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Lighting Ballasts to Undergo Accelerating Change In 2009

December 21, 2008 by Jeff Shepard

In the next five years, the global lighting industry will go through the biggest period of change since the invention of the incandescent bulb by Thomas Edison, according to the Fifth-Edition of Darnell’s comprehensive analysis of "Electronic Ballasts: Market Forces and Demand Characteristics." Soon, the Edison bulb itself will be effectively outlawed in most countries and for most applications.

Every type of lighting that is vying to replace the incandescent blub uses electronic ballast. During this transition period, various types of energy efficient lighting will surge in sales. High-efficiency fluorescent tubes, high-intensity discharge (HID) lighting, as well as CFLs, ultra-high-efficiency light emitting diodes (LEDs) and other lighting technologies will see increasing sales, driving growth for sales of the corresponding electronic ballasts.

"That will be good news because it will drive a huge surge in ballast sales. It may also be bad news because every type of lighting requires different types of ballasts," observed Jeff Shepard, President of Darnell Group. "Only companies offering the right ballasts with the right feature sets will benefit. This is a critical period. Targeting the wrong lighting technology or developing ballasts with the wrong feature set at the wrong time will be disastrous," Shepard concluded.

It’s not just the basic lighting technology that determines overall performance. The ability to dim lamps effectively can result in as much as a 70% energy (and cost) savings. System-level developments are contributing to even greater reductions in energy use by lighting. Centralized control of individual dimmable ballasts in an integrated building communications system brings further cost and energy savings.

The control of individual lighting ballasts is beginning to extent even beyond the building interior to the outside world. New ballasts have been developed that enable electric utilities to remotely control individual fixtures, reducing the lighting load (so-called load shedding) for their commercial customers during peak demand periods.

Even before incandescent bulbs have been banned, demand for more energy efficient lighting has been growing. For example, the U.S. residential sector for energy efficient lighting has surged from 5% of units sold in 2005 to 20% in 2007. More energy efficient lights were sold in the U.S. market in 2007 than in the previous three years combined. And growth is accelerating from 2008 into 2009 and beyond. Europe and China are experiencing similar adoption patterns.

Change is a certainty for this industry.

Darnell’s Fifth-Edition report presents the only detailed and comprehensive analysis of trends driving demand for electronic ballasts. It considers a broad array of technical, economic, environmental and regulatory trends and presents a path to the future for the continued adoption of various energy efficient lighting technologies. For detailed information contact Traci at [email protected] or +1-951-279-6684.