So far, LED lighting technology still hardly accepted by ordinary people. In fact, LED lights have huge potential in domestic indoor lighting market. But as a result of the high prices, LED lights only have small progresses in this area. Relatively, LED high-power LED lamps had much better performance on the market. The energy-saving and environmental friendly advantages can be more showed up among high-power/large LED lamps. Thus the spread of these lamps are far more rapid than low-power/small LED lights.
In recent years, many LED manufacturers started to convert their energy and time on large LED lighting applications, such like LED High Bay Lights, LED Street Lights. High costs, fierce competitions and limited demands led a much slower development to small LED lights. “We are so willing to accept new lighting technology. The working principles of LED sounds pretty good, but they are too expensive, either. If the current price can reduce by 1/3, I’m going to replace all lights in my house by LED lights.” said one of consumers during the 2012 International LED Fair held in Guangzhou.
Why they coasts so much? Here we will give out two major causes of the high price of small LED lights.
Lacking of core technology. Core chip technologies belong to the upstream of LED lighting industry. Unfortunately, more than 85% LED chip technologies are under the control of overseas competitors. Although we have occupied more than 50% manufacturing value in LED lighting products, we earned the least among them. With the continuous improvement of producing technique, it was estimated that the cost of LED chips will be reduced by 20% per year. LED chips cost is the main part (around 60%) of LED lamp costs. If LED chip costs can maintain this dropping trend, by 2015, LED light prices can reach a similar level with energy-saving lights.
Cooling problems. Most domestic LED lighting producers tend to limit the cooling section costs within 5%. In order to achieve this goal, there are two points need to be noticed: 1. The short the path, the better the cooling effects. Here path means heat conducting path, including aluminum layers, heat sinks and cooling fins. 2. Thermal resistance. Multi-cooling-path is necessary for most LED lighting applications.
Once the high price of small LED lights problem has been solved, LED indoors lighting market could rapid developed.