Graphene-on-SiC - ISOM

NEWS ANALYSIS
Lower cost LED lighting
Will Cree’s $10 LED light bulb end America’s
century-long incandescent love affair asks
Compound Semiconductor.
as inDUstrY antiCiPatEs an lED
market upturn, Cree has just unveiled a
new line of lower-priced, incandescent
look-alike bulbs that could speed the
recovery. Costing from $10, coming
with a ten year guarantee and offering
a similar light output to the much-loved
incandescent − but rated to 25,000,
not 1000 hours − the bulbs have been
developed specifically to kick-start
sluggish domestic lighting markets
across the Us.
as Cree’s vice president of corporate
marketing, mike Watson, told Compound
Semiconductor: “We didn’t think this
segment was moving fast enough so
we’re giving consumers a reason to
switch to lED lighting. they love the
shape and the light that comes out of the
incandescent so we’ve given them a bulb
that they are used to, at a price point they
will try.”
and the feedback is good. Described in
the MIT Technology Review as “the lED
bulb Edison would love” and reported
by many to “look like and light like” an
incandescent, this is a bulb that the
likes of Philips lighting and GE will find
difficult to ignore. the new line of lED
bulbs includes three models; a warm
white 60 W-equivalent 9.5 W bulb priced
at $ 12.97, a daylight 60 W-equivalent,
9 W bulb at $ 13.97, and a warm white
40 W-equivalent, 6 W bulb at $ 9.97.
Each has a colour rendering index of at
least 80 with both warm white versions
emitting a 2700K pleasant warm light and
the daylight bulb a cooler-looking 5000K
light.
meanwhile, the Philips lighting 60
W-equivalent incandescent copy cat,
delivers a cooler 3000K at 10 W for
$14.97, while the GE lighting equivalent
rings in at around $ 45. all bulbs promise
a lifetime of around 25,000 hours, a
long-term guarantee, but only the Cree
bulb hits that magic $10 figure. so how
does the lED heavyweight do it? a 40 W
bulb comprises ten of Cree’s phosphorconverted
high voltage Xlamp Xt-E lEDs
with the 60 W version containing twenty
of the same. Phosphor is applied directly
in the lED package to produce white
light. Pairs of lEDs are mounted around
the lamp’s heatsink with Cree calling
the entire vertical structure the Filament
tower.
“the lEDs are arranged in a parallel
configuration to get as close as possible
to the line voltage of the power supply,”
says Watson. “We can reduce the
component count on the driver, making
it simpler and lighter, and we need less
metal, helping us to replicate the look of
an incandescent bulb.”
indeed, Watson is keen to emphasise
the simplicity of its latest bulb. “We’ve
designed this 100 percent, and sourced
the necessary components,” he says.
“take it apart and you’ll see how
simple and elegant it really is. We
needed something that could fit into
this form factor and give you the look
of incandescent light, at a low enough
cost.”
Watson asserts ‘entire system’
breakthroughs − from the lED and power
supply to optics and design − have
been crucial to cutting costs but also
attributes the $10 figure to the company’s
structure. “We’re vertically integrated and
can adjust many variables at the same
time and better than if we were using the
traditional supply chain,” he says. Vertical
integration or not, many industry sources
believe Cree is onto something. Pars
mukish, analyst at Yole Développement,
believes the bulb will serve its purpose
and trigger greater consumer adoption in
the Us domestic lighting market.
“today’s main issue with lED lighting
for residential applications is the upfront
cost,” he says. “the incandescent
costs less than a dollar, the compact
fluorescent lamp costs between $3 and
$5 while the lED lamp, before this, was
between $15 and $40, depending on
geography and rebates offered.“
But of course the Cree bulb changes this.
and as mukish adds: “ in the previous
era of lEDs, it was all about increasing
Cree’s ‘Filament
Tower’ mimics
the filament of
an incandescent
light bulb
the lumen per watt. now it is all about
increasing the lumen per dollar... we
think [Cree has] a good strategy as the
potential volume triggered by residential
lighting will be a virtuous circle for the
company to continue decreasing costs.”
indeed, question Watson whether
the bulb could match the efficiency
and quality of past winners of the
Us Department of Energy’s l Prize
competition and he bluntly says: “the
l prize is fun, and industry rewards are
fun, but the prize that Cree wants is
consumer adoption.”
“the bulb is designed to meet Energy
star requirements but has also been
designed to be affordable with or without
that. it can pay for itself in about a year...
so without any rebate or government
regulation we have made the maths
work,” he adds. “anything else we do
on that [the efficiency] side will now just
make this even sweeter.”
so while the bulb is currently available
in home Depot stores across the Us,
what about the rest of the world? it
will have to wait. Watson believes the
greatest demand currently lies in the Us,
adding:“Europe uses a lot of recessed
track lighting whereas the Us market
already has a very large installed base of
a lamps.”
still Cree’s Us focus looks to be working;
the release of the products saw Cree’s
shares rise 13 percent to the highest level
in two years. We have yet to see if Us
consumers will snap up a $10 lED lamp,
but at the very least, Cree has brought
affordable lED lighting closer to home.
© 2013 angel Business Communications.
Permission required.
20 www.compoundsemiconductor.net April/May 2013