A preview to the future of low-voltage lighting

I feel a shift from the dark to the light, metaphorically and literally.

One last tangent before we proceed.

A while back I kinda laughed at a young woman who wanted to become an interior designer. Fate has taught me the necessity of aligning oneself with market demand. But perhaps I was too harsh. Fascinatingly, for those of you out there. The topic of this essay is technical, systems oriented. But everything mentioned here will eventually demand interior designers. Interior designers with a renewed perspective on the visual and non-visual effects of lighting.

Terminology

• LEDs are a specific subset of a more general product class called Solid State Lighting (SSL).
• The light emitting diodes themselves, the wavelength emitter is called the pump (a very important often overlooked detail).
• Phosphor coatings transform higher energy wavelengths to lower energy wavelengths, passively.

Editorial Status

This is a bit of a rough draft.

Personal Background

I’ve always been sensitive to lighting: less so now; more so with regard to my younger self.

Moreover, I’ve always loved aesthetically pleasing lighting.

While on the control side, many ideas have crossed my mind. From my earliest teenage years, I wanted to retrofit the lighting circuit in my room with a microcontroller signaled AC relay to turn my bedroom lights into an alarm clock but my parents wouldn’t let me because lighting was and still is needlessly dangerous. However, this is likely to change in the future as I will explain. Soon, lighting will be safe, what will follow is likely an emerging field of innovation and experimentation.

However, let’s back up. While I’ve been researching the topic for some time, it was all academic, until a sheer coincidence of fate occurred.

Motivating Story

This crazy story began with an online European acquaintance who repeatedly encouraged me to reconsider college. At a point I was like “I have nothing better going on and so I may as well do something”. To that end my game plan was to (A) sue one particular university and (B) pray and cross my fingers that I can return to this other university.

I found myself talking to a lawyer about my particular grievances as someone who enrolled during the time of COVID. Grievances concerning their consequential handling of that situation to the determent of myself in lost academic opportunities, public recognition. Grievances that are admittedly minor compared to those who aren’t around anymore. It was a dark time.

This lawyer I found myself talking to was very generous with his time. As we talked, he explained that I cannot just sue a university. Rather, my best outlet would be via the department of education, but today that avenue doesn’t exist anymore due to the policies of our current government. Somewhat dismayed, he advised starting a business and moving on as my best possible course of action. I happen to mention circadian lighting and to my amazement, I found myself talking to someone who’s particularly passionate about that topic. After some time, he ended up floating an offer to install the lighting system at a new office he’s looking at building.

Suddenly, the topic of lighting control and design ceased to be academic. I was stunned. Could I be looking at a commercially viable business?

Certainly, a mere occurrence. Yet I found myself thinking: a small sample size I simply stumbled upon; how much larger must the set of all such occurrences be with regard to what I’m not seeing?

What follows is my current outline for naturalistic, photo-biologically optimal interior lighting with regard to both the visual and non-visual effects of electromagnetic radiation from near UV to the near IR range.

Beyond this essay will likely follow many revisions and lessons learned. As I lie at the intersection of business, engineering, and interior design.

Technical Preamble

Form Follows Function

A saying from the 20th century bauhaus movement that valued function over ornament. An idea that in some respects was just a secular rediscovery of 19th century Shaker theology that rejected ornament and status signaling.

As someone who’s been studying design, the Shaker’s proto-modernist constraint-driven simplicity is fascinating. An engineer can do brilliant work, but such work is only ever a 9 to 5 job. While for the Shakers, design and craft was their way of life, a calling they undertook with religious gusto. But nobody understood the value of such until until the 20th century functionalism movement came with such ideas as: form is determined by use; ornament is unnecessary or dishonest; design should emerge from constraints, not style.

Only after this framework existed could people look back and say: “the shakers were already doing this 100+ years earlier”.

However, in some ways the Shakers were even more rigid than 20th century design philosophy.

“Don’t make something unless it is both necessary and useful.”

In modernism: many chair designs; many interpretations of “minimal”; style differences between designers; ego imbued in the artifact. While for the Shakers however: the individual does not have authority to redesign objects freely; craft must carry no personal signature, no stylistic identity nor shall the object reveal the maker. Even major Shaker innovations were never patented (a detail that complicates historical attribution). In summary, craft was not a vehicle for personal expression because the Shaker’s communal life required a suppression of individual variation.

I some respects, I do consider Shaker design philosophy to be superior. So much so, as a believer in principles for navigating the unknown, I do wonder if reinventing interior lighting would be seen as a violation. However, when the nature of the light changes, the arrangement ought to change with it because form follows function.

The legacy architecture was built around AC line voltage branch circuits because the lamps themselves were high voltage loads. Solid state lighting is different: electronically driven (by necessity) low voltage devices. Light emission is a function of current not voltage. Historically, manufacturers retrofitted this new technology to the old architecture and that result has been widespread consumer distaste of LEDs. There is no physical reason why consumers should dislike LEDs, it's an engineering problem.

Moreover, solid state lighting has unique advantages that are lost when retrofitted onto the old architecture. Once this is recognized, it makes more sense to rethink lighting around this new technology.

Keep the utility interface conventional (unless the power source is renewable energy / batteries), redesign the downstream lighting system around class 2 power distribution, modular luminaries (no integrated rectifier/CC regulator), and networked control.

The later point is particularly important. Do not toggle lamps via switching the whole circuit on or off. This is a needlessly hardcoded configuration (that necessity of which will become apparent later on). Better to separate power and control: all luminaries should be on a circuit that is always on; control happens at the protocol level. In this picture, each luminary becomes a node in a network, installed via comm style techs as opposed to licensed electricians.

LEDs Today: Form Does Not Follow Function

Conventional LEDs as implemented today violate the rule that form shall follow function. Why should LEDs mimic the Edison bulb? The uselessness of the glass apparatus is obvious. Less obvious: the electrical control circuitry required to rectify AC power into low-voltage DC; the constant current regulator necessary to restrain the thermal instability inherent to LEDs. This complexity is hidden rather than honestly expressed: violating the Shaker preference for structural truth.

Consumers run LED bulbs hot until they burn out, quickly degrading the phosphor coatings in the process. Moreover the light emitting diodes themselves are a function of current, any ripples in current becomes ripples in light emission. Dimming LEDs is a very complex topic for this reason (among a few other nuances I will later elaborate on). Why has there been such widespread consumer backlash against LEDs? Numerous reasons why, some of which have just been mentioned.

What we got from manufacturers is a new technology forced into an obsolete form, realizing none of the benefits unique to solid state lighting.

LEDs Tomorrow: When Form Follows Function

One day all homes and perhaps most commercial spaces will be DC native in their electrical wiring. These DC native homes will be maximally efficient with regard to the utilization of renewable energy and stored battery power including during emergencies.

The first step from here to there will likely begin with low voltage DC wiring for interior lighting.

A new professional class will be needed. The current labor pool is insufficient. Here I’m particularly optimistic. Did you know that when I was 17 (or perhaps just before turning 17) I worked as a data center tech? Most of my work entailed making and running cables. I was essentially a low voltage tech, and while I hardly understood what I was doing, noting burned down. This is because Class 2 Low Voltage wiring as defined by the NEC is touch safe, fire safe, and as a consequence is free from traditional electrical regulations. You do not need to be a licensed electrician to install class 2 low voltage electrical systems just as you don’t need to be an electrician to run low voltage ethernet cabling. Here, the utility of energy efficient low voltage DC native lighting has hardly been realized in terms of labor and installation costs.

The convergence of desirable qualities in this regard is interesting. With low barriers to entry, we have the possibility to usher in a new professional working class with ease on the installation side. What’s left is the design side that will be the remaining focus of this article.

As an emerging market, innovation blossoms in low regulatory environments. The desire to rethink lighting should not be for mere energy efficiency, low installation costs. But to rethink all aspects of interior lighting from control, design, to the non-visual biological effects of electromagnetic radiation and beyond in creative applications that the teenagers of tomorrow may create from possibilities not available to my younger self.

Low Voltage Lighting Design & Engineering

To be continued

The next article will be a standalone introduction better suited for circulation among professional circles. Topics will include:

• An introduction to low-voltage LED luminary engineering.
• Low voltage power distribution and lighting control systems.
• The physics and photo biology of light; its visual and non-visual effects and how human perception differs from the underlying physics. Details here are especially important for interior designers. This will tie into LED spectrum emission.