The Emerging Market for LEDs and General Lighting

Over the last several years, the emergence of light emitting diodes (LEDs) as a leading form of lighting for residential, commercial and industrial applications has steadily gained acceptance. While still prohibitively expensive on a cost per watt or lumen basis, LEDs are expected to reach parity with traditional forms of lighting (incandescent, flouresent and halogen) sometime around 2015.  However, because LEDs have lifetimes up to 50 times longer than the standard bulb, they naturally appeal to a wide variety of commercial and industrial applications where fixed costs are high. Replacement for general lighting by LEDs if often views as the largest and last bastion of traditional lighting.  Governments are legislating changes which seek to ban or phase out inefficient and chemically toxic technologies.