To remove barriers to the rapid adoption of LED lighting, Soraa will sponsor a Lighting PlugFest in conjunction with Strategies Unlimited at their annual Strategies in Light conference in Santa Clara, California.

Incompatibility between LED lamps and fixtures with existing control gear and dimmers designed for traditional light sources—incandescent, halogen, or fluorescent—is one of the biggest hurdles facing the lighting industry today. PlugFests are a mainstay for the IT and consumer electronics industries—Soraa is the first to adapt the practice to the lighting industry, launching the first ever PlugFest in New York City in December 2012. Lighting PlugFest gives lighting designers and specifiers, manufacturers, and end users the opportunity to test products and identify underlying compatibility issues.

“Soraa has been an innovator in Solid State Lighting, launching a revolution in everything from substrates to LED chips to lamps. Lighting PlugFest is a unique opportunity to bring the SSL revolution to be on par with the IT world,” said Ella Shum, Chair of Strategies in Light Conferences, Strategies Unlimited. “Today, when we use a smartphone and a PC, we don’t think about how they communicate with each other. It should be the same for SSL lighting.”

Soraa will manage and run the testing using a custom-built testing panel comprised of an array of commonly used transformers and dimmers and Soraa’s 12VAC LED MR16 lamps. The panel can also accommodate participating companies’ transformers, dimmers, and 12VAC or 120VAC (E26 only) LED lamps or fixtures. Testing of components and fixtures at the PlugFest booth (Booth 746/748) will be available at no charge on a first come, first served basis on February 13th and 14th.

“Manufacturers benefit because Lighting PlugFest addresses compatibility—an obstacle to widespread LED lamp adoption; designers benefit because they can specify with confidence; and end users benefit because they will know that a particular product combination works,” said Eric Kim, CEO of Soraa. “This event is all about ensuring a positive LED lighting user experience.”