Acuity Brands Sees OLED Fixtures Stepping Up to Claim Their Share of Lighting Market

This week, The Home Depot began offering four Acuity Brands luminaires using organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), which is the technology’s first big step toward the mass market in lighting. This move, combined with news that Korean electronics giant LG Chem has an OLED system capable of producing 100 lumens per watt ready for manufacturers to start integrating into their fixture designs and that other OLED suppliers are close behind, suggests we’ll soon see OLEDs as a major factor in the lighting market.

There’s a lot to be excited about with OLEDs, because they make it possible to design lighting in ways it can’t be done with legacy lighting technologies, Jeannine Fisher Wang, director of business development and marketing for Acuity’s OLED Business Group, told Electrical Marketing in an e-mail exchange.

“Like us, our customers see our vision that OLED offers commercially available choices that are not available today,” Wang said. “They also see that OLED will be able to offer value propositions that cannot be matched by what is available through other light sources in terms of design creativity and application for direct-view light sources, resulting in more choices for them as designers and ultimately for their clients. This includes transparent OLED panels, dynamic OLED panels, and truly flexible panels.

“We see that spaces will be illuminated in new and novel ways unconstrained by limitations of current built environments, such as through integration of lighting with architecture and furniture and the integration of personal and interactive control. These new application possibilities will bring lighting closer to the user and accelerate the adoption of OLED lighting through greater appreciation of the light. The opportunities could be endless depending on where the technology takes us.”

Acuity’s OLED products thus far have been oriented to the architectural market but with the move into Home Depot, they expect consumers to open up to the idea.

“From the very first OLED luminaire concepts we demonstrated in 2010, our customers have been wowed. Customers consider our OLED luminaire concepts revolutionary and inspirational, commenting on how the designs are modern and innovative,” Wang said. “In the beginning, we were focused on demonstrating OLED luminaires as concepts because the technology was so new and relatively unknown. So, up until recently, OLED was viewed as lighting for the future. With the introduction of our next-generation OLED luminaires, we are showing our customers that OLED lighting is applicable now. The performance of OLED lighting technology has advanced in several key ways (namely lifetime and color quality) which allow broader adoption and usage. Our customers are now considering OLED lighting on projects they are working on today.”

In the immediate future, cost will be an important if not predominant factor in driving OLED adoption, but Acuity is expecting the OLED premium to fall away rather quickly. Once that happens, OLEDs will rise to dominate some application categories.

“Cost is an important consideration, and perhaps one of the most significant ones in driving wider industry adoption,” Wang said. “If in five years, costs for OLED panels are a 10th of what they are today featuring lifetimes of greater than 50,000 hours and efficacy of greater than 150 lm/watt as we believe, there is no reason OLEDs would not be as widely adopted as LED. Not only will such improvements allow for broader application of OLED in more applications, but advances in driver electronics, controls, materials, and integration methods will enable OLED to surpass LED in many applications.”

The shift to OLEDs will require further training for reps and distributors to capture the opportunities and stay ahead of the evolution of OLEDs’ role in the market. Acuity is working hard to provide that support and training, Wang said.

“For the products that we have commercially launched, the products have been rolled out into C&I and Home Center sales channels with a complete package of specification information, including product data sheets, photometry, BIM models, product images, application images, instruction sheets, and installation videos. Reps, distributors, and designers are being trained on an ongoing basis through the Acuity Brands sales network in the field as well as at hosted events at numerous Acuity Brands’ Center for Light&Space training facilities. Our message is clear — OLED lighting is now.”