LEDs are becoming the technology of choice for color lighting applications due to their efficiency, design flexibility, and reliability. LEDs can be expected to dominate these applications as LED efficiency improves, prices come down, and customers become more accustomed to using them. White LEDs are also increasingly being used instead of conventional sources in low wattage applications where LED attributes outweigh their higher cost. LEDs have also enabled applications which are not viable with conventional sources. It seems clear that LEDs will continue to find more applications in this area, and will likely dominate the long term. LEDs have not yet made significant penetration into the general illumination market. The key barriers are efficiency and cost. There is worldwide interest and governmental support aimed at enabling LEDs to substantially penetrate the general illumination market. Energy savings is the primary motivation. There appears to be no fundamental barrier which will prevent LEDs from achieving 150+ lumens/watt performance increase and 100x $/lumen cost reductions. If this can be done LEDs will truly disrupt technology for general illumination. There is no way to know when this might happen, but if the rate of progress that has been made in the past decade continues for the next decade LEDs should be an important technology for energy savings and general illumination before 2020.
展开▼
