State-of-the-Art Snapshot: LED Luminaires

In April, I contributed a feature story to ELECTRICAL CONTRACTOR that attempted to capture a snapshot of leading trends in LED luminaire design. Here’s an excerpt:

In 2014, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics to a group of scientists for their 1990s invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes (LEDs), which enabled LEDs to generate white light.

The recipients were Isamu Akasaki, Meijo University and Nagoya University, Japan; Hiroshi Amano, Nagoya University; and Shuji Nakamura, University of California, Santa Barbara.


The lighting industry is in the midst of a tremendous and disruptive technological shift, driven by continuing advances in efficacy, long life and cost reduction that make LEDs an attractive choice for general lighting.


Today, LED luminaires are offered for virtually every application and are supported by industry groups, energy-­efficiency program rebates, and a growing body of knowledge and standards. Performance, quality and cost have reached a competitive level and are expected to continue to improve at an even faster pace. As the category matures, the luminaire product offering is stratifying in a similar fashion to conventional lighting, with commodity and specification segments. In the specification segment, this period of extreme competition is driving manufacturers to add value, and they are showing a high degree of attentiveness to customer feedback and the resulting innovation.


Click here to read the article, which I hope you find useful.

Craig DiLouie

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