Ac LEDs get brighter
Updated Acriche ac-powered LEDs from Seoul Semiconductor Inc. in South Korea, emit 200 lumens at 3.3 W, 50% more than the company’s previous version.
High-yield fabrication and economies of scale slash
costs by 40%, making this latest incarnation more competitive with
conventional lighting.
Acriche comes as a single emitter without a heat-sink PCB for greater
design flexibility. The upgraded package handles up to 4 W, a first for
semiconductor-based light sources, says the company. Acriche runs on
100 to 120 and 220 to 230 Vac, so it can be used in the U.S., South Korea, EU, China, India, the U.K., and Japan. No ac-dc converter is needed.
The company plans to boost brightness from 60 to 80 lm/W in a 250-lumens
package, and to 120 lm/W in a 400-lumens package sometime in
2008.
If Acriche were to replace all the incandescent and fluorescent lamps
used in South Korea today, it would save an estimated $5.3 billion annually
in electricity costs and eliminate 800,000 tons of carbon-dioxide
emissions from five 1,000-MW power plants, the company claims.