The lighting marketplace is driven by the need to provide customers with the most effective and efficient lighting products – and hence LEDs win easily. LED chip manufacturers have been playing their part in developing advanced products, but it is also time to look at the role played by the companies that develop the drivers.
By Shruti Mishra
Due to their crisp white light, small form factor and high lumens-to-watt ratio, the overall market for LEDs is growing at an exponential rate all over the world. The vigorous adoption of LED lights has also triggered the growth of related markets, which include LED drivers. According to a MarketsandMarkets report, the global market for LED drivers is expected to reach US$ 24.98 billion by 2022, at a CAGR of 26.3 per cent during 2016-2022. What has further intensified the consumption of LED drivers is the concept of smart lighting for smart cities and the growing demand for IoT compatible products.
In the Indian market, favourable government initiatives coupled with declining prices have made LED-based luminaires the light of choice for both commercial and residential purposes. The outdoor segment for the LED lighting industry is expected to witness high driver consumption due to the government’s decision to replace 35 million conventional streetlights with LED lights by March 2019 under the Street Light National Programme (SLNP). Digital signage is another segment that is creating a significant demand for LEDs and fuelling the demand for LED drivers.
Being a power regulation device, an LED driver has the same impact on the end product’s performance as the LED light engine. The driver is chiefly responsible for basic light requirements such as flicker-free operation, as well as for evolving features such as wireless connectivity or current-level programming that are implemented in the driver. Innovations in driver design help to make LED lighting more mainstream; however, products that cannot meet the strict guidelines for dimming, efficiency, power factor and price will not be able to withstand the competition.
Recent trends in the market
With LED lights getting more advanced, driver manufacturers are tasked with supporting an expanding array of functionality without compromising on the customers’ expectations of optimum efficiency. Therefore, various tech developments are taking place in this sector. Let’s take a look at some of them.
Miniaturised drivers: The ongoing trend of miniaturisation of LED chips is driving the lighting industry. Keeping this in mind, Seoul Semiconductor has recently launched what it claims is the industry’s smallest phase-cut DC LED driver series named the Nanodriver series. This comes with a footprint of just 13.5mm and a power density which is 10 times higher than the conventional LED. The company claims that the smaller size of the driver will help lighting designers to shrink the size of LEDs by 20 per cent.
Crucial components of LED driver design
Conventional light sources like fluorescent lamps dissipate the heat through the emission of infrared rays and convection, which is why they do not require any advanced thermal management solution to facilitate the process.
LED sources release heat through conduction, which requires additional understanding of how to efficiently carry waste heat out of LEDs in order to prevent performance degradation and system failure.
VLC-enabled drivers: Visible Light Communication (VLC) is a wireless technology that capitalises on the high switching speed of LEDs and offers several compelling benefits over RF. Taking advantage of this technology, IST has launched LED drivers with VLC capabilities that enable luminaire manufacturers and systems integrators to create their own LEDs with high precision, flicker-free dimming capabilities.
Programmable drivers: This technique allows manufacturers the freedom to control the output power of the LED driver in any configuration required. One recent solution that has captured the market in this category is Harvard Technology’s CoolLED range. Its high degree of flexibility allows users to derive many advantages from the driver technology, but perhaps the most important is that people can use the same hardware for different applications by simply adjusting the operating current, thus eliminating the need to stock multiple variants.
Dimmable drivers: The dimming capability of LED drivers is defined as the ability to dim the LED light output from 100 per cent to zero per cent. In this condition, LEDs still operate at the same voltage and current as during full light output. The newly launched 200W LED driver from Trionic offers a universal input voltage range, IP67 protection and high temperature resistance. The 0V – 10V dimmable driver ensures high performance, and is designed for high bay factory and warehouse illumination.
Colour tunable drivers: Colour tuning is emerging as an exciting trend in the LED lighting industry. Traditionally, LEDs are associated with monotone, albeit efficient light. But the advent of new technologies allows LED colour to be adjusted either in terms of white light, full colour or both, depending on the application, to deliver the accurate colour temperature. Helvar’s iC DALI drivers combine hybrid dimming technology with easy colour temperature control for high-quality light output even at the lowest levels. The two driver output channels are connected to two modules with different colour temperatures — warm white and cool white — allowing easier control of colour temperature.
Focus areas for future needs
Driver manufacturers believe that, in the coming years, the LED driver field will witness a more integrated approach from vendors. This will make the LED drivers of the future significantly different from those that we see today. Higher levels of efficiency will become the norm, and drivers will also integrate extremely high levels of complexity in terms of performance and power monitoring. In addition, higher integration of Systems-on-Chips (SoC) will continue to slash the size of the end product while maintaining the reliability of the overall design.
