Evolution of Light Emitting Devices for Mass Deployment

Light has been one of the important things to mankind. It has been one of the primary sources of biological evolution of species on earth. Sun light is a natural one, humans always tried to create light & heat at will. Different forms of such artificial light sources like candles, kerosene lamps etc. were used until the industrial & technological advancement happened few centuries ago.

During industrial advances, multiple innovations happened. One of the most important innovations in light history was Edison's Bulb and that invention put an end to all those candles, kerosene lamps and so on and we entered into the electric light era.

Lot of thing got discovered after which even Edison could not ever imagine and we had a pretty long journey from there all the way through conductor, then semiconductors, then insulators & finally superconductors. Each of the word mentioned above is itself a big revolution in it.

All of these technologies contributed to the technological advances where we are standing now and yes, the bulb invented by Edison improved several times before becoming the tungsten filament bulb we see today.

The advancement in light emitting devices did not end there. Tube light came in as Industrial lighting, with less electricity consumption. Halogen came in which can give high intensity lights. Sodium vapor lamps came as a solution to street lighting. CFL (Compact Fluorescent Lamp) got injected & they became main stream light source world-wide because of its less power consumption. CFL is kind of short form of tube light, with inbuilt ballast, with mini electronic circuitry. All of these solutions were mostly involving electrical & some electronics engineering.

From semiconductor propagances, Light Emitting Diode (LED) got injected. It can give light whenever electricity passes through it, in controlled conditions. Initially LED was used for small indicators, and then it moved to industrial panels for control panels indicators, then rolling display, then every portable electronic device in one or other form etc.

With LED finding many applications, its light intensity also got improved & many new colors got invented. Now we can get very bright LED's which consumes really less power & emits bright white / yellow light. Finally LED torches & LED bulbs arrived, paving the way for energy-efficient lights & thereby allowing energy-saving across millions of households.

LED & CFL light market is very sensitive to the cost. The cost of CFL is relatively high as compared to filament bulb. The cost of LED bulb is even higher as it has entered into mass recently as compared to CFL entry. A day will come when majority of the houses will have highly energy-efficient light like LED. And when this happens I am sure the cost of LED bulb will fall to the level that anyone can afford to buy it & no one will do case analysis or price versus saving analysis in deciding if LED bulb need to be bought & in what time it can pay off the energy bill, it is going to save. When that happens filament bulb will become a thing of past & world would have moved to the LED age of lighting.

The advancement in Smart Grid Technology & Solar Technology will help the LED adoption to masses because of its low power consumption.