The Future of Lighting?

This is going to be the future of lighting around the world, but it must first deal with the issue of cost. As the price comes down, LED lights will supplant incandescent bulbs and the much maligned CFLs. Eventually.

L.E.D.’s, including new bulb types and applications, dominated the exhibits at Lightfair, the lighting industry’s annual trade event held in May in Las Vegas. Traditional tungsten bulbs were largely absent. L.E.D.’s were shown for street and parking lot lighting, under-counter lighting, residential bulb replacements and office lighting. They are being used in commercial refrigerators, as substitutes for fluorescents and for illuminating the outside of buildings, allowing for easy color changes. Television production studios are installing L.E.D.’s to save money and eliminate the need for climbing in the rafters to change bulbs or filters.

The problem, though, is the price. A standard 60-watt incandescent usually costs less than $1. An equivalent compact fluorescent is about $2. But in Europe this September, Philips, the Dutch company dealing in consumer electronics, health care machines and lighting, is to introduce the Ledino, its first L.E.D. replacement for a standard incandescent. Priced at $107 a bulb, it are unlikely to have more than a few takers.

“L.E.D. performance is there, but the price is not,” said Kevin Dowling, a Philips Lighting vice president and past chairman of the Next Generation Lighting Industry Alliance, an industry group that works with the Department of Energy. “Even at $10 to $15, consumers won’t buy L.E.D. bulbs,” Mr. Dowling said.

It's working its way into more commercial applications, and as production techniques improve, the costs will continue to drop to the point where it will compete with CFLs as a replacement choice for the ubiquitous incandescent bulb.

Phillips is not devoting any of its substantial research and development budget to CFLs, and is instead focusing on LED technologies. They view CFLs as an interim technology, and I tend to concur, though if a manufacturer could develop CFLs that use no mercury in their lamps, they might assuage fears of many over the possibility of contamination of the surrounding area should the CFL lamps break.