Meeting the Challenges of Higher-Power LED Lighting Applications

­The global lighting market is projected to reach $163.72 billion by 2027, up from $118.33 billion in 2019,  according to a recent report by Fortune Business Insights.  Of all the most popular lighting technologies available – LEDs, CFLS, HIDs, halogens, incandescent -- LEDs have the highest market share and are projected to continue to do so.

General-purpose LED lighting – residential, commercial, and industrial applications – is one of the two major markets for LEDs, with automotive being the other. New construction and retrofit comprise the biggest application areas, overall. It is possible to retrofit older fluorescent lighting fixtures with LED tubes without removing the ballast or, if desired, to remove the ballast and have the LEDs driven directly from the AC line. With these applications, end-users can immediately realize energy-efficiency cost savings after converting their lighting over to all-LED installations. On the industrial side, LEDs continue to displace higher-power lighting applications, by replacing streetlights, high-pressure sodium, and other arc-style lamps. A major trend is suppliers tiering – the billion-dollar club has a few players and if you don’t have critical mass it is going to be hard to play in this market. Due to advances in power electronics the fixtures are getting smaller and Horticultural lighting applications are growing fast.

Another major driver for the demand for LED lighting is the growing global population. Many areas of the world are installing solar systems that charge batteries during the day, and then power LED lighting in homes at night. In off-grid situations, some populations have no other options for lighting.

Along with the growth of higher-power LED applications are reliability requirements that come with them. Governments across the globe either now have – or will institute – regulatory standards for the efficiency of lighting products. In my experience, I have seen some lower-cost, non-name brand LED lighting products fall well short of projected long lifetimes. One of the many reasons for this disconnect is that reliability projections are only for products that are not in enclosed fixtures. However, it is hard to apply an LED lighting product in an outdoor, retrofit application without putting it in an enclosure. This leads to premature failure of the drive electronics that were designed to optimize cost. Even if such an LED lamp has a warranty, the cost to retrofit it far exceeds the cost of the replacement device, which will fail again. (Many of us have noticed streetlamps going in and out of the current limit - notice the lamps flashing.)

There is room for improvement in the LED lamp market when it comes to increasing reliability and features, especially in outdoor applications exposed to thermal cycling and temperature operating extremes not to mention transients and EMI-EMC concerns. App based controls are also entering a crowded market to differentiate LED products in a crowded market. Meeting these requirements while operating in the hyper-competitive ever evolving LED lighting market is a major challenge. But if you’re up to it, the opportunities are massive.