LEDs emerge to fight fluorescents

TPM Outdoor Productions Pte Ltd has been using LED (light-emitting diodes) lighting to create colourful and animated lighting effects on our frontlit banners/ billboard displays in Singapore since last Aug 2006. We are familiar with LED lighting and its cost and energy efficiency benefits.

This is especially since our Grand Ampera project executed by our sister company, PT TPM in Palembang, Sumatra.

I am sharing an interesting article from Businessweek which summaries how LED lighting will take over our current usage of the compact fluorescent bulbs and incandescent bulbs sooner than you think:

Recent developments in LED lighting that brought about key benefits for its use over the current conventional and alternative sources:

• LED have doubled in energy efficiency and brightness in the last 2 years.
• LED are long lasting: They last up to 50,000 hours compared to about 10,000 hours for fluorescents and 1,000 hours for incandescents. This translate to huge savings in maintenance costs when commercial clients do not need to send out for the janitor each time a bulb blows.
• LED do not contain toxic mercury unlike the compact fluorescent bulbs/ tubes

But some also argue that, at its current development LED lighting needs more improvements before mass market adoption - For single LEDs may demonstrate very high energy efficiency in the lab, but when combined into fixtures, their efficiency is considerably lower. In part that is a heat issue: the diodes produce less heat than incandescents, but they keep that heat in the fixture rather than radiating it, and the hotter the diodes get, the less efficient they are.

But it seems like the widespread use of LED is a matter of sooner than later thanks to the forward-looking actions of these governments:

• California and Canada have decided to ban the sale of incandescent bulbs by 2012.
• Australia is banning incandescent bulbs in 2010.
• The European Union is looking at banning production of the bulbs.
• A U.S. Senate committee is working on a proposal that would phase out the light bulb in 10 years."
• Lighting consumes 22 percent of electricity produced in the U.S. and widespread use of LED lighting could cut consumption in half.

It may not be tomorrow yet, but it is without doubt that in the next 2, 5 or at most 10 years' time - the traditional symbol of bright ideas is set to be replaced with the LED.