Readers might recall I was an early adopter of LED lighting technology. Now it is getting even better.
New LED light design offers less energy, more light
LEDs are durable and save energy. Now researchers have found a way to make LED lamps even more compact while supplying more light than commercially available models. The key to success: transistors made of the semiconductor material gallium nitride.
Incandescent light bulbs are now banned in the EU, while energy-saving lamps remain a bone of contention. In 2016, it will be lights out for halogen bulbs over 10 watts as well. LEDs (light-emitting diodes) therefore have the best chance of becoming the light source of the future. Experts reckon that LED retrofit lamps for use in standard bulb fittings will overtake traditional energy-saving bulbs for the first time from 2015. By 2020 it is predicted that LEDs will have captured between 88 and 90 percent of the lighting market. The tiny diodes offer a whole host of advantages as the most environmentally friendly source of light – they contain no harmful substances, consume less energy and, with a lifetime of between 15,000 and 30,000 hours, last longer than conventional light sources. They also work at full brightness as soon as you flick the switch.
Coping with higher temperatures
LEDs do have one weakness, though – they are extremely sensitive to variations and spikes in power. To function properly, they need a driver that ensures a constant supply of power at all times. This driver, which takes the alternating current from the grid and converts it into direct current with a reduced voltage, has a profound influence on the light yield and lifetime of the LED lamp as a whole. The demands placed on the driver electronics are correspondingly high. This has prompted researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Solid State Physics IAF in Freiburg to focus their attention on voltage transformers featuring gallium nitride (GaN) transistors. During practical testing, the scientists found that the drivers developed using this new semiconductor material were extremely robust. Components made of GaN can operate at higher currents, voltages and temperatures than standard silicon transistors. “Heat plays a role both in the brightness and the service life of LED lamps,” says Dr. Michael Kunzer, group manager at Fraunhofer IAF.
Gallium nitride transistors switch at high speed
Gallium nitride transistors can also switch at high frequencies. The switching speed has a significant impact on the size of the coils and condensers built into the drivers for energy storage. In a GaN-based driver, the switch speed can be made as much as a factor of 10 faster than that of its silicon equivalent. “Applied to a smaller surface, this means it is possible to make switching cheaper. The whole LED lamp can be made lighter and more compact while delivering the same or even improved illumination,” explains Kunzer. Since the energy storage component plays a decisive role in manufacturing costs, this could have an extremely positive effect on the end price.
Thanks to the new semiconductor material’s useful properties, Kunzer and his team have been able to boost the efficiency of the GaN driver to 86 percent – between one and four percentage points better than its silicon equivalent. When compared with the silicon transistor LED lamps available on the market., the scientists were able to increase the light output: while the luminous flux of commercial LED retrofit lamps featuring silicon components is around 1000 lumen (the unit used to measure the light produced), researchers from the IAF have been successful in increasing this to 2090 lumen. “20 percent of energy consumption worldwide can be attributed to lighting, so it’s an area where savings are particularly worthwhile. One shouldn’t underestimate the role played by the efficiency of LED drivers, as this is key to saving energy. In principle, the higher the light yield and efficiency, the lower energy consumption is. If you think that by 2020 LEDs will have carved out a market share of almost 90 percent, then it is obvious that they play a significant role in protecting our environment,” says Kunzer. The researchers will be showcasing a demonstrator of their retrofit LED from April 7-11 at the Hannover Messe, where they can be found at the joint Fraunhofer booth in Hall 2, Booth D18.
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I have tried to hop on this bandwagon so many times, only to be thrown off by the color (which despite what I’m assured each time is bluish) and the humming (which assurances to the contrary I have always heard).
..and anyone with half a brain could see that LEDs were the future (from many years ago) – so why did the EU (and many other countries in the RotW) insist on forcing mercury death tubes on us (at massive cost, inconvenience and degraded lighting)?
So we need LED flashlights, and battery/LED desk lamps. And stick-ums for the walls bypassing the AC power.
Who makes these things?
“Incandescent light bulbs are now banned in the EU”?????
You can still buy them in the EU. Even Amazon.co.uk sell them
http://www.amazon.co.uk/WATT-PEARL-LIGHT-BULB-BAYONET/dp/B002B8NWTK/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1394571911&sr=8-3&keywords=light+bulbs
Amazon carries a battery operated LED desk lamp for about six bucks.
Technically speaking, LEDs will not have captured that larger percentage of the lighting market; it will have been awarded to them by virtue of regulatory bans on competing technologies.
You mean LED’s might suffer shorter lifetimes if run on power from intermittent sources like wind and solar?
The only problem with incandescent light bulbs is that they are banned.
It sounds like a press release, translated from German by a linguist – for example, a “condenser” should have been a “capacitor”. I don’t understand that rant about energy storage, or how the brightness would rise twice – it is usually limited by the LED itself, and if you make it too bright, it does not last.
That said, blue and white LEDs are made of gallium nitride, and if you could place everything on one chip, the future looks bright.
I love the LEDs too. But I am a late adopter of technology. I bout one lamp with a built-in LED array for $15.00 at Home Depot and tried it out. The light was a tad too blue for my tastes but that is now overcome with better more natural spectrums.
All of the LEDS ending up failing however. Worse part was that they all failed independently and intermittently. There were 24 LED on the lamp, each one would flicker then fail. The Led would flicker for weeks. The flickering light lasted for 2 years before it died. It was a pain.
I took the lamp apart and re-soldered every single LED and they all came on again!
I see LED arrays as problematic because their reliability drops as an inverse function of the number of LEDs in the array. One flickering LED with drive you bonkers.
I am certain that is is a solvable problem if attention is applied to it. That is why I am bringing it up. Hey GE and Sylvania! Fix the flicker!
Is it possible to have a single 3-watt LED that yields the same light output as a 100W incandescent bulb yet?
One other thing, stop putting network interface communications hardware in these lighting devices.
The prospect of LED light output per watt increasing significantly makes me wonder if it would be best to hold off on equipping any but the most intensively used fixtures with them. . . I’m pleased thus far with the four test LED bulbs we have in use, but my experience with CFLs makes me skeptical of the long life claims.
I love the efficiency and service life of LED technology, but the color fidelity still needs lots of work. My wife is an artist. She can not work under LED lights unless the color rendering index (CRI) is in the 90s.
Only fossil fuels increase the carrying capacity of the Earth.
But Amador, I hate incandescents. They burn out every five minutes and my twisty bulbs save a lot of my money on my electric bill.
Incandescents basically suck, even though we had many decades to get used to them. They’re inefficient, the light quality is poor, the bulbs don’t last, and they run sufficiently hot to have the potential for injury and even fire.
CFL’s suck too, albeit in different ways. They’re more efficient but not great, the light quality is absolutely horrible, and they’re a problem when it comes to disposal.
LED’s are the future. Instant on, no flicker, decent (and improving) color temperature options, very high efficiency, cool running, long life, etc. They’re still somewhat expensive to buy but that’s mitigated by their low running costs and long life expectancy. Further, prices can be expected to drop very significantly as designs and manufacturing processes improve and volume explode.
Heck, let’s shovel some more R&D dollars into LED’s. They are something everyone can support from the devout greenies to the most skeptical deniers. Finally, we can all get along. Kum ba yah 🙂
We refuse to do CFL. We’ve been slowly converting our main fixtures to LED bulbs. The first one we did in our living room overhead is still going strong and has a yellowish light nearly indistinguishable from the incandescent bulbs we still in the lamps in the room. I agree with wanting a 100w LED although we are seeing some 75w ones now.
Yes, but they are being phased-out.
Far more interesting, from my viewpoint, is that many of the current LED lamp DRIVERS are quite good at radio interference. So if the new crop work at higher frequencies things look grim. As soon as the cheapo versions come out it will get worse.
Gallium nitride transistors can also deliver internet and TV channels to your home because they can flick the diode on and off at tremendous speeds. Your internet service can be light bulb (anywhere in the home) for download and wireless upload. Systems are already working.
ConfusedPhoton says:
March 11, 2014 at 2:07 pm
“Incandescent light bulbs are now banned in the EU”?????
Well, even 100 Watt are available: heat bulbs 100 Watt about 95% efficient with a side efect of emmiting light too..
But indeed leds are the futrue of lighting…
Loving my Phillips Hue LED’s pricey but very very cool.
And, given that LEDs use DC, is there any movement toward equipping new office buildings with DC circuits for the lighting? It would seem that a single transformer would be cheaper than transformers in each bulb for large scale applications. . .
Unintended consequences may be coming in existing commercial buildings due to LED use. Existing buildings were designed with a certain lighting W/SF that was accounted for in the heating calculations. While you save on AC during the summer, you increase your heating system energy during the heating season.
I have seen buildings with their natural gas usage spike due to an LED change-out to the point where their total energy bill ($) rose. (Same condition occurred when some bldgs went from T12 to T8 lighting.)You also may have to start your building up earlier, increasing the run-time on your HVAC system, which increases energy and maintenance costs.
Not saying it is a bad transition, just make sure you look at everything.If you are involved in any such project on a large scale, make sure the heating system impacts are accounted for.
Phillips has a 4′-T8 LED out that is 14.5W. http://www.usa.lighting.philips.com/lightcommunity/trends/tled/
I am a convert to LED Christmas lights for the past 4 years. Mostly because I was too cheap to replace my electrical panel, and the regular ones were tripping breakers. (I have since upgraded my panel for other reasons).
I hate the CFLs. And so now that incandescent are virtually banned in the US, I am switching to LEDs. I prefer the light even to the incandescent. The price is an issue, but now that I am older, fatter and richer (relatively) I can go with what I want instead of what is cheap.
I have converted several of my high magnification microscopes to LED lighting. The light is far brighter than any incandescent I have ever used and there are no filament shadows. The LED provides a bright and flat source. Now I am looking for a deep UV LED source that can can replace the high pressure mercury arc HBO amps.
I have seen some AL GAN LEDS that are too bright and dangerous to look at with the naked eye (deep UV and extremely bright). The pace of development seems to be picking up in a big way for LEDs.
It is also interesting that Philips got out of the commodity incandescent business a few years back.
Alan Watt, Climate Denialist Level 7 says:
March 11, 2014 at 2:10 pm
Technically speaking, LEDs will not have captured that larger percentage of the lighting market; it will have been awarded to them by virtue of regulatory bans on competing technologies.
=====
exactly…..just like wind and solar
If low voltage LED lighting is going to be the norm, perhaps building codes should be changed such that a low voltage lighting circuit is built into our building power distribution boxes.
A single voltage converter supplying all lighting power would eliminate the need for converters in every LED lamp, lowering the unit cost even further. Lighter and cheaper wiring would also reduce costs as the current is much lower and an earth cable should not be necessary for 12V DC circuits.
Now for me to comment on something I know a little about. (Never thought that would happen, did you?)
Anyway, back in the 1940s automobile headlights were a dismal safety feature. The reflector plating would often flake off. Or, moisture would get inside and rust it. Dirt and dust could coat the surface of both the glass lens and the reflector. All of these things would diminish the power of the headlamp. And then there was the small bulb which went in this assembly: particles would burn off the tungsten filament and coat the inside of the glass bulb; blackening it over time.
So, the venerable sealed beam headlight was developed. (If you’re old and worn out like me you’ll remember them.) The lens and reflector were hermetically sealed and made part of the bulb. Thus the inside would stay clean; the plating could not rust off; moisture could not accumulate within the bulb; and since the lens and reflector were actually part of the bulb the particles of tungsten were deposited over a much greater surface, therefore the blackening of the headlight over time was reduced.
So, our beneficent overlords decided to make these sealed beam headlights mandatory on automobiles. After all, they were state of the art for safety – back in the 1940s.
Unlike the enlightened rulers of the US the callous Europeans never enacted such a safety ruling. So, in the latter 1950s the Philips Co. of Holland invented the quartz halogen bulb. Instead of operating in a vacuum the tungsten filament burned in an atmosphere comprised of one of the halogen gases, usually iodine. The gas set up a reaction whereby the particles of tungsten would redeposit themselves back on the filament. Thus the bulb lasted longer and, most importantly, it would not blacken with age. This reaction occurred at a very high temperature which necessitated a bulb made out of quartz glass. This high temperature also insured relatively high light output for the electricity consumed plus the light was much whiter, and closer to sunlight, then conventional bulbs.
Un encumbered by a sealed beam regulation, high end cars in Europe began appearing with these Quartz Halogen headlights in the 1960s. When the filament in a sealed beam headlight burned out the whole unit, including the lens and reflector, got tossed. Thus they were made cheaply. On the European cars, only the small QH bulbs were tossed, the lens and reflector remained. Thus they were top quality: the lens was made out of lead-crystal glass, very accurately fluted; and the reflectors were mirror finished. A substantial rubber boot sealed the bulb in the unit.
In the 1970s the California Highway Patrol began to equip their patrol cars with the European QH headlamps, and called them the finest headlamps they had ever used. Nevertheless, they vigorously enforced the sealed beam regulation on us lesser folks.
The disparity between daytime and nighttime accident rates are dramatic. And, up to the middle 1980s, almost 40 years after their development, the by then antiquated sealed beam headlamps were still required on cars because of a federal safety standard.
It has taken until now, almost 60 years after the fact, for automobile headlights to begin to recover from that ‘safety’ standard. Rest assured, there were substantial lobbying arms aimed at preventing this.
Let the foregoing story be a lesson to anyone who thinks that government regulations are always, and every time, the answer to our problems. Or, to consider why a political entity has been allowed to develop the arrogance to tell us what devices we are permitted to use to light our homes and our lives.