First published in Cleantech magazine 2011 Issue 3. Copyright Cleantech Investor Ltd
Denis Gross of Cleantech magazine was the guest of Nualight, the Irish LED company, and Enterprise Ireland on a tour of cleantech companies in Ireland.
Behind the headline news of property and banking woes from Ireland, there are signs of a strong performance in technological innovation and export.
Exports account for 80% of GDP, and are still growing robustly in value (7% in 2010 for indigenous companies) despite the tough economy.
New kinds of LED lighting technology are invading retail stores with a dual purpose: saving energy and luring shoppers. And as old-style incandescent bulbs are being phased out by the US government, the race for a replacement is on between LEDs and compact fluorescents.
Nualight, founded by Dr Liam Kelly in 2004, is an Irish firm that is pushing its way into the US retail marketplace. Nualight lights are installed in the California-based Fresh and Easy chain, as well as another in New England. Other companies are installing LED lights in stores throughout Texas and the southeast. According to Kelly, Nualight can nearly replicate the true colour of the sun’s illumination using digital LED lighting. Kelly says his firm is able to programme the LED bulbs to highlight individual colours on food – reds for meat, yellows and greens for vegetables and fruit.
Strategic and retail investors in Nualight include Novusmodus (a €200 million investment fund established by ESB, the leading Irish utility group); Climate Change Capital (which led a recent €9.1 million funding round alongside existing investors); 4th Level Ventures (an early investor which has owned shares in Nualight since September 2005); and the Superquinn family.
Revolutionary ideas in lighting
In lighting’s first revolution, it was the 1910 introduction of the tungsten filament that made incandescent light bulbs affordable, leading to the widespread commercialisation of electric lighting.
The second revolution in lighting can be dated to the invention of the fluorescent lamp by General Electric in 1938.
The third revolution is solid state lighting, principally the light emitting diode (LED). The original LEDs in the early 1960s were limited to red and yellow lights and had a small fraction (around 5%) of the luminous efficiency of Edison’s first incandescent lamp. However, dramatic progress has been made in their performance so that now, with the increasing demand for efficient lighting, LEDs represent the next generation of lighting technology – solid state lighting, or SSL.
Currently, energy savings are perhaps the strongest driver behind the development of SSL technology, given the current significant cost premium of LEDs over incandescent lamps. Current generations of LED lights, for example, can provide the illuminating power of a 100W incandescent lamp while consuming 13W of power. Thus in the US market, for example, SSL could reduce the power required for lighting by up to 50% in 2025.
How LEDs work
The LED is a semiconductor p-n junction diode: when connected to a power source, current flows only in one direction from the p-side, or anode, to the n-side, or cathode. When the LED is forward biased, charge-carriers (electrons and holes) flow into the junction from the electrodes. The recombination of electrons with holes results in electroluminescence, as electrons drop to a lower energy level with an accompanying release of a photon. The energy gap determines the wavelength of light emitted, and depends on the materials used to make the LED.
LED investment news
ShineOn, a Chinese company which manufactures LED packaging products for screens and outdoor illuminations, has completed a funding round of an undisclosed sum from Mayfield Fund, GSR Ventures, Northern Light Ventures and IDG-Accel Capital. The company has raised a total of US$51.5 million to date.
Boston-based Digital Lumens, which has technology for LEDs, sensors and lighting system controls, has raised US$10 million in Series B funding from its existing investors, Black Coral Capital, Flybridge Capital Partners and Stata Venture Partners. Digital Lumens, which has raised US$25 million in equity financing to date, has also secured bank funding from the Silicon Valley Bank.
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