Archive for category Green Tip
Analyst questions LED backlight technology but still sees growth market
Posted by LED Larry in Green Tip, LED, Lighting, New LED Technology on March 9th, 2010
Steve Ohr discussed LED TV backlighting in an APEC Consumer session questioning the price and advantages of the technology while stating that even a bearish outlook promises growth.
The APEC conference featured a series of Special Presentations focused on application areas this year, and the lead session in the consumer space focused on LED backlighting for LCD TVs. Gartner Research Director Steve Ohr presented “The promise for LED backlights in consumer TVs” and questioned just how quickly LEDs will penetrate the application, but still offered a positive market outlook.
Ohr started the presentation stating, “I thought LEDs would be too expensive to use as backlights.” But Ohr noted that consumers seem to be buying the LED sets despite the price premium – and in many cases without a discernible difference in picture quality. Ohr questioned whether the edge-lit sets offer any real improvement in image quality relative to fluorescent-lit sets.
While Ohr noted that some analysts and the TV manufacturers are predicting 50% market penetration in 2010, he takes a much more conservative view. Ohr sees 50% penetration by 2013, but notes that bearish outlook still results in a $2 billion white LED opportunity in 2013
Ohr isn’t alone questioning some of the bullish forecasts. Strategies Unlimited’s Bob Steele also questioned some of the high market projections two weeks ago at the Strategies in Light conference. In his annual market forecast presentation, Steele noted that some analysts are projecting that 39 million LED-based TVs will ship in 2010 while he believes 22 million is a more reasonable projection.
Despite his analysis of the financials and questions about the advantages of LEDs in edge-lit configurations, Ohr said signs are pointing potentially to a more rapid adoption of LEDs. He stated, “Promotion of LED backlights may result in high consumer acceptance despite the higher price.”
Ohr also noted that there are signs in the semiconductor space that those companies see a more rapid transition than most expected previously. He noted that NXP had discontinued development of a new fluorescent driver IC. And he displayed a slide of a Marvell fluorescent driver data sheet with discontinued stamped across the sheet.
Ohr concluded stating, “We need $0.05 by 2013.” He questions whether the LED industry can deliver components at that price both because of the manufacturing and packaging cost, and the need to test and bin the products for intensity and color.
Analyst questions LED backlight technology but still sees growth market
Steve Ohr discussed LED TV backlighting in an APEC Consumer session questioning the price and advantages of the technology while stating that even a bearish outlook promises growth.
The APEC conference featured a series of Special Presentations focused on application areas this year, and the lead session in the consumer space focused on LED backlighting for LCD TVs. Gartner Research Director Steve Ohr presented “The promise for LED backlights in consumer TVs” and questioned just how quickly LEDs will penetrate the application, but still offered a positive market outlook.
Ohr started the presentation stating, “I thought LEDs would be too expensive to use as backlights.” But Ohr noted that consumers seem to be buying the LED sets despite the price premium – and in many cases without a discernible difference in picture quality. Ohr questioned whether the edge-lit sets offer any real improvement in image quality relative to fluorescent-lit sets.
While Ohr noted that some analysts and the TV manufacturers are predicting 50% market penetration in 2010, he takes a much more conservative view. Ohr sees 50% penetration by 2013, but notes that bearish outlook still results in a $2 billion white LED opportunity in 2013
Ohr isn’t alone questioning some of the bullish forecasts. Strategies Unlimited’s Bob Steele also questioned some of the high market projections two weeks ago at the Strategies in Light conference. In his annual market forecast presentation, Steele noted that some analysts are projecting that 39 million LED-based TVs will ship in 2010 while he believes 22 million is a more reasonable projection.
Despite his analysis of the financials and questions about the advantages of LEDs in edge-lit configurations, Ohr said signs are pointing potentially to a more rapid adoption of LEDs. He stated, “Promotion of LED backlights may result in high consumer acceptance despite the higher price.”
Ohr also noted that there are signs in the semiconductor space that those companies see a more rapid transition than most expected previously. He noted that NXP had discontinued development of a new fluorescent driver IC. And he displayed a slide of a Marvell fluorescent driver data sheet with discontinued stamped across the sheet.
Ohr concluded stating, “We need $0.05 by 2013.” He questions whether the LED industry can deliver components at that price both because of the manufacturing and packaging cost, and the need to test and bin the products for intensity and color.
E.ON installing LED street lights and traffic signals in Blackpool
A coastal resort town in the UK famous for its decorative illuminations is benefiting from a multiyear project to replace street lights and traffic signals with LED fixtures. Work has already begun on a 25-year project which will upgrade, operate and manage 20,000 street lights and 2,000 traffic signals on nearly 430 km of highway in Blackpool, a seaside resort town in the north of England. The project will track energy savings and carbon emissions at every stage of the rollout.
E.ON Sustainable Energy, part of energy company E.ON, will install and maintain LED street lights and LED traffic signals on behalf of the Community Lighting Partnership, a consortium between consulting engineers Pell Frischmann; and property partnership company Telereal Trillium.
The Community Lighting Partnership recently secured a 25-year Private Finance Initiative (PFI) encompassing both street lighting and traffic signals for Blackpool, the first place in the world to install electric street lighting in 1879.
The LED street lights and traffic signals could save Blackpool Council tax payers up to 25% of their street lighting bill, according to E.ON’s estimates, as well as removing over 1400 tonnes of carbon emissions per year. (These figures are based on a 50-watt LED light with a burn time of 4180 hours per year for each light type versus a more traditional 70-W SON light running at 85W for the same timescale.)
The project will use the Marlin LED street lights recently unveiled by E.ON Sustainable Energy and Advanced LEDs Ltd, a UK-based LED lighting manufacturer.
Benefits of LED lighting
As well as saving money through reduced maintenance and energy usage, Blackpool Council were particularly interested in the potential benefits of LED-based lighting in improving road safety, helping tourism and even reducing crime.
“LED lighting is expected to reduce the number road accidents, and improve the quality of CCTV pictures,” said Richard Scott, Head of Consultancy for E.ON Sustainable Energy. The company has performed extensive testing of the LED street lights at its own facilities.
Scott says that the rollout began in January, despite some unexpected bad weather, and is expected to take 5 years before all the street lights and traffic signals are replaced.
For the Blackpool project, everything from the energy use of the luminaire to the design of the carbon-neutral aluminum street-light columns have been scrutinized for ways to conserve resources and reduce energy consumption.
The system will also utilize remote monitoring technology and a dynamic management system which Scott refers to as “dimming and trimming.” This could for example allow lights to be dimmed, and will also indicate when lights are not functioning, removing the need for maintenance engineers to visit each light to check its performance.
According to figures from E.ON, street lighting uses an estimated 2% of the UK’s electricity, meaning that if all the street lights in the UK were replaced with LED alternatives, over 6 million tonnes of carbon could be saved over a 30 year period.
From LEDmagazine.com
LED modules for accent lighting surpass the performance of halogen lamps
| Modules built using separated phosphor technology demonstrate that the benefits of LEDs can be harnessed in the realm of accent lighting with no compromises in light quality, even taking halogen as a benchmark, as ROGER SEXTON describes. | |
| In the 1970s, the advent of dichroic halogen lamps allowed high-quality accent lighting in retail, hospitality, museums and other applications. From the 1990s until now, compact metal halide lamps have also been used in these applications offering more “punch” (for example, highlighting of merchandise even against the higher background illumination levels of department stores) alongside improvements in longevity and energy consumption.
At the beginning of this decade, highbrightness LEDs showed the promise that more improvements still could be made in terms of longevity. However, until now, light output and efficacy, luminaire size and light quality compromises have been barriers to adoption. ++++++ This article was published in the Jan/Feb 2010 issue of LEDs Magazine. To read the full version of this article, please visit our magazine page, where you can download FREE electronic PDF versions of all issues of LEDs Magazine. You can also request a print copy of LEDs Magazine (available by paid subscription) and sign up for our free weekly email newsletter. |
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| About the Author | |
| ROGER SEXTON is VP of Marketing and R&D at Xicato (www.xicato.com). |
Preheating
If you’re boiling, roasting, or baking a dish that will cook for an hour or more, don’t bother preheating your oven. Even for breads and cakes, never preheat for longer than ten minutes. If you reduce the amount of time your oven is on by one hour per year, you’ss save an average of two kilowatt-hours of energy. If 30 percent of U.S. households could each reduce total oven preheating time by just one hour per year, the sixty million kilowatt-hours of energy saved could bake a dozen cookies for every American.
Refrigerator
Keep your head out of the refrigerator and the door closed! The refrigerator is the single biggest energy-consuming kitchen appliance, and opening the refrigerator door accounts for between $30 and $60 of a typical family’s electricity bill each year. The amount of energy saved in a year by more efficinet refrigerator usage could be enough to light every house in the US for more than four and a half months straight.
Junk Mail
Rid yourself of Junk mail – or at least recycle it. The average U.S. household receives 1.5 trees’ worth of junk mail each year, and many of these are thrown right into the trash. If you want to reduce the amount of junk mail you receive, you’ll need to register with the Mail Preference Service. It costs a buck, but you can do it easily online at www.dmaconsumers.org/cgi/offmailinglist. For the junk mail you continue to receive, remember to toss it into the recycling bin instead of throwing it out with the garbage. You can even recycle plastic window envelopes. If all Americans recycled their junk mail, $370 million landfill dumping fees could be saved each year.
Garbage Disposal
Use cold water when you run your garbage disposal. Better yet, try not to use it at all by composting your food waste or disposing of it in the trash. Your drain will be less clogged, you’ll save money on maintaining your septic system. Disposal wste can disrupt nutrient balances in water and soil ecosystems, which in turn can harm wildlife
Food Waste
When cooking and baking, try to avoid wasting food by using perishable ingredients before they spoil, measuring carefully, and saving leftovers for future meals instead of throwing them away. If you could reduce the amount of food wasted in your household by just twenty-five grams per day (about the weight of a slice of bread), you’d save twenty pounds of food annually – roughly enough to make 16 meals. If all U.S. households reduced their food waste by this amount, the savings would be enough to provide three meals per day for a whole year to each of the 1.35 million children in the U.S. who are homeless.
Dishwasher
Run full loads in your dishwasher and save energy, and don’t pre-rinse your dishes before putting them in. Do both and you’ll save up t 20 gallons of water per dish load, or 7,300 galloon over a year. Thats as much water as the average person drinks in a life time. If you must wash your hands, turn the water off while you scrub