LEDs the shining star at trade show

First they took over our radios. Then our televisions, stereos, watches, toys, telephones, computers, and just about everything else. So is it any wonder that semiconductors are threatening to transform the lighting industry? That's the lesson of this week's Lightfair International at the Convention Center, where light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, are the obvious stars of the show.

These electronic devices already have a bright history. LEDs have come to dominate in niches such as automobile brake lamps, emergency lights, and decorative displays - in Philadelphia, witness the colored LEDs outlining Boathouse Row, flashing civic pride on the facade of the Cira Centre at 30th Street Station, or tinting buildings in the nightly light show on Avenue of the Arts.

But are LEDs ready for prime-time use in homes and businesses? That's the hope of many of the 500 companies touting their wares at this year's Lightfair, the annual trade show of the lighting industry - even if it's a pitch greeted a bit more skeptically by bulb buyers.

"The vast majority of our homes and public spaces will be lit by LEDs in seven to 10 years," predicts Ted Russ, chief business development officer for Lighting Science Group Corp., a Satellite Beach, Fla., company that specializes in LED lighting.

Russ says Lighting Science, founded in 2003, has grown from about 75 employees a year ago to about 400 today at its Florida facility and a plant in Monterrey, Mexico. He foresees similar growth for LED technology, suggesting it will parallel the steady increases in computing power seen for decades in the microprocessor industry.

So far, most of the demand for Lighting Science's LEDs comes from commercial or institutional users. But the company is dipping its toe into the residential market: For the last month, it has been selling a 13-watt Definity lightbulb at Home Depot stores that it says produces light equivalent to a standard 60-watt incandescent bulb.

Unlike many of the company's LED lamps, the new bulb is "omnidirectional" - something done effortlessly by the traditional incandescent developed more than 125 years ago, which may be one reason that the bulbs of Thomas Edison's era have reigned so long despite their inefficiency.

To achieve a similar effect, the Definity bulb uses a design trick: A ring of 13 one-watt LEDs surrounds a "translucent reflector. Light shines through it as well as reflects off of it," explains Lighting Science's Larry Fallon.