LED Lighting History (3) - Applications and affordability

What is the biggest concern of the customers about the LED? They don’t know the products, but we can educated them. Another biggest problem that the customer will consider even if they have known the LEDs well: can I save money from adopting LED lighting products in my house? So, the contractor should also learn something about the history of the affordability of the products. When the customer see that the price of LED lamps are dropping down and down, they will be very happy to use this new technology.

What do customers need to know about LEDs? The short answer for contractors to give customers is that LEDs are electronic components used in a variety of solutions that are already widely employed in traffic lights and supermarket refrigerator cases and are now increasingly being used for household lighting applications, such as led spotlight, which is what Holonyak predicted 48 years ago.

This last case is probably the most important potential opportunity for average electrical contractors today.

While LED lighting prices may remain an issue for many individual homeowners, industry observers expect it to change. And, it has already begun. As has been the case with virtually all solid-state products, economies of scale kick in, and price declines as manufacturing volume increases.

“LEDs have been around in various specialty product sectors for over a decade,” said Steve Briggs, vice president of global product development at GE Lighting. “But the technology really started to cross over into general illumination about two years ago. The market has evolved tremendously, and there have been advances in LED performance as well as reductions in cost. Initial installation investment is still a consideration at this time.

“But in the home, consumers can now economically replace incandescent and halogen bulbs with LEDs in situations such as LED downlight and accent lighting. They are also suitable for replacing linear fluorescents, which will probably happen very soon.”

“Pricing will continue to decrease starting at the LED component level,” said Steve Landau, director of marketing communications at Philips Lumileds Lighting Co., the parent company’s business unit focusing on developing illumination-grade LEDs as opposed to lower wattage products for signaling and signage.

And since energy saving is the acknowledged primary objective today for everybody from multinational corporations down to homeowners, serious consideration should be given to LED lighting, which is emerging as the energy-efficient and cost-efficient technology of choice over the long term.

Part of the problem is that allocation for lighting is often at the bottom of the budgeting food chain. So the contractor might well address the problem of mindset and priorities, not pricing.

“Unfortunately, in too many cases, lighting is left until the end of an installation project,” Landau said. “The contractor and homeowner customer will use whatever budget money is left to buy the lighting materials they can afford. Lighting needs to be treated as a critical part of the project in terms of the desired final objectives.”