Speakers from Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) and Germany’s Osram AG described new LED drive approaches this week during Darnell’s DC Building Power Asia in Taipei. The new drives were designed to optimize solid-state lighting (SSL) performance and reduce cost in buildings with dc power distribution architectures. In both cases, 380/400Vdc power distribution was identified as an optimal power source.
During the plenary session, Dr. Chi-Chun Huang, Researcher with ITRI discussed “LED Lighting, Now and Future.” Because the cost of LED lighting is a key factor slowing the adoption of this technology, Dr. Huang identified high-voltage dc power as a key way to reduce the cost of the three highest-cost elements in an LED lighting system; the LEDs, the heat sink and the driver.