V 1_0_Final Draft Cover

Why the sudden move? Just a guess from myself, perhaps the EPA is realizing that the CFL bulb replacements for incandescents are somewhat of a BIG MISTAKE considering they use small amounts of mercury vapor AND the horrid effect they have on the nation’s power grid due to their inherently LOW power factor. Perhaps the lesser of evils, the EPA wants cheap low quality LED bulbs to displace cheap low quality CFL’s!!

November 15, 2010

Dear ENERGY STAR® Integral LED Lamp Partner or Interested Party:

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has identified provisions included in the ENERGY STAR Integral LED Lamps specification which could allow for qualification of lamps which fail to meet consumer expectations. The purpose of this letter is to notify you that after careful review and consideration, EPA intends to remove section 6, “Non-Standard Lamps”, from the ENERGY STAR Integral LED Lamps specification, effective immediately.

Solid state lighting, like other energy efficient lighting technologies, has great potential to help American consumers and businesses save energy and save money, while helping to protect the environment. As the technology continues to mature, EPA, the Department of Energy and ENERGY STAR partners and stakeholders have discussed at length the necessity of ensuring positive consumer experiences with solid state lighting products, avoiding the problems associated with early compact fluorescent lamps. It is of the utmost importance that consumers find ENERGY STAR qualified integral LED lamps to be proper replacements for their existing lamps, providing not only greater energy efficiency but also photometric performance which meets or exceeds that of the lamp they are replacing.

The Integral LED Lamps specification contains provisions for standard lamps, with photometric requirements for ANSI-standardized omnidirectional, reflector, and decorative lamp shapes, and provisions for “non-standard” lamps with fewer technical requirements, originally included in the specification to allow for innovative lamp designs that do not conform to ANSI standards. Recently, products have been presented to the Agency that visually appeared to match an ANSI standard lamp shape but failed to meet the photometric performance requirements for that shape, and therefore were not eligible for qualification as standard lamps. Subsequently, these products were presented for qualification as non-standard lamps.

This approach of using the non-standard category as an alternate means of qualification defeats the purpose of the non-standard category, and constitutes a potential loophole which threatens to undermine the meaning of the ENERGY STAR in this product category. The Agency recognizes that consumers are accustomed to employing standard lamp shapes in their homes and businesses, and have an established understanding of what performance to expect from those shapes. Further, the Agency is concerned that LED lamps exhibiting standard shapes but not meeting performance requirements set for those shapes (in section 7 and 7A) will disappoint consumers whose expectations are set in large part by physical similarities. In the worst case scenario, these disappointed consumers would relate their negative experience with ENERGY STAR, and with LEDs.

To ensure a positive consumer experience with ENERGY STAR qualified integral LED lamps, EPA intends to remove provisions for non-standard lamps from the Integral LED Lamps specification. This change will be included in version 1.2 of the specification which, in support of the Program’s enhanced testing and verification requirements, is scheduled to replace version 1.1 as of January 1, 2011. Comments on this action may be submitted to ssl@energystar.gov by December 6, 2010.

The Agency also recognizes that solid state lighting technologies, including LEDs, present an opportunity to reconsider the form factors of lighting products commonly employed by consumers and businesses, and will therefore continue to monitor innovative product design. EPA will consider how such products could be included in the scope of the ENERGY STAR Lamps specification currently in development to become effective in 2012, and what requirements would be necessary to avoid negative consumer experiences.

Please feel free to contact me with questions at baker.alex@epa.gov, or (202) 343-9272. Thank you for your support of ENERGY STAR.

Sincerely,

Alex Baker

Lighting Program Manager, ENERGY STAR

US EPA

By Tam Harbert, Contributing editor — EDN, December 14, 2010

Technology manufacturers may start dropping out of the US EPA’s Energy Star program as a result of new certification requirements scheduled to go into effect on January 1, 2011.

The new requirements are a response to an investigation earlier this year by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO), which found that the Energy Star self-certification program was vulnerable to fraud and abuse. The GAO obtained Energy Star certifications for 15 bogus products, some of them rather outlandish.

But information technology and consumer electronics manufacturers say that the new requirements will cost both time and money. Even though Energy Star is a voluntary program, not a regulation, it now has “stricter testing and verification rules than the Clean Air and Clean Water acts,” claimed Ken Salaets, director of global policy, Information Technology Industry Council in Washington, DC.

For the complete article, here is the link: http://www.edn.com/article/511914-Energy_Star_turning_into_black_hole_technology_companies_fear.php

FEATURES DESCRIPTION TPS92001

• Ideal for Single Stage Designs
• Supports Isolated and Non-Isolated Topologies
• Phase-Cut TRIAC Dimmable
• Few External Components Mode Operation
• Wide Duty Cycle Range for Wide-Input Voltage or Dimming Range
• Convenient 5-V Reference Output
• Undervoltage Lockout for Safe Operation
• Operation to 1-MHz
• 0.4-A Source/0.8-A Sink FET Driver
• Low 100-μA Startup Current

But wait! This part is really an old Unitrode UCC1809/280/3809 device that was released in the early 2000 era described THEN as an “Economy Primary Side Controller” for current control applications. Unitrode Semiconductor was a power management IC company purchased by TI back in 1999. But with some REALLY clever external circuit design tricks, it makes one of the best and most cost effective controllers on the market, more than competitive with the industry standard National Semiconductor LM3445 device at a CONSIDERABLE cost savings.

Take at look at the relative simplicity of a non-isolated off-the line triac dimmable circuit that can supply about 700 ma at 40 VDC (about 30 W) shown here from the datasheet (PMP5924RevC_sch). The device functions as a negative Buck converter that generates a negative voltage output to the LED pins. By using the negative buck converter configuration, N-Channel Mosfet Q2 can switch the ground side of the circuit, eliminating the need for an expensive charge-pump gate driver circuit on the IC U1. Current sensing is performed on the low side by resistors R8/R10 in series to allow low cost SMT components. This signal is feed back to the FB pin of U1 to enable closed loop control.

Now the cleverness of circuit design comes in: Op amp U2 (TL331KBDV) is used as a comparator to detect the zero cross of the current and to turn on Q4. Q4 puts a “dummy load” (R20 1K/2W) across the line input around the ever zero cross of the AC waveform, 120 times for second for a 60 HZ power input. Its purpose is to keep the triac CONDUCTING with a minimum holding current. So the triac turns ON and OFF at about a 10V level but sees sufficient current to insure it does not SHUT off or HALF cycle on AC waveform.

• Transistor Q3 proves a little feed-forward compensation for the current control of the IC, thus accomplishing a poor-mans Power Factor Correction (PFC) WITHOUT a boost converter. CLEVER!
• Transistor Q1 and Zener Z5 function as a simple shunt regulator to supply the low voltage Vdd of the chip of about 12 VDC.
• Inductors L1 and L3 perform a dual function of EMI/EMC. They help reduce the radiated EMI generated by the 1 MHZ switching buck converter. But also it acts an EMC compatibility by provided an impedance for the triac circuitry to work into.
• The end result is a triac phase-cut dimmable circuit that operates down to roughly a 1% duty cycle with NO hysteresis.
• The Power Factor for this circuit is approximately 0.9, which is great for Energy Star requirements!

How does it compare with the National Semi LM3445 “industry standard” device?

 
The National Reference design board has a LOT of hysteresis. Granted you can dim down pretty low, but if the power is removed, the control will come up OFF until the dimming level is increased to about 75% level. Thus the circuit has no “memory” for a set and forget dimmer.

Secondly, the author has seen some 120 HZ flicker in the LEDS at very LOW  levels of dimming with LM3445, which could indicate a slight variance in triac triggering level at low levels of dimming.

Finally, the 5k price of the TPS92001 is listed at $0.45 at the 1K level versus the $1.55 of LM3445 at the same 1K level! That is some serious money for products which find themselves in very cost sensitive, high volume consumer products like LED light bulbs. For volume customer this about a 30 cent part.

You really CAN teach an “old dog” new tricks!

tps92001
PMP5924RevC_sch