How long till we see 500 lumen LED's?

How long till we see 500 lumen LED\'s?

I have been thinking lately how nice it would be to have an LED light that performed like the SF M6 in terms of output and throw. How far are we from this technology? a few years?
I think I will still have a place for my current M6's but it sure would be nice not to ever need to worry about bulbs again, and to have it regulated. Is it really that hard to make an extremely powerfull LED or are they just taking their time to get there since it is the most profitable way to do it?
Input appreciated. Thanks, CPFer's /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Re: How long till we see 500 lumen LED\'s?

by the time 500 lumens rolls around, the advancement in driver board design coudl mean multi level lumen output from one flashlight and it probably runs off li ion /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Re: How long till we see 500 lumen LED\'s?

At the current level of LED efficiency, thermal issues will make it hard to make a practical LED brighter than the 5-watt Luxeon emitters. The promise of LEDs comes from their potential for improved efficiency. Currently available white LEDs have about the same efficiency as an incandescent lamp (around 10%), but the incandescents are already operating close to their maximum theoretical efficiency, while the maximum theoretical efficiency for LEDs (at least for single-color emitters) is 100%.

What if white LED efficiency never gets better than, say, 50 percent? That still means that the LEDs will be 5 times as efficient as incandescent bulbs. The advantage of this higher efficiency will allow you to have a flashlight that either a) emits five times as much light with the same power consumption, or b) emits the same amount of light with a much lower power consumption. And since the newer LEDs will be converting less of their power into heat, there will be fewer engineering problems with heat dissipation.

So the short answer is: don't expect super-high output LEDs until the efficiency greatly improves.

Re: How long till we see 500 lumen LED\'s?

Current LEDs are roughly 12% efficient (~30 lm/W). This means an LIII run at spec (700 mA) consumes about 2.4W of power and produces about 2.1W of heat (which the package dissipates) while producing 65 lumens of light. Let's say we get the efficiency up to 60% (150 lm/W). Now we can run that same LED at the 3.5W power level and still produce the same 2.1W of heat at the die. 3.5W at 150 lm/W translates to 525 lumens. Therefore, the short answer to your question is when efficiency goes up by a factor of at least five. I would personally say we'll reach that mark by the end of the decade, and eventually probably hit 80 or 90% (the last few percent gains in efficiency will likely take much longer). A 90% efficient white LED (~225 lm/W) with the same heat dissipating capacity as the LIII can be run at the 21W power level, and would produce close to 5000 lumens.

Re: How long till we see 500 lumen LED\'s?

Lumileds is predicting 75L/W for 2007, and 150L/W for 2012. Looks very promising according to a presentation I found at:
Lumileds presentation @ solid state lighting Workshop 11/2003

They are experimenting with blue+phosphor, and multi-color LED mixing for future white light producing LED based lighting. Due to the problems with AlGaAs red LEDs (they don't like heat), there is mention of research on GaN RED LEDs!! That's interesting. There's also some tantalizing slides implying Nichia and Lumileds are indeed sharing technology (especially on light extraction from the LED die) and this will probably greatly accelerate improvements. They are also expecting prices to fall. This is all good news for us!

Re: How long till we see 500 lumen LED\'s?

i rather se a ls that pruduces 5 watts of light but uses around 1 watt or less that would be so sweeet

Re: How long till we see 500 lumen LED\'s?

If they come out with 500 Lumen LEDs, I am not going to look at them !

Re: How long till we see 500 lumen LED\'s?

[ QUOTE ]
php_44 said:
Lumileds is predicting 75L/W for 2007, and 150L/W for 2012. Looks very promising according to a presentation I found at:
Lumileds presentation @ solid state lighting Workshop 11/2003



[/ QUOTE ]
I highly recommend the above link even for slow dialups [1.6MB!]. There is enough good stuff there to give any LED enthusiast a woodie.

Re: How long till we see 500 lumen LED\'s?

[ QUOTE ]
php_44 said:
Lumileds is predicting 75L/W for 2007, and 150L/W for 2012.

[/ QUOTE ]

A few months ago, someone estimated that the theoretical maximum is somewhere near 300 L/W. Getting 150 L/W in a few years would be impressive!

Re: How long till we see 500 lumen LED\'s?

our futures so bright we gota wear shades /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbsup.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbsup.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbsup.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbsup.gif

Re: How long till we see 500 lumen LED\'s?

have you guys seen the detroit auto show preveiw ? . they had LED headlamps on one of the cars

Re: How long till we see 500 lumen LED\'s?

An X bin 5 watter puts out 192 to 249 lumens at stock 700mA drive levels. Maybe by 2006, the premium LEDs will become available at close to 500 lumens... Maybe McGizmo, Mr. Bulk, Lambda, dat2zip and others on this forum will build one that burns holes through walls. The race is on...

Re: How long till we see 500 lumen LED\'s?

[ QUOTE ]
Doug S said:
[ QUOTE ]
php_44 said:
Lumileds is predicting 75L/W for 2007, and 150L/W for 2012. Looks very promising according to a presentation I found at:
Lumileds presentation @ solid state lighting Workshop 11/2003



[/ QUOTE ]
I highly recommend the above link even for slow dialups [1.6MB!]. There is enough good stuff there to give any LED enthusiast a woodie.

[/ QUOTE ]

The graph of output at a Tj of 100C (page 17) conflicts with the output vs. temperature graphs in the luxeon emitter data sheet. At 100C, the green shows 70% of output, but the presentation graph states 90+. Likewise, the graphs in the datasheet show a red at 100C being at 50% output, whereas the presentation graph states 70%.

Which to believe? The presentation may represent performance given process improvements, and thus, newer information. Though it is strange to see such a big difference.

Re: How long till we see 500 lumen LED\'s?

Darin, that caught my eye too. Maybe the datasheets do not reflect improvements? Vaguely related, I notice for the white luxeons, there has been a trend over time that the efficiency vs current slope has flattened but none of the revisions to the datasheets reflect this.

Re: How long till we see 500 lumen LED\'s?

Another interesting thing has been going on - I've seen several manufacturers getting into the high power LED market:
<ul type="square">
[*]ISP is producing 1W LEDs in green, blue, UV, white.
[*]Nichia is producing high power whites (1.2W)
[*]OSRAM's "golden dragon" 1 watt amber and yellow LEDs
[*]Roithner Lasertechnik has 0.6w LEDs
[*]Microsemi annoucing entry into high power LEDs soon.
[*]GELcore (GE) announcing a 29 Lumen UV LED with RGB phosphors - in their labs.
[/list]

GE and OSRAM are two HUGE companies in the lighting industry and both have very deep pockets for research $$. You can bet their interest will produce some low cost high power LEDs long term. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Re: How long till we see 500 lumen LED\'s?

[ QUOTE ]
php_44 said:
[*]GELcore (GE) announcing a 29 Lumen UV LED with RGB phosphors - in their labs.


[/ QUOTE ]

A lot of people think UV plus RGB phosphor is the technology that will eventually reign supreme for white LEDs. Like a fluorescent, the light color is determined solely by the phosphor mix, and not by how much of the LED's native color shines through the phosphor (which is the case for blue + phosphor white LEDs). Also, because you use a much smaller amount of phosphor per lumen output than fluorescent tubes, you can economically use much higher quality phosphors and get near perfect color rendition. For example, we have 5000K fluorescent tubes with CRI=98. It may be possible to do even better than that with LEDs, or to duplicate blackbody radiation of any color temperature.

Re: How long till we see 500 lumen LED\'s?

There are lots of new technologies in the wings. Nano technology is being explored to create high efficiency phosphors. This article hints at ultra efficient UV based LEDs.

Real hard core LED fans should check out the Sandia Labs lighting page. GOOOOOD stuff there.

Daniel