Today Cree announced that they have trounced previous luminous efficiency records of Light Emitting Diodes with 231 lumens per watt being produced by a single-die component. The record-setting efficient LED has a color temperature of 4500K, the results were produced at room temperature and the LED was running at 350mA, or about one watt. Back in the day (only a few years in LED time) it was believed that 200 lumens per watt might be the theoretical maximum for an LED:
“It wasn’t long ago when 200 lumens per watt was considered the theoretical maximum efficiency for a lighting-class LED. We broke that barrier in 2010, and have now achieved 231 lumens per watt,”
Although 231 lumens per watt is an astounding level of efficiency, at the moment we will have to contend with a measly 135 lumens per watt that XPG LEDs give off at 350mA. It’s only a matter of time before Cree packs this level of performance into components we can actually get our fins on but in the meantime, it’s nice to know that LED engineers are pushing the envelope of solid state lighting on a monthly if not weekly basis.
[Cree]
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