What Makes LED Better than Conventional Lighting?
Today, light emitting diodes or LED lighting is the best when it come to energy saving and a smart solution compared to other methods of lighting available in the market today.
It started out by utilizing these diodes via a DC circuit to emit light to extend the battery life that is used for flashlights and other light emitting gadgets like cellphones and etc. Then it began to find its way to vehicular headlights by utilizing a specially designed reflectors to intensify its brightness and length of coverage but still maintaining its efficiency. There are many advantages to using LED lighting which can now be run from an AC supply. These used to be DC devices operating from a few volts of direct current but can now be used for more robust applications that require the same amount of voltage like those linear strip lighting systems around the outside of a building that stretches for a hundred meters. Since DC drives suffer power loss over distance it then brings a different consideration. This means that it would now require the use of higher drive voltage from its starting point then once the voltages starts to drop, you will then have to use additional regulators to maintain that voltage. Something you do not need to do with an AC or the character of an ‘Alternating Current’ since it can maintain the voltage despite the distance. This has always been the problem with DC power and the reason why it is not being used to transmit power across our streets and cities.
In order to operate your LED lights today, you run your LED lighting from an AC supply which is converted to DC power. And there are several applications for this. Today transformers are used to provide the required DC violated for many stand alone fixtures. Today, there are companies that provide LED light bulbs that screw directly into standard sockets, but they contain miniature circuits that convert AC to DC before it is delivered to the LEDs. The upfront costs of these LED lighting are very expensive. Many would argue though that eventually it pays off because your power bill would decrease remarkably.
The Christmas tree light approach was an early for of this type of lighting. Here multiple LEDs are connected in series so that the voltage drop across the whole string equals the supply voltage.
There are however attempts to develop ‘true’ AC-LEDs but right now we have to contend ourselves on this big leap in technology that can be seen as an upgrade from analog to digital. This type of lighting have many advantages over conventional lighting and these benefits are so huge and will benefit both the user of technology and out planet.