Mr. Belmonte, You're Trying to Seduce Me

Today saw the unveiling of the REFR's latest PR shenanigan. It wasn't released by REFR, of course. They seem a little antsy about anything remotely of substance being released under their corporate name. No, as per their usual MO of late, they are promoting through a surrogate, in this case one Steve Belmonte, of Hospitality Solutions, LLC, and apparently only for purposes of promoting SPD, Hotel Technologies (no Inc., LLC or any other corporate designation).

Mr. Belmonte has developed what he calls the Grad-U-Wake Timer. Not to be confused with the Graduwake brand of alarm clock radio by General Electric. Not to worry about trademark issues, of course, since there will only be confusion if Mr. Belmonte's invention goes on to become an actual for-sale product.

The idea behind the Grad-U-Wake timer is that it will incrementally change the light transmittance of a hotel window equipped (naturally) with SPD, steadily letting in more and more sunlight so as to gently wake the room occupant. Much nicer than one of those wake-up calls, don't you think? Of course, it's not going to be of much use if one needs to rise before dawn, but hey, nothing is perfect.

But the real problem lies in the properties of the SPD film itself, along with the small issue that when you get right down to it, the sun is one really bright sucker.

SPD, in its darkest formulation is rated, so they say, to block 98.5% of incoming light. That certainly sounds good, until you run the math. Even towards its low end sunlight measures about 32000 lux. 1.5% of that, the amount SPD lets through even in its darkest phase, comes to about 480 lux, which is comparable to the light in a reading library. Not exactly ideal conditions for sleeping in, if your window happens to be facing east!

And that's to say nothing of the privacy issues. Sure, it's no big deal if you're on the 20th floor, but if you happen to be in a ground level room, you'll probably note that, for all its light-block properties, SPD does not become opaque under any circumstances. The upshot being that if you have a light on in your room at night, an SPD window will not do much little to protect your privacy.

Promoters of SPD technology continuously make the claim that windows equipped with SPD will make curtains, shades and blinds obsolete. I personally tend to doubt Levolor is quaking in their boots over SPD.