Light Emitting Diodes or LED’s are touted as one of the most promising new technologies on the forefront of energy efficiency today.  So why is it that when I walk into a local superstore, I don’t see the walls lined with LED bulbs?  Here is a perspective from the Strategies in Light conference in Santa Clara, California…

The answer – according to experts at this week’s Strategies in Light conference in Silicon Valley – is that LEDs are still an emerging technology.  During a conference segment on “Overcoming Solid-State Lighting Challenges Today,” experts spoke of some of the many challenges LEDs still face – inconsistency in their manufacture, brightness output and wide-ranging, largely obtuse claims being made about their performance which may be true for some LEDs – but not for others.

According to experts attending the Strategies in Light Conference, LEDs with inconsistent quality are often widely found among those manufactured in mainland China.  For example, out of over 200 LEDs tested from 20 different vendors in China by a Humbolt University Project – over 80% did not meet brightness metrics claimed by the manufacturer and over 20% were only fulfilling about 10% of the brightness requirements.  Moreover, the widely made claim that you will get 50,000 hours out of an LED was at one point described as “NASA-quality” by a representative from a well-known silicon manufacturing company.

So what will we see from LEDs in 2008?  More performance, better output, more efficiency – but on top of that, managed expectations.  Over the past 5 years, LEDs have been widely publicized – but these publications have been often built on generating excitement and seldom detailed enough.  For example, what does 50,000 hours even mean?  In some LEDs that may be a hypothetical number that perhaps 10% of a batch may be able to achieve.  We will see better standardizations and better protections put in place so that your 2008 LED Christmas lights will hopefully come out looking pure clear white – not half white/green and half white/blue as with what happened to my family this past year!

Overall don’t lose faith in LEDs and if you go with LEDs be willing to pay for quality – it’s quality that gives the longer lifetime and higher efficiency.  Products which promise the same for less should be subject to your skepticism.