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Increasing the efficiency of LED street lighting by 15% via optical design

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - PearlLight+ (Increasing the efficiency of LED street lighting by 15% via optical design)

Reporting period: 2016-07-01 to 2017-08-31

In cooperation with leading researchers of the field, Hungaro Lux Light developed a highly innovative design method for manufacturing LED lenses and covers optimised to the desired illumination pattern and the specific LED chip used. This optimisation improves light throughput by 15% on average compared to currently available lenses. This solution can greatly improve the luminaires efficiency, contributing to considerable energy and cost saving, as well as opening new market opportunities for Hungaro Lux Light.
This project aimed for the software automation of Hungaro Lux Light’s design process and industrialisation of the new coating layer as the last major step before the market introduction of the new range of highly competitive luminaires.
The main area where LED-based street lighting can still be improved is the light throughput efficiency of the lens and the transparent cover of the luminaire. The loss in the optical path for a typical street lamp can be as high as 25%. This is caused by two components, the secondary optics and the plastic cover. The weakness of generic lens designs mean a 15-20% loss in the optical path, from the LED chip to the air inside the lamp (secondary optics). The plastic cover of the lamp will reflect part of the light back into the housing, resulting in further losses up to 5-10%. Overcoming these losses has a direct effect on power reduction, allowing to maintain the same light level with reduced input power.
There are several LED chip manufacturers continuously improving their products, so LED luminaire developers like Hungaro Lux Light has to keep up with the rapid improvement of the LED chips. To match up with this development, Hungaro Lux Light has to redesign the fixtures on optical level each time there is an improved LED chip, which takes time and a lot of effort. Without applying new lenses, street luminaires cannot take advantage of recent developments.
Hungaro Lux Light wants to introduce a new range of outdoor LED street lights with improved efficiency. With this solution customers can reduce their electrical power consumption even more than with the other current devices.
By the end of the project, utilizing the developed technologies, we have produced several sample luminaires and we were able to achieve 5,8% reduction in the reflection form the plastic cover, and 27% efficiency gain compared to our previous design, which results are better than our original expectations.
Our project started on the 1st of September 2015 and was finished by 31st of August 2017. In the beginning we have started both the technical and non-technical tasks parallel. The first step of the development was focusing on the finalization of the System specification based on the detailed analysis of the market feedback and investigation of technical possibilities.

Based on the specification the Design process of the software itself and the related database could be done which resulted in defining and designing the main acting components and the relation/interfaces between them. Once all the building blocks were defined and designed, the Implementation started which reached the level by now where the functional Test could also started. The first functional tests were executed by the end of June 2016. As a result, the developed modules are operating as designed separately and integrated as well: they are able to provide similar results as other, commonly used 3rd party libraries (Relux, Dialux, OpticStudio).

The Precursol sol preparation and depostition task focused on the optimization of the antireflective coatings in laboratory environment. Following we were focusing on the Post treatment optimization and investigated the parameters of the different treatment processes to achieve stable and high transmittance surfaces.. We have continuously Tested the prepared samples.. As a next step we have already started to raise the coating process from laboratory to industrial environment and started the Coating technology industrialization.
The Industrial scale-up of the coating process defined all necessary steps and parameters that provides the basis of the coating machine specification. A target coating machine concept was defined.
The Design of the coating machine followed this step, where the industrial coating machine basic design was reached, the main points of the design were finalized including the layout of the system, the product forwarding mechanism, the control system and the separate process stations. During The manufacturing and installation of the coating machine the following steps were the manufacturing of the special parts, and purchasing of the commercially available units. During the realization the minor parameters of the units were fine-tuned, the machine was installed and the first units were coated.
With the newly developed software solution and the enhanced coating ability, we have focused on the Lens design of the new LED lamp, a new luminaire the Pearlligh+.
With the above designed lens system we have initiated the Product development and manufacturing phase and produced 100 pcs of luminaires utilizing novel manufacturing solutions.
During the validation phase we were focusing on the Coating process control, Validation of automated lens design process, Validation of plastic cover improvement. During the validation phase all our initial expectation were met. The new lamps were validated by third party, and the measurements show significant improvement in the efficiency of our new luminaires according to our specification, showing high project success!
As part of our commercialisation activities we have put increased effort in Market Research and Analysis to finalize the technical specification of our development and to enable the preparation of precise and realistic marketing and sales strategy. Based on the gathered information we have updated and detailed our Business Plan and already obtained new Sales and Distributon channels to expand and prepare the commercialisation of our new product and services.
We have put increased effort in the Dissemination and Communication activities since we believe this is a key factor for a successful business. We have focused on a detailed Marketing Communication Strategy to rethink the image of the HungaroLux Light Kft. and to promote the project and its results in a proper way.
As part of the Project Management activities we were focusing on timely and precise realization of the project, we were working closely with our subcontractors to achieve the desired results. All necessary documentation and reports were prepared and submitted.
The Pearllight+ LED Street Lamp is more energy efficient, has longer lifetime, has less maintenance requirements, uses no mercury and contributes to reduced climate control costs.
The company is among the trend leader companies who have modernised the street lighting in Europe with LED technology. Hungaro Lux Light wants to keep his leading position by setting up 5 coherent areas of business services in LED street light technology:
Level 1 A: Production and sales of PearlLight+ LED Street Lamps
Level 1 B: Lease-work of anti-reflective coating
Level 1 C and D: Lease-work regarding to design softwares
Level 2: LightControl Smart System
The LightControl system was developed separately from the Phase 2 project but since a basic pillar of our strategy it must be included in our business plan.
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Our developed lamp