An LED light, as packaged by Bridgelux
Bill Watkins had a lot of career choices to consider after his surprise departure a year ago as chief executive of Seagate Technology. Now he's found his new focus-illumination. The veteran disk drive executive is the new chief executive of Bridgelux, a well-funded startup that is entering the market for solid-state lighting devices.
"Metal halides are the highest-quality light source. Conventional LEDs cannot put enough light in a small space to replace them," said Bridgelux president Mark Swoboda. "These light sources have every bit of the oomph to create enough light. They can pretty much duplicate what the high intensity discharge lights can do."
The ES and LS series, meanwhile, are geared toward replacing conventional compact fluorescents and incandescents. Bridgelux does not make complete bulbs or lamps. Instead, it provides the LEDs and all the electronics in an integrated package that others can assemble into a final product. Expect announcements in a few months that will try to increase the interoperability of LED components with the existing lighting industry.
"The light market is used to a socket and a bulb," said Swoboda.
Although it has been promised for years, the solid state lighting revolution finally appears to be close at hand.
For one thing, policy will dictate it: incandescents are already being
phased out in Australia and the EU; Canada, the U.S. and others will
follow with similar regulations that take effect from now through 2014.
Bridgelux, now based in Sunnyvale, Calif., has raised about $70 million already and is just announcing another funding round of $50 million, led by VantagePoint Venture Partners. The company plans to set up a new factory for making LEDs in Livermore, to the east of Silicon Valley.
Technology plays a role, too. High-end LED lamps have dropped 30 to 60 percent in price from a year ago, Swoboda said. The lower price, combined with the fact that LEDs require far less maintenance and energy, are making the economic argument attractive. Ideally, LED bulbs will cost around $25 in one to two years. (Today, a 60-watt equivalent can cost $40 or more.) Because the lights save around $15 in yearly electricity costs, demand is expected to escalate. The video here shows one of the first Bridgelux arrays.
Mark van den Berg, a VantagePoint managing director, estimates that LEDs are roughly ten times more energy-efficient than incandescent bulbs. They are also, unfortunately, much more expensive. Van den Berg says a consumer can buy an ordinary bulb for as little as two for fifty cents, where a decent fluorescent bulb for home use is $12.99 or so (low-quality versions are quite a bit cheaper, he allows), and an LED light is now $30.
"But it's on its way to ten bucks" within 12 months, he says, with companies like Bridgelux helping to improve the technology.Who will make it in LEDs?
It's hard to say at this point.
The company's light arrays do cut the price of LEDs, and in general,
Bridgelux is fairly well regarded. Other start-ups to watch include
Luminus Devices (large, bright LEDs), Lunera (sideways LEDs)
Renaissance Lighting (fancy fixtures) and D.Light Design. Entrenched players such as Philips Electronics, Cree, Toyoda Gosei,
Osram (known as Sylvania in the U.S.), and Nichia.
The challenge will come from multinationals -- General Electric, Philips, Osram, TSMC, Toshiba, Panasonic, Sharp, etc. -- who also want to dominate the market. Expect acquisitions and consolidation within a few years.
But LEDs aren't the only light technology coming to market.
Luxim announced it has created a street light around its plasma
light bulb that it says can save $145 per fixture. Luxim's bulb is
about the size of a Tic Tac, but it emanates about the same amount of
light as a spotlight. The light is generated by intensely focusing
energy on a small chamber of gases. Luxim originally marketed the bulb
to the projection TV industry, but that effort eventually died out.
