LED Australia

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What is LED?

LED stands for Light Emitting Diode. Diodes are a semiconductor device that will conduct electricity in only one direction. The device is made-up of layers of silicon and seeded with atoms of phosphorus, germanium, arsenic or other rare-earth elements. The layers of the device are called the die and the junction between the materials is where the light is generated. Different materials and designs have different coloured lights and intensities. LEDs are now bright enough to be considered for applications that traditionally used incandescent bulbs.

Technical advances have dramatically improved the reliability and the performance of LEDs since they were invented in the 1960s. The lifetime for the new generation of LEDs is about 100,000 hours of use, or 30 to 40 years of normal operation. As they are a semiconductor device, they are also very rugged and are not subject to fail when dropped or vibrated as are incandescent or fluorescent lights.

The original LEDs only emitted light of one frequency or colour of light. These were blues, greens, yellows, oranges or reds and they were unsuited for domestic lighting. Recent innovations in materials, doping and die structure have developed high brightness LEDs that emit light in all visible frequencies to produce white light. With LED Australia working on new technology with LED, we now can provide the same output in light as incandescent or fluorescent light.


What are the possible applications for your products?

Residential Applications:

Decorative lights | Pendant lights | Under or inside cabinets | Kitchen splash back lighting | Recessed lighting | Feature wall lighting | Bedroom | Bathroom | Home theatre/ media room | Entertainment Area | Patio/ garden

Architectural/ Commercial:

Interior and exterior special effect lighting (eg. Hotel, restaurant, casino, water feature, landmark) | Landscape lighting for gardens, parks, pools and spas | Wall washers | Strip lighting | Accent lighting | Cove lighting | Small spot lighting | Path lights | In-ground and underwater lights

Retail Display:

Refrigerated display case lighting | General merchandise lighting, eg, creating effects and moods based on warm/ cold colours | Display case lighting

Entertainment:

Concerts feature effect lighting | Concert hall and theatre lighting | TV Studios, stage lighting | Bars, clubs and restaurant

Safety and Security:

Exit / Entry Signs | Emergency lighting

Outdoor Areas:

Parking Lots | Street and highway lights and signs


What is the lifespan of LEDs?

Many manufacturers claim that their LEDs will last you 100,000 hours or even longer before operating at half brightness. But how valid is this claim?
Quite simply, the LED industry is not yet old enough to validate this figure. LED manufacturers perform numerous accelerated degradation tests, during which they both over heat and overdrive the LEDs until they expire.

From these results, they then extrapolate the figures to find the expected life span under normal conditions. From these tests, many manufacturers concluded the 100,000 hour figure. There are also many LED manufacturers who give an expected lifespan of anywhere from 60,000 to 80,000 hours.

A major factor in the longevity of LEDs is in the way that they are used - in the output. Different colours consume various amounts of energy, thus changing their total lifespan. Furthermore, the expected lifespan also assumes that the LEDs are operating at full brightness, which, depending on the application, may or may not be true.

We can see from the above that there is really no way to exactly confirm the LED lifespan of 100,000 hours. In reality, they may last much longer than this, or perhaps expire earlier. In any case, their lifespan is far longer than any other lighting technology currently available.

We have designed all LED Australia products to be under driven, ensuring that you will get maximum lifespan out of your products.


What is an IP Rating?

IP (Ingress Protection) Rating for Equipment and Enclosures: A two-digit number (as specified in Australian Standards AS60529 and EN60529) is used to provide an IP Rating to a piece of electronic equipment or to an enclosure for electronic equipment.

The two digits represent three different forms of environmental influence:

1. The first digit represents protection against ingress of solid objects
2. The second digit represents protection against ingress of liquids

The larger the value of each digit, the greater the protection from that influence.As an example, a product rated as IP57 would be better protected against environmental factors than another similar product that was only rated as IP43. Our Gel Connectors are rated at IP67 (totally protected against dust ingress and withstands immersion up to a depth of 1 metre).


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