Future Brightens for Non-LED Green Lighting

Safety concerns dim short-term prospects for LED lights

International trends in energy saving and carbon reduction have made it clear that LED lighting will become a dominant part of the next generation of lighting sources. But in the short-term, the national debt crisis that caused European and American markets to enter into a deep recession last year has darkened the overall market prospects for LED lighting products.

The lack of LED lighting safety standards has made consumers wary of using LED lighting products to replace their existing ones. Since around the second half of last year, the global LED light market has experienced an oversupply that has caused most LED lighting manufacturers to become conservative regarding market prospects. In general, the short-term market prospects are uncertain.

But this general uncertainty in the market does not mean that the global environmental trend of developing green energy industries has stopped. According to industry insiders, LED is only one of many kinds of green light sources. Others such as induction lighting or cold-cathode florescent lamps (CCFL) constitute the new generation of lighting sources. In a comparative sense, these technologies have been on the market for much longer than LED, and have not only reached maturity, but also have safety standards. Decades of marketing and sales have allowed profits to cover the R&D costs of most induction lighting or CCFL manufacturers. And the common safety standards and product specifications make these products suitable for mass production, which creates additional price advantages to these non-LED lighting resources. For instance, the current price of induction lighting is only half that of an LED bulb. Stable product quality and competitive prices have created wide applications for induction lighting in the international market.

According to induction lighting manufacturers, their products have much wider illumination angles and are suited especially to tunnels, factories, roads, bridges, parks, advertisement boards and other industrial commercial and agriculture lighting. However, since they are seldom used for home lighting, general consumers are not yet that familiar with them.

Features and Benefits
AMKO SOLARA Lighting Co. is one of Taiwan's major manufacturers of induction lighting technologies. Since it was established in 2005, the company has used induction lighting as the main light source for its products. Back in 2005, LED was still limited to industrial use. In comparison to traditional lighting sources, AMKO SOLARA's induction lighting products have advantages such as a long life cycle, high efficiency, fast start, no flickering, a wide color temperature range and adaptability to various climatic environments.

According to the company's CEO Michael Ng, the average life of induction lighting products is 100,000 hours, which constitutes a 40 percent savings in electricity in comparison to metal halide light bulbs. They are 13 times as energy efficient as incandescent lamps and twice as efficient as traditional energy-saving light bulbs. And fast start is one of the main features of induction lighting products: they light up as soon as users turn them on and in moments have the same effects as a hot bulb.

Another feature of induction lighting is that it has a wide and highly adaptable range of color temperature. Normal operations can occur between -24C and 40C, which satisfies the lighting needs of different locations. In addition to large-scale engineering projects, induction lighting is suitable for general hospitals and offices. As a result of its special characteristic of not flickering, induction lighting has become known as the "eye protector."

The inventor of induction lighting, Nikola Tesla (1856-1943), said: "Compared to traditional incandescent light bulbs, induction lighting is not only a more efficient light source. The rays of light it emits are softer and don't hurt your eyes. And it doesn't emit harmful radioactive rays."

Ng said "an induction light is similar to a fluorescent light in that mercury in a gas fill inside the bulb is excited, which emits UV radiation that in turn is converted into visible white light by the phosphor coating on the bulb. Another similarity to a fluorescent product is that the phosphor coating determines the color qualities of the light. Induction lamps do not use electrodes. The system uses a high-frequency generator with a power coupler instead of a ballast. And the generator produces a radio frequency magnetic field to excite gas fill." The life of an induction light is especially long since it does not have the problem of the tungsten filament or electrodes wearing out. Also called Light Voltage Directive (LVD), induction lighting is a green lighting source without positive or negative electrodes.

Another characteristic of induction lighting is that it is just as good as today's LED lighting products. In comparing the two, AMKO SOLARA listed the following induction lighting features:

1.Higher lumen and wider lighting angle.

2.Compared to a 20W LED light bulb, induction lighting has a higher energy saving rate.

3.Induction lighting remains at a relatively stable temperature, which helps extend its life cycle.

4.The cost of a process using induction lighting as its light source is about one-fifth to one-third of that of an LED system.

5.The color temperature of induction lighting is more stable than that of an LED lighting system.

6.In an environment over 17 C, the efficiency of an LED light bulb decreases as the temperature rises.

According to Ng, induction lighting is the best choice among the new generation of lighting sources in terms of technology and product functions. And the induction lighting market has already been recognized by industry experts such as Citibank which purchased a major stake of AMKO SOLARA's mainland-based subsidiary last year after a long period of observation and evaluation.

Prospects for LED Lighting
Ng said that as early as the 1980s when the international induction lighting safety standard was established, many internationally renowned large companies have used induction lighting. In contrast to induction lighting, LED lighting lacks the "shelter" of unified standard safety regulations. Currently, most LED manufacturers set their own standards. In the case of LED road lamps, for which governments on the two sides of the Taiwan Strait have set aside subsidies to stimulate market demand this year, unified standards have yet to be established.

The current market demand for LED lighting has been sluggish, Ng said. It has been affected both by the international economic recession and by the reality that LED lighting is in its initial stages of development where a few technological problems that have yet to be solved constrain the growth of the products. Examples of such technological problems are the small volume of bulbs – most LED lighting products are composed of numerous small LED bulbs – and that product quality is unstable. Also, the problem of LED lighting emitting heat has not yet been resolved, and the high price of products has become an obstacle to the expansion of the LED lighting market.

"Although both induction lighting and LED lighting are lighting products, each one has different basic attributes," Ng said. "In fact, each corresponds to a different kind of product." In the opinion of Ng, LED is an electronic product whose function, safety and use are controlled by semi-conductor chips. And it is for this reason that Ng is optimistic about the long-term development of LED lighting. According to Huang Ri-feng, a group leader at the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), "since LED lighting is controlled by semi-conductor chips, many additional functions can be added to it and the functions can be changed flexibly." In other words, the progress happening in the semiconductor chip technology will create more LED lighting use, which will provide LED lighting with unlimited possibilities for development.

When the LED lighting market had difficulties in the second half of last year, AMKO SOLARA searched for strategic partners in the LED lighting industry. Ng said that organic light emitting diodes (OLED) has potential as a light source, and that due to technological advances products manufactured with new technologies always emerge on the market, which both offers companies fresh product choices and benefits the end users.

CCFL
With a new generation of lighting sources to select from, Taiwan has focused on its development of CCFL. Through the efforts of the Industrial Development Bureau under the Ministry of Economic Affairs, the government has been actively promoting the growth of the green lighting industry. In 2009, ITRI formed the CCFL Alliance to strengthen the industry, which became responsible both for creating production standard regulations and for integrating up, mid and downstream manufacturers. In this way, the CCFL market has become a way for Taiwan to have an influential role on the international stage.

"The CCFL lighting industry gives new hope to Taiwan's lighting business," Huang said. "It could really be another field in which Taiwan becomes the world leader in production." According to Huang, the ITRI-led CCFL Alliance was formed to provide assistance to its more than 20 members in technology, marketing and other fields.

Taiwan's major CCFL manufacturers, such as TOA Optronics Corp., Wellypower Optronics Corporation, Delta Electronics, Sintronic Technology and Gio Optoelectronics Corporation, account for one-third of total global production. Taiwan's main competitors in the international market come from Japan and Korea.

Industry insiders have said that CCFL was originally used as back lighting, and after improvements in research and development it was successfully transformed into a lighting source. In comparison to traditional incandescent light bulbs, CCFL is another new type of light source with a simple structure: its light tubes are thin, the bulbs have a long life and emit bright, low ultraviolet rays, there is no flicker, and the change in surface temperature of the light tubes is small.

According to Darfon Electronics, CCFL can save about 25 percent more energy than traditional florescent lighting, and its low-temperature helps not only extend the light tube's life (a CCFL light tube's life is around 50,000 hours, about four times as long as that of a traditional florescent light tube), but also reduce the energy consumption of central air conditioning.

However, in recent years the increasing use of LED lighting (which as a lighting source is transformed from back light) has become a threat to the future success of the CCFL light tube. According to observations by industry insiders based on the development of LED lighting technology, LED and CCFL efficiency parameters are highly correlated.

Considering that LED technology undergoes constant improvements, in the long-term it could become a higher quality product than CCFL light tubes. But currently, LED lighting is still in its initial stages of development, with lots of problems yet to be solved. In contrast, the short-term future of the CCFL light tube market appears to be stable and optimistic.