Status Quo of LED Street Lights and Opportunities for Future Development

It is predicted that 2014 to 2017 will be the replacement period of global LED outdoor lighting, and the number of global LED street lamps will increase by 4 times in the next five years.

Nowadays, governments of various countries have advocated energy-saving retrofit projects that replace traditional street lamps with LED street lamps, and further promoted them to second- and third-tier cities. Then the intervention of “wisdom lighting” has strengthened the advantages of LED street lamps and enabled them to use LED-saving technologies. On the energy-saving 10-20%, coupled with the help of the EMC model, it is accelerated the popularity of LED street lamps.

Even so, its popularity has not been as expected, especially this year LED street lamp speed is significantly lower than expected, slowing down. Is it influenced by objective factors such as the change of government and anti-corruption, or is subject to subjective factors such as LED street lighting technology and market price? To this end, interviewed Professor Liu Muqing of the Department of Light Source and Lighting Engineering at Fudan University to discuss the current status of LED street lamps and the opportunities for future development.

No specification into the biggest bottleneck of LED lights

At present, road lighting is still dominated by high-pressure sodium lamps, and LED street lamps have not really replaced it. In this regard, Liu Muqing said that from a technical point of view, compared with high-pressure sodium lamps, LED is more like nothing, such as the efficiency of the entire light, LED lights can reach more than 100lm / W, and high pressure sodium lamps even with lighting and Ballasts, can only reach 60-70lm/W at most, the luminous efficiency of LED has already surpassed the high pressure sodium lamp obviously, and from the price cost point of view, LED is not much higher than high pressure sodium lamp too.

However, Liu Muqing also admitted that, although from the technical level, the market price point of view, LED street lamp is not worse than the high pressure sodium lamp, but its popularity still needs a process. Specifically from the following three aspects:

First, the efficacy of LED street lamps is higher than that of high-pressure sodium lamps. This is just for technical reasons. In the market, the LED industry is currently in the early stages of development. There are more poor companies than good ones. This part of the "bad students" will cause the market to misunderstand LED street lights: "LED street lights are not good."

Therefore, how to let people know and accept LED street lights is still a good process;

Second, as the LED era continues to accelerate development, companies are increasingly aware of the importance of product quality, and continue to develop high-quality products. The quality of the overall market circulation products will increase.

Third, the standardization issue. Traditional high-pressure sodium lamps are simply composed of three types of parts: light bulbs, ballasts, and lamp housings. Bulbs are the most prone parts and they have a life expectancy of 1-2 years. Even if they are broken, they are replaced very much. Convenient, because it is a standardized product that can replace any manufacturer's light bulb.

In contrast, LED street lamps have different product specifications from their manufacturers. The replacement or repair of products at the later stage requires the same manufacturer to be found. Indirectly, the LED street lamps become monopolized by the enterprise. The non-standard product is the biggest bottleneck in the progress of LED street lamps. The establishment of standardized standards has become an urgent need for industrial development.

If the LED street light solves the above problem, the high pressure sodium lamp can fade out of the market. In theory, the promotion of LED in roads should be faster than indoor lighting, but due to the inertia of road lighting in the market, and the above-mentioned problems of standardization, its popularity has not been as expected. "But I believe that one day, the streetlight will be the spring of LED." Liu Muqing told the reporter of "New Century LED" that he hopes for LED street lamps.

In the past two years, the concept of smart lighting has been integrated to allow LED lights to add humanity. Liu Muqing pointed out that “when controlling street lights, fire sensors, cameras, information displays, and even human-machine interaction systems can be added. On the one hand, local sensors transmit information through the network to the monitoring office through these sensors; on the other hand, they monitor The center sends a variety of data to the LED lights and transmits the information.

Smart lighting is both a lighting system and a light sense to form an information network and data system for data collection, publication, and interaction. "In a nutshell, wisdom lighting is equal to smart lighting plus wisdom based on the lighting system. Liu Muqing speaks for itself.

As Liu Muqing said, the application of intelligent control systems to LED street lamps has increased in recent years. Many domestic and international street lighting companies have begun to devote to the research, development and production of smart LED street lamps, such as Philips, GE, Qinshang Optoelectronics, China Microelectronics, etc. .

User's recognition is the fundamental of standardization

At present, high-power LED lamps and lanterns adopt integrated integrated structures, and the lamps and lanterns can only be returned to the factory for repair or replacement after fault maintenance or the end of their service life. Failure to solve the standardization problem leads to slow development of the industry.

In response to these practical problems, Liu Muqing proposed a light source design idea for high-power LED lamps in 2009. Through the idea of ​​light source design, the lamps can be quickly maintained on site, and most of the components can be recycled, effectively extending the life cycle of LED lamps.

High-power lamps will lead the way in this modularization. But modularization is a long process because it needs to be based on continuous scientific research. At present, the standards for light components of Maimao, which is being vigorously introduced by the Guangdong Science and Technology Department, are embodying the concept of modularization, and the corresponding products have corresponding specifications.

Liu Muqing pointed out that the “domestic LED products do not have a fixed standard” is not accurate. First of all, as a light source application, that is, lighting, there is a complete standard system, and related units have also issued a number of national and industrial and local standards for LED lamps in recent years. However, at present, these standards do not play a role in the development of products.

“Compared to the standard, I prefer to use the term “norm”. LED is too flexible and the specification is very necessary. It can solve the monopolistic mode of individuals and benefit the development of the industry. But the specification must be based on scientific research and must be reasonable. I think that there are a lot of regulations that are head-braking and unreasonable, which has caused many companies to develop resistance."

It is undeniable that LED should completely replace traditional lighting and must be compatible, interchangeable, and modularized, standardized, and standardized in functional lighting applications. With the development of technology and the maturity of the market, the formulation of industry standards is imperative. The mature and perfect standards are the basic guarantee for the healthy development of the LED industry, and the constant voltage and constant current integration modular products will become the mainstream, and the products will also be Gradually increase the effectiveness of smart controls.

However, some SMEs raised the question of “standardization or product differentiation that cannot be reflected”. In this regard, Professor Liu Muqing said that the first thing that needs to be clarified is that the question of modularization and standardization is from the perspective of industrialization development, or from the perspective of SMEs. Obviously, no matter from which angle, the user's approval is the most fundamental. Users prefer products that are easy to operate and convenient to sell. Enterprises can continuously adjust products to meet the most basic needs of users, and the industry can continue to develop.

Non-visual lighting is a breakthrough for SMEs

“The purpose of a luminaire is generally lighting, so that you can see the illuminated object and even give it a warm effect, such as strong daytime light and soft evening lighting. But in addition, it has other applications, such as agriculture. Lighting, medical lighting, visible light communication, etc. These can be collectively referred to as non-visual lighting.” Liu Muqing briefly introduced.

Liu Muqing analyzed that many large companies have gradually invested in the development of agricultural lighting. For a time, agricultural lighting has been hotly fired, but it still requires a process from the actual popularization, because it still has two problems to be solved:

The first is which lighting mode to use is optimized.

LED is very flexible, can be adjusted in the spectrum of light irradiation, light intensity, irradiation time, irradiation light output mode (such as steady state / pulse, etc.), and what kind of light is good for plants, different plants to use What kind of light to illuminate is a scientific problem. If it is solved, the use of agricultural lighting can really move forward.

The second is that the cost of the price is too high.

At present, people in the industry are referring to agricultural lighting as a “tall” product because of the large power required, and the failure to achieve mass production leads to higher prices, which is also a big bottleneck for LED agricultural lighting.

"But I believe that these problems can be solved with the constant maturity of the technology. The application of agricultural lighting is very promising." Liu Muqing is very optimistic about the prospects of agricultural lighting.

LED applications in medical applications need to solve more problems because medical products involve people and are very rigorous. It takes a long time to test. Last year, Liu Muqing’s research team made a breakthrough in this regard and earlier launched a research result—the LED dental mirror has been officially tested by eight hospitals in Shanghai.

Liu Muqing also admitted that at present its price is relatively high, but this is not a general-purpose universal lighting, the price is not its focus, the need for profit must also look at the future of industrialization.

Speaking of how SMEs emerged from fierce competition, Liu Muqing gave a proposal: "You can consider special areas."

In his view, LED is very flexible, in addition to the application of functional lighting, such as road lighting, indoor lighting, etc., as well as a variety of applications in many market segments, such as medical lighting, beauty, fish light, dental mirror, gastroscope Wait. Because of its flexibility, it makes it very easy to enter some special areas.

For functional lighting, flexibility will result in product interchangeability issues, which need to be constrained in the form of specifications or standards. However, special areas do not need to be standardized, and LED's flexibility and malleability can be fully utilized. SMEs have great opportunities for development in this area.

Finally, referring to the trend of future lighting industry, Liu Muqing summarized the following three points:

First, LED will occupy the mainstream of lighting, and the realization of the time is not far;

Second, the flexibility of LED allows the future lighting market, not only limited to visual lighting, visual lighting and non-visual lighting will be the two major research and development direction of lighting;

Third, the combination of LED and digital technology will open the era of smart lighting.