Calendar

SID 2008
May 18-23
Booth 905
Los Angeles, California
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euroLED
June 4-5
Booth 32
Ricoh Arena, Coventry, UK
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SPIE Optics & Photonics
August 12-14
Booth 129
San Diego, California
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Introduction to Illumination Design Using LightTools
September 8-10
Pasadena, California
Click here for more details and to enroll

Advanced Topics in LightTools:  Optimization, COM/API, and Photorealistic Rendering
September 11-12
Pasadena, California
Click here for more details and to enroll

LEDs 2008
September 29-October 1
Booth 56
San Diego, California
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OSA Frontiers in Optics
October 19-23
Booth 514
Rochester, New York
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SPIE Photonics West 2009
January 24-29, 2009
San Jose, California
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For a complete list of LightTools events worldwide: visit our website

New LightTools Solar Tracking and Compound Concentrator Utilities

As the need for clean renewable energy continues to grow, more attention is being focused on the development of more efficient solar energy collection systems. ORA's Engineering Services and LightTools Technical Support teams have developed two new utilities to help LightTools users model and analyze solar collection systems. These utilities, including detailed documentation on their use, are now available for download from ORA's Customer Service Web site, www.oraservice.com (LightTools Support > Utility and Macro Downloads)

Solar Tracking Utility: This utility allows users to simulate and analyze the performance of a solar collection system. Features of this utility include:

• The ability to create both direct and diffuse solar source models to be used in analysis. Advanced source modeling includes the ability to simulate the solar aureole caused by the solar beam's interaction with atmospheric particles.
• The support of insolation data to simulate solar radiation for various geographies, times of year, and times of day. Users can directly input insolation data created using a global meteorological databases provided by METEOTEST's METEONORM version 6.0 software. The METEONORM software is available through ORA (sales@opticalres.com) or your local ORA software distributor. User-defined insolation data files, created using other sources such as the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, are also supported.
• The creation of a solar cell receiver model.
• The ability to evaluate the amount of energy that strikes the solar collection system at a particular time of day.
• The ability to create a solar day scan to simulate the movement of the sun across the sky throughout the day and to calculate both the incident solar power and electrical power of the solar cell defined in your LightTools model.

For more details on the features and use of this utility, please refer to the Solar Tracking Utility User's Guide included in the download.

Compound Concentrator Utility: This utility allows users to create several types of compound concentrators which are sometimes used in solar collectors, including:

• Compound parabolic concentrators
• Compound elliptical concentrators
• Compound hyberbolic concentrators
• Involute concentrators

This new utility supports numerous variations of these fundamental forms. Users can input specific geometric values to define the concentrator (i.e., input diameter, output diameter, etc.) and can indicate if a cubic spline or a Bezier polynomial should be used to fit a specific number of profile points to define the cross sectional profile of the element. The macro uses these inputs to build the concentrator using a LightTools skinned solid.  For more details, please refer to the Compound Concentrator Utility User's Guide included in the download.

Both of these utilities will be included in the next update to LightTools, but are currently available for download from www.oraservice.com.

Update to Backlight Pattern Optimization Utility

An update to the LightTools Backlight Pattern Optimization (BPO) Utility is now available for download from ORA's Customer Support Web site, www.oraservice.com, (LightTools Support > Utility and Macro Downloads).  BPO version 6.0 SR2 includes several customer requested enhancements and bug fixes.  A complete list of these changes is included on the download page.