It’s nice to think that the best technology always triumphs, but we know that’s not the case. The QWERTY keyboard layout has been maligned for years, yet it’s so ingrained into our minds (and laptops) that we can be relatively sure it’s not going anywhere. And, of course, the most often cited example of a better technology being left behind is Betamax’s loss to VHS during the so-called Video Format War of the mid-1970s. Ultimately, it’s unlikely the LEDs will lose out to another technology, especially incandescents, but it will be a drawn out fight and hard-won victory.
As prices drop and consumer awareness grows, LEDs will flourish. Boosters like the L Prize, government regulation, power company subsidies, and (perhaps) rising energy prices will all assist in LED adoption. The case for increasingly efficient lighting is inarguable, and LEDs have the best chance right now, especially considering the trajectory of the industry and the downward trend of the competition. As power becomes an issue for everyone, awareness will grow and the huge gains in efficiency found in solid-state lighting will be welcomed as the lowest-hanging fruit possible, saving individuals, countries, and the world billions of dollars, not to mention tons of carbon dioxide, a year.
It’s fun to think in terms of winning and losing, but things are rarely that simple. The incandescent will probably always be available in some form, and while CFLs are largely recognized as a transitional technology, they’ll be around for some time before they disappear. The better way to think of the situation is as progress: Solid-state lights are tools for a digital age, just as incandescents were the tools for an analog one.
While that’s a convenient observation more than it’s a reason for success, it will be a strong motivator for buyers. Everything in our lives has gotten smarter—from our phones to our televisions to our refrigerators—and now the hold-outs, like our lamps and door knobs, are finally catching up. It’s not solely the gadget-ization of the world around us, it’s also the optimization of costly, inefficient technology that needs to change with the times.
One of the conclusions that this leads us to is just how different solid-state lighting is from what most of us grew up using. LED lamps are solid-state. They have integrated circuits. They last for decades. They can survive a bump, even when hot.
LED replacement bulbs are something new, but if you were to look at their marketing materials and associated packaging, you’d see that the industry wants little more than to position them as a replacement for something old. In fact, to the casual observer, they just seem like a longer-lived, more expensive, futuristic-looking version of the incandescent bulbs on the same aisle. And while the end result of the two products is the same, that thinking couldn’t be further from the truth.
The industry has largely taken it for granted that consumers fear change and don’t want something new, when that’s exactly what LED manufacturers could offer them. This replacement of a 100+ year old technology is offering something completely new, while manufacturers are trying to bill it as a better version of the same old thing.
In the same way that the mobile phone can’t compete with a landline (it needs to be recharged and it drops calls?), and a tablet can’t compete with a notepad (there’s no pen and it doesn’t work in the sun?), the LED bulb should not attempt to compete with the incandescent…except in the most conventional of terms. Yes, they both solve the same problem, but this is a genuine shift in the method of reaching that end point—the production of light—that should be understood and embraced.
When real, transformative technology comes along, it may not be immediately acceptable. Potential buyers may balk at the prospect of doing things differently, but that hesitancy is not overcome by competing head-on with older technology. The newcomer can’t compete against something ingrained; rather, it must change the conversation. Significant technology changes—like the wireless telegraph, the electric car, and the LED bulb—are replacements, not upgrades.
Telling consumers how much they’ll save over the next 22.5 years isn’t ever going to be a persuasive case. Twenty dollars today is a lot more useful than a few pennies saved in a power bill each month for the next few years, so a new argument needs to be made. The argument for “better” light is out the door—nothing will ever match the quality of sunlight or the glow of an incandescent that we’ve long understood to be real indoor light—so where does that leave the LED?
It’s time to embrace technology and see it as a replacement, not a power-saving alternative to something we’d rather have—like some sad, low-fat variety that we know is better for us, but that we don’t really want. Building on the LED’s technology is surely the most effective way to differentiate it and go someplace where incandescents, however efficient, cannot follow.
And what does building on technology mean? It’s not just about improving efficiency or lowering prices—those are just improvements on the same light bulb that’s been in use since the late 1800s. Real technological progress is networked controls, power over ethernet (PoE), maybe even wireless power. Any sufficiently advanced technology, to borrow a phrase from Arthur C. Clarke, could be the sort of breakthrough that puts modern lighting on people’s radar. It might not directly lead to the sale of millions of units, but it would certainly make headlines and draw attention to the improvements the solid-state lighting makes possible.
Why should technology even go into a light? This is pretty simple: lights are properly placed for a number of duties and they already have power running to them. This means that the cost of integrating technology into a light is cheaper than running power lines and installing an entirely new device. Furthermore, although we’ve been focused mostly on replacement bulbs that use LEDs, the future will not be limited to these. LED fixtures, sometimes known as luminaires, will be an important option and these larger fixtures won’t be limited to use in a socket. More importantly, fixtures are big, often expensive things, so there is no pressure to get them to the sub-$5 point. This means the integration of technology can make perfect sense, though it might not ever be in a lamp designed to light a living room. LSG’s Glimpse is a prime example of a fixture that can work in a retrofit situation. It’s Energy Star-compliant, dimmer-compatible, offers up to 750 lumens, and is designed to last 50,000 hours. The Glimpse retrofit downlight (6-inch) is available today at Home Depot and sells for $37.
While wirelessly powered lamps would be a major step forward, it’ll be more feasible to have bulbs that are wirelessly controlled. At the 2012 Consumer Electrics Show a company called Fujikom had a Z-Wave wireless light bulb on display known as the LeDenQ. It is an LED lamp that produces 880 lumens and is rated at 40,000 hours, but that’s just the start. It can produce around 20,000 different colors and its wireless controller will allow owners to change the bulb’s settings. This will be possible using an app or the included remote control. It might sound like a parlor trick—and the bulb isn’t truly wireless, it still needs power from the socket—and Z-wave isn’t anything new (it’s just another wireless home automation solution), but it’s a step in the right direction.
IP-addressable lights are another logical step forward. They connect through a wireless or powerline network and can then be controlled and monitored remotely. These might not replace the humble light switch anytime soon, but they certainly could. Before then, it would make controlling arrays of lights easier than ever and lights would be trackable, so customers could monitor usage or make sure they are getting their promised 25,000 hours. While these might sound like nice toys to have at home, just imagine if you were in charge of the lights at a factory or warehouse. Knowing which lights were not operational would be a huge task, but intelligent fixtures would make it simple. Networked lighting systems already exist, as do LED lighting systems that are powered by PoE and that have motion sensors so they only light up when they detect motion, but these are on the cutting edge today. In the future, these systems will be more widespread and bring convenience and power savings wherever they are installed.
The entire concept of intelligent lighting could be brought to market much easier by tying into a platform like Google’s Android@Home. This would allow Android-powered devices to interact with a home’s functions, including lighting, HVAC, and audio. Some companies are already trying out such forward-looking technologies, including the Lighting Science Group (LSG). At Google I/O 2011, the search company’s annual developer conference, LSG said they were working on lighting that could be controlled through a smartphone app. Flipping a lamp on and off is just the start: you could program your phone to tell your lights to dim when you are watching TV (using an NFC chip on your side table) or to turn on when you get home, using the phone’s GPS for geo-awareness. This solution would use 6LoWPAN (IPv6 over low-power WPAN) to make your bulbs part of the so-called “Internet of Things.”
Another option is the NetLED, a fixture designed to replace fluorescent tubes, that interacts with an app and remote servers for control. At over 60,000 yen (about $740) the kit isn’t cheap, but the lights can be controlled by your smartphone or tablet via their dedicated wireless router. The app offers on/off controls as well as dimming, preset lighting patterns, and charting of usage data.
Audio company Klipsch combined speakers with LED lights in their $600 LightSpeaker In-Ceiling Lighting and Audio System. Perhaps it wasn’t the company’s most successful product, but it combined lights with wireless speakers, making for a convenient system that worked with up to eight speakers and pumped out 20W of audio power per speaker…without running a single wire. The speaker-light combo fit in a standard recessed “can” fixture, which wouldn’t have been possible without the size, efficiency, and flexibility of the LED.
Of course, if our look into LED lighting has taught us anything, it’s that consumers are extremely sensitive to pricing. Integrating IEEE 802.15.4 wireless into a lamp, as LSG’s experiment calls for, apparently wouldn’t make for a larger bulb, but it would make for a more expensive one. So far, manufacturers have just about been able to convince businesses and organizational buyers that new lamps are worth the investment, but consumers, with lower power bills and increased price sensitivity, are harder to win over.
Perhaps if their wallets can’t be appealed to, their gadget lust can be? It is likely that the lighting market will diverge in the future, with part of it continuing to cut costs as quickly as possible to get back to that sub-$5 bulb. The other part of the market will take full advantage of solid-state lighting’s qualities and go the intelligent route, using intelligent products like those offered by Redwood Systems. After all, a light in a parking garage that can tell the operator what capacity the garage is at, turn on when it detects motion, or have a built in security camera is extremely useful. And the best part is that such a setup will also save money in the long run.
Advances, gimmicks, and gadget-lust aside, the LED has an exciting future ahead. The lighting world is ready for a revolution, and it’s probably not going to be incandescents or CFLs that make it happen. Over the next few years (it’s going to take some time for all of today’s CFLs to burn out), there will be rapid changes in lighting. This might seem like an optimistic statement, but we are reaching a watershed moment, not unlike that of the advent of the mobile phone or broadband Internet. Something useful, affordable, and clearly better is about to be widely available and very much on the radar of businesses and consumers. It’s just a matter of time before the LED is how our world is lit.
When this will happen is another matter. Most people will avoid the question completely, while others will tell you “soon” or “over the next few years.” The likelihood is that there will be a rapid uptake in LED lighting when certain conditions are met. If there were to be a major rise in the price of power then adoption would almost certainly increase, though that’s not something we tend to see fluctuate enough that it’s on the average person’s radar. Another condition could be that power companies simply start to give out LED bulbs, as they did with CFLs. They will want consumers to save energy and free, high-efficiency bulbs are an ideal route.
Of course, the final and most definitive path to LED bulb adoption will be their inevitable drop in price. As noted in the last chapter, numbers vary on this, but somewhere between $10 and $15 per bulb is where many people forecast that LED marketshare will grow dramatically. This might vary based on economic conditions and how many high-wattage incandescents people have squirreled away in their garages, but it’s a reasonable estimate for the point where people will no longer be able to ignore the advantages of solid-state lighting. We’re already starting to see LED adoption in street lamps, hotels, and other near-continuous-use situations; it’s the consumer sector that’s lagging. These are the buyers that are the most resistant to the initial investment. As prices drop, it’s inevitable that adoption will increase…especially once all those incandescents people have hoarded start to burn out!
And while the focus is on the future, it’s worth remembering that the downward slope of pricing is in full effect today as well. Excellent LED lamps are available for under $30, and fully adequate ones can be purchased for under $20. In February 2012, a company called Lemnis announced their Pharox Blu series of affordable LED bulbs. The Pharox Blu 200 retails for just $4.95 while the Blu 300 is $6.95! Sure, they produce just 240 and 360 lumens respectively, they are rated at 15,000 hours, they aren’t dimmable, and have sub-90 CRI ratings, but it’s hard to argue with those prices. In a press release, the company noted that it saw a 500% growth in sales directly after lowering their pricing to these levels. These might not be the best bulbs on the market, but it’s a sign of things to come.
To put some numbers behind this growth, a recent estimate by a market research firm estimates that the LED replacement lamp market will grow from a value of $2.2 billion in 2011 to $3.7 billion in 2016, with the growth being led by China. Furthermore, they expect average prices to fall by 14% a year during the same period. While that’s just one set of numbers from one firm (albeit one that’s been studying the photonics market since 1979), it’s indicative of the incredible growth expected in the industry. The push for energy efficiency, the desire for green solutions, the appreciation of quality light, and a gentle nudge from government agencies will all combine to push the LED lamp from a new technology to the standard.
The Department of Energy regularly publishes technical roadmaps that explain their future outlook. These are technical documents, but they are endlessly interesting if you are curious about where experts believe solid-state lighting will be in the next few years. The latest roadmap document, from January 2012, had set targets for up to 2020 with goals that are “challenging but achievable.” These focus on the technical gains that should be achieved in the near future, while the organization’s Manufacturing Roadmaps are concerned mainly with pricing. From 2010 to 2020, the latest roadmap (July 2011) expects the cost of the LEDs in a lamp to fall from 50% of the total cost to less than 25%, and the relative manufacturing cost of a lamp to be approximately 10% of what is was in 2010. Specific numbers aside, the roadmaps project tremendous gains that will greatly reduce the cost of solid-state lighting and increase its accessibility for all buyers.
The growth of the LED industry and of LED lighting is, in many ways, a logical extension of the growth of the semiconductor industry. Over the years we’ve seen a clear trend: where semiconductors go, they take over. Whether it’s for communications, data storage, digital imaging, optoelectronics, or any other number of other aspects of our lives, semiconductors are just too efficient, and improve at too rapid a pace, to be ignored. Incandescent lighting had a long and prosperous run, and it will probably never go away entirely, but we have found something better; it’s just a matter of time until the light-emitting diode is the tool by which we illuminate the world around us.