What is the penetration of LED lights at the moment? According to Yole Developpement Research Institute, the LEDs lighting the proportion varies in different countries, usually 10 to 20 percent. LED penetration has depended largely on decisions of the authorities.
LED lighting market will grow this year, according to forecasts of more than USD 25 billion. The lighting of the total size of the market will grow to more than 81 billion US dollars, so the LEDs accounted for about one-third. Ffth of all LED lamps are sold in China.
LED market is anticipated to go to $42 billion by 2019. LED lighting is expected to represent 36 percent of lumen-hour sales on the general illumination market by 2020, and 74 percent by 2030.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
LED Luminaire Design Change May Hamper Repairability
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1326332&
Separating the AC/DC driver from the LED load in a lamp fixture brings new freedom in design, but also may greatly reduce the possibility of repairing the unit many years later.
It’s not news that LED-based bulbs are replacing the venerable incandescent bulb. In many jurisdictions, the basic incandescent bulb (especially for higher wattages) can no longer be sold; only “specialty” versions are still allowed. The basic bulb has served us well for over 100 years, with the standard “Edison” A19 base in the U.S. and similar versions in the rest of the world (there are other standard bases in use, as well, such as the smaller candelabra).
Now the market is providing LED-based replacements for the A19-base bulb. These units package the LED driver circuitry in the base, so users can directly replace the incandescent unit with the LED-based one. However, packing the needed AC/DC LED-driver circuitry into the base is a physical challenge, and the heat of the LED and its driver adversely affect the reliability of the driver’s components.
Yet there’s a trend that is starting to gain traction, and a recent report “Integrated LED Lighting Poised to Challenge Traditional Light Bulbs” from market researcher IHS provides some numbers. The report indicates that designers of lighting fixtures — termed “luminaires” in the industry — are now starting to produce designs which recognize the reality of LEDs: the LED itself has a lifetime of tens of thousands of hours. If you design a luminaire and assume there will be no need to replace these LEDs during its service life, you can put the driver elsewhere in the product; you are no longer constrained to the classical blub form factor, shown below (in top image). As a result, thermal management is simplified while the driver and LEDs are both in better thermal situations.
Tossing out the long-standing fundamental mandate that any LED-based luminaires must use replaceable A19-style bulbs gives designers a major new degree of freedom. These new luminaires can have new forms and shapes from an esthetic perspective, and can also be freed from the issue of their own heat degrading their reliability. It’s a classic case being able to solve an old problem (in this case, luminaire design) in a very new way due to a new technology, just as the electric bulb was first retrofitted into gas and candle-based fixtures, but soon spurred entirely new types of designs as there was no longer a risk due to the open-flame source of light.
Yet this ability to design without worrying about using a replaceable bulb changes more than the design basis; it also changes the meaning of longevity. If a luminaire is designed so that its LEDs are no longer replaceable
What happens when that now-old luminaire power supply or LED gives out? Will consumers accept the fact that their luminaire likely will need to be totally replaced, or that an expensive repair is needed (many of these supplies are custom-fitted units)?
Tomi Engdahl says:
LEDs battle ebola and climate change while boosting the economy
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/led-zone/4439197/LEDs-battle-ebola-and-climate-change–?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_systemsdesign_20150422&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_systemsdesign_20150422&elq=496f8072ab0c41c18e15d2368a4ef928&elqCampaignId=22660&elqaid=25485&elqat=1&elqTrackId=b0f37e55864e4a53bc481dd1af20c707
Freeplay Energy has donated 500 top-of-the-line Encore Primary solar-powered and hand-cranked radio/flashlights to enable access to vital information for people living in Ebola-hit Guinea Conakry.
Don’t confuse “connected lighting” with “smart lighting”
Smart Lighting’s future may hinge on coming up with a good answer to the question: “Why are our cars still so much smarter than our so-called Smart Homes?” That question was posed in “Smart Home Hype”, a white paper by GreenPeak’s Cees Links who found part of the answer in an important distinction between a “Connected Home” and a truly “Smart Home”.
Latest data shows LEDs kill carbon while boosting the economy
Recent studies provide compelling evidence that strong economic growth and high environmental quality aren’t mutually-exclusive, according to Patrick Clouden. The CEO of Consumer Energy Solutions points out that for the first time in 40 years, the world economy grew and carbon dioxide emissions did not (2014 CO2 emissions remained at 3.2 billion tonnes while the world economy grew by 3%) 1. Previously, it seemed that the two were invariably linked, but this is no longer the case
Tomi Engdahl says:
Samsung’s Mid-Power flip-chip LEDs foreshadow a larger battle ahead
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/electronic-product-reviews/other/4439617/Samsung-s-Mid-Power-flip-chip-LEDs-foreshadow-a-larger-battle-ahead-?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_productsandtools_20150608&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_productsandtools_20150608&elq=3324d8a1e5c24354b89b6aa2e9d08535&elqCampaignId=23344&elqaid=26308&elqat=1&elqTrackId=57c18ae7f8ac40bd965f25fd6c107656
Samsung’s recently-announced family of flip-chip mid-power LEDs and aggressive roadmap for its chip scale packaging (CSP) technology are both signs that the Korean electronics giant intends to defend its market share against growing competition. Like Osram, Philips and other incumbent LED makers, Samsung has been encountering growing competition from upstart Chinese manufacturers who seem to be willing to buy market share with pricing that’s rumored to barely cover their operating costs.
But unlike Philips and several of its other counterparts who’ve folded their hands and sold out, Samsung has chosen to take a stand. Rather than try to win a price war with their existing products, Samsung’s thrown its resources at getting a generation or two ahead of Chinese manufacturers’ packaging and process technologies with two new generations of LEDs.
For the short term, they’ve introduced a 2nd-generation chip-scale package (CSP2) manufacturing process for their GaN on Sapphire (4”) fab line to produce smaller, more efficient LEDs which offer improved optical and thermal properties and a highly-competitive Lm/$ ratio.
The CSP2 process enables Samsung to produce LED die which are roughly 30 percent smaller than its 1.4×1.4mm first generation CSP, while offering a 10 percent improvement in light performance. It also provides higher light quality with advanced multifaceted phosphor coating technology, which covers the top and four sides of an LED package with phosphor.
Tomi Engdahl says:
High-performance LEDs aim at halogen spotlight applications with 90 CRI, halide-equivalent R9 values, 140Lumens/W
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/electronic-product-reviews/other/4439724/High-performance-LEDs-aim-at-halogen-spotlight-applications-with-90-CRI-and-140Lumens-W?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_productsandtools_20150622&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_productsandtools_20150622&&elq=4c4ce6ac5d6d4341b4df83738d39fc2b&elqCampaignId=23553&elqaid=26590&elqat=1&elqTrackId=89ae3416d7f34ff991f7c920297ee1df
One of the reasons I attended Lightfair last month was to get a firsthand look at Cree’s new TrueWhite® LEDs which the company claims are able to rival the light quality of a traditional ceramic metal halide (CMH) bulb. Equally important, I wanted to see how it stacked up against Soraa’s Violet Emission 3-phosphor (V3P) technology which I consider the current gold standard of solid-state lighting (see my 6/14 mini-review of Soraa’s PAR-30/38 bulbs).
The short answer was that I was tickled at the “near-halogen experience” TrueWhite appears to deliver.
Delivering greater than 90 CRI light at more than 140 lumens per watt efficacy in a small 19 mm light emitting surface (LES), Cree TrueWhite® LEDs aim to challenge CMH-type lighting technologies on their home turf, i.e. lighting applications such as high performance retail spots. They attribute this exceptional performance to their “SC5 Technology™ Platform” – a process for making smaller, higher-powered LEDs and TrueWhite, a highly-tuned red/white color-mixing technique. Cree has offered TrueWhite capabilities in some of its MR-16 lamps, LMR4 modules and other products for a year or so but have not made the bare die available until now.
I believe that Cree is correct in its assertion that these are the first LED Arrays to deliver 3500 lumens of high quality light in the 19 mm LES required for retail spots.
The materials which Cree supplied have only a few details of the blue-shifted yellow LEDs + red LEDs (“BSY+R”) color mixing technique which TrueWhite uses to produce 90 CRI light with a high R9 value but conversations at the Lightfair Demo revealed a few more details. Small red LEDs have been used for several years as a relatively cost-effective way to enhance the spectral content of white LEDs which are notoriously thin in the red region. The problem is that, until now, matching the output characteristics of the red and white LEDs usually required a specialized (and co$tly) 2-channel driver. Cree has taken a different approach by tuning the white LEDs’ phosphors so their conversion components are notched in such a way that they leave a “spectral hole” that the red LED can precisely fill.
it looks to me that any possible differences in color rendering between TrueWhite and halide bulbs are small enough as to be insignificant for most applications.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The world’s best LED lamp was awarded – could save 850 terawatt hours
Angled Nanoleaf-LED-lamp are granted to promote the development of energy-efficient equipment Sead Organization Global Efficiency Medal award. Nanoleaf One NL02-1200-300K shine 75-watt incandescent lamp life brightness but consumes 87 percent less energy.
Nanoleafin power of 10 watts and a luminous flux of 800 lumens. Indicating lamp color rendering Ra value of 80 and a color temperature of 2 700-3 000 kelvins.
Developed by the American Cree Cree LED Lighting A21-16050OMF-12DE26-1U100
Competition-winning light bulbs will not be sold in Europe.
LED lamps will have in a significant impact on the energy consumption of the world, because lighting accounts for the world’s electricity consumption is 15-19 per cent. If all the world’s household bulbs replaced with LEDs there would be 850 TWh savings annually.
Source:
http://www.tivi.fi/Uutiset/2015-06-29/Maailman-paras-led-lamppu-palkittiin—voisi-s%C3%A4%C3%A4st%C3%A4%C3%A4-850-terawattituntia-3324844.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
LEDs Get As Cheap as Bulbs
New formulation drastically cuts costs
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1327573&
A new formulation for light-emitting-diodes (LEDs) could make lighting systems using the as cheap as incandescent bulbs, according to Florida State University (Tallahassee). FSU has come up with an inexpensive single layer combo-organic/inorganic material formulation that can glow red, green or blue (or all three together for white LEDs).
“LED researchers have only been using these new materials for about three years, even though its been used for solar panels for quite some time,” professor of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering at FSU, Zhibin Yu, told EE Times. “Other groups are working on it for LEDs, but they need several layers of materials making it expensive to process. We are first published group to use a single layer.”
“Our new new device structure requires just mixing the organic polymer with the active inorganics, instead of using complicated structures with many layers,” Yu told us, “therefore making the process inexpensive and highly manufacturable.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Is solar-powered LED lighting finally getting a chance to shine?
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/led-insights/4440223/Is-solar-powered-LED-lighting-finally-getting-a-chance-to-shine-?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150909&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150909&elq=d19ab76f8ebb4296853ab580093321c6&elqCampaignId=24702&elqaid=27993&elqat=1&elqTrackId=7a7ba963405e45b3bf4934e6a1fb900b
For a good many years, there have been periodic articles about “solar powered lighting,” a supposed creative way to bring lighting to where connection to the grid is next to impossible. But a little cost/benefit analysis has always seemed to put a damper on things. Although there are now dozens of firms in the US which offer such products made in the US or China, there has so far been little traction.
So, what’s the problem here? In a basic system, a solar panel charges a battery during the day and the battery then powers an LED light fixture at night. Sounds simple enough, right? The fact that an LED requires so much less electricity than an incandescent lamp makes the idea worthy of discussion. Furthermore, the inherent directivity of LED emitters makes them much better than any HID lamp in actually delivering lumens to a desired surface, no matter what the specs seem to say for any HID luminaire.
But the devil’s in the details. First of all, a solar panel rated at X watts only delivers those watts at noon in a cloudless sky. In reality, if you do a little 5-minute test yourself with a simple ammeter connected right across any solar panel output to measure the short circuit current (yep, that’s what you do to measure the panel’s efficiency in changing light levels), you will find that any solar panel (they’re all “fundamentally” the same no matter what you’ve been told) with an overcast sky will only deliver 20-30% of its rating, and only 50-70% in a cloudless sky in the morning or late afternoon.
This really means that unless you are located in Phoenix or the Sahara, you need a solar panel 2-3 times what you might think to be sure a battery bank will always be adequately charged.
Now that we know the solar panels need not be a major cost issue, we need some healthy batteries.
However, things are changing. LEDs at 5000K have gone from 50 LPW (lumens per watt) in 2006 to more than 150 LPW in 2015. And not just in some company’s R&D lab, but actually for sale off the shelf from Nichia, Cree, Lumileds, and others.
The killer in all this is when we need those lights on all night at full brightness.
If somebody wants a parking lot light on for security purposes, they want it on at full brightness all night.
Let us jump to an area where solar powered lighting in fact offers surprising benefits. There are now more than 25,000 non-stadium-type youth athletic fields in the US which have no lighting at all. Many of these are also used for youth lacrosse and football practice. If you want to bring lighting to such a field, where no AC mains power has previously been present, it will cost you (the community) between $150K-200K—best case—to dig long trenches, bury high voltage cables per code, bring in overhead power from a distant utility pole transformer, install various service panels per code, and undergo perhaps a 12 month aggravating process with a utility company.
The traditional $150K-$200K process to bring in AC mains power for youth sports field lighting can be reduced to less than $50K if solar power is used.
The major cost is not in the LED luminaires and poles but in bringing in that AC power—an eye-opening challenge. The massive task of doing all that trenching, HV-cable laying, and utility connection is totally eliminated with solar.
The bottom line is the sharp increase in LED efficacy and drop in LED prices, coupled with drops in solar panel pricing, are making it possible to use LED lighting for surprising new applications, matched to need and driven by economics—just when we thought there was not much new going on in LED lighting!
Tomi Engdahl says:
India orders 770 million LED light bulbs, prices drop 83 per cent
Subsidised bulbs sold for US$1.28, cuts peak load by 2,346 MW
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/01/india_orders_770_million_led_light_bulbs_prices_drop_83_per_cent/
Shri Piyush Goyal, India’s minister of State (IC) for Power, Coal and New & Renewable Energy yesterday celebrated the fact that in just 20 months the price of LED lightbulbs has fallen from 310 rupees (US$4.68) to 54.9 rupees ($0.84), an 83 per cent plunge that is partly India’s fault.
In early 2015 the nation adopted a policy called the Domestic Efficient Lighting Programme (DELP), which sees the nation acquire LED lightbulbs for subsidised sale to households. Prime minister Narendra Modhi is a big backer of the plan, which plans to reduce India’s energy consumption. That’s a desirable outcome because plenty of India is still not electrified: if the nation uses less juice it can connect more communities to the grid without investing in quite so much generation capacity. The government is therefore pleased to report peak electricity demand is already down by 2,346 MW.
http://www.delp.in/
Tomi Engdahl says:
LEDs Spur Growth in Power ICs
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1329662&
Power semiconductor and power supply vendors are poised to cash in on strong growth anticipated for LED lighting in coming years, according to the latest forecast from market research firm IHS Inc.
The market for power semiconductors for LED lighting is projected to grow to 24.3 million units in 2020, up from 7.3 million units in 2015, as LED lights command a larger proportion of the overall lighting market, according to IHS (Englewood, Colo.).
LED lightning shipments accounted for just 8% of the total lighting market in 2015. But that percentage is expected to increase to 27% in 2020, according to the market research firm’s power supplies intelligence service.
Shipments of power drivers and power supplies for LED lighting are expected to grow to 4.5 billion units in 2020, up from 1.4 billion units in 2015, IHS said.
IHS also forecasts rapid growth in the microcontroller market. The firm projects that the market for microcontrollers will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of nearly 44% from 2015 to 2020. Microntrollers are used in LED lighting applications for advanced functions, including color changing and for peripheral communications via wireless technologies.
Tomi Engdahl says:
LED light bulb manufacturers diversify in search of sustainable profits
Brian Dipert -June 12, 2018
https://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/brians-brain/4460780/LED-light-bulb-manufacturers-diversify-in-search-of-sustainable-profits
price decline is likely driven by higher consumer demand (therefore higher manufacturing volumes) over the last ~3 years, leading to volume cost efficiencies that manufacturers are able to pass along to consumers as price decreases. And some of it is inevitably the result of ongoing “corner cutting” in terms of the quality of the components used to build the bulb, the means of assembling and testing (or not) the bulb, the robustness (or not) of the bulb’s heat dissipation capabilities, etc … unfortunately translating into an increasing likelihood of premature failure such as that which both Martin and I experienced.
To wit, while researching this piece, I found a notable price discrepancy between “brand name” and “generic” LED light bulbs of similar specifications. I’d wager that at least some of this price disparity translates into quality (therefore reliability) differences. “You get what you pay for,” as the saying goes, or if you prefer, “don’t be penny-wise, pound-foolish.”
With that said, brand-driven perception advantages generally tend to diminish over time, as Ford, Honda, and Kraft Heinz are now finding out
so manufacturers are (or at least should) not be relying solely on them long-term. Companies are also proliferating the foundation LED light technology into a variety of form factor and function variants, such as the examples that follow.