LED Lamps, Their Future is Really Bright! (4)

According to the DOE, rapid progress will continue as the agency, along with its industry partners, pushes this technology to its efficiency limit, which is expected to be reached by about 2015. Properly designed LED luminaires will achieve efficacies of about 138–188 lumens per watt or LPW, or 10 to 14 times that of incandescent lighting. In addition, the DOE expects that LEDs will continue to fall in price as new and better ways to package and manufacture them are perfected.

Contractors should not underestimate the effect that LEDs are going to have on future projects. According to Hamburger, a February 2011 solid-state lighting fixture report from Strategies Unlimited, predicts that the LED lighting market will grow to $8.3 billion by 2014, with a CAGR for the solid-state luminaire market to be 21 percent from 2010 through 2014. The report, “LED Luminaires Market Analysis and Forecast Second Edition 2011,” states that improvements in performance and the price of commercially available high brightness LED packages, heightened concerns regarding energy efficiency, and the phase out of incandescent lamps, have combined to create favorable conditions for acceptance of the technology.

Based on multiple market analyses and proprietary, internal growth rates, Briggs expects the LED lamp market to grow 50 to 65 percent over the next three years, which by anyone’s reckoning should translate into a great deal of LED work for electrical contractors. And while Toshiba wouldn’t share any specific numbers, DallePezze said that the company is so confident that LEDs will become the prominent technology in the lighting market within five years that it stopped making incandescent sources a couple of years ago.

The debate really can end; there’s no longer any doubt that the future will be an energy-efficient one, and LED lighting are certain to play a pivotal role in achieving it. The technology’s few remaining limitations will be surpassed soon, and LEDs will be widely adopted as the light source of choice by a cross-section of society. Electrical contractors should be on the leading edge of that wave.