Joining forces – a market transformation network for pushing white LED-technology in North Rhine-Westphalia

Panel: Panel 4. Building the bridge from lab to customer

Authors:
Claus Barthel, Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment, Energy
Stephan Ramesohl, Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment, Energy

Abstract

The paper presents the activities of the LED (light-emitting diodes) competence network in North Rhine-Westphalia and its role for enhancing market transformation.

With the recent development of the LED, new lighting applications have been arisen such as space lighting, object illumination, headlamps for cars and others. Current R&D aims at taking advantage from the specific features of the LED-technology, as there are high energy efficiency and extreme long lifetime.

In order to foster this development and to strengthen the competitiveness of domestic players, the State of North Rhine-Westphalia has founded a LED competence network. It serves as a platform to coordinate actors from policy, science, research and industry. Market players along the whole product chain are bundled in key projects to develop or to improve products of strategic importance for future market growth. Examples are daylight headlamps for cars, OLEDs (organic LEDs) for space illumination, the development of a very bright white source of LED-light, the so called white LED power chip, and the project “LED instead of neon light”. Furthermore a design competition for the best LED lamp has been launched, and in order to generate practical value for its participants the LED-network undertakes patent investigations and organizes information events.

In this context, the paper outlines recent and future developments of the white LED technology and its advantages, estimates possible energy savings, describes the process of launching the LED-network and illustrates some outstanding examples, discusses the performance of the network as a tool for market transformation policies and points out general lessons concerning the success of market transformation networks.