Significant Progress Made in OLED Lighting

[ambr0sia]

Significant Progress Made in OLED Lighting

Osram, in partnership with BASF, has reached two major milestones in their development of OLED lighting.

* They've developed an OLED that's able to yield 60 lumens per watt (lm/W), a much greater efficiency than conventional bulbs.

* This new OLED meets the international Energy Star SSL Standard for color requirements, a first for this lighting technology.

Osram revealed an OLED capable of achieving 46 lm/W last spring, so this is a pretty quick advancement in efficiency. While even greater efficiencies for OLEDs have been met, so far the Energy Star standard has not. This new OLED is within the acceptable band for color coordinates defined by Energy Star and is able to retain its white color at different levels of intensity.

This all means that a super-efficient and consumer-ready OLED product is getting closer. Osram is continuing to work on the technology with hopes of producing color-appropriate, 100 lm/W light tiles in the near future.

100 lm/W in LED! I know it's not the 140 lumens per watt that HPS is capable of, but with the advances in spectrum, it still sounds ripe with potential.

Light geeks: Is this a game-changer? Do these OLEDs have any chance as feasible grow lights?

 

[wucifer]

Wow! That sounds awesome! 100 lm/W from super-efficient LEDs!

But, this makes me curious...

If you have 1000 watts of LED at 100 lm/W

versus

1000 watts of HPS or MH at 140 lm/W

Which is really more efficient?

How much surface area can each array effectively cover?

How much heat is involved?

 

[moses224]

No heat with leds at all

 

[1love1earth]

to my knowledge one of the major advantages of LED is that the spectrum is fine tuned, while HPS/MH/ even CMH emit alot of lumens, much of that is wasted on light spectrums that the plant doesn't use.

While LEDs can be limited to exact wavelengths, thus making them much more efficient "per lumen".

I've also heard lumens really aren't a good way of measuring LEDs.

I've also read that the inverse square law doesn't apply to LEDs the same way, meaning that the light stays stronger over distance from the plant.

To my knowledge, I'd been hearing mostly about OLED from a consumer electronics standpoint, mostly used in monitor/TV displays. I believe the 11" sony screen launched at several thousand dollars.

So we may still be a good ways off, I do think in less than 10 years time the face of grow lighting will have changed drastically.

 

[Tony Aroma]

I've also read that the inverse square law doesn't apply to LEDs the same way, meaning that the light stays stronger over distance from the plant.

Unfortunately, that is one law you can't break. It applies to any point source of light that radiates in all directions (i.e., spreads out after leaving the source). The only light source that the inverse square law would not apply to would be a "laser." AFAIK, LEDs do not generate a focused, narrow beam of light like a laser.

Oh, and LEDs definitely do generate heat. In fact, quite a bit of it.