Can LEDs Take Over Lighting Market?

I agree...their are problems always with cost when change is apparent.

So the end goal is needed to be understood.

WATTS DIVIDED BY MONEY= CHANGE?

Yes LED's can change almost everything we know about lighting as we know it. Why ? Well since the late 1990's I have been using LED's for architectural lighting in homes, restaurants, bars, clubs, and yes the cost is the largest concern for most of my clients.

The upside is the decrease in power consumption, longer life expectancy, and controllability. I have the opportunity to create any color I want in the spectrum, control it intelligently (DMX protocol) and I can do a retrofit or new installation with entirely low voltage wiring, using about half the copper.

The upstart cost are higher, but the savings are immeasurable in the long run. At this point, I am developing LED lighting systems with integrated solar power which further decreases power consumption. One day I hope to eradicate fluorescent and incandescent lighting in all of my installations.

The future of LED is bright my friends. Do not sleep on it. here's a link: http://www.csoulpro.com/LED_Lighting_Systems.html

Your thinking exactly matches my own but I am not technically trained or experienced and not commercially involved. I make that statement to encourage you to keep us up to date on the LED lighting subject. I am most interested in the solar powered LEDs as I live on the southern Nevada desert with a lot of sun hours and days.

I'm think about using LEDs in my new home. Where can I get the LEDs?

Having worked with LEDs for over 10 years now, I am convinced that LEDs are ready for prime time. However, this is a new light source, and as such, has issues that have never before been experienced and have to be absorbed by the lighting world before they can be fully understood. One really has to understand issues such as color temperature, CRI and correlated CRI, metamerism, consistency, stability, junction temperature, forward voltage, constant current, beam angles and all the radiometric and photometric units. Metrology is one thing, but understanding what the numbers mean and how they affect color rendering and perception is another! I have heard about standards and testing and conflicts between the DOE and EPA relating to solid state lighting. I have attended many technical and consumer oriented trade shows such as LEDs 2007 and LightFair. I have attended conferences and had the privilege of listening to many talented speakers. I have seen specifications for LEDs and luminaries which are not worth the paper they are printed on. I have learned through experience that in order to really understand LEDs, one has to have a broad knowledge of and hands-on experience with a host of parameters which LED manufacturers, luminary designers and lighting designers are barely coming to grips with. And one has to keep up with the rapidly advancing technology!

So yes, LEDs are ready for prime time. Yes, costs need to decline. Yes, there will be real operating cost reductions. Yes, LEDs are environmentally friendly. But remember that LEDs are different from any other light source and to optimize their effectiveness, one really has to have a good all-round understanding of technology, metrology and color. Then one can advance in leaps and bounds.

In my opinion, they have a long hill to climb and probably won't take over the entire lighting market anytime in the foreseeable future. I started with LEDs for automotive exterior lighting over 16 years ago and they are just now beginning to become more commonplace on non-luxury vehicle exterior lighting, but still don't make it into a majority of vehicles.

There are a few niche applications for LEDs but mass adoption for general lighting applications are years away. LED's costs are very high and their efficacy isn't much higher, or in some cases is still lower, than a lot of the technologies they aim to replace. The venerable fluorescent tube lamps used in reasonably well designed luminaires have efficacies (as high as 80 lumens/watt) that exceed most of the LEDs out there and HID sources used in street lighting and such have efficacies that beat current LEDs (as high as 110 lumens/watt). Until the cost comes down signifcantly on the led device prices themselves, they will have a hard time making inroads towards mass adoption because they will be relegated to applications where the cost difference can be made up in reduced maintenance costs or premium installations where the electronic features (color control, intensity,etc) can be sold at a premium.

Yes, LED lighting will take over a significant section of the market. I was a Research engineer in fluorescent lighting for Osram Sylvania and the competitive pressure is very real. The issues are still being considered, but Europe is in love with the LED and it is the primary replacement for incandescent in hundreds of applications all around us. Have you looked at your traffic lights recently? I haven't seen an incandescent traffic light in 5 years.

Part of the problem is that ramping up LED manufacturing to a high level is counter productive because they last so long. What do you do with the manufacturing equipment after the market is flooded with these long life products? Increasing the life of a general purpose product by a factor of 5 to 10 times suddenly has bad repercussions on those who rush into production. Consider that we didn't really have much to choose from in the form of electronic ballasts until about 2002. What took so long? We had to be forced to give up our coil winding, magnetic ballast making machines in the interest of efficiency.

It will happen. Nobody is in a hurry (except where energy costs are high, like Europe)because they have to get a little more use out of the old equipment. Making LED's is a little like making IC chips. Not your ordinary light bulb....

See here: www.elecosn.com

Here are dimmable LED Bulb, and LED incandescent bulb

I can't believe this is even in question. They cost less to operate (over time, time=money), they generate far less heat (so the DEA can't even pick up on your ganja crops with infrared anymore), and they come in way cool psychedelic colors (to better any trip). On a serious note, does anyone remember how expensive TFT screens were to produce back in the day? I believe the demand will drive the sales causing a necessary increase in supply. This is when companies start looking into more efficient and less time consuming ways to manufacture LEDs in order to sell more of them at a more rapid pace (and ultimately, a lower cost to the consumer). It was the same way for inflatable dates, remember? They'll be selling inflatable dates with LED nipples soon, watch and see!!!