月份：2012年10月

Domestic led industry grows well

China attaches great importance to the semiconductor lighting technology innovation and industrial development, and has introduced a series of related policies and plans. The semiconductor lighting in China’s seven strategic emerging industry is an important development. Ministry of national science and technology have plans in 973 and in 863, which will research and development support.

Domestic led industry grows well

In 2009, the national development and Reform Commission and other 6 ministries jointly issued the ” semiconductor lighting development views “, The national development, Reform Commission, housing construction department and Department of transportation carried out joint application demonstration project of semiconductor lighting products in 2010. The state issued incandescent light route map in 2011. The State Council issued in August of this year ” energy-saving and emission reduction ” Twelfth Five-Year Plan ” ” point out the positive development of semiconductor lighting industry and accelerate the key equipments for semiconductor lighting, core material and the key common technology research and development. The Vice Premier Li Keqiang had a chance to make inspection for the led industry and china led flood lights in June 18, 2012.

At present, China’s semiconductor lighting industry has formed a relatively large industrial scale and a complete industrial chain which also has good industry foundation. Especially in recent years, China’s semiconductor lighting industry development grew very rapidly along with the international industry transfer to China,the domestic industry investment growth and the level of industrial technology of the rapid promotion. It already became the world fastest area, and preliminary already built relatively complete industrial chain.
According to the national semiconductor lighting project development and Industry Alliance ( CSA ) statistics, China’s semiconductor lighting industrial dimensions already achieved 156000000000 RMB in in 2011, which includes upstream epitaxial chip production value 650 billion, 2850 billion in output value and the middle package downstream application value of 1210 billion.
” Eleven five” period, China’s semiconductor lighting industry average annual growth rate reached nearly 35%, which is expected to make” 12th Five-Year Plan”, the industry average growth rate will exceed 30%, in 2015 the industry overall dimensions will achieve 5000 billion RMB in 2015.
Under the national policy support and market demand drive below, our country is preliminary already formed from upstream epitaxial material. The semiconductor lighting technology has been rapidly promoted, the key technology and international has to been narrow. led industry chip localization rate has reached 68% in 2011, and the industrialization of high power LED light efficiency reaches 120 lm/W. with independent intellectual property rights of the Si silicon power, LED optical efficiency become more than 100 lm/W; so does the UV semiconductor lighting R & D.

Market cultivation expansive approach for world of led (2)

4, To promote their products should according to the technical requirements of the market environment

Whether product performance can achieve environmental requirements or not, which is the most critical. In the design, marketing, we should consider the advantages of world of led package  promotion and to promote their products according to the technical requirements of each market environment. If just for promotion and marketing, they will often have a negative impact after they run out of the lights, and realize it is not good as what you said, when they put something, after one or two years, it go die. At that time, he was taken for world of led attitude absolute boycott, the most typical example in this regard is the street light.

Market cultivation expansive approach for world of led (2)

5, there is a need to study the market segments

Lighting enterprise scale, what would like to do much less likely to? This can be seen from the traditional lighting companies. Because the biggest problem of lighting products is to involve the design, it is not your standard products that will be able to sell a building as long as involved in the design, the size of the business you do not go, do not like home appliances. So do LED lighting, in particular, they need to study the market segments, For example, the emergence of this world of led, it gained a good application on the filed of travel, military, aerospace, airport every aspect of market segments in fact make it easier for you in this field to become the boss, do not necessarily have been a cook billion scale enterprises.

6, what kind of products are sold to what kind of market

If you want to have your Lamps to do well, the quality is very critical. Of course, price is one aspect. Try to do, can market is divided the lighting companies into two categories? one is the high-end market for high quality requirements, lighting can be done with the first-class brand chip, the product can be sold more expensive; the other is for the low-end market, it can be appropriate to reduce costs. Such sales, to let customers understand your product in the end belonging to which level, what kind of application environment. To a certain extent, it can be avoided the product prices disorderly competition.

Market cultivation expansive approach for world of led (1)

For the uncertain market, the really need, perhaps, is the concept of a more rational and constructive thinking. The Union Assembly, representatives of the participating companies have raised a number of insights, such as “to promote the right product in accordance with the technical requirements of the market environment”, ” and actively cultivate and open the domestic market”, “cost control spared article” “deep secret agents in the emerging market and market segments” “Focus on the added value into the world of led pn junction system to provide customers with solutions. Of course, the reason should not just talk about it, how to form a high degree of consensus in the development of the industry and transform into the real engine of the action force, which are the market forward.

Market cultivation expansive approach for world of led 1

Actively boost domestic market

The domestic market is very large indeed, how to pull the domestic market? In this regard, the government has had a lot of practices, but need to do more to cultivate the market, and they should actively encourage more people, more businesses, institutions, and more families to understand the world of led, and to propaganda better of the LED’s advantages and social benefits with actively boost domestic market.

2, to avoid the “low-price competition”

In the past two years, why the market price has continued to drop? In addition to the supply and demand of the reasons of the above, as well as one of the main reasons is because a lot of small businesses simply do not know the technology, which is simply a layman to run world of led lighting, but in order to stay in business, and grab orders, so they put the price be low; This actually a sad to our industry.

3, how to reduce costs?

Judging from the current situation, the domestic chip companies this year, or a considerable number of enterprises will encounter shuffle, the first half of next year there will be more. The key for businesses can not survive or not is in quality and cost. Enterprises, especially the equally important role of the cost should be placed and technology, but how we can reduce the cost of it? Generally speaking, it is the scale, output, as well as lowering the price of raw materials and logistics costs.

The lifetime of LED components

Basically, LED is a kind of semiconductor component (diode) that can emit light, which is also a type of electrical component. Normally, the estimation of LED components should use accelerated life testing (ALT led street light pdf) method with a couple of mature samples and statistical analysis. The current LM-80 specification based experiments on three different testing temperatures, and together with the lumen maintenance regulated by the Energy Star. It is not really controversial to use it as the single standard to determine the lifetime of LED components. Especially after the launching of TM-21 life estimation solution, LED chip manufacturers no longer determine the service life of their products by themselves. But led heat dissipation problems still existed:

 

Basically, LED is a kind of semiconductor component (diode) that can emit light, which is also a type of electrical component.

 

  1. In the LM-80 specification, LED chips should be tested in three different working temperatures. In each temperature, at least 85% LED chip should pass the 6000-hour aging test, and using the lumen maintenance parameter as the only basis for judging. The problem is this is a statistic process. Within the 6000-hour test, there are still 15% LED chips cannot pass these tests. The failure of every single LED chip will cause the failure of the lamp, thus for LED application manufacturers, lumen maintenance based on the LM-80 specification is unreliable.
  2. In order to increase the accuracy of LM-80 in estimating the lifetime of LED components, clear definition of failure modes are necessary, for example: lumen maintenance rate, dead lights, burned components, color coordinate/voltage/current offset. The occurrence of any one of these faults means the death of the lamp. In addition to grain quality, including the selection of packaging materials and packaging technologies will impact the lifetime and reliability of LED elements. Therefore, LED elements insisted on LM-80 tests need to pass the tests for reliability qualification, which is necessary.
  3. In order to reduce the interruption risk during LE-80/6000 hours tests caused by the failure of LED components, usually LED manufacturers may increase the number of testing samples. According to the regulation of Energy Star, dead lights will not be included into the calculation of average lumen maintenance rate, but should be marked within the final LM-80 report. Thus, when LED application makers read about these LM-80 reports, they will learn about the failure rate as well as the average lumen maintenance rate.

Does the lumen maintenance data can represent the service life of LED lamps?

There are two main problems in current LED lighting market:

 

The first one: unclear identity. According to the test of ITRI industry, more than 50% LED bulbs in the market are insufficient in output luminous flux as they have been marked. It is estimated that measured results will be 10% less than the value given out by laboratory experiments.

 

Does the lumen maintenance data can represent the service life of LED lamps?

 

The second problem is the different quality. Currently, there is no unified standard to provide clear definitions to the relationship between prices and qualities. In most of cases, customers might spend a lot of money but did not obtain the corresponding high-quality products. This situation made buyers from other regions, like Europe and the United States paid more attention on the identity and quality of LED lamps/bulbs.

 

Does the lumen maintenance data can represent the service life of LED lamps? At present, the most official representative standard related to the service life of LED bulbs in the LED lighting market should be the LM-80 specification released by the Energy Star (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) for LED Lamps. However, a number of different voices now have been found in North America. Some experts call on the abolishing of LM-80 specification immediately since it is not accurate as people expected in estimating the service life of LED bulbs. At least, it should not be the only specification for that.

 

In fact, in 2006, the U.S. Department of Energy Quality Working Group for Solid State Lighting (SSL) invited 32 LED experts and conducted a series of deep discussions about the reliability and lifetime estimation methods for LED lighting products. In consideration of the LED technologies at that moment, it is proved that lumen maintenance (L70) will be the most representative and most reliable specification for determining the life time of LED lamps. The light attenuation of LED lights is step by step process, which is too slow to be sensed by human. In the early stage of light attenuation, people can hardly recognize their lamps become dimmer. Not until the light attenuate to only 70% of the initial light intensity, the lost brightness of LED lights can be noticed. Thus the working group of U.S. Department of Energy Quality Working Group for Solid State Lighting suggested that L70 should be the only standard of LM-80 specification in determining the lifetime of LED lights, including LED bulbs.

Applications of high-frequency non-electrode LED lamps

High-frequency non-electrode LED lamps – a new green light source with high energy efficiency in the 21st century. The general working principles of this lamp is coupling energy into the bulb through the high-frequency induction magnetic field energy; forming plasma within the bulb via avalanche ionization; when excited atoms return to the ground state, they will send out UV rays (254nm), which is also called spontaneous emission; the fluorescent powder stimulated by UV rays, they will send out invisible light. Lacking of electrode and filament makes non-electrode LED lamps immune to the lifetime restrictions caused by light sources. The average service life of high-frequency non-electrode LED lamps is more than 60,000 hours, with a power factor higher than 98%, instant start and re-start, the efficiency of the entire system is no less than 63lm/W, color temperature between 2700K to 6500K, with CRI larger than 80, normal working temperature of -25℃-50℃. High-frequency non-electrode LED lamps have really good performances in many optical parameters. Their high efficiency and lower power consumption can save more than 60% energy compared with other traditional lamps.

 

Applications of high-frequency non-electrode LED lamps

 

Because of using solid amalgam, these lamps will not cause damages to the environment. 99% can be recycled, no flicker, low heat generation, led advantage no light pollution, long service life, no maintenance and frequent replacement, which saves a lot of human and material resources. High-frequency non-electrode LED lamps are widely used in factories, shopping malls, offices, classrooms, streets, parking lots, gas stations, stadium management, bridges, etc., especially used as green light sources in tunnels, subways, billboards, cold storage and other places where maintenance works are rather difficult.

 

Non-electrode lamp is not a new invention. As early as 100 years ago, American scientists invented similar lighting technology. However, due to all kinds of restrictions in technologies at that moment, non-electrode lamp can only stayed in the laboratory for a long time. Recently, scientists felt interested in them again and tried to combine this technology with LED lighting source (the 4th generation light source).

 

According to statistics, 20% of energy consuming of our country is from the lighting industry. If 1/3 of our current light sources replaced by LED lighting applications, then more than 150 billion degrees electricity will be saved every year. Estimated in accordance with the existing power energy structure, this assumption will reduce the carbon dioxide emission by 25 million to 43.2 million tons.

Future development of LED down lamps

With the development of LED down lighting technology, a large number of LED manufacturers realized the importance of product quality. Only high quality LED lighting products can impress customers and make them decide to replace their old traditional lighting applications with LED lamps.

 

With the development of LED down lighting technology, a large number of LED manufacturers realized the importance of product quality.

 

It is the quality that determines the future direction of LED down lamps. In fact, LED lighting industry is suffering bottleneck currently. The over-expensive production cost made them be hardly accepted by ordinal buyers. Compared with traditional fluorescent lights, which is only cost several USD, LED down lamps are incomparable. Experts believed that in order to successfully break this bottleneck, LED manufacturers should improve the quality of LED products, prolong the service life to more than 50,000 hours. In addition, they also need to spend more energy and time on the appearance design.

 

Thank to their own advantages, designers will have more creative space if they choose to use LED lighting products instead of traditional lamps. That is the main reason that more and more interior designers would like to use LED down lamps, which break the traditional concepts of appearance. The energy-saving and low heat dissipation features make LED down lights also can be used in the commercial and industrial areas.

 

With the increasingly popularization of LED lighting technologies, a large number of inferior LED down lamps flooded into the market, the instable quality of them broke the expectations of buyers towards LED down lights, even exerted bad influences on other LED lighting products. Because of the lacking of a unified standard in the LED lighting industry, consumers usually felt helpless when they bought some low-quality products but found nowhere to complain. All these casted a thick layer of shadow on the future of the lighting industry. The majority of small and media sized LED makers either to sink in the pessimistic ocean or to struggle to survive under the huge pressure. The time will give out the final result.

 

What LED makers needed desperately right now is a unified standard. They should not pursuit the immediate petty profits at the cost of the overall development of the LED down lighting products. LED down lights have a bright future, but LED manufacturers have to aim high and learn from mistakes that they made before.

Compartments that determine the lifetime of LED down lamps

There are three compartments of LED down lamps that can determine their lifetime: LED beads (LED chips car led ), LED power supplies (LED drivers), cooling sections. LED beads are the core part of LED down lamps, which will directly determine their performances and service lives. Currently, most high quality LED beads are from Cree (American) and Nichia (Japan). Other LED chip manufacturers with higher cost performances are Epistar, Everlight from Taiwan and Sanan optoelectronics, Yingrui from the mainland.

 

Compartments that determine the lifetime of LED down lamps

 

Undoubtedly, Cree is the best LED chip manufacturers in the world, LED lights used these beads have higher output luminous flux, longer service life, but also higher selling prices. These products are more suitable for European and American markets. Chips from Taiwan are weaker than Cree chips in performances, but still have very long lifetime, can be afforded by customers from developing countries and regions, like the mainland, Southeast Asia and Mid-east.

 

LED power supplies are the heart of LED down lamps, having significant influences on them. LED down lights usually work under 110-220VAC. Since the development of LED lights is relatively shorter than other traditional lamps, the Chinese Government still has no uniformed standard for LED power supplies. Currently, LED power supplies that sold in domestic market have different qualities, different standards, many of which have very low power factor (PF) and cannot pass the EMC electrical tests. The lifetime of electrolytic capacitors within power supplies are directly determine the lifetime them. In order to reduce the cost as low as possible, producers tend to use low quality electrolytic capacitors, which will weak the efficiency of power supplies, making “long lifetime” LED down lamps become “short life” lights.

 

The cooling design of LED down lights also impacts their lifetime magnificently. Heat generated by LED beads will be conducted to PCBs and finally covers, then dissipated into the air though covers. Among these parts, it is the PCBs’ heat dissipation performances that determine the quality of cooling sections. PCB must have a higher thermal conductivity. The thermal conductivity of grease should be good enough. The cooling area of the enclosure should be large enough. Reasonable design of these parts can maintain the working temperature of PN junctions under 70 degrees, which can guarantee the normal working conditions of LED down lights.

General analysis of LED down lamps’ current situation

Recently, China’s National Development and Reform Commission released an announcement: “Plans for phasing out incandescent lights in China”. According to this announcement, from 1st October of 2012, incandescent lights with power consumptions higher than 100W will be banned in the mainland. And from 1st October of 2012, incandescent lights with power consumptions higher than 15W will be banned in the mainland. That means the ordinary incandescent lighting applications will leave the stage of the lighting history. As the most advanced lighting technology today, LED lights has emerged in the market and been known by customers.

 

Recently, China’s National Development and Reform Commission released an announcement

 

Since the invention of LED lights, their brightness has constantly and stably upgraded (from LED indicators to intelligent LED street lights), implying that LED lights will become the dominated lighting applications on day. Similarly, LED down lamps also transformed from the high-en lighting products to the new darling of general application market.

 

Down lights is a type of indoor lighting applications, which can be used in shopping malls, offices, factories, hospitals and also houses. LED down lamps inherits all the advantages of traditional down lights, besides they also have typical features of LED lighting technologies: less heat dissipation, save more energy, can work for a long time, small costs of maintenance and replacement. In the early stage of development, because of the over-expensive of LED chips, LED down lamps were hardly accepted by end users. However, the reduction of LED chip prices and together with the improvement of cooling section designs made it is possible for LED down lights to seize the commercial lighting market.

 

LED chips, lamp covers and drivers (power supplies) compose the main body of LED down lights. single LED chips with high power are more suitable for LED down lighting applications. Low-powered LED chips, like 5050, 5630 are more suitable for LED panels, since they cannot provide sufficient light when used individually. The normal distance from lamp bodies to the ground for indoor lighting products is around 4-5 meters. Definitely, only high-powered single LED chip can meet such requirements. The most common used high-power LED chip for LED down lights is 1W LED chip, which can be used to make 1W, 3W, 5W, 7W and 9W (25W tops) LED down lights.

Incandescent lamps have comprehensively banned in EU, a new era for LED lighting applications

31st August 2012 is the deadline for the EU Government to comprehensively ban incandescent bulbs in any countries and regions within EU. Our researchers visited several large supermarkets and electrical stores in Brussels and found that low-wattage (less than 40W) incandescent lights have been completely replaced by energy-saving lamps with the similar power consumption.

 

Incandescent lamps have comprehensively banned in EU, a new era for LED lighting applications

 

The comprehensive ban of incandescent bulbs in EU presents the end of 100 years of “Edison Era”. As early as March 2007, the European Commission put forward proposals to replace incandescent lights with other more energy-saving lighting technologies. In March 2009, the European Commission formally adopted an order to phase out incandescent lights gradually.

 

Related tests showed that only 5% of the electrical energy can be converted to optical energy for incandescent lights, the remaining 95% energy will be converted into wasted heat. It is obvious that the elimination of incandescent lights is inevitable. Banning is mainly for the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions. It is showed that if replace incandescent lights with energy-saving lights in all EU member states, the saved electricity can supply Romania for one year.

 

The elimination of incandescent lights means the expansion of the market of new energy-saving lamps. Nowadays, among all kinds of energy-saving lamps, it is LED lighting applications and energy-saving lamps (compact fluorescent lamps) has become the two main lighting tools with higher cost-effective.

 

In assessments conducted by related institutes to all kinds of lamps available in the market, LED always obtained a high score. LED lighting applications have many advantages: high energy efficiency, environmental friendly, long service life, beautiful appearance and high luminous efficiency. They have broad market prospects. Compared with incandescent lights and city street light , the energy-saving ratio of LED lighting applications can reach up to 90%. Although, the current selling prices of LED lights are much higher, they can work 25 times longer than incandescent lights. Experts pointed out that the production costs of LED lamps will reduce with the improving of LED technology. Accordingly, the LED’s price dropping is just a problem of time. Studies published by McKinsey Analysis suggested that a current 20 euros LED lights will be sold on 3 euros in 2020. Some experts predicted that with the decline in the production cost of LED lights, these high-tech lighting products will go into mass production stage from next year.