Energy-saving market never lack of followers. Experts expressed different views to this problem: on one hand, intelligent LED lighting industry is the inevitable trend. On the other hand, developing a type of intelligent products costs much less than producing them. Survey reports showed that an intelligent power supplier only costs 5 yuan, while producing a matching LED lamps for this supplier will cost 20%-30% more. Through calculation, a dimmable LED products costs 20% more than non-dimmable LED products (same type). Adding RGB functions will cost 30% more.

Longxin Zhang divided the entire LED development into three stages: replacing traditional lamps; self improvement (more energy-saving, more intelligent); cross-sector integration (including Internet of Things, long-distance control, residential intelligent LED lighting technique etc.). Currently, Chinese LED lighting market is still in the first stage. Simplified intelligent LED lighting technique is a transition phase, a middle stage between first level and second level. Chinese LED industry only has developed for ten years, still in the first stage. Some people began to accept this new lighting technology, but most still take a wait-and-see approach to it. They expect cheaper and more reliable products. The technique of LED has not been fully developed, the spread level has not been maximized. LED is not mature in both industrial aspect and in commercial aspect. Under such circumstance, rushed into intelligent stage is not a wise behavior.

 

Chen Xu is also suspicious of this problem. Internet of Things, sensor technology, and cloud computing are all in their early stages. The development of intelligent LED lamps requires the mature of these technologies. In his point of view, they should develop at least simultaneously. And this problem cannot be solved in short term.

 

Nowadays, most of LED enterprises just want to add some additional value to their products tough “intelligence” and expand the brand influence at the same time. However, this method is only suitable for large LED enterprises. Small and middle sized LED companies lack of capital to operate.

 

Some experts also indicated that the development of intelligent LED lighting industry should obtain the support of government. Such clutter developing modes will lead to a chaos in domestic LED high bay lighting market, prolonging the first stage.

 

 

Currently, intelligent LED lighting industry is just in the beginning stag in China. Many domestic LED enterprises treated this emerging market as a big chance and spent a lot of energy and money on the research and development. Kingsun-China spent 7.65 million yuan on development of intelligent LED street lights and incidental power supplier technology in 2011. It accounted for 51.69% of all development plans. In 2012, Kingsun-China intended to heavy the investment in this area. There are 15 LED lighting enterprises in China had annual sales more than one billion yuan. Among which 12 enterprises started relevant research and development in intelligent LED lighting industry.

“Presently, most of our researches for intelligent LED lighting technology are concentrated on dimmable RGB products. Systematical intelligent LED lighting technology has not been touched yet. In this area, we were far behind our overseas competitors.” Said Longxin Zhang. Chairman of Guangzhou LED Lighting Association. In his opinion, Chinese LED manufacturers developing intelligent LED lighting technology is just for commercial purposes. Demand for automatically controlled RGB lamps started to emerge in recent years. In order to occupy the best place in this new born market, domestic LED enterprises rushed into this area without any deep considerations and full preparations, which is rather dangerous. This only means that Chinese LED manufactures are not fully understand the significance of intelligent LED lighting products. On the contrary, foreign LED companies behaved much better than us. They focused on long-term effects. Their purpose to develop intelligent LED lights products is to improve people’s life qualities.

 

Some LED enterprises have promoted their intelligent LED lighting products. These products realized intelligent operations mainly though power suppliers. Thus, this kind of “intelligence” is low-tech and easily made. Only those who has realized intelligence though integrated circuits can be named intelligent products. Meanwhile, the real demand of this type of products in Chinese market has been over estimated. Economics department of Fudan University published a survey report recently. This report indicated that the permeability of intelligent LED lighting products in mainland market is less than 2%. Demands are focus on dimmable LED landscape lights, dimmable LED street lights and their monitoring system.