SATELLITE BEACH, FLA.—At a press conference held recently in India, Lighting Science Group, a maker of LED lighting solutions, and Dixon Technologies India Pvt. Ltd., an electronics products manufacturer in India, unveiled one of their first joint products: a high-performance, sub-$15 omnidirectional 60-watt equivalent A19 LED bulb that will be available in India by the end of the year and will be sold worldwide by Lighting Science Group early next year.
Utilizing Lighting Science Group’s technical design, the bulb is the first in a series of products being jointly manufactured and distributed by the two companies. The full line of products will include street lights, outdoor and industrial light fixtures.
The Indian market for LED lighting is expected to grow to $400 million by 2015 (53 percent per annum), making it one of the fastest-growing sectors of one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. According to India’s Ministry of Power, the country plans to build 80 new coal-fired power plants to keep up with rising electricity demand over the next five years, and the potential savings from simply changing light bulbs to the new LED technology can significantly reduce the country’s electricity demand by as much as 40 percent.
Aggressive Growth Plans
“With India’s peak load electricity deficit expected to increase upwards of 15 percent in the near-term, the adoption of energy efficient technologies will prove critical in meeting India’s infrastructure needs and demands of continued economic growth,” said Sunil Vachani, chairman and managing director of Dixon Technologies. “Our partnership with Lighting Science Group will make LED technology available for large scale implementation in the Indian market and we expect to be the market’s leading seller of LED lighting within two years.”
Consistent availability of good quality electricity can be a constraining factor on economic growth, and moving to LED lighting is the low lying fruit of efficiency initiatives without polluting the environment: easy to implement with rapid repayment of the investment from power savings. The newly announced Lighting Science Definity bulb fits perfectly into existing screw-in light sockets and creates a clean, bright light level equivalent to a conventional 60-watt incandescent bulb using 85 percent less electricity and is designed to handle the variable quality of power in India and other emerging economies. Even compared with relatively efficient compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs), the new bulb uses 35 percent less electricity and, unlike all fluorescent lights, contains no toxic mercury. At a retail price that is below $15, the payback from electricity savings versus traditional incandescent light bulbs is eight months and the LED bulb has an expected life of approximately eight years.
“With 800 million incandescent light bulbs and 300 million CFLs sold in India each year, the market is ripe for these highly efficient, long lasting and nontoxic products,” said Atul Lall, deputy managing director of Dixon Technologies. “The economic and environmental implications of this partnership are significant: old-style light bulbs use 60 billion units of electricity each year, 7 percent of India’s total, and our Lighting Science Group Definity lamps could save more than 70 percent of that, equivalent to 32 coal fired plants with 500MW capacity.”
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