Blade – 第643页 – LED Lighting Blog

Nine tips for high quality LED bulb drivers

1) High efficiency and less heat;

LED bulbs drivers are usually embedded within the lamp body, connected with LED chips. Thus the heat generated by LED chips and drivers will add up together, which make the cooling designs more difficult. In normally conditions, the heat generation and dissipation will be in a balance, which will be the working temperature of LED bulb. In the meanwhile, the working temperature of LED bulbs also determined the service life of them.

2) Power suppliers and long service life;

According to the bucket theory, the shortest plank decided how much water can this bucket hold. Power supplier is the shortest plank of LED lamps when judging its service life. Thus for many LED manufacturers, designing or choosing a right power supplier is significant for LED lights.

3) Small current pulse amplitude;

Current pulse amplitude is another important parameter when judging the quality of LED bulb drivers. Normally, small current pulse amplitude can not only improve the quality of the illumination but also prolong the lifetime of this device, thus extending the life time of LED bulbs.

4) Internal current with high frequency;

Current ripple with high frequency can reduce or even eliminate flickers, which will be captured by human eyes and cause damages. Certainly, high quality LED bulbs should not have substantial current ripple.

5) High power factor;

Improving the power factor of LED bulb drivers can increase the energy efficiency of power grid, reducing invalid loss. At present, many countries have their own regulations for the power factor of electrical appliances, including LED lighting products. For example, according to the related standard of Germany, every electrical devices that imported into Germany should have a power factor larger than 90.

6) Electrical isolation;

LED drivers are usually powered by the power grid, directly working under high voltage AC. While LED work under DC. Electrical isolation is necessary between them. Normally, designers will design isolated circuits between the input end and the output end of LED drivers.

7) Protection;

Generally, LED derivers should have protection measures for over-temperature and over-current.

8) Small size;

Generally LED bulb drivers are small sized, since only small drivers can be integrated built into LED bulbs.

9) Low production costs;

Low costs will have good market performances, which is the universal law of the Chinese market and cannot be varied in the short term. LED companies must adapt this.

LED lighting source will change the style of indoor decoration

Lighting is always one of the key points in the residential decoration, a crowning touch at which housewives are hard working. Lighting sources are definitely the most important part of LED lamps. For example, most people would like to use crystal lights, thus energy-saving lamps are definitely not suitable for them. Because of the narrow spectrum and weak penetration of energy-saving lamps, it is very hard for them to present the glittering and translucent of crystal lamps. Thus housewives that loyal to crystal lights have to choose incandescent lighting sources, since the refraction of crystal can make incandescent light more bright and colorful. However, the exaggerated power consumption of incandescent lighting sources is also heartbreaking. In order to avoid expensive electrical bills, many housewives choose to shut off these lamps until guests’ visits. Spending a lot but obtaining a little, it is really an unspeakable feeling. These embarrassing situations have not been improved until the invitation of the LED lighting source.

LED lighting source have many advantages: long service life, good light penetration, high energy efficiency and environmental friendly. Most residential LED lights such as outdoor led spotlights are small sized. They brought new concepts to lighting designs.

In the past, lighting designers needed to consider of many factors during the designing process, like the translucent effect of lampshades, the artistry of lamps, the strength structure. In addition, they had to take into account of the spatial position of lighting sources and visual influences. Among these, it is the visual influences caused by lighting sources that drove designers crazy mostly. The light-emitting part of LED lamps is LED chips. Compared with the large sized lamp body, their size can be ignored (cooling maybe the only problem needs to be considered). That means the whole lamp body is equivalent to the lamp. Neither chips nor wires will bring no visual influences. Using LED lighting source, designers can only focus on the design of lamp bodies. The final results are much better than using energy-saving lighting sources or even incandescent lighting sources. In addition, designers also can choose to use multiple LEDs as lighting source, which provide more imagination space for them.

LED lighting source will change the style of indoor decoration and also the LED lighting market. Far-sighted LED producers should foresee this and prepare in advance.

Southeast Asia and Africa: emerging markets for LED lighting applications

In 2012, the gross market size of Thailand lighting market is approximate 250 million USD. The LED penetration rate is around 10%. It is estimated that by 2015, the penetration rate of LED lighting applications in Thailand market will increase to more than 45%. Currently, the Thailand Government is actively planning a series of city lighting projects by using LED lighting applications. A lot of local LED makers and LED manufacturers from other regions, especially from China and Taiwan have engaged into these projects. China’s LED companies mains led lighting with local certificate of origin can enjoy a zero tariffs when exported their products into Thailand. But lighting sources that exported to Thailand still need to provide the local certification.

Since most regions of Thailand have a tropical monsoon climate, hot and rainy, LED lighting applications that exported into this country should strengthen the protection of heat and moisture. LED manufacturers need also take into account of exporting LED emergency lights, LED flashlights and other portable LED devices to Thailand.

The Vietnam Government has recently announced a draft of “2011-2020 plan for the national urban development”, hoping to realize a 38% urbanization in the whole country in 2015. Thank to this draft, Vietnam has been considered as another emerging market for LED lighting applications in Southeast Asia. A large number of LED producers from the mainland and Taiwan region have entered into this market, promoting public lighting concepts and industrial lighting products.

In Africa, about 90% rural population is lacking of electricity supply. Small streets or country road are illuminated by nothing. Basic lighting market and municipal lighting market are the two most potential markets in Africa, waiting for development. For a long time, the lighting market of Africa has been in a low-level stage. They do not have many strict requirements in product performances and functions. Products with low production costs, basic lighting functions, longer service life and simple operation can fully meet the need of local markets. United Nations have launched a series of development lighting programs in Africa, supplying more energy efficient LED lighting applications to users from Africa. Off-grid solar LED lighting products, indoor and portable LED lamps, 1W-5W solar LED bulbs and LED emergency lights are very popular in African market.

Russia and India became the new export markets of LED lighting products

In 2012, the international LED lighting market was affected by the debt crisis in Europe. The global economy sustained a constantly sluggish state for a long time. Some large brand, like Philips, OSRAM, Toshiba poured into the European and American markets, directly leading to the death of many small and media sized LED factories there. For this part, the demand of the domestic market did not achieve a qualitative leap. Relatively, domestic LED manufacturers that are able to compete for key bids and special projects are much less than that of Europe and America. Export can only be treated as an emerging market for LED lighting products such as Mains led lights . The LED research department of the international research institution TrendForce indicated that many counties and regions except Europe and America has shown a clear upward trend in the demand for LED lighting products, including Russia, Thailand, Vietnam, India, Africa, etc, which provided more development opportunities for LED industry both in the mainland and Taiwan region.

For a long time, Russia has enjoyed a rapid increasing penetration rate in the LED lighting market. It is estimated that the proportion of Russian LED lighting market will be 1% – 5% by the year of 2015. Energy efficiency and optimization of electricity consumption are two main reasons for the stable and rapid development of LED lighting industry in Russia. By 2014, the entire Russian lighting market size will reach up to about 600 million euros, more than half of which will be in commercial area. Other parts are from public lighting applications and outdoor lighting applications. Russia has joined into the WTO, the declination of import tariffs will inevitably lead to the large amount importation of LED lighting products from other countries and regions, and consequently, expanding the profit margin of LED corporate in Russia.

More than 80% lighting products used in India are from the mainland, including traditional lighting products and LED lighting products. The India Government is planning to improve the proportion of LED lighting systems in public lighting projects and other outdoor lighting applications. It is estimated that until 2015, the compound annual growth rate of the LED lighting market in India will reach 41%.

Cheap LED Lights: How cheap on earth can make customers satisfied?

At present, LED manufacturers should meet the demand of LCD panel producers and LCD TV manufacturers, and meanwhile, the demand of LED backlighting producers. In order to deal with these situations, LED manufacturers speeded up the pace of cutting off costs and improving performances. In addition, they were also committed to increase productivity. They have the same goal: produce Cheap LED Lights to attract more consumers.

In Japan’s LED lighting industry market, the cost-cutting target in 2014 of LED lighting applications was 0.5 yen/lm. The current cost is around 1-1.5 yen/lm. Originally, the government and Japan’s LED manufacturers planned to realize this target within 3 years, now reduced to 2 years. Thus, prices of LEDs will gradually be consistent with the LCD panel industry. In the aspect of performance, the government and related manufacturers planned to realize 200lm/W in 2014. At the current rate of development, this target can very likely be realized in advance.

Some experts expressed their support to the promotion of cheap LED lights. In their opinion, thank to the increasingly intense competitions among established LED makers and new-born LED producers, the trend of production costs dropping and performance improving “pushed” the entire LED lighting market into a larger virtuous circle.

For example, the current average price of LED bulbs is less than 4000 yen. If this price can keep pace with the dropping speed of LED chips, it is estimated that in about 2 years, the average price of LED bulbs will drop by half, which will definitely make LED bulbs completely take place of traditional filament bulbs and other energy-saving bulbs and become the dominate products in the residential lighting market.

In order to further occupy the lighting market, many LED makers began to invest in new technologies. Chips, phosphor and packaging, a lot of technologies that used on LED lighting applications has been improved at different levels.

However, in the aspect of economy, fluorescent LED (straight) tubes are far less valuable than traditional fluorescent lights. But this condition may probably be changed due to the estimated outburst of LED lights (costs reduction and improving performances) in 2014. Although the initial production costs of LED tubes are much higher than traditional fluorescent tubes, in consideration of the other aspects, like service life, power consumption and environmental production factor, customers may probably choose the former rather than the later.

Analysis of LED dimmers

There are many difficulties and problems in LED dimming technology. Scientists and technicians tended to find solutions and breakthrough from dimming methods of other traditional lighting technologies, like incandescent lamps, fluorescent lamps, to design appropriate LED dimmers. The current major dimming methods of traditional lights are Triac dimmers, electronic dimmers, remote control dimmers (IR or RF) and other dimmers for commercial purposes. In the next section, we will do some analysis and comparisons among these dimming technologies, see which one will be more suitable for LED dimmers.

Using electronic dimmers must change the wiring of lamps (generally, wall switches are only connected to the AC wire, unavailable to provide power to other electronic circuits), increasing the construction costs. Remote control dimmers are embedded with intelligent electronic circuits which can provide multiple advanced features, like RGB dimming technologies, etc. However, remote control dimming method also has disadvantages: compared with other dimming methods, remote controllers are much more expensive and easier to lose, not suitable for public places. Worse still, both electronic dimming method and remote control dimming method require dimmers from the same manufactures or producers, since they should be matched up in the same specification. That led lights to an embarrassing situation that products from different factories are incompatible with each other. Thus the currently market is very small and unlikely to widely spread.

Triac dimmers need not to change the circuit, which dramatically reduce the cost. Besides, functional variations among dimmers from different manufactures are ignorable. Triac dimmers are more popular in European and North America. Thus, in the process of replacing incandescent lamps by with LED lighting applications, matching between SCR dimming technology and dimmers is a must-be-solved problem. LED dimmers using SCR dimming method is a hot topic in the current market. But SCR dimming technology also has a lot of inadequacies:

1) The power factor will drop with the reduction of brightness of lamps.

2) Efficiency will deteriorate during the dimming process, since reducing brightness lead to the insufficient of the load, the premature closure of SCR, and consequently the unstable working conditions of lamps (flickers). In order to solve the flicker problem, usually bleeder or dummy load will be added into circuits.

To grasp led industrial technological innovation(2)

3, technological innovation have three key areas

On the technological innovation area, there are three areas represented repeatedly mentioned, which should cause the industry to particular concern: First, thermal, optical, lens and other infrastructure, cutting-edge research, technological innovation, which is the basis for led industrial development; followed by is the specification, the interface related work. Specifications Interface determines interchange ability between products, large-scale promotion of the market; Furthermore is the intelligent solution, which is to increase the LED key link of the value-added LED lights advantage.

4, how to realize equipment nationalization and popularize to the market?

The localization of the equipment, especially the localization of MOCVD equipment is a symbol of the strength of the national core technology. At present, China has a number of successful R & D MOCVD prototype, but the ideal performance of the market-oriented is not good. Remove the pre-Fund invested to purchase domestic equipment, late debugging applications will consume a lot of energy and time. To let domestic equipment popularize to market need to increase support for efforts from all levels, and also requires the equipment and technology to fully integrate, it will effectively meet the needs of led industrial products to market. Because foreign equipment usually have a good combination with the production process, domestic only simply produce equipment. It is out of the process requirements, so can not optimize thousands of parameter.

5, how to break the patent shackles in LED household lighting?

The core upstream patent is missing, export enterprises to circumvent patent risk, so they usually chosen chip products of foreign countries and China’s Taiwan region. First, countries should intensify research and development efforts, and patented breakthrough in all aspects, such as a silicon substrate. State Key Laboratory should also improve patent sharing mechanism, common technology patent purchase to ensure that the interests of developers, patent sharing. Furthermore, the enterprise or higher levels should also be obtained through the purchase, cooperation, exchange and more patent licensing. Secondly, every year, a lot of good patent were given up automatically, the Union should increase the importance on small price, and then the appropriate way to share. Finally, the core enterprise must have its own unique technology, the industry should form a free brand proud atmosphere, the Union should be encouraged to increase its own brand enterprises.

To grasp led industrial technological innovation(1)

Industry is inseparable from the progress of technology innovation, while enterprises must be the subject of technological innovation. It is the development of any industry that they must face the common proposition, semiconductor lighting industry is no exception. Small and scattered, and the scale of China’s enterprises, the led industrial common key technologies research and development platform are missing. How to play technological innovation principal position, matching patent environment to achieve common key technological breakthroughs?

How to strengthen research in close cooperation, and effect co-ordination of the upstream and downstream, to form a complete chain of technological innovation? How to scientifically conduct demonstration application, to solve the problems of system integration innovation, technology and market seamless? These are the key for our country to become a semiconductor lighting industry and innovation powerhouse in next three to five years.

1, the above technology is an error-oriented market concerns
After nearly 10 years’ development, China’s semiconductor led lights technology has made great strides, and the products already have a cost advantage, but the upstream technical aspects still keep 10% – 20% gap compared with international standards. The state should give enterprises more support for technological innovation link. LED, as a new type of high-tech industries, technological progress has been the first impetus to led industrial development. At present, however, the industry’s attention on the market are much higher than the technology, the price war is the key to business survival, this is an error-oriented, immature technology products damage the LED’s image in the minds of consumers. The industry is still necessary to strengthen the technical R & D, high quality, high value-added products to win market share.

2, how to play the dominant position of enterprise technology innovation?
Enterprises are the mainstay of technological innovation. But compared with international companies, Chinese enterprises are generally weak in internal R & D capabilities; But the technology is the outcome of market and the conversion rate is low. How to play the dominant position of the enterprise, the development of enterprises. the key problem for market needed is that there is an urgent need to address the problem. In addition, you want to seize the technological high ground, but also the need for outdoor led landscape lighting industry to concentrate superior resources to the construction of public R & D platform.

The led industrial situation shall be faced

2012, the led industrial is still uncertain, “the low-price competition, declining profitability, price confusion” are the key words that can not be evaded. How to fundamentally change this situation? An entrepreneur said: “for the led yard lighting industry, the government’s policy support is very important, but more important, as a corporate itself to really practise internal organs well, in particular, the helm who and how truly sustainable development, technological innovation, and focus on quality and differentiated development at all levels to enhance their competitiveness and promote the sound development of industry is the real protection.

1, focusing on the development of differentiation ”
Upstream chip companies homogenization of competition is very serious. the difference is very small, technically we are basically in a relatively narrow range of competition, which is not opened. This situation need to change, if it does not change, the disorderly competition, price competition is inevitable, which is not sustainable development. Especially from epitaxial silicon industry, a great need for innovative ideas, the formation of differences in the technical route and cost control.

2. practising internal organs, and to produce products well.

led industrial this year is a very special year, the prices have been changing, and has also been lowered, corporate earnings are on the decline. Being facing with such an environment, enterprises should be how to deal with the uneven quality of the products, the price confusion, vicious competition? First, we should depend on doing their own work, practising internal organs, and to produce products well. If the products are not good, and technology is not be prominent, it is dangerous to the survival of the enterprise.

3, the dispersion of the technology, resources urgent need to integrate

led lights industrial enterprises have five thousand, Zhejiang, at least have more than a thousand. So many companies but it is a multi-but not strong, but not strong scattered, each enterprise technology resources are dispersed. Compared with Japan, South Korean companies, their number is limited, but a very strong. Our strength is very scattered, then large enterprises compared with others is also a district team, up a county brigade limited resources. So, from the government level, it is necessary to consider how the introduction of some resource integration policy, and to make the industry bigger and stronger.

The rated high brightness led is not enough caused memory homogenization fightting the price

40 watt LED lights is only spent 25 yuan, the same wattage incandescent only needs 2 yuan. Incandescent can be eliminated, and the LED lights up, which is a trend, but it does not like the five national ministries whol require as quickly and comprehensively. On the one hand, incandescent relative to the price advantage of the high brightness led, there are still short-term; On the other hand, the LED lighting business “homogenization, that price” sales strategy cast a shadow over prospects for the domestic market.

“Notice on the progressive ban on the import and sale of general lighting incandescent, according to five national ministries since October 1 this year to ban the import and sales of 100 watts and above ordinary incandescent lighting. Reporter visited the Shanghai Pudong New Area Hengda building materials market and found that although the “purchase incandescent client is not a lot”, yet various lighting stores also are equipped with incandescent lamps of 100 watts and above “100 watt incandescent 2.5 yuan each.

LED lamps compare with incandescent light, the greatest development force is energy saving and environmental protection advantages. However, as the costs are too high, resulting in high prices than traditional lamps a few grades, allowing consumers really willing to consume, the need to further decline is prices.

“40 watt high brightness led lamp is 25 yuan only, the same wattage incandescent is 2 yuan.” One shop sales staff said, although the price of LED lamps has continued downward trend, yet the real to reach consumers’ bottom line, still will take some time.

Experts said the high price is certainly a drag on sales of LED lights, which is a major culprit in the doldrums, but the public popularity of LED lamps have no improvement, which is also one reason. Talking about the LED, a lot of people will only think of the LED display, TV, but do not know to the original LED lighting can also be used, we may find this very strange, but this situation is very common. Even if part of an understanding of the LED energy-saving lamps, but the understanding is not comprehensive. Seeing high brightness led lights are just look at the power and price of the relevant parameters and they do not understand the relative specifications.

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作者：Blade