6 September 2011

German partners in EnLight project target 40% cut in LED lighting power consumption

Germany’s annual power consumption is about 500 terawatt-hours (TWh), with lighting accounting for almost 12% of that. However, if incandescent lamps were consistently replaced by more energy-efficient LED technologies, then as much as 20% of the electricity needed for lighting could be saved, i.e. 11.5TWh in Germany alone (equivalent to the annual output of a large-scale power plant).

Over the coming three years, Germany’s seven partners in the EnLight (Energy Efficient and Intelligent Lighting Systems) research project — which is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) — aim to reduce energy consumption further by up to an additional 40% compared with existing LED systems.

The partners from industry and research are shouldering about €5m (45%) of the project costs. Contributions of about €4.1m and €2m are made by the BMBF and the European Union, respectively. The EnLight project partners, alongside the German project leader Infineon Technologies AG, are BJB GmbH & Co KG, the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, Insta Elektro GmbH, NXP Semiconductors GA GmbH, Osram AG and RWTH Aachen University.

The German partners’ work is integrated into the European ENIAC Joint Undertaking project EnLight, headed by Philips. The European joint research project brings together 30 partners from six countries whose collaboration aims to further strengthen Europe’s global position in the lighting system sector.

EnLight aims to exploit the full potential of LED-based lighting for saving further power through innovations in LED lighting modules including in the LED and the driver electronics. The research is targeted at areas including changes to the socket standards. For example, at present the E27 base — the standard base of incandescent lamps across Europe — is not designed to be operated with light management systems, as is necessary for improved energy efficiency. Another goal is to develop programmable controls and innovative sensors for intelligent LED lighting solutions. In addition, the aim is for intelligent wireline and wireless networking of LED lighting systems and for enabling their energy-optimized operation to save as much as 40% electricity. The project will also explore entirely new light functions: based on EnLight research, LED light sources will be able to automatically adapt their brightness to the ambient light.

Tags: LEDs

Visit: www.enlight-project.eu