Goodbye, Incandescent Bulb! | QDaily Business History

The little glass bulb that made Edison famous is finally on its way out. LED lights — brighter, safer, cheaper to run — will soon replace it entirely, and manufacturers and retailers are both pushing the change along.

On November 10, at the Global Efficient Lighting Forum held in Beijing by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), IKEA announced that from September 1, 2015, its stores worldwide will sell only LED lighting and will stop selling incandescent bulbs. That makes IKEA the first retailer anywhere to say it will sell nothing but LED.

It has been 134 years since Edison invented the bulb that changed an age. As one of the first electrical appliances in the world, it is arguably something we should have said goodbye to long ago: it is inefficient, power-hungry and short-lived. If anything let the incandescent bulb fight off wave after wave of challengers — fluorescent lamps, high-pressure mercury lamps, halogen lamps — it was the huge lead it had built up over the years in price and production volume. As late as 2013, China was still making 3.89 billion incandescent bulbs a year, roughly a third of world output.

LED technology, which won this year's Nobel Prize in Physics, was once expected to finish off the old bulb quickly. A light-emitting diode with current running through it has obvious advantages: no ultraviolet radiation, no lead or mercury; high light output and low energy use, drawing only one-eighth to one-tenth the power of an ordinary incandescent bulb at the same brightness; and a long life, with a single LED normally lasting 20 years.

In 2000, the US Department of Energy began working with private manufacturers to push white LED technology forward, but by 2008 only a small share of 25- to 40-watt traditional bulbs had been replaced by LEDs. When Philips' LED bulbs reached US shelves in 2010, they sold for as much as $49. Incandescent bulbs were cheap at the time, and consumers balked at paying that much for an LED.

Sweden's IKEA, also a northern European company, wanted the same thing the Netherlands' Philips did: to get more people using LED lights that are cheap and good. Between them they broke through the two barriers holding LED back — price and technology, one each.

We have written before about IKEA's ten big moves for cutting costs. By negotiating hard with suppliers, IKEA used its price advantage to get a lot of people to swap out the incandescent bulbs at home. In 2012, Peter Wisbeck, IKEA's purchasing manager for Greater China, told reporters that after suppliers redesigned the LED driver, production costs fell by 50%. One LED table lamp that had retailed for 199 yuan was cut to 99 yuan in a promotion, and sales jumped from 200,000 units to 2 million.

IKEA has done the arithmetic. Take a typical three-person household in an apartment with "two bedrooms, two living areas, one bathroom, one toilet, one balcony, standard fit-out": switching every light to energy-saving LEDs would use 308 kilowatt-hours less electricity a year than traditional incandescent bulbs — 163.42 yuan off the power bill — and save the trouble of about 20 bulb changes.

IKEA China told QDaily that at the store it opened last year in Baoshan, Shanghai, the spotlights are already all LED. Even the country's first IKEA store, the 16-year-old Xuhui store in Shanghai, has begun replacing all of its light fittings with LEDs, with the work to be finished before September 1, 2015, without disrupting shoppers.

In 2013, IKEA sold 22.4 million LED products worldwide, including 12.3 million LED bulbs. "We want to offer goods that every consumer can afford," Peter Wisbeck said, "not a market for a small group of higher-income people — and not only in China, but in every market."

IKEA China is now in the second year of its LED campaign. Between November 2 and December 27, for every LED bulb IKEA China sells, the IKEA Foundation will donate one euro to improve lighting in refugee camps in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, and to widen access there to renewable energy and basic education. In the campaign's first year, the IKEA Foundation gave 7.7 million euros.

Philips, also in the business of selling LED lights, has lately set its sights on something more forward-looking and more niche: the smart home.

You may have seen this flat, strangely expensive bulb in the accessories section of an Apple Store. It is Hue, the world's first connected smart LED home lighting system, launched by Philips in 2012. In plain terms, it is a color-changing light you can control from a distance, through an app on a phone or tablet.

Hue literally means "color." Each bulb holds LED chips in three colors — red, blue and cyan — and the color temperature can be shifted freely from cool to warm, so in theory it can mix 16 million different colors.

Like Nest, Hue looks thoroughly geeky at first glance. One form that geekiness takes is a high price. Hue sells for $199, which buys three LED bulbs and a bridge; an extra bulb costs another $59. To calm people's fear of paying that much for a smart-home product, Philips also released Hue Lux in the middle of this year — no color changing, but far friendlier on the wallet, with a starter kit at $30.

Since Philips opened the system to developers, more than 200 apps have been built around Hue, and IFTTT carries plenty of related control recipes. Philips has not released sales figures, but Jiang Zhaoning, founder of the Chinese smart-bulb brand Yeelink, said on Zhihu that Hue ships close to 3 million units a year through Apple Stores alone.

Beyond smart products like Hue, sales in the ordinary LED lighting market are climbing steadily too. LED technology has kept improving in recent years, and cost is no longer the obstacle. In 2014, LED lighting is expected to reach 20% penetration worldwide, and it keeps spreading faster. In China, LED lighting penetration is expected to pass 70% by 2017.

Figures Philips China gave QDaily show that LED product sales have grown at around 30% a year since 2010. In 2013, LED sales rose 43%; in the third quarter of 2014, which has just ended, LED products accounted for 40% of sales in the lighting category. Philips plans to lift that to 50% next year.

In 2009, Philips developed the world's first LED bulb that could replace a 60-watt incandescent bulb outright. It won the US Department of Energy's L Prize that year and was named the third greatest invention of 2009 by Time magazine.

IKEA took a different route: it invested in LED technology and put it to its own use. Through the group's investment arm, Mountain Cleantech AG, IKEA is looking worldwide for technologies that would widen the range of things LED lighting can do.

One supplier of such technology is Design LED Products, which IKEA recently bought. The Scottish company specializes in ultra-thin, ultra-light, bendable LED light tiles. In time, IKEA's round bulbs may give way to these tiles, used as decorative lighting on furniture and walls.

It is in fact the second LED technology company IKEA has bought. Back in 2012 it acquired a startup called El Seed, which went on to supply the mercury-free LED bulbs IKEA uses today, whose light is almost indistinguishable from daylight or an incandescent bulb.

The wave of "ditch the incandescent bulb" campaigns that began sweeping the world in 2008 gave companies like IKEA and Philips a direct reason to sell more LED lights:

The European Union issued a ban as early as 2009, phasing out traditional bulbs above 100 watts, then 75-watt and 60-watt bulbs. By 2012, the incandescent bulb would meet its "doomsday" across EU countries;

The US Energy Independence and Security Act, passed in 2007, required that between January 2012 and January 2014 the country phase out 40-, 60-, 75- and 100-watt incandescent bulbs and replace them with energy-saving bulbs.

China drew up a five-stage phase-out plan running from November 2011 to October 2016, retiring bulbs from 100 watts down to 15 watts.

Finally, QDaily has put together a timeline of the light bulb, so you can see what it took, over more than a century, to get from the incandescent bulb to the LED.

First Generation: The Incandescent Bulb

In 1860, Swan made a carbon-filament electric lamp, 20 years before Edison;

In 1874, two Canadian electricians filed a patent for an electric lamp. They filled a glass bulb with nitrogen and made light with an electrified carbon rod. Lacking the money to develop the invention further, they sold the patent to Edison in 1875;

In 1880, a carbonized bamboo-filament bulb made by Edison ran for 1,200 hours in the lab;

In 1883, Edison and Swan set up the Edison and Swan Electric Light Company together in Britain to make incandescent bulbs commercially;

In 1906, General Electric began producing incandescent bulbs with tungsten filaments in place of carbonized bamboo;

In 1913, mass production began of bulbs with coiled filaments filled with the inert gas argon.

Second Generation: Fluorescent Lamps, Energy-Saving Lamps and Gas-Discharge Lamps

Fluorescent Lamps

Usually made as tubes, they give high luminous efficiency over a large emitting surface, with energy efficiency close to 40% and only one-sixth the heat of an incandescent bulb.

In 1910, France's A. Claude invented the neon discharge lamp — the commercial neon light;

In 1938, General Electric scientist Inman invented the fluorescent lamp, the first true low-pressure discharge lamp that could give white light;

In 1939, the first practical fluorescent lamp was shown at the New York World's Fair, with an efficacy of about 40 lumens;

By 1950, fluorescent lamps had partly replaced incandescent bulbs.

Energy-Saving Lamps (Compact Fluorescent Lamps, or CFLs)

They can replace incandescent bulbs directly, with 1.5 times the luminous flux of an ordinary fluorescent lamp and six times that of an incandescent bulb, cutting electricity use by 80%.

In 1976, Edward Hammer of General Electric invented the first compact fluorescent lamp, but the project was shelved because it was costly and fragile;

In 1980, Philips launched the SL bulb, built around a folded tube and a ballast. It used a stable tri-phosphor coating and a mercury amalgam, and was the first energy-saving lamp to replace an incandescent bulb successfully.

Gas-Discharge Lamps (HID)

They use the high pressure produced by a mercury discharge to get more visible light out of the electricity. A normal HID lamp gives more than three times the luminous flux of an ordinary lamp, and its light, at around 6000K, comes closest to midday sunlight, which the human eye finds most comfortable.

In 1906, the first high-pressure mercury lamp appeared, for medical and research use;

In 1932, high-pressure mercury lamps went on sale for lighting — the start of HID;

In 1934, the mercury lamp appeared, the first true gas-discharge lamp.

Third Generation: Halogen Lamps

In 1959, the halogen lamp was developed successfully, giving white light with very little bulk and very little light decay,

In 1961, the metal halide lamp appeared. The most efficient light source in common use, the high-pressure sodium lamp, has a luminous efficiency far above that of the high-pressure mercury lamp.

Fourth Generation: Induction Lamps and LEDs

Induction Lamps

Also called electromagnetic induction lamps, they last more than 100,000 hours, use over 70% less energy than incandescent bulbs, and are made of materials that are more than 98% recyclable. In 1907, the American scientist P. C. Hewitt patented the principle of the induction lamp; it reached the market on a large scale in the early 1990s.

LED (Light-Emitting Diode)

No ultraviolet radiation, no mercury in the lamp, high light output. Low energy use, with a typical unit power of 0.05 to 1 watt, drawing only one-eighth to one-tenth the power of an ordinary incandescent bulb at the same brightness. Long life: the standard rating, measured to the point where luminous flux has fallen to 70%, is 100,000 hours, and a single LED can normally serve for 50 years.

In 1962, General Electric invented the light-emitting diode, turning electricity straight into light;

In 1964, the red diode was born, with an efficacy of just 0.1 lumens per watt;

In 1996, Shuji Nakamura of Japan's Nichia Corporation developed the blue LED, which led to the white LED and to blue LEDs going into industrial production;

In the 1980s, the first generation of high-brightness LEDs appeared; ultra-bright LEDs arrived in the 1990s;

In 2000, the US Department of Energy began working with private manufacturers to push white LED technology forward.