Why LED lights are hard to enter into the home

The invention of the electric light brought more light to human beings. With the advancement of science and technology, the family electric light has undergone several generations of development: the first generation is an incandescent light (tungsten lamp), and the second generation is a fluorescent light. Three generations are compact fluorescent lamps (energy-saving lamps), and the fourth generation is LED lamps. At present, incandescent lamps gradually withdraw from the historical stage (some countries no longer produce incandescent bulbs), and energy-saving lamps through continuous improvement, performance is gradually improved and the price is reduced, due to its better energy-saving effect, the government vigorously promoted, has now become a family The main lighting. The development of LED lamps is very fast, and has been widely used in LED backlighting (mobile phones, televisions, computers), bright projects, automotive interior and exterior lighting, commercial lighting, and industrial lighting, and LED lamps have been used in homes. Less, this article will explore why LED lights are difficult to get into the home.

LED and Driver Development Overview The main electronics of LED lamps are white LEDs and their associated drivers. Here is a brief overview of their development.

The lighting LED is a white LED. The market for white LEDs will be exactly 10 years in 2011. In the past 10 years, white LEDs have been continuously improved and improved in terms of materials, structure, and technology, which have made significant progress in performance and increased varieties, and the price has declined year by year. For example, four years ago, white LEDs had luminous efficiencies of 40-601 m/W, two years ago they increased to 80-100 lm/W, and this year they reached 1201 m/W, and some of them exceeded 1201 m/W. In the white LED just listed, a Φ5, 0.06W white LED to 2 ~ 3 yuan / month, and now, 2 ~ 3 yuan can buy 1 ~ 3W high-power white LED. 3 years ago, the top brand 3W white LED in foreign countries was about RMB 30 per unit, but this year it dropped to about RMB 10 per unit, and the unit price was RMB 6 when ordering large quantities.

The increase in the production of LED lamps has led to the development of driver ICs. Each semiconductor device factory has produced a variety of LED lamp driver ICs to meet the needs of the market. The LED driver ICs for AC mains supply also have a power factor correction circuit (PFC) that enables a power factor of >0.95 and an efficiency of >85%. Many companies produce finished driver modules with different output power (from a few W to several tens of W), and the output current accuracy is better than ± 5%, making the production of LED lamps easier.

The development of LED and LED drivers creates excellent conditions for the design and production of LED lamps and reduces the production costs of LEDs.

The main application of LED lights in home applications LED lights is landscape lights. It has taken the limelight at the Beijing Olympics, the Shanghai World Expo, and the Guangzhou Asian Games, making these venues more colorful, brighter and more beautiful. The magnificent scenes are astonishing, cheering, and agitating. The results are excellent.

At present, indoor lighting is mainly used in commercial lighting, used in shopping malls, exhibition halls, arenas, entertainment venues, bars, cafes, hotels and catering. It has both lighting and decorative features. In general, LED lights in homes are rarely used and basically have not yet started. Only a few families have some reading lamps, table lamps, bedside lamps and small spotlights for decoration. Some 2~3W LED bulbs (most of them are E27 standard lamp holders) are used in the kitchen, bathroom, balcony and corridor.

LED lights are more energy-efficient than energy-saving lamps. Today, energy saving and emission reduction are strongly advocated. Why is it difficult for LED lamps to enter millions of households?

It is difficult to enter the home of several difficult LED lights why it is difficult to enter the family, here put forward some superficial views. These difficulties include:

1. The retail price is too high to be acceptable (not only for rural residents, even for urban residents). The current price of LED lamps is the highest compared with energy-saving lamps and incandescent lamps, as shown in Table 1.

Table 1 is only a general price, not including high-end product prices. For example, Philips 5W LED bulbs to 135 yuan / month, a factory in Guangdong production of 3 to 5W LED bulbs actually 155 yuan / month.

2. The production technology of high-grade LED has a certain distance compared with foreign countries. Some cutting-edge production technologies are in the hands of foreigners. There are a lot of factories that produce LED in China, but most of them are package factories (wafers are imported, and domestic companies do cutting and packaging work). Most of the profits fall into the pockets of foreigners, and the price of LED is also controlled by them.

3. The production of energy-saving lamps has a history of more than 30 years. Not only has the production scale been formed, but also a large number of exports have been made. Now it is not only able to produce 5~13W energy-saving lamps commonly used in homes, but has developed low-power 3W energy-saving lamps year after year, and has developed 100~200W high-power energy-saving lamps, and its quality has also improved. For example, its life has exceeded 6000 hours. 6 years service life. In order to achieve energy-saving and emission reduction, the government advocates replacing incandescent lamps with energy-saving lamps. The government implements energy-saving lamp subsidies and promotes the "green lighting project" of energy-saving lamps. The production time of LED lamps is not long, and there are not many enterprises that have formed a production scale, and there are fewer companies that produce home-use lamps. At present, most companies that produce LED lamps have small scales, and some still produce workshops. The production equipment and technology are backward and the quality is difficult to guarantee.

4. At present, some enterprises that produce LEDs in order to reduce production costs, lack of safety protection devices on the circuit, it is easy to cause over-voltage, over-current failure so that the LED lamp is damaged, that is, poor reliability. Although LEDs have a long life of 50,000 hours, they often fail in practical applications for less than a few thousand hours. In addition, there are some LED manufacturers use LED light fade too much, and in less than a few months, the brightness of LED lights have a greater reduction, that is, some LED lights do not really pass.

5. At present, the market of LED lamps is chaotic, and low-quality and low-cost LED lamps flood the market (three non-products). This not only causes the buyer to suffer economic losses, but also causes a distrust of the quality of LED lamps; on the other hand, it adopts high quality for regular use. As for the LED lights produced by components and components, low-quality and low-cost LED lights have made it difficult for them to sell.

6. Investors' concern is that production costs must be reduced to mass production (eg, monthly production of 50,000 to 100,000 LED lamps, or a greater amount). Large-scale production, advanced equipment, and large-scale plants are required, but the investment is large, but currently The market for LED lamps for home use has not yet been established. The establishment and development of the market will take a long time, and if a large amount of capital is invested, the recovery time of the funds will be longer and it will take more risks. This is one of the concerns. At present, the quality of LED lights (especially reliability) is not very satisfactory, and the price is too high, not a hot commodity. This is the second concern. Thirdly, the current market is chaotic and sales are difficult. Investors believe that LED lights are a good product with promising development and a relatively large market, but they are still waiting to see. Some of these investors have invested in the production of commercial LED lamps or industrial and mining LED lamps. These lamps have higher profits (unit purchases, non-personal purchases), and many of them are produced after orders are received, and the investment risk is small.

Concluding remarks require LED lights to enter millions of homes, to improve a lot of work, including: LED's own further increase in luminous efficiency, light fade further reduced, which can reduce the cost of LED and improve the quality of LED lights; improve the reliability of the drive circuit, To make the life of the LED lamp really reach 30,000 hours; the application and promotion of the LED lamp in the home must also be supported by the government, because the LED lamp is more energy-efficient than the energy-saving lamp; to rectify the LED lamp market, it is strictly prohibited that the inferior low-cost LED lamp (three no Product) listed.