作者：Blade

LED light growing too fast to lead the malformation of industry chain

For the development of LED lighting business in China, experts indicated that LED light growing so fast in China that hard to be digested by market. The number of enterprises entered into this field sharply increased, leading to the confusion in the market. Many LED lighting applications applied to commercial purpose. Most of the ordinary family cannot afford these due to their exorbitant prices, which restricted their popularity among mass consumers. “If the price can be reduced more than 30% on the existing basis, LED lights will take much more occupations than now.” said Sunyi zhang, a market analyst from Shanghai Jinghua lighting technique Co., Ltd. Thus how to improve LED lighting technology, increase products qualities, reduce cost of production, became the key to the prosperous of a LED enterprises. However, LED light growing too fast to let these be realized.

 

For the development of LED lighting business in China, experts indicated that LED light growing so fast in China that hard to be digested by market.

 

Nowadays, abnormal developments have appeared in LED lighting business. Disconnections frequently turned up within the entire industry chain. Merchants for raw materials tended to stock up their products, raise prices and create monopolies. This leaded to a rather bad situation that LED manufacturers had to increase prices of their own LED lighting products or even worse reduce the cost of production by decreasing products’ qualities. However, a lot of business men were blinded by the illusory profit of LED lighting industry. More and more LED manufacturers cannot wait to jump into this fire. The immediate consequence is that they have to further drop their cost of production, producing products with very poor qualities. Too fast LED light growing will let this embarrassing situation keep on going for a long time. Blind investments coming from downstream have greatly compressed the profit margins of LED lighting market. The more fierce of competitions, the more narrow of the market profit margins. Price battle impact a bad effect on an emerging market, like LED lighting market. It will weak the international competitiveness of a company to some degrees, and disrupt the entire market at the mean while.

 

At present, the global LED lighting industry has been carved up by three regions: the United States, Europe and Asia. Japan, Korea and China are three main competitors in Asia. How to improve the international competiveness is much more important than how to occupy domestic market in an unscientific way. We do not want to see that in near future China LED street light would lose its competiveness in Asia and also in the world.

Problems for LED street light bulbs

At present, the commonly used color temperature for LED street light bulbs is around 5000K (Cool White). However, as for a road lighting system, a light color with 5000K will make pedestrians feel cold, and also reduce farsightedness ability of drives. Some experts even believe that street lights with a temperature higher than 4500K will increase the number of traffic accidents. The most suitable color temperature for LED street lights is around 3000K (Warm White or Yellow White).

 

Without these unnecessary cost for maintains, Chinese LED manufacturers would had more money for developing LED street lighting technology. How to get out of this wrong region, that all depends on what policy will be put in place.

 

However, even cool white LED street lights has been replaced by warm white LED street lights, problems still exist within LED street lighting business, due to the lack of an identified technique standard. LED lighting business has been developed nearly ten years in China, but still lack of unified technical standards in product specifications, including color temperature, working time, product dimensions, etc. Each manufacturer produces products in accordance with their own standards, leading to market confusion. Taking color temperature for instance, same LED street light bulbs with same color temperature (3000K) will have distinguished color if they from different manufacturers. Sometimes, this difference is obvious. Without any identical standard, it is impossible for products to be generally used. For example, a certain local government decided to use LED street lights from one manufacturer in a road-lighting project. After several years using, some of these lights are broken, they only can be replaced by the same products from the same manufacturer. In other words, lacking of an identified standard among LED manufacturers reduces the flexibility of LED products, at least making the update and replacement of them become more difficult.

 

Lighting rate is a rather important examining aspect of related department. According to Chinese present manufacturing technology, broken LED street light needs to be replaced entirely instead of partly. It is very bad for Chinese LED manufacturers. In order to reduce the fault rate, they have to raise their cost of production, as well as perform long-term maintains. And it is also a bottleneck which blocks the spread of LED street lighting business in overseas market. No one would like to use street lights can only be replaced entirely when they are broke down. Meanwhile, it blokes the development of LED manufacturers. Without these unnecessary cost for maintains, Chinese LED manufacturers would had more money for developing LED street lighting technology. How to get out of this wrong region, that all depends on what policy will be put in place.

Small companies have little chance in outdoor LED landscape lighting business.

LED lighting industry has a wide developing prospect in Nanjing. At present, there are more than 20 LED dealers in Nanjing lighting market, only one of which is dealer for outdoor LED landscape lighting. LED Lights is still an emerging market in Nanjing, thus local brands dominated Nanjing LED lighting market. Large-scale projects are generally contracted by several LED enterprises. Small and medium-sized companies are vulnerable in fierce competitions. That is the main reason why a lot of merchants had to give up the outdoor LED landscape lighting market. However, this cannot be an obstacle for the rapid development of outdoor LED lighting business in Nanjing.

 

Market for outdoor LED landscape lighting are very small, and also with a narrow channel. Export is another important channel. But only competent LED enterprises can afford these.

 

Apart from Nanjing, LED street light is also an emerging market in most cities in east part of China (except for Shanghai, in which LED has entered a highly developing stage.) In these regions, LEDs are mostly used in household lighting, landscape lighting, residential lighting and office lighting. After years of developing, the price is transparent and the market is stable. However, most of these cities met with the same problem that happened in Nanjing market: small merchants had no competitiveness in outdoor LED landscape lighting business. They did not have enough strength to take over large-scale projects. Some merchants appealed for alliance, but only few of them respond.

 

At present, only eleven LED merchants in Hangzhou, none of them are dealers for outdoor LED landscape lighting. “There are a lot of risks.” Said one dealer in Hangzhou Chunyang LED lighting market, “Now, we just want to focus on small LED lights business. Providing LED lights to large-scale products is really attractive. But it is the meet that too big to be swallowed.” There are more than 120 shops selling LED lamps together with traditional lamps. LED lighting is treated as a secondary business. And most of them are only selling small LED lights (LED spotlights, LED down lights, LED tubes and LED bulbs). Market for outdoor LED landscape lighting are very small, and also with a narrow channel. Export is another important channel. But only competent LED enterprises can afford these. They have enough capability to research and develop their products, providing sufficient and valid certificates which are strongly required by overseas buyers. Abroad large LED lights market has been carved up by several LED giants in China. Small and medium-sized companies can only pay their attention on small LED lighting business.

Form a concerted effort to promote the green LED lighting of street solar light

Recent years, we are steadily pushed forward the urban green lighting,  so that urban lighting facilities have been improved a lot. To develop urban green lighting, promote urban energy saving lighting have widely become a society-wide consensus. Up to the end of 2010, China’s 655 cities have a total of more than 1800 thousand street solar light, about 40% of the electricity for urban lighting electricity consumption of the entire society. On the “Eleventh-Five-Year” period, the  semiconductor lighting on the development and application of urban lighting has spread fastly. According to the relevant research statistics, the share of semi-conductor light source in the urban landscape lighting accounts for 70%, and the semi conductor street lights accounts for 9% of the total street lights. The “12th Five-Year period China’s economic growth targets will increase to a sustainable development, green lighting will become an important part of national industrial restructuring. At the same time, China is curently in a period of rapid development of urbanization. The populazation of urban city have increased of more than 10 million, and the annual growth rate of street solar light is 120-1500000. This process will last about 25 years or even longer. If we change the new lights in the urban city to LED street light, some of the old street lamps and landscape street lights to LED street lights, the potential and development prospects are very impressive.

In order to promote China’s urban lighting, the National Housing and Urban-Rural Development Ministry has issued the 12th Five-City Green Lighting Plan” clearly pointed out to further promote the urban green lighting in the 12th Five-Year period, to improve the lighting level of quality and energy efficiency, and to reduce lighting energy consumption , to accelerate the development of semiconductor lighting renewable energy and other new products in order to achieve the development pattern of urban lighting of street solar light.

Currently, we are actively developed the policies and measures to promote the development of green building and LED Spot Light.  The demand for green buildings and green lighting, and LED, new energy and new technology will be largly needed. International market demand and domestic policy, guidance, andwill become a key factor in determining LED growth rate.

The development of green lighting is the future direction of one of the key technologies of the lighting application. Green building development will greatly enhance the demand for semiconductor lighting source. We believe that the formation around the green lighting will accelerate the advention of spring.

 

Analysis of internal LED vehicle lights (2)

Instrument lights may be the most commonly used internal vehicle lights. Using LED lighting applications to replace traditional instrument lights can dramatically reduce energy consumption, making a big difference. Thus LED instrument lights became the concentration of many domestic and overseas vehicle manufacturers. As in internal LED vehicle lights, energy saving is the primary object just like LED Street Light. However, in addition to the energy-saving function, internal vehicle lighting is also judged in the categories of most reliable and most aesthetic designs. Same as traditional instrument lights, LED instrument lights are mounted on the dashboard for lighting instrument pointer and scale plate, normal power of which is around 0.5W. Instrument lights are generally connected with indicating lights, license plate lights. When indicating lights or license plate lights work, the corresponding buttons on the instrument panel will be lightened to inform the driver. Some instrument lights’ luminous intensity can be adjusted. With the development of intelligent lighting technology, more and more sophisticated user-friendly design will appear in vehicle lighting.

 

LED vehicle lights can use LEDs to convert electrical energy into luminous energy, dramatically drop energy consumption (only 1/10 as much as traditional vehicle lights).

 

Commonly used internal vehicle warning/indicating lights are oil pressure warning lights, excessively high water temperature warning lights, charging indicator lights, direction indicating lights, high beam indicating lights, etc. These lights can all be replaced by low-power LED lights. Warning lights are red (easier to attract attention), and indicating lights are green and blue. Normally, warning/indicating lights are mounted in the front of cabs, beside the instrument lights. As another important internal LED vehicle lights, LED warning/indicating lights enjoy a lighting status second to LED instrument lights.

 

LED working indicating lights are a kind of auxiliary internal LED vehicle lights, rarely used in daily driving, but necessary when cars broke down. LED working indicating lights are movable, often with a hook or clamp plug (a little cigarette lighter-type plug). The power comes from cars’ generators or batteries. The general power consumption of these lights is 21W. They have very high brightness, thus requiring a good cooling system.

 

LED vehicle lights can use LED High Bay to convert electrical energy into luminous energy, dramatically drop energy consumption (only 1/10 as much as traditional vehicle lights). As a result, it can more effectively save fuel consumption, keeping car circuits from burning by excessive loads.

Analysis of internal LED vehicle lights (1)

Commonly used internal LED vehicle lights are down lights, reading lights, door lights, stepping lights, instrument lights, dashboard warning lights, etc.

 

Cars and trucks are generally set up one down light. In addition to the function of internal decoration, LED Down Lights can monitor car doors and keep on lighting when doors are not closed (just like a visible alarm). The general power consumption of LED down lights is 0.5W-2W. LED Down lights for buses need higher power consumption (2W-3W). In addition to the higher light condensation, another advantage of LED down lights compare with commonly used energy-saving down lights is that LED down lights have a stronger cooling function.

 

Commonly used internal LED vehicle lights are dome lights, reading lights, door lights, stepping lights, instrument lights, dashboard warning lights, etc.

 

Reading lights, as its name implies, typically used to make driver or passengers more convenient to read word materials. LED reading lights are installed in the front of crew seat, less than 50 cm from the user’s head, usually with a 45 degree angle. A certain degree of light condensation is required by these lights, since a higher light condensation will reduce the blindfold reaction of readers. Normally, LED reading lights have a small beam angle, not very high lamp flux, some of them can be manually adjusted. Users can adjust the lighting angles and lighting intense by pressing buttons beside the light. LED reading lights are one of commonly used internal LED vehicle lights. The general power consumption of LED down  lights is around 5W. Similar to LED downlight, LED reading lights have a better cooling function. This advantage is obvious in the condition of long-time lighting. Users no longer need to sweat to view the map in hot days.

 

LED door lights are lights in between internal LED lights and external LED lights. However, people used to classify them as internal LED vehicle lights. They are typically installed in the bottom of internal car doors. When door is open, LED door lights will be lightened, emitting a red light to attract other pedestrians and drivers attention, avoiding accidents. When door is closed, they will go out.

 

LED stepping lights are only installed in large and medium-sized buses, rarely appeared in small cars. It is a kind of lamp with service function. When passengers intend to get on or get off bus or couch during the night, LED stepping lights will be lightened.

 

High quality LEDs: the only way for Chinese LED giants to survive from “price battle”

Thank to the strong support from government, Chinese LED lighting business has a good development prospect. Around 80% LED applications all around the world was from China. China has been widely accepted as the giant LED factory in the world. However, there still many problems waiting to be solved in this “hug manufacturing factory”. The lure of the high profits attract so many small companies which has no standard regulations. Continuous “price battle” will give birth to a chaos in Chinese LED lighting market.

 

High quality LEDs: the only way for Chinese LED giants to survive from “price battle”

 

How Chinese big enterprises survive from this “price battle”? Obviously, dropping their own products’ prices is a bad policy. It is a Perish Song for Chinese LED lighting business. Increasing the quality of products is the only way for Chinese LED giants to survive. High quality LEDs will make Chinese manufacturers have their own brands. And brand effect will dramatically improve the long-term competiveness of Chinese LED enterprises. Exclusive Shop for LED is a “must be passed path” for making our own LED brands.

 

The rapid development of high quality LEDs attracts the attention of most Chinese LED giants, due to the highly developed economy and the huge potential of Beijing’s LED lighting applications market. Nowadays, the concept of energy saving and environmental protection is gradually rooted in consumers’ mind. There are around 50 LED merchants in Beijing, in which 5 are exclusive stores for LED (most of them are high quality LEDs). The promotion of the economy caused by Beijing Olympics give birth to the rapid developments in most of LED lighting business, like LED street light, LED landscape lighting, LED intelligent lighting, etc.

 

Even in other large cities in China, the growth of high quality LEDs is exponentially. At present, more than 80 LED merchants appeared in Shanghai’s lighting market. 20 of them are exclusive stores for LED lamps. Among them, only 5 stores are selling cheap products. “Cheap products have little superiority here. Yes, they are very cheap, but also they don’t have high qualities. Most of my customers are asking for high quality LEDs, especially in household lighting.” Said Zhu Jun. Who is running a LED household lighting stores in Shanghai.

 

In the currently chaotic Chinese LED lighting market, developing high quality LEDs is the best and only method for Chinese LED manufacturers to regain international competitiveness.

Analysis for external LED vehicle lights (2)

LED brake light is also installed in the rear of the car, switch of which connected with brake pedal by circuits. Treading the brake pedal can cause its lighting up. Since the main object of this light is warning other vehicles in the rear side of user’s car, the light intensity of this kind of LED lights in relatively high compare with other external LED vehicle lights only performing display operation. In order to avoid the rear-end collision caused by large vehicles, high mounted brake light made up of linear arrayed LEDs (similar to LED bar).

 

LED brake light is also installed in the rear of the car, switch of which connected with brake pedal by circuits.

 

The LED turn signals (1W-3W) of cars are usually installed on both side of the front and the rear, indicating (flash light) the driving trend of the car. The flash frequency of this light is around 50Hz. Run-up time is less than 1.5s. When in a emergency needs to draw other vehicles’ attention, all of the four LED turn signals can be switched on simultaneously, constantly flashing.

 

LED position lamps, also known as “width lamps”, are installed in the front/side/back of the car (an auxiliary vehicle light different from side lights). When users driving during the night, headlight, position light, instrument-panellamp and license plate light will send out light simultaneously. The main usage of LED position lamps is indicating the form of the car for other pedestrians and vehicles. LED position lamps are not as important as other main external LED vehicle lights, like LED headlights and LED turn signals. The brightness requirement of it is thus lower (only 0.5W-2W). Generally, white/yellow for head position lamps, red for tail lamps and amber for side position lamps.

 

LED warning lights and LED street light can be used in certain special conditions. Because of its particularity, it is not a necessary for each vehicle. LED warning lights (5W-10W) are generally installed in the top of the car. Different color represents different type of vehicles: red used by police car, blue represents ambulance, bus and taxi always use white or yellow. All of these LED warning lights have a common flash frequency of 2-6 per second. LED warning lights are a kind of unusual external LED vehicle lights. For a seek of convenient administration, this light is even forbidden to common users in some countries.

 

LED high bay day running lights is another unusually used external LED vehicle lights. They are seated in the head of the car, making the car can be easily recognized during the day. They are as much really a decorative light as a functional light. The largest usage for this light is to make the car look more awesome.

 

Analysis for external LED vehicle lights (1)

Common external lights for vehicles are: headlights, for LED lights, license plate lights, reversing lights, brake lights, turn signal indicator lights, marker lights, etc. The generally used color for external vehicle lights is white, orange yellow and red. Vehicles performing special tasks (fire engines, police cars, ambulances, emergency rescue vehicles) usually use red, yellow and blue flash caution lights for the purpose of first pass. Nowadays, LED lighting Products technology has been generally applied in the vehicle lighting. The common external LED vehicle lights can be classified as follow:

 

Common external lights for vehicles are: headlights, for lights, license plate lights, reversing lights, brake lights, turn signal indicator lights, marker lights, etc.

 

Head lamp is commonly known as “head light”, mounted on the front of the car, used to illuminate the road. According to different purposes, they also can be classified as high beam headlights (40W-60W) and dipped beam headlights (35W-55W). White high brightness LED headlight is a good substitute for normally used filament lamp, halogen lamp and high intensity discharge lamp (HID). Presently, they have become the main external LED vehicle lights.

 

Fog lights are usually installed in the front side and in the end side of the car. In the case of fog, snow, rain and dust, fog lights can be used to improve the lighting performance of the headlights. They can be treated as auxiliary lighting tools. Since the lamp flux requirement for fog lights is not so high (3W-5W orange yellow for head fog lights and 3W-5W red for tail fog lights), they can be simply replaced by LED spot lights with relatively low power consumption.

 

LED license plate lights are mounted on the rear of the car, on the both side of the license plate. Similar to LED fog lights, since the power consumption is just 1W-2W (ensure the words and figures can be recognized within 20 meters), LED spotlights are fully available for using purpose.

 

LED reversing light is installed in the rear of the car, automatically lighting when the transmission hung in reverse. As well as lighting up the rear side of the car, it also can warn pedestrians and other vehicles at that position. LED reversing light has a relatively higher requirement in beam angle (larger than commonly used small external LED vehicle lights), as a result of providing users with a larger visual field behind the car, consequently increasing the safety factor. The generally used LED reversing light has a power consumption of 2W-5W, white color.

 

LED lighting for offices can reduce the electricity consumption to 70% in Japan

Japanese Health Fundamental Research Institute (JHFRI) start to install LED intelligent lighting in their central building. Experts from National Power Supply Bureau estimated that this plan will reduce the electricity consumption to 70% in next decade. Although the correctness of this data still needs to be verified, Japanese government and JHFRI felt confident for this estimation. According to rough estimation, more than 100 billion kilowatt hours of electricity will be used in lighting per year. The proportion of LED lighting for offices is around 20%. How to save electricity consumption on lighting is a big problem for Japanese government for a very long time. LED lighting for offices may be a sally port for developing LED electricity-saving technology within Japan.

 

LED lighting for offices can reduce the electricity consumption to 70% in Japan

 

Not only JHFRI star to use LED lighting technique in their main building, other “tenements” who also rented this building as office locations also applied this plan for trial one by one. In fact, the survey report from last month showed that around 20% “tenements” has already used LED lights in their offices, and around 30% other users is installing or is considering to install LED office lights.

 

There are several LED technologies can be used in LED lighting for offices: LED panel lights (LED ceiling lights) and LED tubes are normally used for office lighting. Meanwhile LED table lights are usually considered as individual working lighting. (LED high bay lights with higher lamp fluxes can only be used in workshop, warehouse etc.)

 

Although LED lighting for offices can reduce the electricity consumption to a large extent, its practical applicability and aesthetics should not be ignored. In accordance with lighting test result, LED technique with a similar lumen as filament lamp or energy-saving lamp consumes a much less power. Theoretically, the proportionate relationship is approximately 1:5. In addition, LED lights are more environmental friendly and more durable. Thus, it is not a surprise that more and more people choose to use LED lighting technique as their office lighting or even household lighting. On the other hand, aesthetics is also very important for users. A good design concept can usually bring you a comfortable and joyful feeling, which is essential for people’s daily life.