LED’s Performance

Published:2011/1/23 21:24:00 Author:Amy From:SeekIC

It was milestone when LED light output reached 100 lumens per watt, but this record has been break again and again. In fact, some manufacturers declared that they had achieved 200lm per watt in lab. It's apparently that as far as light efficiency concerned, LED has already surpassed incandescent bulb (the light output of standard 60W incandescent bulb is 15lm per watt). In other word, it is the ratio of light output flux (unit: lumen) generated from a light source to the amount of power consumed (unit: W) to produce light output. But even so, it is predicted that LED with light output of 150lm/w will be everywhere in 2012. On the other hand, the lifespan of LED will be extremely long. According to various calculations, a LED can work for 10,000 hours, some even last to 50,000 hours while incandescent only about 1,200 or 1,500 hours. In addition, LED is a kind of GREEN products with no any hazardous materials contained or radiating.

The cost of LED is getting down rapidly. In past 12 months, the price of some special LED has reduced from 5 dollars to below 1 dollar. Some experts of LED industry held that the price of LED replaced by incandescent can be accepted by most consumers in future 12 months. Some manufacturers proclaimed that they have already designed lighting chip for supplying power to LED bulb whose brightness equals to 75W incandescent bulb widely used in private residential places. In order to have the ability of sufficient light output, this kind of LED chip requires 12W-15W power consumption.

In term of car, headlight requires at lest 800 lumens light output. CREE is a manufacturer of LED whose XLample XP-G series have the highest lumen density in current market. These LEDs adopt XP series encapsulation technique offering 400 lumens light output flux and (1A) and over 130lm/W light output (350mA). Owning to its benefit of energy saving for car owner (its efficiency will be higher to 75 % than standard version headlight), LED use will reduce the level of vehicle fuel consumption per year. How much energy actually does LED save? Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute-UMTRI had an evaluation in 2008. They conducted an investigation on power consumption of a coach external lighting situation through comparing 100% traditional incandescent and fluorescent light source system to 100% LED illumination light source system based on the same lighting effect. It turned out that LED system can save luminous energy over 50 %, which not only cut the car’s fuel cost, but lower the carbon emission by 1%-2% annual year. The related integrated circuit is CM1412.

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