LED Advantage
Time: 2013-05-03 21:14:11     Copyfrom: Eyeshot Lighting Limited

Stepping Back to See Forward

For us to gain a perspective, let's take a quick look back. For most of man's existence we have been burning flames to light our paths and our inner spaces and thinking that we were quite the achiever in harnessing the power of fire to enrich our lives and propel forward a modest level of civilization.

Later, we embraced candles and oil lanterns fed by beeswax and animal fat and we couldn't be happier as we had reaped from our environment cheap and sustainable lighting that could be stored and carried around with us.

Then, within perhaps the last 150 years, our industrial age came along and for the first time we institutionalized our resources. Businesses were mass producing glass oil lanterns and companies were piping town gas through our major cities.

Then something surprised us; the first commercially viable light bulb arrived. The electrical industry was born. Commercial electric power stations ushered in the development of power grids which envited everyone to embrace light bulbs and gas discharge tubes. Electricity became the standard in flame-free light. Interestingly enough, Edison's light bulbs were hailed as the new clean, safe, and a low cost source of light.

Today is Yesterday

Yet again, in a relatively short time span, we are touting another remarkable breakthrough in technology - the Light Emitting Diode (LED).

Fire yields light through the heat of a flame. Light bulbs radiate light with a hot filament, but solid state LED lighting produces light by exciting atoms. Today, we no longer rely on heat to produce light. This is the significant departure from all the other light sources that have preceded this discovery.

Solid state lighting is likely to be the greatest revolution to our quality of life in terms of light. And it may be the only development in recent times that is truly offering us a choice to reduce our power consumption and avoid the use of environmentally risky materials at the same time. Solid state lighting doesn't have to be a selfish choice, when so much about it is a smart choice.

Electricity to Light

The fundamentals are simple: Turn electricity into light without wasting energy. LED technology is an extension of the semiconductor business. Light emitting diodes are semiconductors which emit light, in theory, it is a bit more complicated, but the results are simple to understand and easy to apprceiate.

Low Temperature & Power Consumption

LEDs are nearly fire safe and in fact depend on lower operating temperatures to run efficiently, gain long life, and avoid internal damage. LEDs produce light with a very low power consumption. They are estimated to be about 80% more efficient than incandescent light bulbs about around 20 to 30% more efficient than florescent tube lighting. Some of this value is calculated based on direct energy consumption and part of this value points to the cost in disposing waste heat that must be absorbed by other systems like HVAC (air conditioning).

Digital Control

LEDs can be electronically controlled. We can turn LED lighting off and on with switches or through sensors or digital timers. Digital control and light modulation (dimming and color mixing) is perhaps one of LED lighting's greatest assets.  Digital control is simple and precise and the equipment needed for digital control is not expensive. Digital control is also extremely flexible and can be adapted to environmental control systems and security applications.

Quality of Light

Solid state materials can be created to emit very specific wavelengths of light. This is an extremely valuable quality of the product. LEDs can be specifically designed to create almost any color of light that you need.

Shape and Size

LED lighting is very flexible in terms of shape and size.  The technology fits into small flashlights and scales up as well to fit large street lights. Solid state lighting components can be modularized to fit nearly any practical application.