Top Things to Know About LEDs
- A light-emitting diode, or LED, is a type of solid-state lighting that uses a semiconductor to convert electricity into light. Today’s LED bulbs can be six-seven times more energy efficient than conventional incandescent lights and cut energy use by more than 80 percent.
- Good-quality LED bulbs can have a useful life of 25,000 hours or more -- meaning they can last more than 25 times longer than traditional light bulbs. That is a life of more than three years if run 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
- Unlike incandescent bulbs -- which release 90 percent of their energy as heat -- LEDs use energy far more efficiently with little wasted heat.
- LEDs are used in a wide range of applications because of their unique characteristics, which include compact size, ease of maintenance, resistance to breakage, and the ability to focus the light in a single direction instead of having it go every which way.
- LEDs contain no mercury determined that LEDs have a much smaller environmental impact than incandescent bulbs. They also have an edge over compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) that’s expected to grow over the next few years as LED technology continues its steady improvement.
- The first visible-spectrum LED was invented by Nick Holonyak, Jr., while working for GE in 1962. Since then, the technology has rapidly advanced and costs have dropped tremendously, making LEDs a viable lighting solution. Between 2011 and 2012, global sales of LED replacement bulbs increased by 22 percent while the cost of a 60-watt equivalent LED bulb fell by nearly 40 percent. By 2030, it's estimated that LEDs will account for 75 percent of all lighting sales.
- In 2012, about 49 million LEDs were installed in the U.S. -- saving about $675 million in annual energy costs. Switching entirely to LED lights over the next two decades could save the U.S. $250 billion in energy costs, reduce electricity consumption for lighting by nearly 50 percent and avoid 1,800 million metric tons of carbon emissions.
- The chips can either be purchased ready-encapsulated from the chip original manufacturer or the lighting manufacturer can buy the naked chip and encapsulate them in-house. Either way this must be done properly otherwise it can have a devastating effect on the performance of the chip.
- The performance or grade of chip is usually defined by how many lumens per watt it can achieve, but there is another, often overlooked factor in how good the chip is, CRI.
- Chip may well be 125 lum/watt the whole fixture, including driver goes in, but it certainly won’t be the same when the light comes out of the finished product, the fixture, it will be nearer 80 lum/watt.