There’s an emerging market for power supplies in Led lighting and signage

There’s an emerging market for power supplies in Led lighting and signage. IC vendors are salivating over the huge market for Led bulbs to replace incandescent and CFL bulbs, which will all need their own ac/dc power ICs. But the largest bulb replacement market of all, replacing the 60W light bulb, will have razor-thin profit margins and most likely go straight to Asian manufacturers. A more promising market for US technology companies focusing on high-power LEDs is signage, displays, and industrial Lighting.

You may have seen the Mitsubishi screen at the Dallas Cowboys’ stadium which is billed as the world’s largest LED video display.

This display uses 22,000 Lambda-TDK power supplies, an impressive number for one installation, which power a total of 21,000,000 LEDs. The power supplies are the ZWS100AF-5 series, which Digi-Key lists at $20 each in quantities of 100 -- but perhaps the Cowboys got a quantity discount. Lambda recently released the LD12 series of AC-DC power supplies for led lighting and display applications, rated at up to 12.6 watts, with both constant-voltage and constant-current models available. They're encapsulated and operate with universal power inputs of 90 to 265VAC. The constant-voltage LDV12 series comes with 12V, 15V or 24V outputs; the LDC12 constant-current units provide 350 - 750mA with DC output ranges of either 3-18V or 3-36V. Typical output efficiencies are 82% under full load. They're priced at $14.50 each in quantities of 1,000.

Here’s a clip of the huge screen which is basically a 72x160-ft wall of LEDs being used as a video game display by a concert director, a video-game enthusiast, who bootlegged some screen time and hooked up his Xbox for some extraordinary gaming time.

As displays like this one become more common, their access to audiences beyond sports will open up likewise.

Another promising albeit mundane market for external power supplies is powering LEDs for industrial lighting.

Power Partners introduced its PIL100 series of ac/dc 100W LED lighting power modules, also with a choice of constant current or constant voltage models. All models accept up to

305Vac; the output on the constant current models is 350 - 4200mA, and the constant voltage models offer 12 to 105VDC outputs. Efficiency is as high as 93%.

You may have heard Cary Eskow’s keynote speech at the LED Workshop, where he pointed out the advantages of high-power LEDs to enhance work or recreational environments that go far beyond simply replacing today’s (or yesterday’s) lighting technology. Not coincidentally, these applications are also likely to have higher profit margins than mere replacement technologies.

There’s an emerging market for power supplies in Led lighting and signage