conference report CS Europe
Uptake of LED lamps in the lighting sector will have a profound affect on the lighting business. IMS Research predicts that total units shipments will start declining in 2017, and revenues will go into reverse the year after, due to the very long lifetime of the LED bulb (see Figure 1).
The good news for consumers is that the prices of LED bulbs will tumble over the next few years (see Figure 2). In 2014 their average price should drop below $10, a major milestone from the perspective of many US consumers. Smallwood says that three years’ later, the average price should nudge below $5, and he predicts it will retail for just $3.59 in 2020.
During the next few years Japan will account for the greatest deployment of LED lamps and luminaires. This will be fuelled by the very high cost of energy in this country, which has been driven up by the impact of the Fukushima nuclear reactor damage. But by 2018, North America will overtake Japan.
The residential market will be the hardest one to penetrate for LED lighting. “Consumer’s don’t do return- on-investment calculations,” said Smallwood. “They go to the supermarket and pick out the cheapest bulb. They’ve been doing that for the last hundred years.”
But households will start to buy LED bulbs when prices fall. By 2020, LEDs will be found in four-fifths of sockets in developed regions, with incandescents making up just 2 percent. In offices, fluorescents could still be widely used, thanks to their combination of high efficiency, long life time and low cost.
In developing regions a slightly different picture will emerge. Although LEDs will be found in 44 percent of sockets by 2020, for the next few years the CFL will remain the most popular energy efficient lighting product, due to its lower price.
Forecasts for LED lighting have been translated into LED die shipment predictions. According to Smallwood, shipments of packaged LEDs for lighting will hit about 3 billion die this year, and will rocket to more than 30 billion by 2017.
The role of SiC
Analyst Philippe Roussel provided a detailed analysis of the current state of the wide bandgap market, offering some predictions for the coming years. According to him, the wide bandgap market will be worth almost $100 million in 2012, rising to nearly $3 billion by the end of this decade.
This rapid rise in sales will occur because of two highly valued characteristics found in all wide bandgap
Table 2: Many countries are using legislation to phase out the purchasing of
incandescents.Credit: IMS Research
April / May 2012
www.compoundsemiconductor.net 17
Figure
2.The average selling price of LED lamps will tumble during the next few
years.Credit: IMS Research
devices: A high junction temperature and a high electron mobility. Thanks to these twin strengths, devices have no recovery time during switching, leading to low losses and high switching frequencies. And at the system level that means lower cooling demands, fewer filters and ultimately a unit that can be lighter and smaller.
Efficiency gains also result from replacing silicon devices with those made from wide bandgap materials. According to Roussel, switching from the incumbent technology to GaN or SiC can increase the efficiency in DC-to-DC conversion from 85 percent to 95 percent; boost the efficiency of AC-to-DC conversion from 85 percent to 90 percent; and propel the efficiency of DC- to-AC conversion from 96 percent to 99 percent.
Thanks in part to these efficiency gains, Roussel believes that we are starting to enter a new era for
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