The Future of LED: 150 Lumens per Watt by 2020
One of the most common problems associated with the LED bulb industry is that it is trying to take too much control of the market too soon. For instance, before it is sufficiently cheap enough for ordinary working people to afford, and before the technology is as good as it potentially can be. Naturally, however, to decrease the price of LED bulbs and to increase their power and efficiency, you need to increase the number of the bulbs in the marketplace and in consumers’ homes. In other words, the process is iterative.
Reading the Future
With that in mind, it’s safe to say that the maximum potential of the LED technology won’t be reached for a long time to come. However, the U.S.’s energy monitoring research group – the Energy Information Administration (EIA) have claimed that by 2020, an average given LED will produce more than 150 lumens per Watt.
When you compare this figure to the output of a regular LED now – around 83 lumens per Watt, you can see that the efficiency of the technology is set to almost double by the end of the current decade. This is not a trivial prediction.
150 Lumens in Context
Some argue that current LED technology is not worth the financial cost – that the double cost of an LED bulb compared with a standard halogen incandescent lamp is not worth the investment. Unfortunately, even these statements are incorrect, and there is a mass of data which suggests that the efficiency of current LED technology is over double that of the comparable halogen candescent bulbs.
A regular candescent bulb produces around 16 lumens per Watt and has a lifetime of 1,000 hours. Compare this with the standard for LED technology, where bulbs output 83 lumens per Watt, and have a lifespan of up to 30,000 hours.
As you can see, there is barely any comparison to be made between the two technologies, even today. The only potential downside of purchasing LED bulbs now is their initial cost. By 2020, however, with efficiency over-doubling what it is at now, there will be even less of an incentive to go with halogen bulbs.
Incentivising the LED Switchover
The remaining barrier for LED tech, it therefore seems, is pricing. To defeat this issue, there will need to be a conceited effort from all sides to help everyday people see the potential in LED bulbs versus older, less efficient kinds like halogens. The first step is education. Many people will convert simply because of the green benefits of the technology, while others will convert because of the long-term money-saving potential for LED bulbs.
On top of these basic educational points, pressure should be exerted top-down from the state to ensure that people conform to the change to LED uniformly. The British Government has already got the proverbial ball rolling, enforcing a ban on the stocking of UK-produced non-LED bulbs in retail environments. The aim there is to reduce the number of non-LED bulbs available to purchase in store, but unfortunately this leaves the potential for retailers to import halogens from abroad. Perhaps this is part of the government’s plan – to ensure that Britain continues to produce high quality LED bulbs which generate income at home and abroad (through export), while allowing Britain to import global, cheap bulbs. Hopefully, the government will see past this to the potential of an LED-only Britain soon.
Ultimately, the future of LED technology is encouraging, with the efficiency of the technology set to increase dramatically in a few short years. Despite this, more needs to be done to improve the affordability of the technology, with a potential answer to the problem being increased circulation through various forms of encouragement.
One of the highest energy efficient LED products reached 173 lumens per watt in 2019 with an impressive 4W per metre LED tape. The lumens per metre is 680, divided by 4 watts, gives you an efficacy of 170 lumens per watt.
