The patent behind the standardization of LED lighting

At the recent international lighting exhibition in Guangzhou, LED giants such as Philips, Nichia Chemical, OSRAM and Xuming Optoelectronics gathered together. At a forum on the theme of “Common Trade Industry Conspiracy and Business Strategy”, a spectator asked the highest level from the above four big companies on an ambitious basis:

"If I want to invest 10 billion yuan to enter the LED industry, do you think I am crazy or have a good vision?"

He was immediately poured into a pot of cold water. Because the executives said, "If you really have so much money, there are actually many better choices. Why bother you?"

In fact, affected by the debt crisis in Europe, the US economic downturn and other factors, from the second half of last year, export orders for LED companies drastically decreased. In September last year, the executive vice president of the Shenzhen LED Industry Association and the owner of Qi Duoli Industrial Co., Ltd. had caused an uproar in the industry. In the past year, the shuffle has continued.

However, on the other side of the coin, driven by emerging markets such as China, the LED industry is still expected to see large-scale growth.

“At present, 1/8 of the world's lighting market is LED market. We expect LED market share will be 45% by 2015,” said Marc de Jong, CEO of Philips Lighting Professional Lighting Solution Business Unit. “In Asia The LED lighting market is expected to increase by 70%-80%, and China will play a leading role."

In the beginning of May, people from the National City Street Light Management Institute co-aggregated fertilizer and participated in Philips "City, Residents, Lighting" theme seminar. In the small discussion of LED road lighting, Xie Junyan, Senior Engineer of the Shanghai Street Light Management Center said , "Like a digital camera to replace a film camera, LED will quickly replace the traditional sodium lamp." Wei Qianzhe, vice president and general manager of Philips Professional Lighting Solutions, believes that the process of urbanization in China is accelerating and how to pass through the process of urban expansion and development Urban planning and high-performance infrastructure construction, such as the use of advanced LED lighting solutions to create a unique city, to achieve sustainable long-term urban development. These are the long-term concerns of Philips' "City, Residents, and Lighting" activities.

Although it is also acknowledged that the Chinese market is large, Lin Yinggu, deputy general manager of business development at Xuming Optoelectronics (600184, Ltd.) believes that "LED products are reasonably priced in China, and China's standardization needs to focus on products. Comparability."

The street lamp administrative system or for resistance “The electricity savings are all taken away by the government and there is no reasonable allocation mechanism.”

On May 7th this year, the Ministry of Science and Technology released the "12th Five-Year Plan for Special Development of Semiconductor Lighting Technology" (draft for solicitation of comments): By 2015, LED lighting products accounted for 30% of general lighting and 50 "Ten Cities" were built. Wanhe" pilot demonstration city. Subsequently, on May 16th, the State Council executive meeting discussed and adopted the “12th Five-Year Plan” of the National Basic Public Service System to study and determine the policies and measures for promoting the consumption of LED lighting fixtures and other energy-saving appliances, and proposed to allocate RMB 2.2 billion to support the promotion of energy-saving. Lamps and LED lighting fixtures.

However, Xie Junyan still believes that the promotion of LED road lighting on the resistance is not small.

In fact, because China's street light management system belongs to power companies in administrative jurisdiction, the nature of its industry's monopoly makes it often inert or even repellent when it comes to new things.

"The main reason is that the price of LED lights is too high." Xie Junyan explained, "A look at 100W LED lights is estimated to be sold around 3000-4000 yuan."

It is understood that street lights do not necessarily need to be installed on our roads, but the Ministry of Construction requires that street lights must be installed on urban roads. In the construction of street lights, it is usually in accordance with the "who proposed, who pays the bill" approach. Considering the high input costs of LED lamps at the initial stage, special road designs are required for installation. Unlike sodium lamps, which are installed at a fixed distance, and also require maintenance costs later, some construction units are not willing to use LED lamps.

In addition, because the predecessor of the street lamp management office is a light company, the weight of the electricity used in the early days is relatively small, and because it is affiliated to the grid company, the street lamps are usually not equipped with electricity meters. This also makes it very practical. It is difficult to actually calculate the amount of electricity saved by LEDs.

“In the early period we invested a lot, and the maintenance costs in the later period were high, but the electricity savings were taken away by the government. We did not form a reasonable distribution mechanism based on the benefits of energy conservation.” A man from the Ma'anshan Street Lamp Management Institute in Anhui Philips said in the "Cities, Residents, Lights" event.

Can chip technology update lower costs?

Most people still believe that the future direction of LED chips is based on silicon.

Although LED prices are still too high at present, the rapid decline in costs has already seen new hope. It is enough to prove that the use of LED in our country after the first spotlight, after two or three years of road lighting, finally successfully entered the interior at the end of last year.

“Because last year's rise in rare earth prices led to a rise in phosphor prices, the cost of fluorescent lamps increased; in addition, the light efficiency of LEDs has increased, the cost has been declining, and many areas where the returns were not very good in the past are now OK.” GE Lighting Asia Pacific Wang Jian, general manager of LED products and innovation center lighting business, said.

If you buy lighting products, a 130 lm/W, 40,000-hour LED lamp that costs $15, and a 60 lm/W 3,000-hour fluorescent lamp that costs $3, Which one would you choose?

Li Yunli, the chief technology officer of New Century Optoelectronics Co., Ltd., will choose the latter. Li believes that for consumers, the key to whether LED products can enter the market is price, but not technology. "If you reduce the performance of the LED to 100 lumens/watt and have a lifetime of 15,000 hours, but the price is also 3 dollars, it will be very competitive."

In fact, even without reducing the performance of the LED, the cost reduction is not impossible. As far as the core LED chip technology is concerned, “the efficiency of the chip is increased by 10% every year, and the cost reduction of 5% every three months is still very promising,” said Zhou Xuejun, Director of Asia Pacific Marketing at Philips Lumileds Lighting Company.

Zhao Hanmin, chief technology officer of Jingneng Optoelectronics (Jiangxi) Co., Ltd., deliberately challenged the development of sapphire substrate technology for 20 years. “If you use silicon substrate technology, you can evade the technology patent network of large companies, and the cost of LED chips Sapphire substrate is 5-10 times lower."

However, Zhao also stated frankly that the technical difficulty of silicon substrates is higher than that of sapphire substrates. "The main problem is stress, and it is prone to cracks."

However, most people still believe that the future direction of LED chips is based on silicon.

"The cost of silicon will decline with the adjustment of rare earth prices after 3-5 years, and we will do more at that time," said Kiharu Hiroshi, deputy director of the LED development center for lighting at the Nichia Chemical Industrial Plant Association. ”

Patent confusion behind standardization back in 2010, Philips, Osram, Panasonic, Toshiba and other international lighting giants have established Zhaga.

In addition to the cost, the questions raised by LED street light management personnel for the LED include the inconvenience of post-maintenance.

In theory, the service life of high-pressure sodium lamps for road lighting is only about 5000 hours, while the life of high-power LEDs is generally 50,000 to 70,000 hours. However, in practical applications, it is still unavoidable to encounter problems, "the maintenance of the light source part is less likely, but the driver may still need to maintain." Xie Junyan said.

This makes many users guilty. “At present, there are almost 560,000 LED street lamps in the country. The products come from thousands of manufacturers. Each manufacturer has a lot of different models. Before the sodium lamp had 10 varieties, it was almost, but there were too many LED products. There is no compatibility. How can we maintain it?” said one person in the industry.

Because there is no relevant standard stipulating the modulus of the LED street lamp module, it also often leads the manufacturer to have no direction. "A lot of plants do not know what to do and develop in disorder and waste a lot," said Xie Junyan.

In fact, for LED products, China currently has 146 standards, and for the lack of standards on the market always feel that the Chinese Lighting Association Liu Shengping's explanation is that the standard formulation process, often lags behind the development of the product, and LED The technology itself has developed rapidly, and various standards cannot be used to limit the development of the industry.

In fact, big companies have been unable to wait. As early as 2010, Philips, Osram, Panasonic, Toshiba and other international lighting giants have led the establishment of Zhaga.

According to reports, Zhaga is an international trade association, mainly for the development of LED light engine interface standard specifications, to solve the current LED industry product interface incompatibility is difficult to achieve large-scale production problems. “Zhaga has established a stable design platform for luminaire manufacturers through a unified interface, which can promote the scale of products and promote the popularization of LED lighting.” Zhaga standing member representative, marketing manager of Dekai Quality Certification (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. Guangzhou Branch Xie Yiqin Say.

However, many domestic companies are also worried that after joining the Zhaga Alliance, it may be difficult to get around the specification and establish the patented traps and barriers for LED downstream applications.

In response, Xie Yiqin responded that the Zhaga interface standardization only involves the interface of the light engine and does not involve its internal working mechanism. "According to the Zhaga standard, a light engine that uses LEDs as a light source is a module that can standardize the interface, and the technology used in the module is not standardized. That is to say, even if the light engine's exterior is standardized, its interior is still special."