David Shiller

  In a previous post, I’ve discussed sustainable aluminum as a path to further improve the sustainability of lighting. Another important metal to the lighting industry is copper. Copper is also critical for electrification, electric motors, electric vehicles, and many renewable energy technologies. The Copper Mark is a labeling program for copper producers to demonstrate [...]

  Some LightNOW readers are likely familiar with the existing white light laser approach of a blue laser diode (LD) pumping a phosphor to make safe, high intensity, white light. The challenges with blue LD + phosphor are: low CRI for phosphors that can withstand the intensity and heat, only high CCTs for these phosphors, [...]

  In the lighting world, we usually think of reducing carbon by increasing efficiency of energy use. However, there is a new push to reduce the carbon used to create construction materials, known as embodied carbon. This matters in the fight against climate change. Building materials and construction comprise about 11% of global energy carbon [...]

I’ve written previous articles about the gradual shift in US imports away from China toward Mexico, India, Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe, here and here. The above chart is courtesy of DigiTimes Research. It projects India’s production value of LED lighting to rise from $2.2 Billion USD in 2020 to $16.2 Billion in 2025. That’s [...]

  I had the pleasure of interviewing Tom Butters, Founder & Executive Director of The Lighting Agora, about what the Agora is and where it’s heading. Shiller:  What was your original goal in establishing the Lighting Agora?  Butters:  I have always strived to work for the benefit of the lighting industry as a whole. In [...]

  Before a tsunami, the ocean withdraws out to sea. Similarly, the signs are growing that a new tsunami is about to hit the lighting industry. That is the integration of lighting controls with HVAC controls. Why? It’s well known that LED “socket saturation” as well as diminishing returns when LEDs are combined with advanced [...]

For a variety of reasons, Taiwanese businesses are reducing their investments in mainland China. One reason is the difficulties China faced during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the extreme challenges that were specific to China, including their unprecedented extended shutdowns of large commercial cities such as Shanghai, among others. Many larger, Taiwanese companies have been relocating [...]

Last week, the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI) unveiled the Works with WELL Program, a new product licensing opportunity designed to help product manufacturers validate and showcase how their products align with the WELL Building Standard, based on IWBI licensing criteria. Nearly 40 early-adopting companies have enrolled more than 1,000 products in the new program. To earn [...]

  New research by Assistant Professor of Physics Xiao-Feng Qian, at the Stevens Institute of Technology has linked two separate fields of physics: Coherence Optics and Classical Mechanics. It introduces a universal relationship between the polarization of light and its entanglement properties. A new quantitative relationship between certain quantum properties of light are connected and [...]