This is particularly true for the Asia-Pacific region, where we have seen massive growth in demand for cutting edge LED technology, particularly in the solar market - this is supported by a recent report from Frost and Sullivan, which found that LED lighting is set to dominate the lighting market and force out older, more energy intensive products.
LED lighting offers a number of significant advantages over traditional halogen products, with lower running costs, longer operating life and therefore much cheaper maintenance.
The driving force in the LED market at present is efficiency and the range of technologies within LED lighting. Without the proper power and control technologies working in support of the LEDs, it no longer delivers the energy and environmental savings that it should. With LED lighting as a technology moving so quickly, coupled with projects in the pipeline up to three years ahead, there is an interesting dynamic between current possibility and near-future potential.
Of course, there is a flip side to the coin too: evolving technology means costs and BOMs (bill of materials) can evolve just as rapidly. This means a lighting designer with a project idea might find that they can achieve a lot more than they initially had in mind, potentially saving costs, energy and installation time. As a result some of leading companies in this space are designing for projects without knowing the full potential of the technology they're working with.
In the LED lighting market, the industry deals with the challenges of pricing, branding and the retail channel and regulation. Manufacturers are turning to COB (chip on board) design and quality enhancements to overcome the price challenges and demonstrate the value. My organisation witnesses a lot of e-mails and marketing from suppliers and see a trend of local manufacturers in Asia dropping out of the market. Moreover, in China there are rare-earth export quota regulations to contend with. With many of the phosphors used in LEDs containing some rare-earth elements, the availability of these materials is currently causing some concern to Chinese suppliers.
One area where LED lighting is really taking off is in solar and off-grid applications, where LED lighting can provide much more than halogen or where batteries are just not practical. A typical off-grid application is the LED Lantern, popular in places like India where most of the country still doesn't have the luxury of easily accessible mains electricity. Furthermore, solar power LED applications, such as solar street lamps are an interesting application, which involves a wider range of technologies than just solid-state-lighting. Some of the key design issues that must be addressed are generating the maximum power out of the solar panel, how to charge up the battery for energy storage and how to drive the most of the LEDs in an outdoor environment.
As LED technology gets more advanced and evolves to deliver better lumens per watt performance, mid-and-high power LEDs are finding their way to a variety of lighting applications, especially in public area or portable (battery powered) devices. For example, a UK based company, NJO Technology, has installed innovative LED lighting in some of London's most iconic buildings. The Apollo theatre in the West End, the Royal Albert Hall, Heathrow's Terminal 3 and the outside of the newly refurbished Kings Cross station have all been illuminated by NJO.
As the next-generation of lighting technology, high power LEDs are environmentally friendly and boast a long life, reducing the cost of maintenance. With a single LED lamp of 100W being able to reach the lighting intensity of a 250W high voltage sodium lamp, LED solutions present significant power efficiency when they are utilised as street lighting. Today the SSL market is focussed on system efficacy, which represents a more complicated challenge for lighting electronics design engineers (EDEs). EDEs will need to place more emphasis on safety, power regulation, dimming-lighting control and communication protocol, sensing and wireless integration into the lighting fixtures. Each of these requirements represents a totally different group of suppliers, and so this is an area where the support offered by companies like element14 really proves its value.
To put what is possible into perspective, NJO's work at Kings Cross features custom-machined stainless steel housing, protecting a Cree MC-E Series RGBCW LED, frosted output optic and clear glass lens. With each LED putting out 100 Lumens, and a total of 1080 LED units making up the fountain installation, the result will be an impressive display requiring 9 universes (4,320 channels) of synchronised DMX512.
Currently the SSL (solid state lighting) market can be divided into 3 major areas of focus:
* Ballasts: Multi-purpose constant current LED drivers
* Luminaries: Outdoor / Indoor / Specialty Lighting
* Lamps (Retrofits): GU10/PAR16, E14/C43, E27/A55/A60, PAR30/PAR38 along with MR16 and T8 LED Tubes etc.
In terms of product shipments, the biggest demand comes from mid-power applications, for example LED tube (T8 LED). Currently, price is a barrier for mass-market acceptance for high-power LEDs, but this situation is forecasted to change after 2015 according to a report last year from Strategies Unlimited, that anticipates widespread acceptance as costs decrease.
The lighting industry is now moving towards a new system of performance measurement, to a standard referred to as 'hot lumen performance'. This benchmarks by measuring lumen performance after the LED lighting fixture has reached thermal equilibrium. As LED performance is closely related to heat dissipation, there is a risk that any excess heat can damage the LED in the longer term. This new standard is designed to reflect the 'real world' performance rather than results obtained in lab conditions.
