LED lighting has made a big step forward from lighting component level to lighting system level. The integration of LEDs and their system components into general lighting system solutions, such as downlights, hybrid luminaries, office luminaries, emergency lighting, or light walls, have been accelerated. Multiple important drivers have triggered this fast development in recent years. In the first place, increased lumen output values were needed. This could be reached with improved LED efficacy values and also based on high power LED arrays, sometimes combined with remote phosphor concepts and especially high-end cooling systems. Secondly, the light quality has had to be improved. Nowadays single LED devices with high CRIs and warm-white color temperatures are available for fixed white light. Even lighting systems with variable CCTs are used in multiple applications. But the generation of high efficient, warm-white light with CRI values above 90 remains challenging. In addition, a special aspect of light quality concerns the spectral and color tolerances. Now LED manufacturers support closer binning, reached by improved, selective production processes. As Steve Landau, Marcom Manager of Philips Lumileds mentioned, his company wants to decrease the binning dramatically down to MacAdams 4, resulting in a categorization of color temperatures only. Furthermore, LED lighting depends mainly on the ability of users (e.g. OEMs) to deal with the application of LED lighting systems. In this respect, there are a lot of auspicious approaches such as lighting networks, ready-to-use LED modules, ready-made thermal management modules, etc. Finally, a new mindset has evolved, taking into account that LED lighting has to be part of an emotional lighting story in buildings instead of pure technical specifications. This change opened the way for totally new applications like concrete walls with integrated LEDs. All in all, the LED lighting systems coming out of niche applications into broader areas of general and architectural lighting.
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