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Former GE lighting expert Stuart Mucklejohn has won The International Electrotechnical Commission's (ICE) Centenary Challenge. Mucklejohn's joint paper with Georges Zissis is a vital step towards developing a desperately needed international standard on the response of the human eye under mesopic conditions. The prize is a major success both for the authors and the lighting community as a whole - the IEC is responsible for standards for a wide range of industry products from electrical goods, to computers, to signal protocols, to washing machines.
The IEC Centenary Challenge asked the world's academic institutions to address the issue of 'Standards for end-users at any level of business activity', and Zissis and Mucklejohn won first prize for their paper on 'Standardising mesopic vision conditions and incidence on light sources science and technology'.
The Criteria encompassed the commercial impact of the research - demanding a clear linkage between standardization and business development - including references to electronic, electrical and information technology standardization. The judges also required original flair. The winning paper matches an easily comprehendible style with a sophisticated rendition of a complex problem. Furthermore, the findings have been succinctly linked to the relevant scholarly literature.
The paper places standardization at the heart of industry progress:
'Our modern world should fit together like a jigsaw puzzle thanks to standardization. Standards that have role in protecting the public's safety and healthÉ However, there still exist a number of domains where standards are cruelly missing and this is a serious handicap that slows down, or in some cases stops, new product development and all associated business.' Georges Zissis and Stuart Mucklejohn.
The paper addresses the inadequacy of standards surrounding how human mesopic vision affects the development of innovative light sources as well as addressing how important energy economies can contribute to sustainable development. This is especially relevant for urban lighting systems that enhance security and quality of life in built-up areas. They also address how collaborative research can overcome the problem.
The project was conducted under the auspices of the collaborative industry project 'NumeLiTe' in which GE Consumer and Industrial played an active role. The project brought together 11 partners from industry and academia in six European countries and was established to harness expertise in all areas of component design to generate a set of interacting tools to facilitate total system design. The final goal of the project was to demonstrate the new road lighting system in the city of Albi. The project demonstrated the possibility of adapting new light sources to human mesopic vision, and allowed for a decrease in the input power during less busy hours without degrading visibility conditions or lamp lifespan.
Albi's new road lighting has given energy savings of 40% to 45% per annum. In addition, an end-user satisfaction study targeting pedestrians, drivers and merchants confirmed that this system offers enhanced security, improving quality of life for road users in urban environments. GE developed the dimmable 150W mesopic output lamps for the Albi installation, and holds the patent for these, which are available for use in streetlighting applications.
Good, efficient and sensitive lighting for drivers has a number of benefits including reducing the number of night time road traffic accidents. Running costs and aesthetic considerations, however, have also to be taken into account for many installations. Zissis and Mucklejohn offer a solution to balance these, often competing, priorities to deliver maximum benefit to all classes of users for minimum cost in terms of energy consumed.
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