The DesignLights Consortium (DLC) recently announced two additions to its Networked Lighting Controls (NLC) Technical Requirements, Version 5. These additions became effective December 22, 2021.

These are:

• The DLC now recognizes the PSA-certified cybersecurity standard with Chip Level 2 or 3 certification and with System Level 1, 2, or 3, and Device Level 1, 2, or 3 certification. This certification may now be used to meet the NLC5 cybersecurity requirement.
• The DLC now recognizes accredited certifications from an organization accredited as “Management Systems Certification Bodies” by the International Accreditation Service (IAS) as valid proof of compliance with the ISO 27001 cybersecurity standard.

NLC5 becomes required February 28, 2022. Products that comply with NLC4 but not NLC5 will be de-listed.

Click here to learn more.

NEMA announced it has published American National Standard for Lighting Equipment—LED Drivers Robustness (ANSI C82.15-2021). This is the first standard defining test procedures for LED driver robustness, and applies to hardware and microcontroller and microprocessor-based LED drivers. The test methods confirm a driver’s ability to withstand specific stresses.

This document’s core audience is LED driver manufacturers and testing laboratories. ANSI C82.15-2021 is available on the NEMA website for $100.

The Zhaga Consortium has published a whitepaper, “How Zhaga addresses Sustainability and the Circular Economy.” The publication points out that durable, repairable, and upgradeable LED luminaires are key elements to sustainable lighting. It explains that Zhaga is developing and standardizing interface specifications for components of serviceable luminaires, to help facilitate a new market framework called “Circularity Lighting.”

Sustainable action in the lighting industry entails the provision and continuous development of energy-efficient lighting solutions and the resource-saving design of durable and serviceable products. Serviceable products and systems are characterized by properties like repairability, upgradeability, replaceability, being future proof and durable. Such products and systems are designed in a modular way and the interfaces of the components used are based on standardized and widely recognized specifications. Zhaga uses the term “Circularity Lighting” for a market framework with products and systems that support the aims of the circular economy through enhanced serviceability.

The whitepaper describes various problems to be addressed:

• The different life cycles of luminaires and connectivity solutions.
• Even luminaires of high quality and durable design can experience an early failure.
• An upgrade of product features may be desired.

Solutions are illustrated referencing to the Zhaga specifications:

• Book 18 and Book 20 about intelligent interfaces between outdoor resp. indoor luminaires and sensor /communication modules.
• Book 24 and Book 25 that allow programming of LED control gear from different manufactures by using unified NFC programmers.
• Book 21 and Book 26 about linear socketable LED modules that allow the selection of modules with desired characteristics (efficiency, color temperature, CRI, etc.).

Click here to read the whitepaper.

The DesignLights Consortium (DLC) has released for comment the second draft of technical requirements for outdoor LED luminaires that not only save energy and meet the DLC’s Solid-State Lighting (SSL) Technical Requirements, but also include attributes that limit light pollution, sky glow and light trespass.

Drafted with the input of a multi-disciplinary Advisory Group convened last spring, the DLC’s draft LUNA Technical Requirements are meant to mitigate adverse environmental impacts of lighting at night while providing appropriate visibility for people. The DLC is accepting comments on the draft policy through October 22, 2021 (comments@designlights.org) and anticipates releasing final LUNA technical requirements by December 16, 2021.

Once LUNA is fully implemented in 2022, lighting manufacturers will be able to list and qualify their products to the specification. Project designers will then be able to easily search for LED outdoor lighting products in a subsection of LUNA Qualified Products on the DLC’s SSL Qualified Products List (QPL), which will include luminaires that are both energy efficient and have characteristics enabling best environmental practices for nighttime illumination.

The California Energy Commission (CEC) has adopted the 2022 Building Energy Efficiency Standards (Energy Code) for newly constructed and renovated buildings. If approved by the California Building Standards Commission in December, it will go into effect on January 1, 2023, providing a year to gear up for the changes.

As the state’s primary energy policy and planning agency, the CEC adopts standards every three years to cost-effectively increase the energy efficiency and lower the carbon footprint of buildings. Homes and businesses use nearly 70 percent of California’s electricity and are responsible for a quarter of the state’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

The 2022 Energy Code focuses on four key areas in newly constructed homes and businesses:

• Encouraging electric heat pump technology for space and water heating, which consumes less energy and produces fewer emissions than gas-powered units.
• Establishing electric-ready requirements for single-family homes to position owners to use cleaner electric heating, cooking and electric vehicle (EV) charging options whenever they choose to adopt those technologies.
• Expanding solar photovoltaic (PV) system and battery storage standards to make clean energy available onsite and complement the state’s progress toward a 100 percent clean electricity grid.
• Strengthening ventilation standards to improve indoor air quality.

The impact of climate change is accelerating, bringing an even greater need for buildings that are comfortable, efficient and resilient. Each updated code guides the construction of buildings to better withstand extreme weather, lower energy costs, and reduce climate and air pollution.

For more information, view the executive summary and learn more at the 2022 standards web page. We’ll revisit this topic with specific lighting changes in the near future.

After nine years developing its software protocol to enable interoperability of smart street lighting systems and other smart city applications from multiple vendors, the TALQ Consortium announced it is sharing with the smart city community the detail of the TALQ OpenAPI Specification in the public domain.

The TALQ protocol (both the data model and API definitions) can now be found openly and free-of-charge on GitHub. This provides cities and other municipal authorities, commentators, consultants and potential members with the opportunity to view the details of the specification and to understand the advantages it brings.

Making the specification public allows manufacturers of Central Management Software (CMS) and Outdoor Device Networks (ODN, so called ‘Gateways’) to consider integrating the protocol into their own systems and to become interoperable with the solutions of other vendors.

The benefit to the smart city community is that there will be even more awareness of the specification – both vendors and cities – allowing them to profit from decades of Smart Outdoor Lighting and Smart City experience and prepare future-proof solutions, whilst at the same time opening the specification up to public scrutiny.

The TALQ OpenAPI definition provides developers with access to an extensive set of tools. Widely available documentation generation tools can be used to display the API, and code generation tools can create servers and clients in various programming languages. A wide range of testing and other tools is also available, all of which dramatically reduces the development effort for system manufacturers.

Compliance with the specification will remain restricted to member companies, who will retain access to the carefully designed Test Suite with which they can test their systems internally until they are ready for official TALQ certification. These test tools provide valuable diagnostic information to accelerate the integration of the TALQ OpenAPI Specification.