How do LED's Work?

LED’s or light emitting diodes, work on a completely different basis to other light sources. A diode is created when two conductive materials are placed in contact with each other. When electricity is passed through them, the atoms in one of the materials become excited to a higher energy state. The excess energy is then released to the other material making up the diode and in the process light is generated.

LED’s are much more efficient than incandescent lamps. An incandescent lamp will typically waste 98% of the energy used in the form of excess heat. A 100-watt light bulb emits about 1,700 lumens – that’s only 17 lumens per watt. A typical LED will achieve a light output efficiency of 60 – 80 lumens per watt. Outputs greater than 100 lumens per watt have been reported, usually under laboratory or optimal test conditions.

It’s a sobering thought to think that up to 98% of the energy you are using to power your lights could be being wasted in the form of unwanted heat.

LED will typically save 70-85% energy costs which considering inefficient lighting can be up to 60% of your overall utilities costs is not an insignificant amount of money.

LED lamps are low voltage solid-state devices that cannot operate on a standard AC current. Part of the cost of an LED lamp is the internal circuits that are required to allow them to operate on an AC circuit.

LED’s will be damaged by excessive heat.

Heat is an LED’s worst enemy. The majority of LED’s will have heat sinks and cooling fins designed to keep the LED within its temperature design parameters.

Most LED lamps deal with the heat issue in one of two ways. Some LED lamps have multiple arrays of LED’s with built in redundancy. Thus a number of the individual LED’s could fail before light output is impaired. In addition to the ‘safety in numbers approach’, some engineers believe that is easier to dissipate heat through a large number of contact points than through a single point of contact. Thus they believe that a ‘multiple array’ will be more reliable.

Some LED lamps are single ‘high power’ LED units. Here the LED is much larger and as the name suggests, there is only one of them providing the light.

Heat management in LED lamps is absolutely crucial. No amount of ‘go faster’ cooling fins will make up for a poor thermal path. This is why cheaper "alternatives" on the market will fail and give the LED a poor reputation.
Typically LED’s are encapsulated in a transparent resin – the lens. This resin is a poor thermal conductor so the heat must be conducted away from the LED through the backside of the chip – the area that you can’t see.

Weblight joins the Carbon Trust & Siemens green finance deal!!

The Carbon Trust and Siemens launch new green finance deal worth £550 million to green businesses in the UK

 

A joint partnership between the Carbon Trust and Siemens to provide UK businesses with green equipment finance worth up to £550 million over the next three years has been announced today.

This major new deal will boost green growth and unlock business investment in the low carbon economy – key to the UK’s recovery. The new dedicated low carbon finance scheme is a first and will enable UK businesses to invest in cost effective energy efficiency equipment or other low carbon technologies, such as new efficient lighting and biomass heating.

 

All businesses will be able to apply for new green growth finance from the scheme from 4 April 2011. Under a Heads of Agreement signed between the two parties Siemens Financial Services Ltd. in the UK (SFS UK) will provide the financial backing and manage the provision of funding and the Carbon Trust will use its expertise in carbon saving from energy efficient technologies to assess the carbon, energy and cost savings of any application. This will enable the financing to pay for itself through energy savings.

Tom Delay, chief executive of the Carbon Trust, commented:
“Driving green growth in the UK is key to our economic recovery. A missing ingredient at present is access to affordable finance to enable business to make green investments. This new major finance facility will improve business competitiveness, cut carbon and boost green growth.”

James Gearey, CEO from Siemens Financial Services Ltd. UK commented:
“We are delighted to be working with the Carbon Trust, their values very much match our own. Siemens has been reporting the performance of its environmental portfolio since 2002, not just the commercial performance, but also the hundreds of millions of tonnes of carbon emission reduction that has been delivered through Siemens technology.

Siemens Financial Services has extensive experience of asset financing and lending to UK business and is particularly successful in the SME sector. This background combined with our ready access to funding means we are well placed to support the scheme and deliver the associated benefits to its future customers.”

Miles Templeman, the Director General of the Institute of Directors, said: “In today’s high energy cost environment improving energy efficiency is a must for all businesses. The new Energy Efficiency Finance scheme could play a significant role in stimulating innovative solutions.”

John Sauven, Executive Director of Greenpeace, welcomed the partnership:
“This green finance deal is exactly the sort of initiative that we need to see happening more frequently in the future. A green growth strategy can only work if it is backed by green finance. Deals like this, alongside the development of a green infrastructure bank, could be a tipping point that the UK economy needs to get out of the current doldrums.”

The Carbon Trust and Siemens Financial Services have also agreed to finance a new commercial venture that will increase the take up of energy efficiency projects. This venture will offer procurement support to businesses wishing to purchase energy efficiency equipment at scale from a network of accredited suppliers and will be launched later this year.

LED - In schools, its proven and its hear to stay.

SCHOOLS in Oxfordshire could soon be slashing their electricity bills with the introduction of new energy saving lights.

Secondary schools could save an average of £20,000 a year and primary schools about £3,000 by using the carbon-reducing tube lights, according to the county council.
John Mason School in Abingdon is now saving about £18,000 a year after installing the lights throughout its buildings in the summer holidays.

The school decided to buy the Light Emitting Diode (LED) filled tubes after a month-long trial in two classrooms organised by Oxfordshire County Council. The lights saved 40 per cent more energy and cash than the old fluorescent tubes.
The school’s business manager Alex Keeble said the lights cost about £80,000, but the school was now saving 40 per cent on its electricity bills.

She said: “Like everyone we are getting increasingly worried about our energy costs, so we have been very impressed with the results.
“The possibility of investing in a scheme that will have a significant impact on our budget and benefit the environment can only be good news for us. Less money on energy also means more money to support the education of our students.”

She added: “Not only have we seen a reduction in costs from the trial period, but the actual illumination has given better working conditions for students and staff.”
Oxfordshire County Council hopes other schools will now consider the lights as part of a wider drive to cut carbon emissions and energy costs across all its buildings.

Darrell Marchand, the council’s energy and environmental manager, said: “Before we recommend a new energy efficient technology to schools we need to know it will perform at the level anticipated.
“To make the experiment fair we compared the two types of light and the results were pretty emphatic.”

Cabinet member for growth and infrastructure Lorraine Lindsay-Gale added: “This has significant implications for the carbon footprint of schools.
“Lighting accounts for about 50 per cent of schools’ electricity needs and LED lighting could have a real impact on the lighting costs for our schools.”

The need for more efficient lighting was identified after a council energy survey at every maintained school in the county over the past four years.

Council spokesman Marcus Mabberley added: “Individual schools hold the money to pay their energy bills, so decisions about installing energy efficient measures would rest with them.”

The IPAD3 will have LED back light!! according to on-line experts

Apple will be implementing a new LED back-light design for iPad 3, report

Posted on 07. Nov, 2011 by TabletMan in Tablets

When you take off the front frame on the Apple iPad 2 you get to see the 9.7-inch LCD panel and more. Image: Ifixit

Operating on the assumption that Apple is actively pursing a Retina Display for the next Apple iPad tablet the rumor mill is reporting that Apple will introduce a new LED backlight design with the next iPad tablet. Apperantly the current single LED back-light design used in the 1024×768 resolution iPad 1 and iPad 2 isn’t sufficent for the 2048×1536 resolution display that’s reportedly being used on the next-gen. Apple iPad tablet.
DigiTimes is reporting all of this exclusively through intel gained from unnamed sources at Taiwan-based BLU (back-light unit) makers. According to those sources Apple will be implenting one of two new dual-LED light bar designs; one is a single-bar design that includes two LED chips, another design uses two LED light bars.

The unnamed DigiTimes sources said a dual light bar design is most probable becuase local BLU makers in Taiwan have already solved heat dissipation and battery consumption problems for such a design.
It’s no secret that the next-gen. Apple iPad will need to have a whole new design to satisfy all the rumored features, so really this report by DigiTimes is quite resonable. With the next iPad, the iPad 3 (possible name), keeping the 10 hours of battery life that iPad 1 and iPad 2 have featured will be imperative for Apple. Even though no competitors have been able to touch the iPad 2′s battery life I don’t think Apple will the iPad 3 have bad battery life at any cost.

Rare Earth - why lamp prices are still rising! by GE

What is the issue?  A shortage of the materials known as ‘Rare Earths’ (RE) on global markets is driving up prices of a whole range of goods, from TV and laptop screens to disc drives and catalytic converters. Rare Earths are also an essential component of fluorescent lighting products, and the meteoric increase in RE prices has led to a significant rise in manufacturing costs. For an idea of the scale of these rises, if rare earths were coffee, a latte-to-go that cost €1.50 just a few months ago would now cost almost €16! The situation remains volatile and further price increases seem highly likely. This briefing paper provides a high level overview of the impact that rare earth shortages are having – and will continue to have – on GE Lighting and our products.

What are Rare Earths?  Rare Earths are a group of 17 elements with unique properties that make them virtually indispensible in the production of a wide range of modern goods. Neodymium, for instance, is highly magnetic and used in cell phones, loudspeakers, hard drives and catalytic converters. Others are used in camera lenses, electric vehicles, rechargeable batteries, petroleum refining, defense technology and lighting. Despite the name, many of these elements are not all that rare; the problem is that they are not found in concentrations sufficient to make extraction commercially viable.

What Rare Earths are used in lighting products?  More than half of the phosphor used in linear fluorescent (LFL) and compact fluorescent (CFL) products is derived from rare earths, and as many as five different rare earths are required to create the white light.

Why have prices risen?  Two factors have driven the rise in prices. Firstly, there has been a huge growth in consumption driven by mushrooming demand for consumer/electronic goods, and in rare earth-hungry applications such as hybrid/electric vehicles and wind turbines. And secondly, the world’s major producer, China – currently responsible for around 97% of global output – has been limiting production and imposing quotas on its exports every year. China’s limits on the export of Rare Earths tends to promote production of materials elsewhere in the world.

What impact has the shortage of Rare Earths had?  The Rare Earths shortage has had a dramatic impact on world prices. According to the Financial Times, prices rose by a factor of between three and five between January and May 2011.  Over the last 12 months, the prices of some Rare Earths – including Terbium and Europium, both used in fluorescent lamp phosphors – have increased by around one thousand per cent, others by even more.  In June, it was reported that the price of some rare earths had doubled within just two weeks.  This has lead to stockpiling by some dealers, driving up prices further still.

What’s the current situation?  Demand for some rare earths will undoubtedly outpace supply for some time to come but many actions are underway to help manage the situation. The United States, the European Union and other governments are working with China to ensure balanced and fair trade policies.

Could this ‘lost’ production be replaced?  In the short term no; in the medium to long term yes. Work is underway to open – or in some cases reopen – mines in the USA, Canada, Australia and Vietnam; and advances in recycling technologies could release many thousands of tons of materials currently ‘stored’ in old electronics and other products. In July 2011, Japanese researchers announced the discovery of what appears to be vast deposits of Rare Earths in the mud of the Pacific Ocean. However it would be some years before these would reach world markets. For the foreseeable future though, the current situation will have a serious and detrimental impact on the availability – and cost – of Rare Earth materials.

How does this specifically affect GE Lighting?  As a company for whom Rare Earths are an essential component of production, scarcity and rising prices will clearly have an impact, one that has been intensified in the EU27 countries due to energy efficient legislation driving increased use of rare-earth phosphor containing lamps. However, it should be remembered that this isn’t just a challenge for GE Lighting; it’s a global issue, one that’s having an impact on manufacturers and users of all kinds of goods.

What does the future hold?  No one can be sure what’s going to happen next. As already mentioned, the situation remains volatile and prices are likely to fluctuate over the coming months and even years. We have therefore taken a number of actions: We have established teams across the company to help manage this unprecedented supply chain situation.  We are actively working to develop and procure lower Rare Earth content phosphor.  We are working to qualify an expanded base of suppliers.  We continue to work to secure the ample supply of materials. We will do our best to manage these costs where we can, but rises on a similar scale to those seen in recent months will mean further significant price adjustments may be unavoidable.