technology is finding rapid adoption among residential and business customers. LED
lighting is increasingly used in street lights, flood lights, industrial
lighting, commercial lighting, solar lighting, as well as solar off-grid
vertical.
The LED lighting market has a promise of growth around 45
percent year on year, said Kiran Moras, director, Promptec Renewable Energy, a
manufacturer of LED lighting, to Greentech Lead. This growth may stabilize at
10 percent after 12 years. The complete LED industry will be worth around Rs. 720
crore for year 2012-13, Moras said.
Nikhil Malhotra, country manager India, GlacialTech, an
Indian manufacturer of LED light solutions, says the rising electricity costs
and shortage of power will drive the LED lighting industry in India. LED
lighting has immense business potential due to its energy efficiency and lower
maintenance.
GlacialTech manufactures down light series, panel light series,
high bay light series, flood light series, AR111 series and
LED drivers etc.
LED has several advantages compared to CFL. LED lights
provide average of 120 Lumens/Watt consumed where as CFL lights provide around
40 Lumens/Watt, thus, saving about 60 percent energy over CFL for the same
light output. For example, a 15 W CFL light gives same brightness as 7W LED light.
Secondly, life of LED is proven to be around 80,000 burning
hours which amounts to about 25 years where as CFL is about 3 years. LED’s are
made of Silicon and other bio degradable semiconductor material where CFL
contains hazardous mercury in it. The light output from LED is directional and
helps reduce light loss where as light output from CFL is in all directions. This
results in loss of light. One of the important aspect is LED’s are not as
brittle as CFL tubes.
Another advantage of LED lamps is that they produce
unidirectional light, so it is easier to control the light, you can
choose to focus it for spot lighting or use a lens for diffused lighting
applications. On the other hand a CFL relies on a reflector to achieve to
spread the light and a portion of the light is always
wasted.
LED lamps also turn on instantly (reaching full brightness
immediately) while CFLs tend to have a warm-up period for a few seconds.
As LED lighting industry evolves, new technologies are being
developed to improve energy efficiency and lifespan. Some of the key
innovations are significant improvements in Lumens/watt in LED over last 2
years. We have experienced improvement from 60 Lumens/watt to 150 Lumens/watt.
The temperature bearing capacity of the LED’s have increased at least 60
percent thus reducing the amount of heat sink material to be used in luminary,
says Moras of Promptec.
The technological advancements will help reduce the price of
LEDs. Currently LEDs are priced higher than CFLs; however Promptec expects over
next 2 years, the cost of LED fixtures will be same or lesser than other
conventional fixtures. In solar Lighting, the LED light systems are 50 percent
cheaper than the conventional CFL solar lights. This is mainly due to the
reduction of Panel size and battery size for LED light system due to higher
light output.
“Users need to consider cost of electricity when comparing
the prices of LED and other conventional lights. With savings in electricity
and lower maintenance cost, LED’s are affordable even now,” Moras said.
LED lighting faces several development challenges, the most
important of them being thermal management and good quality electronic drivers.
As the technology is new and is in the development stage, manufacturers are likely
to make mistake and disrepute the industry, says Moras.
One of the key issues LED lighting industry is facing is the
conditioned power supply, according to Moras. As the supplied power to LED
lights are not very stable and good, they are causing damages to the LED driver
circuits, causing failure of LED lights. Hence the manufacturers of LED lights
need to take care of all the nuances in the supplied power such as high
voltage, high surge current, low voltage, etc.
According to Malhotra of GlacialTech, a good LED lighting
product not only needs a good optical design, but also a good heat dissipation
design and high quality driver design.
Rajani Baburajan