2008 Olympics widespread the LED Lighting Technology

“High-technology Olympics” advocated by Beijing authorities seems not only just a slogan to show but also a premediated plan to promote China’s energy-saving and emission reduction technology, of which LED lighting plays the important part.
Recently, Ruijun Wang, an office from Ministry of Sicence and Technology, stated that the implementation of “high-tech olympics“ is a long term consideration not only for the seek of provide advance, reliable and applicable technology support which lead the way in promotion of energy-saving, security, food safety, inteligent transportaion etc. In general, he said, there are three aspects as follows:

1. The concepts of  “green life”, “green evironment” and “technological development”  are widely accepted by the commonalities;
2.  Some key technologies are popularized, indusralized and commercialized with the demostrative effect of Olympics.  For example, we implemented plan to support the use of new-energy cars in public transportation. So that within four years, 60,000 will be used in the area with a forecasted increase of RMB10 billion in sales. 
3. New technologies for energy saving and green gas emission reduction has been widespread and acceptted.  With this opportunity, Ministry of Science and Technology seized the opportunity to promote solid-state lighting technology in 21 pioneer cities and planned to install 6 million LED lights for functional and landscape lighting. In remote rural and pasturing areas, the so-called “golden sun” project focused mainly on solar energy lighting technology used in Beijing Olympics.

 Therefore, we emphasize, “Hi-tech Olympics” is not only a concept, but a demostration, application and promotion of high technology, in the effort to promote China’s energy-saving emission reduction technology, to the development of green technology..

Solar Led Lights – Perfect Combination of New Engergy and Energy Saving

Solar LED lights are perfect combination in anything that is about lighting. From street lights, traffice lights to head lamps and flash lights, those made with LED is the most suitabable to marry with solar. As what they are, there is almost nothing to care, no grid construction, no large batteries, and no plugs. Just expose the gadget to the sun. Indeed, LED and solar power are the team to beat when it comes to coming up with environmentally friendly lighting.

One of the popular application of solar led lights is for outdoor lighting. All LED lights have to do is to gather the solar energy all day and have them stored in their batteries. Fully charged ones can actually power up the lighting for around 10 hours. To really optimize lighting period, just make sure that the solar led lights are totally exposed to the rays of the sun at the longest time.

More and more companies are incorporate these concepts to build solar LED lights, and the price of solar LED lights is being acceptable with the commercialization of both. Solar Led lights are more popular in the form of lighting for the yard, albeit, however, efforts have been made to make indoor LED lights drived by solar.

So, indeed, the solar Led technology is here to stay, trying to provide bright illumination, adding exciting to our homes and their exteriors, all without the use of conventional power but instead tap the free and clean energy from the sun.

Korea to replace 30% Light Bulbs with LEDs by 2015

Incandescent lights could soon become a thing of the past. The Ministry of KnowLedge Economy of Korea is pushing a “15-30″ move aiming to replace 30 percent of lights in the country with more energy-efficient LED, or light-emitting diodes by the year 2015 as part of a move to go green.

Unlike incandescent lights, led lamps can create a range of infrared, visible and ultraviolet light and can also express more than 16 million colors with a durability of 100,000 hours. That’s quite an improvement over a halogen bulb’s maximum of 6,000 hours.

Switching from ordinary lights to LED lamps can save 80~90% energy consumption in lighting. The European Union and Australia have announced plans to halt sales of ordinary light bulbs and halogen Lighting within the next four years.

Experts say LED lamps can be used as a substitute for sunlight and help control flowering and growth, while using only a third of the electricity of traditional lighting.

There is still some way to go before LEDs become a more common feature in Korean lives.

But the government says Korea could become a leading nation in LED use and development, generating US$4 billion in exports and 30,000 jobs using the country’s strong semiconductor industry as a springboard.

SOURCE chosun.com

Boston’s Old North Church installs energy-efficient LED lighting

The Old North Church, a beacon for Paul Revere’s famous warning of the movement of British forces, and a symbol of the American Revolution, has gone high-tech with the installation of light-emitting diodes, or Leds.

The energy-efficient lights illuminate ceiling vaults inside the church, whose steeple was used to display two lanterns as a signal about British troop movements on April 18, 1775 – the night described in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s famous poem, which included the line: “One if by land, and two if by sea.”Fluorescents still there

LEDs haven’t yet replaced the slightly less-modern compact fluorescents that the church began using two years ago in its modern versions of the steeple lanterns.

The 18 strips of LEDs inside church’s sanctuary – replacements for old-fashioned incandescents – may seem an anachronism at the most visited historic site in a city with a rich Revolutionary War legacy. But the lights are tucked into crown molding, illuminating the graceful white ceiling arches while the lights themselves are hidden from direct view by tourists and worshippers below.

Light and beauty

“What we’ve added is light, and beauty,” said Ed Pignone, executive director of the Old North Foundation of Boston, which oversees the 285-year-old church.

One of the church’s annual half-million visitors agreed the installation was done with historic sensibility.

“It’s completely transparent and invisible,” said Jim Peluso of Richmond, Va., one of a handful of Old North visitors on a chilly winter Friday. “I guess it’s no different than adding running water, or an HVAC system in the church, right?”

The LEDs were donated by Philips Solid-State Lighting Solutions, which planned to announce the Old North installation Monday. The company was formed through last year’s acquisition of Color Kinetics, a Burlington, Mass.-based LED designer, by Netherlands-based Royal Philips Electronics NV.

Old North’s ceiling vaults had been only dimly lit by the old incandescents, and they frequently burned out, Pignone said. The LEDs are projected to last at least 25 times as long as the incandescent bulbs, at five times the efficiency. They also do not give off as much heat as the older lights, which caused ceiling paint to peel prematurely.

How they work

LEDs are similar to computer semiconductors, but they convert electricity directly to light, rather than heating a metal filament to the point of glowing incandescence. The light streams out of tiny glass domes, about the size of matchstick heads. They are more expensive than incandescents and compact fluorescents, but are being touted as eventual replacements for those lights because of their growing efficiency and predictions of increasingly lower costs.

Modern concessions

They’re among several concessions to modernity and convenience at Old North, the home of an Episcopal congregation. Speakers hang from columns above the pews. While the church’s first floor has no artificial lighting, the upper floor is lit with incandescents.

“Churches are organic,” Pignone said. “They’re not frozen in time. They’re living buildings.”

A pair of incandescent lanterns once hung in the steeple to commemorate the signals of Revere’s warning, but two years ago they were replaced with compact fluorescents. They are only lit each Patriot’s Day – a civic holiday in Massachusetts marking the Revolutionary War’s start at Lexington and Concord – and special occasions such as the death of a president, or a World Series victory by the Boston Red Sox.

Pignone isn’t ruling out the possibility that Old North Church might eventually replace the compact fluorescents in the steeple lanterns with LEDs. His foundation is reviewing the entire church property’s capital needs, including restoration work and adding more efficient lighting in buildings such as a gift shop.

LEDs in the steeple “might be addressed in the master plan,” he said.

New LED Floodlights Advance Tokyo’s ‘Green’ Efforts

LED floodlights recently installed in Tokyo’s Chidorigafuchi Park were developed specifically to reduce the park’s carbon footprint, particularly during the annual cherry blossom viewing season when the park plays host to thousands of people every night. The new luminaires utilizing LUXEON® LEDs from Philips Lumileds were designed by Nagasaki-based lighting manufacturer.

The transition from halogen to LED lighting is saving an estimated 90% in energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions for each replaced fixture, helping the park do its part to combat global climate change as well as advancing Tokyo’s efforts to become a model low-carbon city. In addition, the cooler LED beam and lower UV levels will provide a more flower-friendly environment that will help keep the cherry blossoms in peak bloom for as long as possible during the annual festival.

The LED floodlights developed for the park come in 7- and 14-LED models with light outputs of up to 2800 lumens. The fixtures are illuminated with LUXEON K2 with TFFC (Thin Film Flip Chip) LEDs selected because of their ability to be driven at 1000mA to meet high brightness requirements.

LED lights shine at saving energy in tech gear

The same innovation that makes laptop screens thinner turns out to be one of the best energy-saving technologies on Earth – and it’s all thanks to new tricks that make it possible to create more illumination using the most humble member of the semiconductor family, the light-emitting diode, or LED.

Semiconductors, you will recall, are materials that can be coaxed into either conducting or not conducting electricity. Computer chips, which turn on and off, or count to zero and one, are the most common type of semiconductor. Solar cells, which emit electrons when struck by the photons in light beams, are another well-known semiconductor.

The LED is a solar cell in reverse, said Steven DenBaars, a professor of materials science at UC Santa Barbara. “When we put in electricity, it comes out as light,” he said.

Although the LED has been in commercial use since the late ’60s, it has ever been the blinking idiot of the semiconductor world. Costly to make and emitting only tiny amounts of light, the LED was at first useful only in expensive instruments such as calculators, watches and eventually those old VCRs that used to flash 12:00.

But in a world that is warming globally, this all-but-forgotten semiconductor may finally get its day in the sun, according to technology analyst Sweta Dash, who noted the growing importance of LEDs in a recent report for market research firm iSuppli Corp.

Writing about the display screens on electronic devices from wall-size to wrist-size televisions, Dash noted that one of the most important trends is a switch in the type of backlight that helps brighten the screens and increase the color range. Increasingly, Dash wrote, laptop and PDA makers are opting to use LEDs as backlights. Why? LEDs are thinner and use less energy than the fluorescent tubes inside today’s flat-panel screens, she said.

As Dash explained, behind the flat-panel display in a typical laptop there sits a thin fluorescent lightbulb that illuminates the back of the screen. Dash’s report noted how designers increasingly are using LEDs in this backlight function.

“In notebooks, everyone is trying to get more battery life,” said Dash, adding that the solid state LED also takes up less space than today’s fluorescent backlight. And that allows for sleeker products like Apple’s MacBook Air, which is about three-quarters of an inch thick at the hinge.

Thanks to this happy confluence of low-power consumption and thinness, Dash predicted that “in the next few years we will see this major change where these LED backlights are going to be everywhere.”

John Peddie, whose Tiburon consulting firm has tracked graphics and multimedia for three decades, said LED backlighting will not only yield thinner electronic devices but a more vibrant palette of colors on display screens. Current display technology can represent a palette of about 24 million colors. “We need close to a billion colors, our eyes are that sensitive,” said Peddie, adding that LED backlighting will enrich visual display.

But snazzier graphics and thinner gizmos are just the beginning of the LED revolution. The same power-saving characteristic that drives computer design is already making LEDs economical as a source of illumination in real world applications like traffic lights, according to DenBaars, the UCSB professor who works at that school’s Solid State Lighting and Energy Center.

“Cities are saving hundreds of dollars per intersection per year with LED traffic lights,” said DenBaars, who broke down the savings as follows.

The 100-watt incandescent bulb in a streetlight might cost $2 to buy, $40 to install and $73 a year to run, plus the cost of electricity. The bulb will likely last just six months, he said, pushing the cost to about $160 per year – two bulbs, two installations and the electric bill.

A 15-watt LED stoplight could throw off the same illumination at an annual electricity cost of about $11 – more than enough to offset the $50 cost of the solid state lamp, which should last five years, he said.

Because of the favorable economics, cities have led the charge on using LEDs in traffic lights and other round-the-clock situations in which the initial cost of the solid state device is still quite high relative to other light sources such as compact fluorescent bulbs. But it will be a while before consumers can justify the higher costs of LEDs as energy-saving replacements for older household fixtures.

“A room light is on about four to six hours a day,” DenBaars said, and that works out to a payback period on the order of three to six years.

So while LEDs may be ready to make computers smaller and sleeker, the technology will have to come down in price before it can find wider household application. But DenBaars said LEDs will eventually have a big role to play in reducing electricity consumption. And in the short term it may even find applications where its benefits outweigh its installation costs, such as in outdoor lighting for decks and patios.

“LED lights don’t attract bugs,” DenBaars said. “They don’t emit ultraviolet light like incandescent and fluorescent lights. And it’s the ultraviolet light that attracts the bugs.”

(Source: San Francisco Chronicle – May 5th 2008) 

Overview of LED lighting

A Light Emitting Diode (LED) is a semiconductor device which converts electricity into light. LED lighting has been around since the 1960s, but is just now beginning to appear in the residential market for space lighting. At first white LEDs were only possible by “rainbow” groups of three LEDs — red, green, and blue — by controlling the current to each to yield an overall white light. This changed in 1993 when Nichia created a blue indium gallium chip with a phosphor coating that is used to create the wave shift necessary to emit white light from a single diode. This process is much less expensive for the amount of light generated.

Each diode is about 1/4 inch in diameter and uses about ten milliamps to operate at about a tenth of a watt. LEDs are small in size, but can be grouped together for higher intensity applications. LED fixtures require a driver which is analogous to the ballast in fluorescent fixtures. The drivers are typically built into the fixture (like fluorescent ballasts) or they are a plug transformer for portable (plug-in) fixtures. The plug-in transformers allow the fixture to run on standard 120 volt alternating current (AC), with a modest (about 15 to 20 percent) power loss.

The efficacy of a typical residential application LED is approximately 20 lumens per watt (LPW), though efficacies of up to 100 LPW have been created in laboratory settings. Incandescent bulbs have an efficacy of about 15 LPW and ENERGY STAR® qualified compact fluorescents are about 60 LPW, depending on the wattage and lamp type. Some manufacturers claim efficiencies much higher than 20 LPW; make sure to examine system efficacy, which accounts for the power use of all components. In December 2006, the U.S. Department of Energy studied the efficacy of four luminaries. All four fell short of the manufacturers’ claims; the study implies that manufacturers are relying on measurements of how much light an isolated LED produces, rather than how much light an LED luminaire actually delivers.

LEDs are better at placing light in a single direction than incandescent or fluorescent bulbs. Because of their directional output, they have unique design features that can be exploited by clever designs. LED strip lights can be installed under counters, in hallways, and in staircases; concentrated arrays can be used for room lighting. Waterproof, outdoor fixtures are also available. Some manufacturers consider applications such as gardens, walkways, and decorative fixtures outside garage doors to be the most cost-efficient.

LED lights are more rugged and damage-resistant than compact fluorescents and incandescent bulbs. LED lights don’t flicker. They are very heat sensitive; excessive heat or inappropriate applications dramatically reduce both light output and lifetime. Uses include:

• Task and reading lamps
• Linear strip lighting (under kitchen cabinets)
• Recessed lighting/ceiling cans
• Porch/outdoor/landscaping lighting
• Art lighting
• Night lights
• Stair and walkway lighting
• Pendants and overhead
• Retrofit bulbs for lamps

Definitions and Terms

Term	Definition	Units	How to interpret
Color Temperature	Color of light	Kelvin (K)	Sunlight at sunrise is 1800K 100W Incandescent light bulb is 2850K Overcast Sky is 6500K
Color Rendering Index (CRI)	Light’s effect on color	Scale of 0 to 100 with sunlight at 100	The higher the number, the more “true” the color will look in that light
Brightness	The intensity of the light.	Lumens	The higher the lumens, the brighter the light
Power	Amount of electrical energy consumed	Watts	Lower the watts, the lower the energy consumed
Efficiency	The efficiency of the bulb to convert electricity into light	Lumens per Watt	More efficient bulbs provide more light using less energy

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	Individual LEDs are considerably more efficient; however, the lamp or fixture design is reduced by the driver and electronics. In addition, LEDs do not produce heat like incandescent bulbs.
	LEDs last considerably longer than incandescent or fluorescent lighting. LEDs don’t typically burn out like traditional lighting, but rather gradually decrease in light output. Their “useful life” is defined by the Alliance for Solid-State Illumination Systems and Technologies (ASSIST) as the time it takes until 70% of initial light output is reached, often 50,000 hours. They are resistant to thermal and vibrational shocks and perform well when subjected to frequent on-off cycling.

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LED lighting applications

LEDs used as a replacement for incandescent light bulbs and fluorescent lamps are known as solid-state lighting (SSL) – packaged as a cluster of white LEDs grouped together to form a light source. LEDs are moderately efficient; the average commercial SSL currently outputs 32 lumens per watt (lm/W), and new technologies promise to deliver up to 80 lm/W. The long lifetime of LEDs make SSL very attractive. They are also more mechanically robust than incandescent light bulbs and fluorescent tubes. Currently, solid state lighting is becoming more available for household use but is relatively expensive, although costs are decreasing. LED flashlights, however, already have become widely available.

One 6 watt LED light bulb can potentially last up to 58,500 or more hours than a 60 watt incandescent bulb, and potentially 50,000 more hours than a CFL. The cost difference between 40 incandescent light bulbs and 1 LED light bulb is only a few dollars, however, the kWh usage is significantly smaller with an LED light. Over this period of time, a significant amount of money can be saved. LEDs will also contribute by producing less waste.

A number of manufacturers have started marketing ultra-compact LCD video projectors that use high-powered white LEDs for the light source. Another alternative design is to use red, green, and blue LEDs in a sequential DLP design.

Incandescent bulbs are much less expensive but also less efficient, generating from about 16 lm/W for a domestic tungsten bulb to 22 lm/W for a halogen bulb. Fluorescent tubes are more efficient, providing 50 to 100 lm/W for domestic tubes (average 60 lm/W), but are bulky and fragile and require starter or ballast circuits. Compact fluorescent lamps, which include a quiet integrated ballast, are relatively robust and efficient and fit in standard light bulb sockets. They are currently the best choice for efficient household lighting if one overlooks the poisonous mercury they contain[citation needed].

LEDs are now well established in applications such as traffic signals and indicator lamps for trucks and automobiles. High output LED fixtures suitable for general architectural lighting applications are beginning to appear on the market with system efficacies of up to 56 lumens per watt, which is comparable to fluorescent systems. Proponents of LEDs expect that technological advances will reduce costs such that SSL will replace incandescent and fluorescent lighting in most commercial and residential applications.

LED downlights in NYC advertising agency officeDue to their monochromatic nature, LED lights have great power advantages over white lights when a specific color is required. Unlike traditional white lights, the LED does not need a coating or diffuser that can absorb much of the emitted light. LED lights are inherently colored, and are available in a wide range of colors. One of the most recently introduced colors is the emerald green (bluish green, about 500 nm) that meets the legal requirements for traffic signals and navigation lights.

There are applications that specifically require light without any blue component. Examples are photographic darkroom safe lights, illumination in laboratories where certain photo-sensitive chemicals are used, and situations where dark adaptation (night vision) mus

List of LED applications

Architectural lighting
Status indicators on all sorts of equipment
Traffic lights and signals
Light source for machine vision systems, requiring bright, focused, homogeneous and possibly strobed illumination.
Exit signs
Motorcycle and Bicycle lights
Toys and recreational sporting goods, such as the Flashflight
Railroad crossing signals
Continuity indicators
Flashlights, including some mechanically powered models.
Light bars on emergency vehicles.
Elevator Push Button Lighting
Thin, lightweight message displays at airports and railway stations and as destination displays for trains, buses, trams and ferries.
Red or yellow LEDs are used in indicator and alphanumeric displays in environments where night vision must be retained: aircraft cockpits, submarine and ship bridges, astronomy observatories, and in the field, e.g. night time animal watching and military field use.
Red, yellow, green, and blue LEDs can be used for model railroading applications
Remote controls, such as for TVs and VCRs, often use infrared LEDs.
In optical fiber and Free Space Optics communications.
In dot matrix arrangements for displaying messages.
Glowlights, as a more expensive but longer lasting and reusable alternative to Glowsticks.
Grow lights composed of LEDs are more efficient, both because LEDs produce more lumens per watt than other alternatives, and also because they can be tuned to the specific wavelengths plants can make the most use of.
Movement sensors, for example in optical computer mice
Because of their long life and fast switching times, LEDs have been used for automotive high-mounted brake lights and truck and bus brake lights and turn signals for some time, but many high-end vehicles are now starting to use LEDs for their entire rear light clusters. Besides the gain in reliability, this has styling advantages because LEDs are capable of forming much thinner lights than incandescent lamps with parabolic reflectors. The significant improvement in the time taken to light up (perhaps 0.5s faster than an incandescent bulb) improves safety by giving drivers more time to react. It has been reported that at normal highway speeds this equals 1 car length increased reaction time for the car behind.
Backlighting for LCD televisions and displays. The availability of LEDs in specific colors (RGB) enables a full-spectrum light source which expands the color gamut by as much as 45%.
New stage lighting equipment is being developed with LED sources in primary red-green-blue arrangements.
Lumalive, a photonic textile
LED-based Christmas lights have been available since 2002, but are only now beginning to gain in popularity and acceptance due to their higher initial purchase cost when compared to similar incandescent-based Christmas lights. For example, as of 2006, a set of 50 incandescent lights might cost $2.00 USD, while a similar set of 50 LED lights might cost $10.00 USD. The purchase cost can be even higher for single-color sets of LED lights with rare or recently-introduced colors, such as purple, pink or white. Regardless of the higher initial purchase price, the total cost of ownership for LED Christmas lights would eventually be lower than the TCO for similar incandescent Christmas lights[citation needed] since an LED requires much less power to output the same amount of light as a similar incandescent bulb.
LED phototherapy for acne using blue or red LEDs has been proven to significantly reduce acne over a 3 month period.[citation needed]
As a medium quality voltage reference in electronic circuits. The forward voltage drop (e.g. about 1.7 V for a normal red LED) can be used instead of a Zener diode in low-voltage regulators. Although LED forward voltage is much more current-dependent than a good Zener, Zener diodes are not available below voltages of about 3 V.
Computers, for hard drive activity and power on. Some custom computers feature LED accent lighting to draw attention to a given component. Many computer manufactuers use LEDs to tell the user its current state. One example would be the Mac, which tells its user when it is asleep by fading the LED activity lights in and out, in and out.
Light bulbs
Lanterns

President Obama’s attention on LED lighting revolution

Chairman and CEO of LED maker Cree, met President Obama at the White House with seven other CEOs to discuss the latest developments in energy-efficient technologies.
Swoboda CEO of Cree and the other CEOs, representing American companies “at the forefront of innovation”, were invited to meet with President Obama on July 2 to discuss American innovation in areas such as clean energy and the potential benefits to the U.S. economy.
In his remarks following the White House meeting, the President observed, “I just had a meeting with the CEOs of some of the most innovative energy companies in America to talk about growth and progress of a sector that represents a big piece of America’s economic future. It’s men and women like these who will help lead us out of this recession and into a better future.
“My job and our job as a government is to do whatever we can to unleash the great generative powers of the American economy by encouraging their efforts. And when you hear the innovation that’s taking place everything from LED lighting that can save a huge amount on energy costs to new concrete materials….that gets you excited about the future.”
“With President Obama’s support and the current momentum surrounding energy efficiency and sustainability, there are unprecedented opportunities for U.S. companies, like Cree, to deliver innovative technologies and products to address our current energy challenges,” said Swoboda. “Twenty-two percent of US electricity is used for lighting and the widespread deployment of LED lighting can reduce this by more than 60 percent.”

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