160 TECHNOLOGY / ANNUAL LED ROUND UP
Our LED expert Dr Geoff Archenhold looks back at a year of consolidation - though not imagination - in the world of solid state technology.
2012: A SOLID YEAR FOR THE LIGHTING INDUSTRY
2012 was always going to be a big year for lighting as the world’s biggest showcase, the Olympics, came to good old London town and we had Light + Building in Frank- furt. The London Games were always going to be a great showcase for lighting and especially for LEDs as the organisers were promis- ing the greenest Olympics yet and the show didn’t let us down. From creating the colours of the Olympic symbols to lighting the Tower Bridge in a myriad of colourful scenes the presence of LED lighting was shown to billions across the world. If you have been reading my columns for a while you will remember that my predic- tion back in 2007 was that LED light bulbs would be everywhere by the next London Olympics, which raised some serious smiles if not murmurs of “he’s totally mad” by the majority of the lighting industry at the time. The reason I could make such a prediction was simple: I looked for the signs and trends within the industry and pulled them together to conclude the most prob- able outcome from a technical and commer- cial perspective. True, one could argue that LED light bulbs are not everywhere in the UK but one could argue that if you looked at the USA and Japan the statement holds true. This led (sorry for the pun!) me to question why major retailers in these two countries have got quality LED lighting on their shelves but the UK is lagging behind. The only conclusion I can ultimately come
to is that the USA and Japan took the stra- tegic lead with LED technology by creating strong government programmes of support for the new technology to create the mar- ket expectations, whereas Europe lagged behind with a strategy of ‘let’s wait and see what happens’. Despite this approach, the technology will ultimately arrive en masse to help reduce the energy consumption and increase the quality of lighting for all of us. My reflection on 2012 is that it was a solid year of growth for LED lighting, excep- tionally unimaginative fixture design and the creation of the 2nd Phase of end user disillusionment for the technology. I was disappointed that the majority of the light- ing systems all looked virtually identical and manufacturers had simply replaced the lighting source with LEDs rather than explore the use of the novel light sources. The market rapidly expanded for LED light- ing as costs tumbled and 2012 saw the LED light source toppled as the most expensive component in the LED fixture to a great sigh of relief from manufacturers. However, this nexus was to cause issues towards the end of 2012 as focus on veracious cost downs started to hit system quality. Thus, by the time we are sitting down for our Christmas dinner with family and friends, someone somewhere will be getting stressed that their LED installation will have a high failure rate as component quality has been sacrificed for cost. As I have always stated, the most susceptible part of an LED system
is the power electronics that drive the LED for a whole host of reasons and today this is the most expensive part of the LED system so trying to save US$1 or 2 could be the biggest mistake a fixture manufacturer can make. Driver issues are definitely on the rise from what I can gather from the Light- ing Design community – so beware! Light + Building was an excellent showcase for demonstrating the potential of OLEDs and Laser lighting in the future and allowed many LED manufacturers to launch new high quality LED emitters and high density power arrays. It was definitely a year where all LED manufacturers created high power LED arrays either in chip on board (COB) or in Zhaga type modules. Finally, I will end up making a series of predictions for 2013 and what we might see in time for Brazil 2016! However, let’s look at a selection of break- throughs made in 2012.
JANUARY 2012 Philips Lumileds: launched the Luxeon K LED emitter arrays shown in figure 1 specifically for retrofit and downlight LED lighting applications. Luxeon K provided a unique approach for Lumileds to deliver the highest, most consistent quality of light in an easy-to-implement array with freedom from colour, flux, and Vf binning. The key Luxeon K Parameters included: • CCT: 2700K, 3000K, 4000K; • Guaranteed minimum CRI of 80 and typical 85;
• Typical Flux at 700mA: 620 to 4455 lumens;
• >100 lumens / watt at 350mA, Tj 85°C, 3000K CCT;
• Hot testing and specification at 85°C; • Freedom From Binning; • Single 3-step MacAdam Ellipse color space;
• No flux bins; no Vf bins. Figure 1: Luxeon K LED array family from Lumileds.
Figure 2: The compact Cree XB-D cool white LEDs introduced in January.
Cree: introduced the breakthrough XLamp XB-D LED as shown in figure 2. Built on
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