LED-based lighting systems are tipped to dominate the world’s lighting markets within nine years. Recently, JOHN POWER travelled to the US to visit Philips’s pioneering LED lighting businesses in San Jose and New York to witness the revolution first-hand.
Technological revolutions are not always apparent as they unfold. But just as surely as diesel and electric locomotives replaced steam engines, or DVDs replaced video tape cassettes, so LED (light emitting diode) lighting is replacing traditional incandescent, fluorescent and halogen lights.
In late January I visited the US to learn about LED lighting from one of the sector’s largest and most innovative proponents, Philips. Few people realise that lighting represents approximately one-third of Philips’ total annual business turnover (EUR 25.4 billion in 2010). Sales at Philips Lighting grew by nine percent in 2010, and LED systems represented a powerful part of that success, accounting for 37 percent growth in the fourth quarter compared to the same quarter in 2009, and comprising 14 percent of all sales in Philips Lighting.
My tour started at Philips Lumileds in San Jose, in the heartland of California’s Silicon Valley, and proceeded to the company’s Color Kinetics offices in New York.
Lumileds is Philips’ R&D hub for LED technologies, and the site of initial fabrication of LED diodes, including high-powered LUXEON LEDs, which are the core LED components in devices as diverse as automobile headlights to handheld torches and architectural lighting fittings.
Color Kinetics is involved in the subsequent development and supply of LED-based light fittings and systems for commercial building applications; its advanced systems now feature in 34,000 buildings worldwide, ranging from the Adelaide Entertainment Centre to the dynamic displays of the New World Centre in Hong Kong.
Every element of Philips’ LED business – from the creation of more luminous and resilient diodes, to the invention of smaller and more adaptable light fittings for all kinds of interior and exterior building applications – is happening at breakneck speed in response to unprecedented demand, as the abovementioned figures prove.
In this article I’ll explains what LEDs are and how they function, and provide reveal the thoughts of leading Philips executives about future trends in the sector.
WHAT ARE LEDS?
Most of us are familiar with traditional incandescent lights, which contain a coiled tungsten filament (0.43 millimetres thick) inside a sealed bulb. Light is produced when the filament is heated by an electric current. Incandescent bulbs generate a great amount of wasted heat energy and are limited in their performance characteristics, as do halogen bulbs.
Matthijs Glastra, Philips Lumileds’ executive vice-president worldwide operations, says the world’s LED markets are becoming more sophisticated, following a realisation that LED lighting’s renowned energy efficiency (LEDs use up to 50 percent less energy than traditional lighting) is just one of many advantages.
“We’re going from analogue to digital – that’s what’s happening in lighting, and with that we’re seeing changing business models,” says Glastra, speaking at the Lumileds offices and manufacturing facility at San Jose.
“The other thing is that we see a combination of not just lighting components, but also solutions – how do you light a room in a way that makes sense, both from an energy consumption as well as an appearance perspective?”
Steve Landau, Philips Lumileds’ director of marketing communications, says research into LED technologies is an ongoing process, and the first step in a full-solution offering.
“We are an LED manufacturer; we don’t physically make the luminaires; we don’t make the retrofit bulbs, we don’t make the solutions – we make the LEDs that make these solutions possible, and, most specifically, our focus is on what’s called a ‘power LED’ – in our case that’s LUXEON. A power LED, historically, is an LED driven at a power of 350 milliamps; a low-power LED that most people are familiar with is typically driven at about 10 milliamps, a fraction of the power, so there is a significant difference in the amount of power that goes in, and as a result you get significantly more light.” By contrast, Landau says low-power LEDs, which are used to backlight mobile phone displays and similar devices, and are not part of the Lumileds business.
“In 2000 we released our first high-powered LED called LUXEON and essentially created this space; it was several years before competitors came into that space with high-powered LEDs. Our markets initially were really focused on the automotive industry; in entertainment lighting, with red, blue, green, CYAN, amber – the coloured light that you’re familiar with; and flashlights (the portable market), which was an early adopter of LED technology. But, in particular, over the last five years as the efficacy of the LED has increased from 20 to 40 to 60 to now 100 lumens per watt or better, so the quality of light has risen dramatically and allowed our markets to expand.”
According to Landau, the direct results of superior R&D include greater colour uniformity, superior product longevity and less colour shift.
The LUXEON ‘Rebel’ is the world’s most widely used power LED.
GLOBAL LED MARKETS BY SECTOR: 2011
According to Rick Hamburger, Philips Lumileds’ director of segment marketing, the year ahead represents opportunities worth billions of dollars for the LED industry in each of its major sectors: Outdoor (2011 global market valued at EUR1000 million), Shops & Hospitality (EUR800 million), Office (600 million) and Retrofit (1500 million).
Outdoor
Hamburger says China is “really pushing efficiency” – a trend that many people might no have expected. He notes, in particular, that lighting efficiency in the outdoor sector must also take account of labour savings from reduced changeovers of lights.
Shops & Hospitality
Also known as Retail. “We see this as another emerging market,” Hamburger says. “Starbucks, Macy’s and Wallgreens have all announced they’re going to convert a portion of their lighting into LEDs. We’re seeing the same thing in hospitality – it’s not just the power savings, it’s the cooling in a lot of these applications. It’s how the light is shaped, how the light comes down. Our new product LUXEON ‘S’ has a single shadow and the richness of colour is extraordinary. We’re starting to see other demands in here; if you look at the downlight market you just want more of a broad light to come down in a small-arc type of application, so we’re working to address that one.
“Sometimes you look at a light and it’s blue and the centre point is very white, but as you move to the side it gets blue again – you don’t have that in LEDs and that’s something that display professionals find very valuable. So we’re starting to see a lot of adoption in shops and hospitality for reasons that people don’t always jump to.
“And we’re seeing this throughout the world.”
Office
Hamburger refers to this sector as “the big unknown”.
“We all know some of the stats about the amount of energy that office lighting uses in the world, and the potential saving that LED can have, but the penetration rate in the office segment is probably the lowest of all the major segments and there’s various reasons for it. But we’re starting to see some innovators run with it throughout the world. We’re seeing it in the downlight market – you go into a lot of offices and downlights are starting to change right now; we’ve seen the basket troffer being converted to LEDs because the light distribution is nice and smooth, and we’re also seeing, particularly in China, that people are trying to replace the TL tube with LEDs. We have probably the most efficient LED tube on the market.”
Hamburger says this sector is also showing payback periods of just two and half years in outdoor area lighting.
“People are experimenting with the troffers, figuring out how to use LEDs to get the right light distribution; lighting designers who are very influential and architects in this sector are asking, ‘How can I relight this conference room? I don’t need the old troffer. What if I come from the side and I just really want some light here and some light there? What does that do to my loading? Can I reduce my lighting per square metre to enable me to meet requirements for the government and Standards body? And that’s where you’re going to see a lot of adoption.
Retrofit
“This is probably the biggest gorilla,” Hamburger concedes. “We have estimates of 1500 million euros but no one knows for sure. Our view is it’s still growing; Japan has a lot of stuff going on. And it’s going to be different bulb types. The other thing is the rebates. What’s driving it is the lumens per dollar, definitely under the $10 price point.
“This is going to be the most challenging sector.”
BEYOND COST
LED lighting is about more than money, says Nigel D’Acre, regional business director, Asia Commercial Lighting, speaking at Philips Color Kinetics in New York.
“With the retrofit market, direct replacements are a massive opportunity for us, but let’s think beyond that,” he says. “Let’s think of the design opportunities – for example: putting LEDs into furniture, putting LEDs into very thin ceiling panels, or integrating it into exterior architecture. LEDs are very small, low energy and digital – sometimes the fact that LEDs are digital is overlooked.
“So let’s look beyond retrofitting when we start to open up new market segments. What’s next for LED’s? We predict that by 2015 on both the LED source side and applications/solutions side, 50 percent of the market will be LED-based. So we have to ensure that we adhere to that.
If we break it down a little bit further, customers are becoming increasingly aware of the benefits of LED’s, they understand the cost benefits and sustainability – now we have to help the market understand the wonderful associated opportunities.”
