report - lumishore€¦ · report the superyacht report. 6. the light fantastic. still, pumping out...

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SuperyachtTheT R U T H • O P I N I O N K N O W L E D G E • I D E A S A N D E X P E R T I N D U S T R Y A N A L Y S I S

LIGHTINGThe current state of lighting technology and where it might be heading in the future.

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ISSUE 172 3

The light fantastic

The days of fixed colour solitary bulbs and basic light ropes are long gone, and a new era of lighting technology is illuminating superyachts like never before. Tim Thomas takes a look at the current state of lighting technology, and explores where lighting might be heading in the future.

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The Superyacht REPORT


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The light fantasticThe light fantastic

“The most terrifying thing for me,” begins John Roberts,

principal of lighting design studio Aqualuce, “was when our automated and systems control head, Andrew Butchart, showed me that he could turn the entire boat’s lights off from the quay on his mobile phone. But I also realised it could be very useful against clients who haven’t paid their bills …”

Illuminating a superyacht has never been just about fitting lamps and lights in the interior and locating a few spotlights in the outside deckheads. Over the years, the possibilities of lighting – designed to highlight the sculptural qualities of the yacht’s lines, to light the water around the hull, or simply to create the biggest wow factor in the anchorage – have advanced beyond

measure. A relative revolution in lighting, driven by both advances in technology and the demands of sustainability on power consumption, is opening up incredible opportunities to create astonishing visual impact, while offering the ultimate in control and integration into a yacht’s domotics. It has never been easier to create myriad moods, or for an owner or guest to select those moods with a touch on a tablet or phone app.

If you want a prime example of how things have changed in the last 10 years, take a look at underwater lighting. Based in Swansea, UK, Lumishore is relatively young in lighting terms, but the team carries with it a wealth of experience – engineering director Tony Xu, CTO Gareth Evans and co-founder Alun Board have worked together for more than 15 years, and were all key to the development of the lighting and software behind the iconic Yas Marina hotel’s exoskeleton light system. Since Lumishore’s founding in 2008, they have notched up a number of firsts, including the first colour-changing underwater lights.

A look at the line of their underwater lighting units over the last seven years clearly shows how rapidly the LED has advanced. The latest versions feature RGBW for the ultimate colour control, connected to the user interface via the yacht’s wireless network and controlled through any one of the main protocols – DMX, KNX or DALI.

The circuit boards have shrunk while the number of LEDs in each unit has increased, and there has been development in software too – from intelligent mapping to ensure all the lights are kept in sync when in phase changing mode, to true sound-to-light that controls the colour and pulse of individual lights using the low-, mid-, and high-frequency bands of the music rather than relying on a set program routine.

Perhaps the biggest clue, though, is in the sheer power of the latest generation of underwater LEDs, and for that Lumishore uses the industry standard measurement – fixture lumens. The problem, according to Evans, is that some manufacturers of underwater lights rate the light output – lumens – of a stripped-back light, similar to how you might measure the basic output of a previous generation halogen or HID unit. “Fixture lumens is a measurement of the output of the finished unit, through the glass, the aperture and everything else,” Evans explains. “It’s not the same, because if you look at how restrictive the light aperture is and add in at least two lenses on the front, those are very limiting.” As if to demonstrate, he loads a Lumishore unit into an integrating sphere and records of reading of around 18,000 fixture lumens, then loads a competitor light and reveals that it is only outputting a shade under 5,700 fixture lumens – in spite of claiming nearly 10,000 fixture lumens on the unit.

It has never been easier to create myriad moods, or for an owner or guest to select those moods with a touch on

a tablet or phone app.

AQUALUCE’S LIGHTING DESIGN FOR THE REFITTED RADIANT INCLUDES A STUNNING COMBINATION OF EFFECTS, FROM DISTINCT STYLING HIGHLIGHTS TO CLEVER SAT DOME ILLUMINATION.

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The light fantastic

Still, pumping out 18,000 fixture lumens is a serious amount of light, although that is pretty much at the thermal limit of welded-in units in a stainless-steel hull due to the poor heat conduction properties of the metal (it’s why Lumishore’s aluminium superyacht lights are rated up to 24,000 lumens currently, roughly equivalent to a collapsing star). It is this fact that is leading to other areas of innovation – how to deal with heat build-up and dissipation of the LED units. “It’s not the LEDs or the drivers that prove the limiting factor, it’s the amount of heat you can remove – 120W is the limit for thermal loading, particularly when you consider that through-hull fittings often back into the engine bay, or

into tanks in a small cofferdam,” explains Evans.

To combat this, Lumishore has developed a patented louvred LED array, where individual elements of the circuit face can be swivelled. This means that in areas where the hull shape would normally require a long tube to create the correct projection plane for the light, the LED element itself can be directed to a flatter angle, meaning the housing can be shorter. A flush flange can be mounted in all locations around the vessel improving laminar flow as well as optical efficiency. The heat can be managed away from the electronics and into the water for heat dissipation rather than relying on a large heat sink at the rear of the housing.

MONDOMARINE’S YACHT NAMELESS FEATURES LUMISHORE UNDERWATER LIGHTING.

“It’s not the LEDs or the drivers that prove the limiting factor, it’s

the amount of heat you can remove.”– Gareth Evans, CTO,

Lumishore

The light fantastic

While underwater lights are designed to deliver power, when it comes to interior lighting the problems can be far more subtle, but have a far bigger impact. “Ten years ago at the beginning of their development a lot of LEDs were problematic,” says Roberts. “They didn’t dim properly, the drivers weren’t right, we had colour shift and colour rendition was bad. Manufacturers have sorted out a lot of those things although there are still one or two issues.”

“Not all white lights are the same,” says Evans. “If you go to your local store and buy a cheap white LED light, put it in your kitchen and turn it on, everything looks green or a funny colour. That’s because they have a very low colour rendering index (CRI), which equates to the quality of the white light. Advanced LED modules use different wavelength emitters to fill in the colour spectrum gaps to

make them flatter in order to simulate daylight.”

“Colour nowadays has become a lot easier,” adds Butchart. “With the advent of [control protocol] DMX several years ago, LEDs have become better in their colour quality and rather than three large RGB dots they now comprise much smaller dots, so colour mixing becomes a lot easier.” The addition of white to the RGB

emitters – created using a coating on a blue emitter – to give RGBW units also helps give a true white representation. “There’s now dynamic white,” Butchart adds, “so you get a cool white at 4,000 Kelvin and a warm white at 2,700 Kelvin, and you can vary between them. It means that you can change the look of a room to make it appear day or evening, with a bright white for daylight and a nice

“There’s now dynamic white ... It means that you can change the look of a room to make it appear day or evening, with a bright white for daylight and a nice

warm tone for the evening. The visual impact of the area totally changes.”

– Andrew Butchart, automated and systems control head, Aqualuce

AQUALUCE‘S LIGHTING DESIGN PROVED KEY FOR THE FOSTER + PARTNERS’ INTERIOR OF S/Y PANTHALASSA.

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warm tone for the evening. It transforms the area drastically – the visual impact of the area totally changes.” It is helping to address one of the early problems with LED lighting, which struggled to mimic the CRI of incandescent light bulbs, which in turn could not only affect the quality of the light but also had direct impact on the rendition of colours in objects found in the room. Fully controllable RGBW LEDs have also consigned the use of filters and gels – and the associated programming and commissioning process – to history.

One of the knock-on effects of all this is that the process of lighting design and also of engineering is becoming much more involved. “We’re doing a big project at the moment that has a lot of backlit panels, which means it’s got to be seamless,” says Roberts, “and that means there’s a lot of care and attention to detail on where all the ancillary equipment goes. So our lighting design work now involves more engineering with all services, and we’re giving a lot more to the

shipyard than maybe other clients or designers would be involved in.”

Of course, one of the key advantages of modern lighting systems is the increase in efficiency and, properly managed, the decrease in heat. It leads to an energy efficiency spiral as not only is the direct power draw of the lighting greatly reduced, but also the load on air conditioning is reduced. Further developments in using high-power projector units coupled to fibre optics – either through point lighting or through side-emitting technology – means that the projector unit and the drivers can be located in a spot that is convenient both for heat management and for easier maintenance.

While LED technology has now reached a point of usability, both in terms of the quality of the light produced and the lifespan of the equipment itself, it is far from a finished technology in terms of

development. “LEDs as discrete devices are getting brighter and more efficient,” offers Evans. “It’s now got to the point where you could take a single LED, fit it in a housing and you’ve got enough light to illuminate your desk or even your office. The other development is that the package size is getting smaller and smaller.” This is potentially interesting, says Evans, because the smaller you can make the LED the more it becomes a point source, and that’s easier to manage optically. “If you’ve got a tiny spec of dust creating all this light it’s far easier to put a lens on top and really direct that light to where you want it to go,” he explains.

However, and in particular with underwater lighting, there’s a limit to how much you can cram in. “We’re already at the thermal limit,” Evans continues. “We know that for stainless steel the limit is 120W of power (due to the poor

ABOVE: SOLANDGE BELOW: QUATTROELLEPHOTOS: KLAUS JORDAN

“It’s now got to the point where you could take a single LED, fit it in a housing and

you’ve got enough light to illuminate your desk

or even your office. The other development

is that the package size is getting smaller

and smaller.” –– Gareth Evans, CTO,

Lumishore

AFT DECK OF S/Y PANTHALASSA.

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MONDOMARINE’S YACHT NAMELESS FEATURES LUMISHORE UNDERWATER LIGHTING.

thermal conductivity of the metal), so how do you get more output? The only way is to increase the efficiency of the LEDs, and then you gain an advantage by putting more LEDs in, but driving them at a lower power at, say, 1W or 2W instead of 10W. That way, you could get 180 lumens per watt out of the device, as opposed to 80 lumens per watt if you used fewer LEDs but ran them at full power – 10W. So putting more LEDs in there and driving them less hard gives you more light output at optimum heat. But that’s also actually quite complex to do in terms of software and how they are driven. The upshot, though, is that as LEDs become more efficient you can get brighter lights in a smaller housing.”

The next generation of lighting

is a little harder to predict, and will probaby evolve differently according to different areas of the boat. Much is being made of the extension of organic LEDs (OLED) from device displays to lighting, and several major companies such as Lumiotec and Philips are already touting OLED lighting panels. With uniform illumination and currently offered in thin panel forms, pieces such as Philips’ Lumiblade offer the potential for stunning interior design light panels, lamps and effects. Philips – in collaboration with Kvadrat Soft Cells – has even gone as far as developing LED wallpaper using luminous textiles and colour/intensity-adjustable LEDs to create a glowing ‘mood effect’ general light source. Similar wall coverings are being developed

using other technologies too – UK company Lomox is developing OLED technology to create similar – and potentially far more complex – room lighting effects. The technology is still a way off being usable, though. “I think OLED is used in very different ways from LED,” says Evans. “OLEDs are low-power, flexible and OK for background or mood lighting – you could illuminate a whole panel or the inside of a boat, and effectively the whole ceiling could be OLED and that could give off enough light to be used.”

OLED is not the only technology being explored, however. Laser diodes have been suggested as an emerging lighting tech in the next decade, and indeed BMW has already opted for a version of the technology for the headlights on its new i8 supercar, claiming the high-beam range of its Laserlight unit is double that of any current headlight technology. If you remain a little sceptical, consider that Dr Shuji Nakamura – the Nobel Prize-winning inventor of green and blue LEDs, which essentially opened the LED lighting floodgates – came out earlier in 2016 and proclaimed that laser diodes were the future of

lighting, with several advantages over LEDs.

Researchers are also looking at another emerging display technology – quantum dots – and several have claimed that this could be a cheap and viable alternative in the form of hybrid quantum dot LEDs (QLED). QLEDs are said to be the follow-on technology set to replace OLED in device screens and televisions, and both Philips and Samsung have launched quantum dot televisions in the last couple of years – Samsung in particular, labelling them Super Ultra High-Definition (SUHD) TVs. Hybrid quantum dot LEDs work on the basis of nanocrystals (the quantum dots) that emit light when excited, but a barrier has been the efficiency of the production process. However, in 2015 a team of researchers at the University of Hiroshima managed to produce the dots using a solution-based process at room temperature, signalling a potential gateway for mass development and adoption of the technology.

While all these new technologies may prove interesting for the interior of a superyacht, the exterior lighting design is likely to remain in the bounds of conventional methods for now. That’s not to say boundaries aren’t being pushed here too, though. “There’s a lot of new-effect technology coming through, but it’s just got to be carefully used, such as membranes on yachts to create visions and pictures,” says Roberts.

“That’s the new breakthrough that we put forward as a concept for the yacht Topaz. What people are trying to do now is get superstructures to become membranes of changing colour that can have other effects on it – that’s a development that’s coming.”

Butchart likens it to the advertising hoardings now seen around the edges of sports pitches, but both agree that these things have to be approached with a degree of caution. “It’ll work in the nice dry interior but it’s not [yet] designed for being on a deck that’s got seawater splashing on it, large temperature variations, wind and everything else,” says Butchart, “and the companies developing the technology haven’t thought of that application. We’ve thought of doing that but we’ll keep it quiet until the technology is at a level we’ll know will work. It could be done now but you couldn’t maintain it – it’s possible, but not viable.”

“It’s all to do with how well it can be maintained and what’s going to break down,” offers Roberts. “We’re a bit reticent about these things, because the last thing you want is a 100-metre yacht out of commission with you in the firing line. It’s all well and good if it’s on a deck or inside an area you can get to, but once you start on hulls and superstructures you’ve got to be careful.”

That’s not to say that no one has put forward proposals, and in the spring of 2016 Oceanco unveiled a 95-metre concept designed by Van Geest Design

with some rather radical lighting ideas developed by lighting design studio Temeloy. The resulting yacht – named Moonstone – features 300 interlocking triangular backlit panels in the topsides that should not only reflect the sun and water during the day, but which would allow stunning shimmering lighting effects at night. In addition, it has been proposed that fisheye lens cameras will capture the sky, stars and sunsets and project them onto the interior’s deckheads.

Whatever the future may hold, current advances in existing technology are opening the doors for an incredible array of lighting effects both inside and out. Such is the power of clever lighting design that even carefully considered refit projects can create a stir. “When we finished the refit of the 110-metre Radiant a couple of years ago,” offers Roberts, “it came to Monaco and stood its ground against everybody.” Butchart adds: “Other yachts came to us saying they had to switch off their exterior lights because they couldn’t compete.”

Advanced LED installations, the creative use of fibre optics, modern waterproofed LED strip lighting, ultra power underwater lights and the advent of OLED panel lights are all playing in their part in making our yachts look more stunning than ever. Throw in the tantalising possibility of membrane technology and even more advanced panel displays, and it’s clear to see – the future of yacht lighting is brighter than ever. g

“There’s a lot of new-effect technology coming through, but it’s just got to be

carefully used, such as membranes on yachts to create visions and pictures.” – John Roberts, principal, Aqualuce

HIGH-POWER UNDERWATER LIGHTING FROM LUMISHORE, WHICH CAN ILLUMINATE THE SEABED AT ANCHORAGE.


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Reprinted by kind permission of The Superyacht Group from The Superyacht Report, issue 172TRP Magazines Ltd, Lansdowne House, 3–7 Northcote Road, London SW11 1NG, UK

T: +44 (0)20 7924 4004 | F: +44 (0)20 7924 1004 | E: [email protected] | W: www.thesuperyachtgroup.com

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Unit 2, Technium 1, Kings Road, Swansea, SA1 8PH, UK +44(0)208 144 1694 | [email protected]

7127 24TH Court East, Sarasota, Florida 34243, USA(941) 405-3302 | [email protected]

www.Lumishore.com

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