This week: Packaged LEDs futures, Bayer does polycarbonate, and declining electricity use.
Electricity use projected to drop
We reported a month ago that electricity use in the US has declined for three years and stands at levels not seen since 2001. Now IHS Technology has released a projection on how much it might decline in the future, due to the uptake of more efficient lighting. The answer: a projected 24%, from 3.61 trillion kWh in 2013 to 2.75 TkWh in 2018. This will happen despite the expected 5.1% rise in the number of lamps worldwide. Lighting will account for 10.3% of all generated energy in 2018, versus 16.4% last year.
The coming scale of the Internet of Things
Someone has put a number on the size of the IoT over the coming five years. It's a big number. Business Insider Intelligence estimates that the IoT today encompasses 1.9 billion "things" and will balloon to 9 billion by 2018. That's on the same order as the combined total of PCs, smartphones, tablets, smart TVs, and wearable computers. The Internet had better be running predominantly IPv6 by then.
Packaged LEDs at $26 billion in five years
Continuing with the theme of five-year projections, we turn to Strategies Unlimited's extrapolation of the growth of the packaged LED business, unveiled in the opening keynote at Strategies in Light last week. Analyst Katya Evstratyeva said this segment grew 7% from 2012 to 2013 and will grow at a double-digit rate in each of the next five years to reach $25.9 billion in 2018. Lighting will account for most of the growth, with automotive growing only modestly, while backlighting and mobile applications will decline. Evstratyeva said that high-power LEDs will still dominate over mid-power in 2018. LEDs Magazine will post more details this week.
Take two lenses and call me in the morning
Designing luminaire optics giving you a headache? Bayer AG has just the thing for you, according to a press release that hit the wires when the SIL conference opened. Bayer MaterialScience produces "special polycarbonate grades for crucial LED components such as lenses and light guides," according to the presser. The product line is a couple of years old. I, for one, was unaware that the company had branched out from acetylsalicylic acid.
— Keith Dawson 
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