IES Technical Luncheon: LED Lighting for Horticultural Environments

Both commercial and novice growers are recognizing the benefits of growing plants and vegetables using custom tuned horticultural lighting equipment. While HID lighting equipment has been, and continues to be a popular light source for the grow environment for many years, LED lighting equipment has advanced significantly and offers additional flexibility and advantages. With these advancements, LEDs are quickly making their presence known to the Horticultural grow market, making selecting the appropriate lighting increasingly complicated. This session will explore the fundamental differences between Horticultural lighting equipment and lighting equipment intended for general lighting application. We will also spend time discussing the safety requirements specified in UL’s standard for Horticultural lighting equipment and the performance characteristics for this specialized lighting equipment.

PRESENTER:
Michael Ritto, P.E. – Michael the Business Development Manager for UL’s North American Lighting business. Michael has been with UL for more than 12 years and has spent his entire career in Lighting. Michael worked as a project handler and review for UL for more than 8 years working on all lighting equipment and specializing in Luminaires, LED Drivers and Emergency Lighting Equipment. For the last 4 years Michael has worked as a Business Development Manager responsible for setting ULs overall growth strategy and for developing and launching new services aligned with industry needs. Michael has his Bachelors of Science in Electrical Engineering Technologies for Farmingdale State University, a Master’s of Science in Electrical Engineering from New York University – Polytechnic School of Engineering and is a New York State Licensed Professional Engineer.