LED technology
LED has competition for lighting
There is a lot of hope for LED in general lighting applications but the race is far from won with competing technologies also claiming a stake in this lucrative market. Thomas P. Pearsall, General Secretary of European Photonics Industry Consortium (EPIC) asks what will it take for LEDs to succeed against competing solutions.
A
lmost everyone knows that HB-LEDs offer a new source of lighting with lower energy consumption and longer lifetime. LEDs are now mass-manufactured and sold on a commercial basis. They are the preferred solution for many important lighting applications. A major exception is general lighting applications in home and business applications, which together account for more than 66% (Light’s Labour’s Lost, IEA, 2006, p.35) of the electrical consumption for lighting.
The three main areas where attention is needed in order of priority are marketing, manufacturing cost reduction and performance improvement. LED lighting solutions are more expensive than all other commercial alternatives on a euro-per-lumen basis. LEDs can be sold today in high-end luminaires where the unique performance and appearance of LEDs can contribute to the added value. Two examples are automobiles and backlighting for flat-panel displays. However, the lighting industry has chosen to aim instead at low-end bulb replacement. LED solutions are not cost- competitive for this market segment. In our opinion this marketing strategy needs modification.
In general lighting applications, customers do not buy technology. They purchase performance and pay attention to cost. Since LEDs are efficient, operating costs are low, and the cost of ownership is essentially the cost of acquisition. The cost of LED “light bulbs” in euros per lumen needs to decline by 75% before they can be competitive with existing fluorescent alternatives. On the other hand, there is market space for a higher-priced, higher-functionality “smart LED” luminaires which could not be challenged by fluorescent solutions.
Manufacturing costs for LEDs will come down. The Haitz Law learning-curve predicts that the cost per lumen will be 50% lower by the time the current generation of compact fluorescent lamps (CFL) burns out. Cost reductions for general lighting will come from photonic integration, manufacture on larger substrates, optimisation
of chip size, reduction in current density, improvement in wavelength conversion technologies, and better packaging for thermal, electrical and optical management. A reduction of 75% in costs within five years seems to us to be within reach.
A competitive lamp for general lighting should produce about 600 to 1000 lumens. Commercially available LED lamps do not yet reach this level of emission. There is a lot of space inside the “light bulb” housing, and redesign of LED lamps can make use of this space to incorporate arrays of LEDs that operate at the maximum efficacy point, rather than at maximum brightness. More engineering work is needed to develop phosphor technologies that are highly reproducible with colour temperatures and which do not age.
These advances would make sensible standardization possible, so that commercially available lamps correspond to accepted levels of performance both in terms of light
April/May 2010
www.compoundsemiconductor.net 45
Figure 1. LEDs have a way to go before becoming the number one lighting choice
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149 |
Page 150 |
Page 151 |
Page 152 |
Page 153 |
Page 154 |
Page 155 |
Page 156 |
Page 157 |
Page 158 |
Page 159 |
Page 160 |
Page 161 |
Page 162 |
Page 163 |
Page 164 |
Page 165 |
Page 166 |
Page 167 |
Page 168 |
Page 169 |
Page 170 |
Page 171 |
Page 172 |
Page 173 |
Page 174 |
Page 175 |
Page 176 |
Page 177 |
Page 178 |
Page 179 |
Page 180 |
Page 181 |
Page 182 |
Page 183 |
Page 184 |
Page 185 |
Page 186 |
Page 187 |
Page 188 |
Page 189 |
Page 190 |
Page 191 |
Page 192 |
Page 193 |
Page 194 |
Page 195 |
Page 196 |
Page 197 |
Page 198 |
Page 199 |
Page 200 |
Page 201 |
Page 202 |
Page 203 |
Page 204 |
Page 205 |
Page 206 |
Page 207 |
Page 208 |
Page 209 |
Page 210 |
Page 211 |
Page 212 |
Page 213 |
Page 214 |
Page 215 |
Page 216 |
Page 217 |
Page 218 |
Page 219 |
Page 220 |
Page 221 |
Page 222 |
Page 223 |
Page 224 |
Page 225 |
Page 226 |
Page 227 |
Page 228 |
Page 229 |
Page 230 |
Page 231 |
Page 232 |
Page 233 |
Page 234 |
Page 235 |
Page 236 |
Page 237 |
Page 238 |
Page 239 |
Page 240 |
Page 241 |
Page 242 |
Page 243 |
Page 244 |
Page 245 |
Page 246 |
Page 247 |
Page 248 |
Page 249 |
Page 250 |
Page 251 |
Page 252 |
Page 253 |
Page 254 |
Page 255 |
Page 256 |
Page 257 |
Page 258 |
Page 259 |
Page 260 |
Page 261 |
Page 262 |
Page 263 |
Page 264 |
Page 265 |
Page 266 |
Page 267 |
Page 268 |
Page 269 |
Page 270 |
Page 271 |
Page 272