LED Taiwan

Many people are making the switch to compact fluorescents (CFLs) from incandescent bulbs to save energy. But the CFLs are still not making people happy, because CFLs cost more than standard bulbs and they contain mercury – which is an environmental concern. They take time to warm up to full brightness, especially in cold weather. They flicker and buzz and many people feel they produce an unappealing quality of light – it’s a fluorescent, after all.

Another option to consider when planning your lighting is LEDs. Light Emitting Diode (LED) technology uses a fraction of energy compared to conventional incandescent or even CFLs. And they last a long time before needing replacement – up to 50,000 hours, compared to 6,000 for a CFL or 1,000 for standard incandescent bulbs.

Incandescent lights work by using electricity to heat a filament until it glows. They also give off a lot of excess heat – you know that if you’ve ever touched a light bulb after it’s been on for even a short while. Fluorescent lights work by passing electrical current through a gas-filled tube, which causes it to emit light. LEDs work by channeling electric current through a semi-conductor material – 100 per cent of which is turned into light, with no waste heat produced. LEDs are very energy efficient.

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With the growing awareness of the importance of environmental protection, LED (light emitting diode), due to smaller size, energy efficiency, longer lifespan and quicker activation than traditional lighting sources, is regarded as the answer to future lighting needs.

The lighting industry generally agrees that LED lighting holds immense potential to replace traditional counterparts in the next decade. With global warming threats looming in the background, LED lighting has a bright future for it can be installed literally flat on surfaces, does not shatter like incandescent bulbs, nor pose mercury contaminants as with fluorescents. So featuring low thermal resistance, high luminosity and reliability, LED lighting has been the focus of R&D in recent years, and looks to become a daily lighting source in the future.

Despite well-publicized efforts by many nations, lighting makers and advocates have not been able to sizable increase the market shares of LED lighting, evidenced by relatively few LED lamps available at retailers. Makers optimistically predict that 1W or higher super-bright LEDs are expected to grow at 14% annual compound growth rate in the following years, but so far less than 10% of typical lighting are LED powered. After years of development, LEDs are mainly used for nighttime advertising, auto lamps and traffic lights, with its focus being turned to larger-sized displays indoors and out, but not as mainstream lighting for indoors or outdoors. The costs and prices of LEDs are some 20-times higher than for conventional lighting, as well as the luminous efficiency of white LEDs being only 40-50lm /W are the reasons cited as the hindrances to their becoming more popular. And that LEDs are rarely used in traditional commercial lighting is an issue that needs to be addressed.

Many Challenges
Many obstacles stand in the way for white LEDs to widely replace fluorescent lamps, which are mostly used in office lighting, especially the high-efficiency, super-thin T5 fluorescent tubes. The T5s boast luminous efficiency of 100Lm/W, color rendering of Ra85, 91% light output after 10,000 hours of use, and diameter of only 16mm. Coupled with minimized pollution via using solid mercury alloy, T5s now pose less environmental hazards. Also white LEDs will not likely achieve similar luminous efficiency as T5s in the near future, as well as featuring relatively narrow projection angles, hence unable to illuminate spacious settings.

Instead of significantly boosting the use of LEDs, widely advocated policies to ban or replace incandescent bulbs have directly benefited energy-saving bulbs, such as compact fluorescent lamps (CFL). In Taiwan alone, the sales of energy-saving bulbs increased 20-30% annually during January to July 2008. With incandescent bulbs to be completely banned in most developed countries, the demand for energy-saving bulbs due to replacement worldwide will peak in two to three years. Such rising demand will not be met without raising the production of energy-saving bulbs accordingly.

Intermediate Product
An intermediate product, one between traditional halogen and LED lighting, for spotlighting has been developed: Major lighting makers have used ceramics to build the ceramic metal halide (CMH) lamp, which features good color rendering of Ra80-90, stable color temperature, is 4-times as durable as halogen lamps, with low-wattage CMHs burning only half the electricity. Coupled with electronic ballasts, CMHs are not only good lights but also energy efficient.

A study of a furniture chain store in Taiwan shows that replacing 2,700 units of 50W halogen lamps with 1,500 units of 20W CMH lamps saves 118KW per hour. Coupled with the added saving in air conditioning due to reduced heat output from less lighting, a single store saves NT$2.3 million (US$68,886 at US$1: NT$33.4) in power consumption, cutting carbon dioxide emissions by 250 metric tons a year to help lessen global warming.

Outlooks
Currently typical LED applications are 80% concentrated in cellphone, automotive, consumer appliance and other displays. Such trend may not change despite the optimism of the Optoelectronics Industry Development Association in Washington, DC, which predicts the luminous efficiency of white LEDs to rise to 150lm/W by 2012, with rapid price reductions to widely popularize such lighting. Also Japan aims to entirely replace fluorescent lamps with white LED lamps nationwide by 2012. Although the R&D of LED lighting has clearly progressed since 2000, but a single LED still has only 5W of maximum efficiency, coupled with 35-40 Lm/W of luminous efficiency for white LEDs, so for such lighting source to be truly practical remains questionable.

LEDs are undoubtedly the best energy-saving lighting solution. But self-delusional mindsets of lighting makers and governments, as well as technical challenges, may blind consumers, preventing them to weigh the issue of marketability.

White LED lamps still leave much to be desired in terms of color temperature. Exceeding 6,000K, white LEDs cannot compete against even incandescent and fluorescent lamps, especially for applications calling for mood-creation as in restaurants, hotels and homes, where fluorescent lamps with color temperature lower than 3,000K are often needed.

Excessively pale color temperatures of white LED lamps also make such products less marketable for residential lighting in temperate zones, for consumers there generally prefer softer lighting to create comfortable, warm atmosphere in homes. In short, white LED`s low luminous efficiency and excessive brightness, which has to be toned down with lens or diffuser, make such lighting less desirable in color rendering and hence less marketable in some locations.

Ultimate Goal
Developing practical LED lighting may not be as difficult as building LED lamps that are rated good products after being used by consumers, which should be the ultimate goal for lighting makers. In other words, lighting makers have to firmly grasp the characteristics and needs of LED lighting applications to turn LEDs into practical, competitive lighting products. The reason that LEDs have yet to become ubiquitous indoor lights is that R&D people lack in-depth understanding of lighting applications, still trying to replace original forms of lighting, when they should be developing LED lighting as a new source by looking at its characteristics and human vision.

As such, more work awaits to be done to study and properly position the suitability and role of LED lighting, as well as integrate the resources of LED makers and lighting designers. The current focuses on LED lighting development seem properly aimed, tapping the inherent properties of such light source as brightness and fast activation, with LEDs mostly used in traffic signals, advertising displays, marquees, emergency lights etc.

The lighting industry now will undergo further systems integration. The top-three lighting makers have been taking over smaller peers in Asia and Eastern Europe to expand markets, as well as horizontally integrating electronic ballast makers to set up systematic lighting businesses, hence enhancing competitiveness.

AMS Technologies introduces Enfis Ltd.’s new LED array UNO TAG Long Green 532 nm.

The UNO TAG array completes Enfis line of LED arrays in the green spectral range besides the already available UNO green at 520nm. The new array features an aperture of 0.5 cm2, a 2000mW typical radiant flux, 1000 lumens typical luminous flux and 38W input power.

The LED array UNO long green is available as TAG array, as UNO TILE connectorised PCB array and as complete air cooled light engine with drive electronics.

The UNO long green array finds its usage in several applications including architectural lighting, entertainment lighting, backlighting, signs, illumination, effect lighting as well as forensics and medical and dental applications.

The UNO TAG is shown at LASER World of PHOTONICS (15th to 18th June 2009, Munich) at AMS Technologies stand B1.301.

The new product is available from AMS Technologies throughout Europe from local offices in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom.

About AMS Technologies
Founded in 1982, AMS Technologies is a leading distributor of high-tech components, systems and instruments in Europe today. Headquartered in Martinsried/Munich, Germany, the company serves regional markets from local sales offices in the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Spain. AMS Technologies represents approved global technology leaders and new to market companies that develop innovative, leading edge products in the fields of optoelectronics, thermal management and high power electronics.

While LED (light-emitting diode) costs are still high, this type of lighting is extremely long-lasting. And as prices come down, its efficiency could lead to huge energy savings.

The first consumer LED products lit up in the 1970s, with red light numbers on pocket calculators and push-button displays on big, geeky Pulsar watches. Then came those centered, high-mounted brake lights in the rear windows of cars. Now LEDs are found in everything from traffic lights to operating rooms to greenhouses.

An LED is a device that produces light when an electrical current flows through it. The color it emits depends on the materials used to make the diode.

“It won’t be long before LED lighting technology has a space on your desk, has a space on your ceiling, certainly has a space on your car,” says Russell Dupuis, an electro-optics professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Dupuis was awarded the 2002 National Medal of Technology for his work on LEDs.

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It is claimed from Korea Researchers that the world’s first purely white LED (light-emitting diode) has been produced in Korea.

Soo-Young Park, a professor of organic materials for photonics at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Seoul National University in Korea, led the group, which includes researchers from the University of Valencia in Spain.

LEDs are much more energy-efficient than incandescent or compact fluorescent lighting (CFL), but the quality of light they can give a room is up for debate.

Because LEDs do not naturally produce white light, getting them to look like they do adds to their production cost, making them much more expensive than your average incandescent or CFL. Many companies have been trying to come up with different LED recipes and components to produce a nice white light, while keeping the consumer cost down.

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It is reported from Matter Network that the Lexus of Albuquerque car dealership is going green and not just by selling hybrids. The dealership recently switched their stadium lights from fossil fuel power to solar power.

For Lexus of Albuquerque, solar/LED (light-emitting diode) lights are powering down electricity from the grid and saving the overhead energy costs of their overhead lighting. Using Visible Light Solar Technologies’ solar/LED system, the dealership harnesses the sun’s power and converts it for use by the LED lights. The solar energy is “collected, sized and utilized at the point of application rather than generated from a remote solar collection location,” according to Visible Light Solar Technologies.

Basically, the dealership lamps are collecting energy during the day and storing it in batteries for use later at night. The lamps remain connected to the grid for emergency needs or when a series of cloudy days uses up the solar power generated, drastically cutting back on fossil fueled energy. Chips in the lighting system monitor power generation and consumption to switch to the grid when necessary and to turn off lighting when it is not needed. In keeping with environmental progress, Lexus of Albuquerque’s existing stadium lights are reused instead of thrown out. Doing so reduces landfill waste and additional raw material generation.

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This is a test on LED streetlight. During the day, the block of bungalows and houses at 22nd Avenue East and East Mercer Street looks like most of Capitol Hill. But at night, it looks crazy. This is one of seven test areas in the neighbourhood where Seattle City Light swapped the high-pressure sodium streetlights, which emit a warm orange hue, with glaring LEDs. City officials want to replace all 40,000 residential streetlamps in Seattle with the new light-emitting diodes by next year to save energy and money. But the lights cast a sickening hue. “It is a very cold color-zombie blue,” says Dan Travers, who lives on the block. “My first thought was that people are going to look scary under these lights.”

“It looks like you are in a supermarket aisle,” says Andie deRoux, who lives in an apartment building seven blocks west of Travers. Abby Katzman, who has lived on the eastern slope of Capitol Hill for 20 years, says, “I like the energy it saves, but it does seem very cool and winterly.”

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It is reported on June 11 that China plans to turn to Taiwan companies to put LED technology into street lights in 10 Chinese cities.

The project aims to cut electric bills in Chinese cities by using LED in city lights. LEDs give off less heat, consume less energy and last longer than traditional lights, according to China’s National Semiconductor Lighting Industry Alliance, which oversees the project to light up China with LEDs. The technology is also inexpensive because it’s used in a range of projects, from Christmas lights and the displays of alarm clocks, DVD players and digital music players, to the backlights in LCD laptop screens.

The agreement was part of deals signed at a two-day conference between LED industry leaders and government officials from Taiwan and China.

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This artical shows you how to push a 1920s house into a modern, low-carbon age. The last few touches – appliances and rare light bulbs.

After spending the past year reducing the home’s heating bills by adding stacks of insulation, the owner has now turned her attention to slashing her electricity needs. She buy electricity from Good Energy which is a 100% renewable electricity supplier, but she would like to reduce our dependence on it, as all electricity is expensive – green or not. She monitor her energy usage with weekly measurements taken directly from both the gas and electricity utility and currently the house consumes 8kWh of electricity every day.

As part of her drive to save energy, She has reviewed the efficiency of all of her electrical appliances. Fridge freezers are significant consumers of electricity in the average house because they are switched on 365 days a year. As she was old, she recently replaced it with an A-rated one to minimise energy usage. Their television is an old-fashioned boxy cathode ray tube, which is quite energy-hungry, consuming 300 watts per hour when on. The plan – when she has the money – is to change it over to a LCD type. They’ll plan their purchase with a great site called Sust-It which you can use to determine the energy cost per year of new tellies and other products.

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Nighttime commuters may notice a bluish glow coming from the ten pairs of street lights lighting their way. Mounted 40 feet above the traffic, similar to those found in stoplights and laser pointers, the lights are not bulbs but rows of LEDs.

“This is the first interstate highway to be lit with LED lighting,” said Kevin Orth, director of sales for Wisconsin-based Beta LED, which makes the lights. LEDs are coming to the streets of Eden Prairie, where officials are replacing the city’s old street lights, and already illuminate the parking lot of a Cub Foods store in St. Paul’s Phalen neighborhood, which last month became the second certified energy-efficient supermarket in the country.

For large projects like these, the long-run savings in energy and maintenance, as well as the environmental concerns, generally outweigh the short-run costs.

This growing use of LEDs by government and industry marks a move away from traditional incandescent bulbs and, more recently, the more-efficient fluorescent lights that have come on the market. Although LEDs cost more to manufacture than other lighting options, they consume a small fraction of the energy of even fluorescent bulbs and last 25 to 30 years.

Lighting still accounts for as much as 20 percent of electricity used around the world, so improving lighting technology by even a little bit can lead to great savings in energy and reductions in greenhouse gases.