LED lighting is one of the fastest developing technologies in the world today and can be found in almost all applications where lighting is required.
From car headlights to torches, traffic signals to building flood lights; the huge surge in the popularity of LED Lighting is down to the unique properties that it offers.
LED is a more energy efficient, longer lasting, powerful and versatile lighting solution than any other technology available.
Notable Points
- Efficiency: LED’s produce more light per watt than incandescent bulbs. Their efficiency is not affected by shape and size, unlike Fluorescent light bulbs or tubes.
- Colour: LED’s can emit light of an intended colour without the use of the colour filters that traditional lighting methods require. This is more efficient and can lower initial costs.
- Size: LEDs can be very small (smaller than 2 mm) and are easily populated onto printed circuit boards.
- On/Off Time: LEDs light up very quickly. A typical red indicator LED will achieve full brightness in under a microsecond. LED’s used in communications devices can have even faster response times.
- Cycling: LED’s are ideal for use in applications that are subject to frequent on-off cycling, unlike fluorescent lamps that burn out more quickly when cycled frequently, or HID lamps that require a long time before restarting.
- Dimming: LED’s can very easily be dimmed either by pulse-width modulation or lowering the forward current.
- Cool Light: In contrast to most light sources, LED’s radiate very little heat in the form of IR that can cause damage to sensitive objects or fabrics. Wasted energy is dispersed as heat through the base of the LED.
- Slow Failure: LED’s mostly fail by dimming over time, rather than the abrupt burn-out of incandescent bulbs.
- Lifetime: LED’s can have a relatively long useful life. Typical ranges are 50,000 to 100,000 hours of useful life, though time to complete failure may be longer. Fluorescent tubes typically are rated at about 10,000 to 15,000 hours, depending partly on the conditions of use, and incandescent light bulbs at 1,000–2,000 hours.
- Shock Resistance: LED’s, being solid state components, are difficult to damage with external shock, unlike fluorescent and incandescent bulbs which are fragile.
- Focus: The solid package of the LED can be designed to focus its light. Incandescent and fluorescent sources often require an external reflector to collect light and direct it in a usable manner.
- Toxicity: LED’s do not contain mercury, unlike fluorescent lamps.