I missed this announcement back in May, but the team over at Lumenpulse (including many of my former CK colleagues…should I call them “frienemies”?) launched an LED cove product using a custom ASIC driver chip that runs an AC-system topology.  Lumenpulse is advertising this as eliminating the power supply, but that is not really accurate — it is simply continuing the trend of miniaturizing power supplies from bulky units into integrated-circuit chips.  They’ve also included 0-10v dimming and their own power-line carrier option.  Maury Wright reviews the particulars of this system design in an article at LEDsMagazine.

I advocated at the DOE SSL R+D workshops and at several other conferences that miniaturization of power supplies is a key aspect of driving the “next evolution of lighting”.  There are a host of secondary benefits — such as reduction in cost, size and complexity of fixtures, along with driving new form factors — that miniaturized drivers can enable.  All told, this reduction of waste is a key driver for significantly more sustainable lighting fixtures.  I hope the DOE continues to stimulate R+D investment in this area.