Epistar's recent deveopment on LED for general lighting

Epistar's speculation that current LED 40W bulbs is USD$15, by time 2011 60W LED bulb will be USD$9.90. and will drop to USD$7.50, that would be about 5 times of the incandescent bulb with a penetration rate of 10%. The World’s LED penetration increases 1-2% that will be approximately USD$40B business.
It is the time for LED lighting, the largest market is the interior lighting, The RED LED efficacy is 168lm/W at laboratory, and We estimate that we would achieve the warm white efficacy of 130-150 lm/W in beginning of 2011. That would surpass the efficacy of cold white; their price can be almost the same.
Current situation is that the current cost of warm white LED is higher than cold white, whereas warm white is 30% less bright as cold white. Therefore, the efficacy and cost of warm white over cold white is the key factor for a higher penetration of general light application.

According to DOE’s estimation, the cold whet LED target efficacy is 113 lm.W in 2009.
The OEM cost is USD$25 for 1,000 Lumen, Warm white LED target efficacy is 70 lumens, OEM cost if USD$36 for 1000 lumens. They speculate that by 2012, Cold white efficacby is 170 lm/W OEM Cost of USD$6.00 for 1,000 Lumens. Cold White LED efficacy is 128 lm/W, OEM cost is $11.00 for 1,000 Lumens.

Recent finding on Epistar’s LED development is moving farther than what DOE can expect. The HV LED has shortened the technology gap between cold white and warm white LEDs. Their warm white LED was able to attain 110 lm/w in 2009, much higher than the other major players of 80 lm/W level. They expect that they will achieve 130 lm/W soon in 2012.

Compare with a 60W incandescent bulb that deliver 800 Lumen. The fact is when LED Efficacy is 100 lm/w, a 12.5W LED may have 50% electrical energy would be dissipated in form of thermal energy. Once if we can improve the efficacy to 150 lm/W, we need only 6.6W LED bulb, we just have 6.6W LED heat energy for the light bulb to deliver. In this LED, the power dissipation is 14.W. Only under this development. LED can be used extensively for replacement of the incandescent Light bulbs.

Epistar said that when the LED replacement bulb is just two times the price of incandescent, that the market to accept LED will be going up to 25% of adoption rate.
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Big Bucks for Bulb Replacement

Incandescent Light bulb, one of your house old Must-Have item for many years since this greatest invention was created 130 years ago by Thomas Edison.
However, this common article has something that would surprise you, When I was young my father told me not to take out the bulb hen it is glowing, was the filament is so fragile that could be broken mush easily when it is hot. Same thing applies to my beloved Telefunken ECC803 or Mullard 12AX7 Vacuum Tubes. They are made with heater with similar configuration as the Incandescent light bulbs.
Here are a few facts about the light bulb that has been lightening your house for many years.
1.) He is not the best to produce Lights
In fact as little as 1 watt out of every 50 that you put in contributes to actual light. The rest are lost to background heat. (A tungsten filament must be heated to between 3,000 and 5,000 degrees F to get it to glow).
2.)If we did away with them, they could power 2 cities the size of New York for free —By recent estimates, households and businesses in the United States lose about $18 billion every year to inefficiencies in lighting. In terms of power, that's enough to light up a city twice the size of New York for a whole year.
3.) Short life Span
Another thing that incandescent light bulbs are known for, besides the radiant heat, is their lifespan. Glowing for an average of about 1,000 hours before burning out. This short life span is also a built-in benefit for the light bulb companies. Bulbs that burn out once a year are replaced at a rate of 650 million per year in the U.S. alone. That's close to $2 billion in household spending directly attributed to incandescent inefficiency.
4.) Replacing the light bulb hasn't been easy. In reality, the incandescent light bulb has been on the way out for decades, but the transition hasn't been easy... Offices stopped using incandescent as their primary source of light back in the 1950s; today, the bulb's apparent replacement (the fluorescent tube) has emerged as a major culprit in the battle for the environment.
With mercury being a key ingredient in the millions of fluorescent tubes we use at work every day, disposal is turning into an industrial nightmare. A T5 CFL Cold Fluorescent Tube pollutions 10 tons of water in its life cycle. Today, the costs of cleanup — not to mention other shortcomings in the technology — have caused many businesses to start turning their backs on the once revered florescent.
Hope did not die with the fluorescent alternative...The Bright Idea did not die with the fluorescent alternative...
Because right now, there is an unprecedented push to make another light source the preferred commercial lighting solution of the 21st century. That is one of the top ten Inventions in 20th Century. It's so effective, in fact, that grocery stores are already using it in their refrigerated display cases because it produces very little background heat at all.
And it's so efficient that it needs just 18 watts of power to produce the same amount of light as a 100 watt Edison bulb.


This is the LED, Light Emitting Diode!

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Street Lighting in Portugal

September 07, 2009 - The implementation of attractive LED street lighting in Portugal has gathered pace over the summer as EnergiaViva has completed installations of the new UrbanLED street light in ten towns and cities.

Installation work in a further 20 Portuguese municipalities on streets in the towns of Alcochete, Moita, Barreiro, Arraiolos, Pombal, Santa Maria de Feira, Vale de Cambra, Estarreja, Coimbra and Torres Vedras is expected to have been completed this fall.

The UrbanLED luminaires were first used in April 2009, when they installed in street in the Portuguese town of Pombal. Rebel LEDs from Philips Lumileds, provide an attractive combination of power efficiency, CRI, uniform light distribution and low maintenance and repair costs.

Phase out of incandescent light bulbs in EU

As of September 1, 2009, the phase out of incandescent light bulbs is officially underway in the European Union with a ban on the sale and importation of 100 W and higher bulbs.

The European Energy Commission stated that the banned lamps will not be removed from shop shelves on September 1, and that the retailers are allowed to sell their existing stock of incandescent 100 W bulbs.

The EU plans to gradually phase out conventional incandescent and halogen bulbs from the market by the end of 2012. Compact fluorescent bulbs and LEDs are the two main alternatives.

The legal limitation on import of the bulbs will generate a black market and smuggling operation to bring them in. It will also create a huge surge in sales legally as people stock up on high wattage bulbs of 100W. till the embargo goes into effect. There is already a big sales for the Incandescent light bulbas people started to Collect it for memorial purpose and for reserve usage. They should stick to encouraging development instead of mandating it.

In fact the world two largest LED makers Osram and Philips has the biggest market share for conventional incandescent Light bulbs, every year, they are closing their factories and probably in 5 years time, the LED light bulb will be the major product in lighting comparing with Incandescent light bulb. However the speed of such migration of LED into the lighting industry are depending on these big players : Nichia, Osram, Lumileds, Cree, Seoul Semi, Everlight...Etc.

Who are more or less in controling of the prices and amount of the High Performance HBLED.

What are the obstacles for LED becoming truly general lighting?

Strategies Unlimited believes the LED lighting market will grow by 28% from 2008 to 2012, but many challenges remain.

As the LED lighting market grows beyond single color and color-changing applications into general illumination applications such as residential, commercial and off-grid applications, and ultimately into outdoor area applications, it is forecast to exceed $5 billion in 2012, corresponding to a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 28% from 2008 to 2012.

That looks very promising but I think that there are still a lot of obstacles for preventing this promising adoption number to come true!

First, the LED efficiency is just around 26% with the best LED chip we have, still 74% of the energy will be inevitably converted to heat energy so there we can see that all LED direct replacement light bulb comes with a heat sink which may the cost higher and looks clumsy. Of course they are better design like Parathom and Master LED from Osram and Philips respectively.

2nd challenge is that say one of the world largest CFL and LED maker Osram has 50 factories. Amongst them, two of them are for LED, rest of them is CFL and incandescent light fixture, Does these two factories will be promoted by their top management for expansion and force the other 48 factories to lose market share and close in the end.

The LED replacement fixture is far less bright as the Traditional energy saving lamp. I am using LED fixture at home, but My study place is still a single Energy Lamp as it is brighter. So not until a LED of efficacy of 200 lm/watt is launched, the LED replacement lamp will not be as popular as these CFL are today!

In recent years, LED technology has made impressive performance gains, which in turn have improved the efficacy of LED lighting fixtures. In the forecast period 2008-2012, white LED fixtures will make gains in market share as the best commercially available high-performance white LEDs move beyond luminous efficacies of 100 l/W.

Another way of being a obstacle is that how to prevent theft of the Expensive LED in the office or factory, a reasonable good quality LED lamp is valued $30-60 and that is a tempting for people who might risk stealing the LED light whenever that is an opportunity for using it at his house!
So only the new building that has a ne fixture that come with special design to prevent the light bulb to be easily been removed would reduce or prevent them to be “Lost”! Means that the market for LED directly replacement bulb would be much smaller than we expect...

The LED directly replace for CFL is still expensive, well 5 years ago it is 80 times more expensive than energy Light bulb. Now that is 10-15 times more expensive, not until it is 3-5 times more expensive, the popularity of the LED direct replacement bulbs will not be Popular!

The angle of light emission of LED light bulb is till narrow as comparing with the energy light bulb which is practically 360 degrees. LED is around 80-120 Degrees with larger the emission angle, the less the average light output.

However, this will be only the beginning for the ultimate replacement of conventional light sources, including high-efficiency fluorescent and HID fixtures. However, many challenges face the LED industry to accomplish that goal, all of which are discussed in a new report released by Strategies Unlimited.

“LED lighting Fixtures – Market Analysis and Forecast” provides a detailed assessment of the market drivers and challenges faced by the LED lighting fixture industry in penetrating the general illumination market. It provides application analyses and forecasts for nine lighting market segments through 2012.

Let's work harder for achieving the goal!

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