New applications for light-emitting diodes (LEDs) as replacements for conventional lighting sources are emerging this year while prices for this relatively new technology fall and energy savings improve. LEDs are winning adoption as lighting sources for PC screens as large laptop makers aim to eliminate pollution caused by older cold cathode fluorescent lamp (CCFL) technology. Many big laptop brands are speeding up their adoption of LED backlights, according to Ivan Lin, an analyst with Taipei market research firm LEDinside. LED backlights still cost 70 percent more than CCFL backlights because patents and brightness issues remain.
“With more than 1,000 LEDs used in a backlight, maintaining consistency and reliability is still a big issue,” Lin said in a statement on the LEDinside website.
In Taiwan, LED makers are aiming to replace CCFLs used as backlights in notebook computers. This not only promises to cut energy consumption for the screens in half but also eliminate pollution caused by mercury, which is contained in CCFLs. Taiwan companies make about 90 percent of the world’s laptop computers.
LEDinside has forecast that the penetration rate of LEDs in laptop computers will reach 60.3 percent by 2010. Researchers also say new manufacturing technology may help make LEDs a viable lighting source in homes and offices within the next five years.
The global market for LEDs, worth more than $5 billion last year, is likely to more than double in size by 2012 as nations and consumers use the energy-saving lights to cut expenses and help reduce carbon emissions. Applications include nearly every type of lighting imaginable such as displays in electronic devices, road signage, traffic lights, large public information screens and video displays.
Taiwan is the world’s second largest LED maker, with a 25 percent market share. Taiwan’s market share has been growing more rapidly than that of the world’s largest supplier, Japan, with about 40 percent of the market.
LEDs are also likely to replace CCFL backlights in flat-screen televisions.
LEDs are poised to take a larger portion of the multi-billion dollar lighting market away from light bulbs and tubes as the new technology becomes more mature and manufacturing costs fall.
The high-tech lights have other advantages because they take up less space, have no breakable glass or filaments, perform exceptionally well in cold environments, require no warm up time, eliminate frequent replacement of burned out bulbs and tubes and emit no harmful infrared or ultraviolet rays.
In December 2008, the U.S Department of Energy (DOE) reported the results of a study in San Francisco that used LEDs for street lighting. The study conducted trials of LED street lights from four suppliers on four streets in San Francisco.
“While lighting performance varied among the LED luminaires assessed in this study, energy savings potential was high in each case, with energy reductions ranging from 50 percent to 70 percent over the current high pressure sodium (HPS) system,” the DOE report said. “This study estimates that if the nationwide stock of installed HPS roadway luminaires were replaced with LED luminaires such as those that were found to perform well in the field, 8.1TWh of total annual energy savings could be achieved, with a corresponding 5.7 million metric tons of CO
2 emissions abated.”
LEDs reduce energy consumption by emitting light from a chip rather than an incandescent filament in a light bulb or charged gases in a fluorescent light tube. LEDs use about a tenth of the energy of an incandescent bulb and can last a decade or longer. They also produce almost no heat, thereby reducing fire potential.
The December 2008 U.S. Department of Energy report says that potential energy savings from current LED street lighting is significant, and that potential is likely to increase in the future as the energy and lighting performance of LED street lights continues to improve. However, economic viability will remain a key factor that must be weighed in concert with lighting performance, the report said.
Continuing investment in development of new technology promises to make LEDs more affordable and energy efficient.
Gallium Nitride (GaN), a semiconductor used to make LEDs, emits brilliant light but uses very little electricity. New GaN LEDs potentially can provide household lighting, but high production costs have impeded wide adoption so far. However, the Cambridge University based Centre for Gallium Nitride has developed a new way of making GaN which could produce LEDs for a tenth of current prices.
Taiwan’s LED makers include
Arima Optoelectronics Corp.,
Bright LED Electronics Corp.,
Epistar Corp.,
Everlight Electronic Co.,
Formosa Epitaxy,
Genesis Photonics Inc.,
Harvatek,
I-Chiun Precision,
Ligitek,
Opto Tech Corp. and
Unity Opto Technology Co.
