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Global Sources Report Says Greater China's LED Lighting Manufacturers Predict Export Boom
LIGHTimes Staff
May 6, 2008...Global Sources of Hong Kong has published its China Sourcing Report for LED Light Fixtures. According to the report 81 percent of Greater China LED light fixture suppliers surveyed predict strong export growth of 10 percent or more in the next 12 months. The primary reason cited by the companies for the strong growth is a wider range of LED-based general lighting applications. ''The use of LEDs in functional everyday lighting is moving into the mainstream, especially in developed markets. This, in turn, is fueling product development, with Greater China manufacturers seeking to gain an edge through improved performance and application flexibility,'' said the Report's publisher Spenser Au. LIGHTimes SecondPage members login for more. Guests can view membership details.
Arrowhead Sells Subsidiary Aonex to AmberWave Systems
CompoundSemi News Staff
May 6, 2008...Arrowhead Research Corporation of Pasedena, California USA, announced the sale of its majority owned subsidiary, Aonex Technologies to AmberWave Systems. According to the agreement, Amberwave will pay Aonex shareholders up to $7.95 million in earn-out payments in addition to running royalty on sales of solar products incorporating Aonex’s technology.
Arrowhead Research Corporation and Caltech Professor, Dr. Harry Atwater, launched Aonex Technologies in 2004. The company’s original focus was on commercializing the materials integration technology developed at Dr. Atwater’s lab for high efficiency solar cells. The company later expanded into the LED and laser markets. Aonex’s primary product is an innovative substrate that could enable the fabrication of higher efficiency compound semiconductor devices at lower cost and higher yields.
Aonex’s technology is expected to enhance the material technology product portfolio offered by AmberWave Systems.
“AmberWave’s technical capabilities and business expertise make it the perfect company to bring Aonex’s products to market,” said Aonex CEO and co-founder Sean Olson. “There is a shared vision of using materials integration to develop better, more cost effective semiconductor devices.” Arrowhead Research Corporation News Release
Lite-On IT to Establish Subsidiary Focused on Automotive LED Products
LIGHTimes Staff
May 6, 2008...Lite-On IT and its overseas subsidiaries High Yield Group and Lite-On IT International, plan to invest US$2.1 million to establish a subsidiary in Zhengjiang, China that will produce LED lighting products for use in automobiles, according to a Digitimes article. Lite-On IT recently acquired Automotive Playback Modules Hungary, a manufacturer of car audio and video players from Royal Philips Electronics. This acquisition along with the tremendous potential global market for LED automotive headlights, and a sufficient supply of HB LEDs from Lite-On IT’s parent company Lite-On Technology, prompted the establishment of the new subsidiary, the article indicated.
St. Andrews Researchers Created Organic Laser Powered by LED
CompoundSemi News Staff
May 5, 2008...Researchers at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, have created a visible organic laser that can be tuned to any color of the rainbow. The researchers pointed out that the laser is powered by a simple indium gallium nitride (InGaN) LED, rather than another laser, which was previously required for an organic laser. The physicists at St. Andrews contend that in addition to being more compact than previous organic lasers, they can be produced at a fraction of the cost.
Professor Ifor Samuel and Dr Graham Turnbull have used flexible plastic-like semiconducting materials to make a number of new innovations including a light-emitting sticking plaster for the treatment of skin cancer. According to the researchers, the technology could revolutionize point of care diagnosis and treatment. Professor Samuel said, "For over forty years visible organic lasers have required another laser to make them shine. We have now developed a low-cost, easy to make plastic laser, which converts the light from an LED (of the kind used in torches and traffic lights) into laser light. LEDs can be battery powered, and so this hybrid LED-laser approach can make very simple compact emitters. The lasers can give a variety of colors and are suitable for various applications such as spectroscopy or chemical sensing." The researchers findings are explained in the April 23 issue of Applied Physics Letters. Applied Physics Letters Abstract, St. Andrews University News Release
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LED Lightbulbs: Success at $99, $50, $25 and $15
Tom Griffiths - Publisher
May 1, 2008...One assumes that I'm not the only one in the world to receive the "interesting" LED and solid state lighting spam showing me the latest and greatest "incandescent replacements". We get the company-generated press releases here, as well, and hopefully succeed at getting them vetted, put in a little perspective and reporteed to you in a timely manner. A recent one that was very "eco-oriented" caught my attention as representing an approach to market to the consumers rather than "the lighting industry", and while giving it some thought, I concluded that it represented "a phase" that the solid state lighting industry is currently in.
As we dug into the details, some of the claims are a bit of a stretch when offered without data to back it up. That doesn't mean they weren't true, but in consumer-oriented marketing, the impression is what counts, not the facts or qualifiers . A 50,000 hour lifetime matches the 70% lumen maintenance claim of popular packaged LEDs, but how do you get "the system" to that level? "Light output comparable to a 100-watt incandescent," it says, but are those inferred 1000 lumens distributed with the same spread as a 100W A-19 globe? 13W to get that "comparable output"? 77 lumens/watt would be an amazing luminaire efficiency with this year's technology. Can we assume that the quality of the light is comparable for warmth or color rendering? (Highly doubtful). "Under $6 a year to run". If it's expensive electricity, we could estimate it at $0.15 per kWh. That's a run time of 3077 hours out of the 8760 available each year. Pretty heavy use, and an important part of the economic case since the 13W vs 100W savings is about $.013 (1.3 cents) per running hour. We'd be giving residential lighting the benefit of the doubt to average 5 hours a night every night, which is about 1800 hours, or an annual savings of about $24. $99 bulb, 4 year payback for a heavy usage, all else being equal (meaning that it's truly "comparable" in output and quality and stays that way for at least those 7200 hours). But consumers don't ask those questions, and it will be simply, "Is the light quality as good and bright?" and if it doesn't die in 4 or 5 years, they'll assume that things worked out in their favor.
That led to giving some thought to the "phases" we might expect to see as LED lighting begins its inevitable march to total lighting market domination. The first, which I would contend we're in now, is that of a guilt-driven eco-fad. Eeek, we're "using more energy than we should", producing "CO2 pollution" as a recent press conference announcement phrased it (one assumes that fish, land animals, humans and non-photosynthetic life forms are all "pollution" generators as well). Guilt is a perfectly valid market force, and hopefully one that is directed at issues that have an underlying content concerning good stewardship of resources, whatever they may be. The "Don't Mess With Texas" anti-litter campaign comes to mind and before that, Woodsey Owl chanting, "Give a Hoot, Don't Pollute". In the case of LEDs and hybrid cars, as an illustrating example, the guilt is most effectively marketed to the more affluent because the technology may not yet be cost-effective in the standard economic sense. The earliest hybrid cars were premium priced and not reaching a fuel cost-savings payback quick enough to beat the expense of replacing the battery packs. While improving, I suspect it's still not the case. Low inflation-adjusted energy prices through the 80s and 90s encouraged a trend towards big, comfortable vehicles with only modest efficiency improvements. Higher gas prices will encourage the hybrid and other fuel efficient vehicle technology development. In the same way, rising energy generation and delivery costs will continue to fuel a trend toward efficiency in a lot of sectors, lighting included.
So much as it was with those first hybrid, this early phase of residential LED lighting, with $99 "bulbs" would seem to be about being "eco-friendlier" with less concern given to any economic reality. We also see a bit of "trendy high end" getting into the mix, since LEDs do have the capability to simply make better light. It goes where it's pointed, can fit where traditional sources can't, and you can control the colors (either in the design, or as part of the installed system). That's cool, it looks great, and it's not cheap. If I can afford it, do I need to justify the $50,000 home theatre in my mansion, or is it merely that I could afford it and I enjoy it? (I don't have either the theatre or mansion, but who's sweating those details).
So what happens when we get to the $50 bulb or the analogous corresponding fixture prices at $100 or $150, (numbers chosen somewhat randomly)? My expectation is the we enter the "economic case" phase. That's the point that we'll see the marketing department take pencil to paper and show real light outputs and quality, representative energy costs, realistic replacement price comparisons, and so forth. Note that "real" and "representative" start to come into play. The LED producers have really done a good job over the last year or so of applying that mentality to fully disclose lifetime variances with temperature or lumen efficiency variances with input power because the results are good enough to make an LED the best light source for a number of applications. At $50 for "the bulb" the analytical buyers, including commercial building owners, will "see the light" and it won't just be a trendy, but a trend that makes sense. At $25, my prediction is that we'll see more of the same, but with the sale being "easy". Lots of word of mouth will be kicking in, and phrases like, "the case made sense at $50, but at $25, it's a no-brainer".
Somewhere below $20 is where the real fun will begin. I don't know if it's $19.95, $14.95 or $12.95, but somewhere in there we'll see mainstream, residential adoption kick in big time. We tend to talk about the 25-cent common 60-watt bulb and forget that people are happily paying $3-$5 for an individual CFL, and in some cases like PAR- or R-38 flood or spot lights, that much or more for a good looking or robust incandescent. The apples-to-apples case will be easy to make on the side of a box. "Averaging 3 hours per night for 3 nights a week, this bulb/fixture will pay for itself in just 2 years, but will last 20". "The last bulb you'll ever need" might be a hot tag line for the baby boomers (hope it lasts 30 years, and that you do too!). By that time, the solid state lighting industry will have word of mouth momentum on its side, and enough volume of positive economic case stories from the previous phase to drown out most of the negative experiences that took place in our current trendy phase. Assuming we keep that spam to a minimum...
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