What's Next for Solid State Lighting

October 1, 2006 – Vol.11 No.28

WHAT’S NEXT FOR SOLID STATE LIGHTING?

When light emitting diodes (LED) were first considered as a replacement for the venerable (but terribly inefficient) incandescent light bulb, LED proponents said that the solid state light engines would use ninety percent, or so, less energy than a comparable conventional bulb and would last for a decade or two. (Often longer than the fixture it was installed in.) Advances in technology would push prices downward, making them a near term competitor to the compact fluorescent bulbs and a long term competitor to conventional bulbs.

With due respect for the LED industry it is still in its infancy and the technology has a long way to advance, and probably will. But to date LEDs have not performed as originally promoted. Power consumption for a given light output is 25-30 percent that of incandescents thus about the same as compact fluorescents. Very good, but not great. Bulbs made with LEDs also remain very expensive, even compared with compact fluorescents.

Other issues remain unresolved with LEDs as well. The quality of light tends to range to nearer to blue-white rather than yellow-white that most people are accustomed to. Further, not all LEDs introduced for general lighting are dimmable, but neither are all compact fluorescents. As above however, the LED-to-replace-incandescent-lightbulb industry is really just getting going, so improvements are expected.

A group in Canada, however, is impatient with what they see as the slow pace of LEDs and has launched a research program to develop solid state lighting from silicon. The group, led by Group IV Semiconductors, says they can make a solid state light bulb that would have the same light output and the same light color as incandescent light bulbs and work in standard light fixtures. They too, like early LED claims, say that the solid state silicon light bulbs would use 90 percent less electricity than conventional incandescent. We’ll see.

The project includes EnCana Corporation and Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) and is expected to run for at least three years. EnCana is an oil and gas producer and SDTC is a foundation established by the Government of Canada to support the development and demonstration of clean technologies. McMaster University provided some of the funding to Group IV. Visit Group IV at http://www.groupivsemi.com/index.html