Building on its success in LED-backlight TVs

Vizio, a leading supplier of LED-backlit LCD HDTVs, announced it will enter the LED lighting market with a series of replacement lamps using LEDs supplied by Epistar and Seoul Semiconductor.

Vizio’s LED lamps are recyclable, and feature a glass-free design to prohibit shattering. The LED lamps are designed to give off a warm hue of light, reminiscent of a natural source. The LEDs product line (see table) will feature triple the lifespan of compact fluorescent bulbs, with up to 25,000 hours of usage. Vizio plans to enter the market in late Q4 of this year.

Vizio high-efficiency LED lighting product collection

Vizio’s partners in the LED lighting space include Epistar and Seoul Semiconductor, two of the world’s top-ten suppliers of LED lighting. “This is a natural progression for Vizio beyond consumer electronics. We look forward to Vizio applying its innovation, marketing and distribution channels to save American consumers even more with its new line of LED lighting,” said Donald Leo, Vice President of Seoul Semiconductor.

“Vizio’s expansion into the LED lighting market stands to challenge the convention in the same way that it has had in the flat-panel television market,” said B.J. Lee, Chairman of Epistar.

As North America’s largest shipper of LED-backlit HDTVs, Vizio realized a 2000% growth in total shipments year over year, with over 2 million units shipped in 2010. From 2009 – 2010, the company’s contribution to energy savings (based on power consumption of 2009 vs. 2010 Vizio HDTV models at an estimated savings of 280,000 MWh/yr) could be viewed as equivalent to the energy needed to power the city of Las Vegas for more than a year.

According to the US Energy Information Administration, the residential sector general service light (A19 type) bulb purchase rate of LEDs will increase approximately 300% between 2010 and 2015 to 100 million units.

benefits of switching to LEDs following the March nuclear disaster

If Japan replaced all of its 1.6 billion light bulbs with LED varieties, the country would save the annual electricity output of 13 nuclear reactors.

So says the Institute of Energy Economics, a research group overseen by the country’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.

IEE analyzed the benefits of switching to LEDs following the March nuclear disaster in Fukushima. Meltdowns prompted the country to abandon expansion of a nuclear industry that has provided 30% of Japan’s electricity with 54 reactors – 35 of which remain shut for safety.

IEE’s findings surfaced this week in the Mainichi Daily News.

“Promoting the introduction of LED lights will serve as energy-saving measures that have immediate effects and sustainability,” the Tokyo-based online paper quotes an IEE representative as saying.

LED light bulbs use only about 10%-to-20% of the power consumed by incandescent light bulbs, and about 60% of fluorescents, including common energy-saving compact fluorescent bulbs. IEE figured that Japanese homes, offices and manufacturing sites use some 1.6 billion bulbs, annually eating up 150.6 billion kWh of electricity.

If people replace those with LED bulbs, the country would cut annual consumption by 92.2 billion kWh, to 58.4 billion kWh, according to IEE. It says that’s the equivalent of 13 nuclear reactors, a quarter of the country’s total.

Cost is a challenge. As we’ve noted before, LED bulbs in the U.S. can have retail prices of $40. If you have, say, 40 bulbs in your house, you’d pay $1600 to replace them all at once.

IEE tallied the bill for 1.6 billion bulbs in Japan at ¥15.7 trillion ($194 billion). However, the upfront cost provides long-term savings not only in electricity bills, but also in longevity. Manufacturers say LED bulbs can last for 25 years, although it will take a quarter of a century to find out if that’s true.

Another knock on LEDs, especially for home users, is that lighting designers and architects note that they lack the warmth of incandescent bulbs. But the good news from Japan – 70% of the 1.6 billion bulbs in Japan are fluorescent, to which many people would prefer LEDs for glow.

Philips switches on bright LED bulb

Philips is introducing an LED bulb that gives off as much light as a 75-watt incandescent bulb and consume 17 watts of power.

The lighting giant said today that the EnduraLED A21 will be available in the fourth quarter for a price expected to be between $40 and $45. It will show off the bulb tomorrow at the LightFair lighting conference, where many LED lighting announcements are expected.

The EnduraLED A21 will be the first general-purpose LED bulb to give off as much light as a 75-watt incandescent bulb, according to Philips. It will be rated at 1,100 lumens and an efficiency of almost 65 lumens per watt.

The bulb itself roughly resembles a crown, a design meant to give off light evenly. LED light sources give off directional light, making them very good at downlights or spotlights, but now manufacturers are designing bulbs to disperse light more in all directions.

The bulb will have a rated life of 25,000 hours, or about 17 years with four hours of daily use. The color rendering index, a measure of light quality, is 80 and the color temperature is 2,700, or a warmer yellow light meant to be similar to incandescents.

Philips last year started selling a 60-watt equivalent LED bulb with the same design and LED light sources, which is available through Home Depot for $39.97. It uses 12.5 watts.

Lighting manufacturers are seeking to boost the brightness and light quality of LEDs to make them attractive alternatives to incandescent and compact fluorescent bulbs. The prices for LED bulbs are much higher but are expected to drop over time.

Philips said that over its lifetime, an EnduraLED A21 could save a home or business $160. There are about 90 million 75-watt incandescent bulbs sold every year in the U.S., and switching to LEDs would eliminate the carbon emissions of almost 1 million cars, according to Philips.

Android meets LED bulbs in Google smart-home push

By the end of this year, people will be able to buy an LED light bulb controllable from an Android device, part of Google’s move into home automation.

At the Google I/O conference today, Google demonstrated how Android devices, including tablets and smartphones, can act as a hub for controlling multiple devices in the home, including lighting, appliances, thermostats, and music.

Coming to a home network near you: a Lighting Sciences Group A19 LED bulb controllable by Android devices.

Google concocted a lighting demo system with Lighting Sciences Group, which developed an LED bulb that can talk to Android. It uses a new mesh network wireless protocol rather than Wi-Fi, ZigBee, or the other proprietary home automation protocols.

The hope is that software developers will create applications that use the home automation system of connected devices. The demo at Google I/O was of a person playing a shooting video game with the lights turning on and off as shots were fired, said Eric Holland, the director of electrical engineering at Lighting Sciences Group.

“Lighting is very visible and prevalent so it made sense for it to be first foray for the platform,” Holland said. “Every one of the lights has a radio integrated inside the lamp so there’s no additional equipment.”

Many companies are building home automation systems built around connected objects, which give people a way to set up schedules around lighting and heating/cooling. People can also turn plugged-in items on and off from a central point, such as a tablet or small dashboard.

Having many devices communicating using ZigBee or Wi-Fi could create interference problems, one reason why a new protocol is being used, Holland said. Since it is open-source, Google and Lighting Sciences Group hope it will be adopted by other lighting and home automation companies. The networked bulbs will be available by the end of the year at the same cost as their general-purpose LEDs, for which prices range from under $20 to about $35 for a 60-watt equivalent.

Google enters a crowded field of home automation and consumer smart-grid companies that are trying to get a foothold for smart-home products.

Cree LED takes aim at office fluorescent lights

LED lighting company Cree is taking on the overhead fluorescent lights that are a fixture of office buildings with a light source it says will quickly recoup the investment.

The company today announced a new line of “architectural troffers,” or rectangular-shaped fixtures designed for overhead lighting. The troffers use Cree’s LED light sources, which offer a longer life and improved efficiency over fluorescent lights, according to the company.

Cree LED light sources in the overhead fixtures.

The fixtures offer a white light with an efficiency of 110 lumens per watt and a color rendering index, a measure of light quality, of 90. The lights can be dimmed and are designed to last 50,000 hours, which would be more than 10 years at 12 hours a day. The fixtures have a thermal management system designed for long life.

Design services company O’Brien/Atkins Associates said in a statement that the measuring efficiency over the full product life cycle, including sizing, heating and cooling, and disposal, can be cut lighting costs by 60 percent.

Using the national average for electricity prices of 10 cents a kilowatt-hour, Cree calculates that the payoff of office upgrades to LEDs can be less than one year to replace typical fluorescent tubes. Because of the higher upfront cost of LED lighting technology, consumer adoption of LED bulbs is expected to be slower than that of commercial customers.

Lighting Retailer Elemental LED Adds Free Shipping Offer

Elemental LED, a San Francisco Bay Area-based LED lighting company, added a free shipping offer to a growing list of website promotions. Customers who purchase more than $250 now have the option to get free UPS ground shipping for their order by choosing the Free Shipping method on the shopping cart page of the Elemental LED website. This promotion requires no coupon code, and is automatic for every order over $250.

“This is an ideal time to offer free shipping to our customers,” says Elemental LED Marketing Manager Charlotte Dick, “because we know money is tight this year for many families who would like to begin their springtime home projects.”

The new free shipping offer does not have an expiration date and is an addition to a plentiful list of other regular promotions and discounts customers can receive at Elemental LED.

Other promotions that Elemental LED offer include a 10% coupon for new customers and those that sign up for the company’s newsletter at elementalled.com, and a $50 coupon for orders over $400. Plus, current and new customers only need to create a login to participate in the company’s Refer-a-Friend program to receive discounts off future orders.

Details about these promotions, plus others, can be found on the Elemental LED’s profile at RetailMeNot. To take advantage of Elemental LED’s free shipping offer, and to browse their LED lighting catalog, please visit www.elementalled.com.

Elemental LED is founded on the belief that everyone has the right to stylish, energy efficient LED lights. LED lighting technology is the safest, hippest, and most energy efficient way to light our world.

LED Bulbs That Try to Please the Eye

For years, experts have predicted that LEDs, the technology used in digital clocks, would eclipse compact fluorescents as an energy-saving alternative to traditional incandescent bulbs. Now Switch Lighting, a venture capitalist-financed company in San Jose, Calif., says it has come up with an LED bulb that emits light eye-pleasing enough to make that happen.

Others have introduced a number of LED bulbs in the last few years, but most have the same drawbacks: because LEDs are powered by semiconductors, they project light in only one direction and lack the warmth of their incandescent counterparts. Switch Lighting claims to have solved these problems by mounting outward-facing LEDs on metal fingers and cooling them with an inert liquid, creating a warmer, brighter output. The bulbs are also recyclable and, like most LEDs, mercury free.

They will be available in 40-, 60- and 75-watt equivalents, for about $20 each, later this year.

GE Lighting launches new version of Infusion LED module

The Infusion module is designed to be easy to replace, and offers a wide range of color temperatures and light outputs up to 3300 lm at 4000K.GE Lighting Europe has unveiled a new range of Infusion LED modules with a wide range of light-output and color-temperature options. Three color temperatures – 2700K, 3000K and 4000K – are available, each with 4 different light outputs: at 3000K, these are 1100 lm (15W, using 7 LEDs), 1500 lm, 2000 lm and 3000 lm (46W, using 22 LEDs).

GE believes that the modules address a problem in some professional lighting applications, which is that designers remain reticent about specifying LED everywhere in their schemes, with one critical reason being the difficulty in servicing and upgrading the luminaires.

The Infusion module is designed to be upgraded as required, since it can be connected to the luminaire body with a simple twist-lock mechanism, which provides the necessary thermal, electrical and mechanical connectivity.

The easy interchangeability has other benefits too. “One luminaire will accept a complete range of LED modules,” explains Phil Marshall, President & CEO for EMEA at GE Lighting. “This overcomes the inflexibility of integrated luminaires, giving retailers the ability to vary color temperatures, beam angles and light packages by simply swapping modules.”

At the launch event, attendees viewed a range of high-quality ProSpex downlights from Lucent Lighting which are built using the GE modules.

Attendees also learned a new term, “hot-swap protection,” which refers to protection against the surge current experienced when the LED module is connected to a live driver. The modules also have an onboard thermal protection feature that turns off the LEDs if the module gets too hot.

Thermal management is a key issue for the modules, especially when the output can reach 3000 lm. GE is working with various partners for both active and passive cooling solutions, namely AVC for heat sinks, Sunon for fans and Nuventix for synthetic jets. The performance figures quoted for the modules are recorded at a temperature of 65°C measured at a dedicated measurement point on the rear of the module.

GE is also offering an “Infusion Ultra” version, with a color rendering index (CRI) of 90, combined with 2-step color consistency, compared with a CRI of 80 and a 4-step color range. GE is using packaged LEDs from Cree, and uses a precise mix of different LEDs from different bins in each module to give the desired light output. This is the same approach used by Cree in its own EasyWhite LEDs.

The GE modules are designed to run from external electronic control gear. GE is in the process of qualifying a number of LED drivers as being compatible with its modules, from driver partners including AEG, Harvard Engineering, IST Ltd, Lightech, Roal Electronics and TCI. The 1100-lm and 1500-lm modules contain single LED strings and operate from 700 mA, while the 2000-lm and 3000-lm modules have two strings and require 1400 mA.

Unlike earlier versions, the modules are supplied without integrated optics. From May 2011 the modules will have an optical interface that will allow the attachment of reflectors via a twist-lock mechanism. GE plans to introduce a series of optical accessories with a range of beam angles in categories including spot, flood, wide flood and extra-wide flood.

FZLED Unveils A New Line of T8 LED Tube Lights with Newly Innovated Dimming Functionality

FZLED, maker of high-performance LED lighting products, today releases their new line of T8 LED Tube Lights. Available in two sizes, two feet (58cm and 60cm) and four feet (120cm), these high-performance LED tube lights are direct replacements for traditional T8 tubes and fit standard G13 sockets with an AC voltage range of 90-264V. FZLED’s commitment to R&D has enabled them to incorporate a creative dimming function into their T8 LED Tube Lights. This built-in feature allows the Tube Lights to function at 12%, 25%, 50%, and 100% of light intensity. The desired level of brightness is selected by pressing the on/off power switch multiple times. Uniquely designed dimming functionality, easy installation, and energy savings over fifty-percent make this new line of LED products ideal for residential, commercial, and industrial use.

“We are very proud of these new T8 LED Tube Lights. As the first company in the LED industry to incorporate switching dimmable IC technology into an indoor lighting product, FZLED is further demonstrating our commitment to innovation and exceptional quality.” – Alan Lin, CEO, FZLED

Both sizes of the T8 LED Tube Lights are available with or without FZLED’s newly innovated dimming function. Requiring no starters and with no need to remove traditional ballasts the FZLED T8 Tube Lights can be used by consumers immediately, without complicated installations. With lifetimes of at least 35,000 hours these high-quality LED lighting products are excellent for indoor, architectural, flood, and mood lighting.

Using Liteon 5050 SMD LEDs, the two foot long T8 LED Tube Light uses 12 watts of power and produces up to 850 luminous flux (lm) while the four foot long T8 LED Tube Light uses 22 watts and produces up to 1700 lm. Both sizes are available with bright 6000K CCT, softer 4000K CCT, or softest 3000K CCT. With high power-conversion ratios, replacing traditional T8 tubes with FZLED’s T8 LED Tube Lights can provide over fifty-percent in energy savings. Emitting no harmful UV or IR rays, using no mercury, and with significantly reduced CO2 emissions, compared to traditional T8 tubes, FZLED’s T8 LED Tube Lights are eco-friendly and a lighting solution that users can feel good about.

These high-quality T8 LED Tube Lights are currently available in Taiwan and Singapore. FZLED is excited to build relationships with more distribution partners in order to provide consumers around the world with their innovative, energy-saving, and high-performance lighting solutions.

Features
Energy Saving
No heat, No UV, or IR light radiation
Light source: SMD LED
Ra > 70 for cool white
Long lifetime > 35000 hours
G13 socket compatible
High power driver efficiency > 80%
Starter Free
No need to remove traditional ballasts
CE, FCC and ETL Approved

About FZLED
FZLED, founded in 2009, is a Taiwan-based developer and manufacturer of high-performance LED lighting products. As a sub-division of FZTech Inc., FZLED’s products have superior thermal designs using the existing know-how and expertise of FZTech. Committed to excellence, FZLED follows a strict TQC for the entire manufacturing process, and conducts R&D projects continuously in an effort to create LED lighting solutions that offer light-weight, high-quality, environmentally-friendly, innovative, and thermally-optimized products to consumers.

Pocket LED Penlight provides output of work light

Delivering 120 lumens, Pocket Floodlight(TM) features wide-angle light beam for up close use. Design provides clear, uniform light pattern, without hot spots and dark spots that are common to most flashlights. Measuring 6 in. long with 9/16 in. head diameter, Pocket Floodlight(TM) has glass lens and T6 aluminum body with black Type II anodizing. Threaded joints have rubber O-ring seals and tailcap switch is sealed with rubber cap.