The world is drifting rapidly towards more efficient, smarter and cost effective energy solutions. Energy usage all around the world is increasing at a great pace, whether it is solar, wind or tidal power for electrical energy. Or gasoline, bio-fuel, compressed natural gas (CNG), to power up vehicles. Scientists are putting their full effort in finding alternate solutions to get the maximum benefit out of available energy source and above all to have environment friendly light sources.

The electrical energy demand is also rising at an enormous rate, especially in the large cities like New York with total electricity consumption of about 141,398 millions of kWh. Lighting up the whole city required a huge amount of electrical power and this shoots up even further during night time. Compared to compact fluorescents bulbs, LEDs are more than twice efficient, turn on quickly and are compatible with dimmer switches. LED bulbs contain no toxic elements (like mercury as in compact fluorescents bulbs), and have enough service life that disposal is not much of an issue.

The standard method to calculate the efficiency of any light source is called efficacy. It is basically the ratio between the amounts of luminosity produced (lumens) by the lightning source to the amount of power consumed in Watts. The commonly used incandescent bulbs are the most inefficient source of light having efficacy of 13.8 which means having a luminous efficiency as low as 2.0% where the rest of 98% power is consumed in heating. This is a massive amount of electricity wastage. Standard fluorescent tubes have efficacy value of 60 which is same as 9% efficient, again more than 90% wasted in other losses. Following table shows some of the most widely used household and industrial lighting devices with their efficiency and efficacy values.

To solve this serious issue many companies like Philips Lumileds and Osram are doing extensive research work to increase the efficiency of lighting devices. During the last decade a lot of advancement is done in the Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) as the alternate lighting source to increase the efficiency of LED and ability to operate at higher power known as HP-LED (High Power LEDs).

These High power LEDs have much higher efficacy as compared to standard fluorescent tubes. Recently Philips competitor Creehas made a breakthrough in developing a HP-LED having a superb efficacy of 129 lm/Watt. They have named this series as X lamp LEDs. The replacement of these LED light source with our present day standards will bring a revolution in the world of energy efficient lighting system. The biggest consumer of the Electrical power is the light sources, making these efficient will save a lot of energy which can be utilized in many other good uses. Knowing the fact that LED are very power efficient, it is the best for usage with renewable energy system like solar and wind powered systems. LEDs lights thus can be used in far off places where conventional power grid systems are not available to fulfill the need of electrical power and so every small unit of electrical power is very valuable.

High Power LEDs light has also found its place in many other applications including the automobile industries, Medical Sciences, Potable Communication devices, entertainment systems and many other industrial and domestic applications. Countries like Canada and China and USA have successfully implemented the idea of LED Street Lights.

Researchers and scientists are continuously working on finding new methods to make LEDs economically more and more feasible. During last few years a rapid advancements were made by many universities and organizations to make better, Brighter, Cheaper and longer life LEDs that can permanently replace conventional lighting source. According to some experts a complete conversion to LEDs will decrease carbon dioxide emissions dramatically. LED lighting is potentially the most cost effective way among other simple approaches to tackling global warming using existing technology. In short LEDs technology promises not only to creates a lesser need to use fossil fuels to generate electricity but in the long run, decrease heating oil and electricity bills as well.

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