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HEDLight

Program Manager: Dr. Douglas Kirkpatrick

The High Efficiency Distributed Lighting (HEDLight) program seeks to fundamentally change the design for lighting systems on U. S. military platforms to increase survivability, deployability, and maintainability.

Current lighting systems use electrical distribution and the generation of light at the point-of-use. HEDLight remote source lighting uses centralized light generation and optically transports the light to the point-of-use. This allows the lighting system electrical circuitry and wiring to be concentrated, protected, and removed to the interior of the warship, thereby removing a source of vulnerability from the outer-envelope. Critical metrics that are necessary for the successful implementation of HEDLight are system efficiency, weight, and control of the illumination pattern. The technical areas key to the success of the HEDLight program include the development of compact, high-efficiency, full-spectrum light sources; high-efficiency coupling optics; high-efficiency, integrated optical-fiber luminaries; and integrated illuminator engines that effectively combine the light source, the optical coupler, and fiberluminaire.

Under the HEDLight program, potential opportunities have been identified to demonstrate the advantages of this advanced lighting technology. The HEDLight program seeks to replace the current fluorescent and incandescent lighting used on Navy surface vessels today. The current lighting sources will be replaced by HEDLight systems, which employ highly efficient metal halide high intensity discharge (HID) and light emitting diode (LED) sources that are efficiently coupled to large core plastic optical fiber and/ or linear acrylic rods for distribution. The purpose of this phase is to identify failure modes, refine the system based on lessons learned, and evaluate the overall utility of the system. The HEDLight systems will be installed in engineering control rooms, hangar bays, berths, well decks and weather deck locations on the ship. Offering reduced maintenance, improved safety and space-savings, HEDLight systems are the perfect solution for shipboard lighting as it removes voltage, glass and hazardous materials from the workspace. Once installed, 6-9 month sea trials will commence, which are expected to demonstrate HEDLight's benefits of lower maintenance costs, increased lifetime, efficiency, safety, and improved lighting.