Aussmak Optoelectronics Enviably Swamped With Household CCFL Orders

George Lin, general manager of Aussmak Optoelectronics Corp., is pondering how to squeeze more capacity out of the company's production lines of cold cathode fluorescent lamp (CCFL) lights, which are humming already to fill a stream of orders for household lighting but, more importantly, to prepare for the increasing chances of winning government contracts as well.

“Capacity shortage has been the bee in my bonnet recently,” confesses Lin. In less than a year since the company participated in the autumn edition of the Hong Kong International Lighting Fair 2009, Aussmak has landed impressive number of contracts from Europe and Japan. “We shipped three 20-foot containers to Japan this July and August and will deliver same volume of lights to Europe in coming months,” Lin says.

Aussmak's having acquired more industry standard certificates as CNS, CCC, CE, UL, and PSE buoys Lin's confidence, for he believes the more formal qualifications the better the likelihood of landing government contracts.

Multi-advantaged

“CCFLs have become increasingly popular mainly for being very durable, energy saving, minimally mercury contaminating, dimmable and emitting non-tanning UV-B ray,” Lin stresses.

Specifically CCFLs, the general manager notes, typically last 50,000 hours as backlight in liquid crystal display (LCD) TVs and 30,000 hours as lighting source. Besides being 80% more energy efficient than incandescent bulbs, CCFLs, according to Aussmak data, contain much less mercury than current existing fluorescent lamps.

Also, data shows that CCFL could be 36% more energy efficient than T8 fluorescents and 17% more than T5 tubes, where CCFLs of equal illumination are rated 54W vs. T8's 85W and T5's 65W; while CCFLs' yearly per-unit CO2 output is around 349.1 kilograms, compared with T8's 549.5 kilograms and T5's 420.2 kilograms. CCFLs is, moreover able to dim down 30% to save more energy and reduce more CO2 output. Besides, CCFLs use, relative to the other two, the least glass tubing and contain the least mercury, as well as being recyclable.

Such merits have inspired the company to dub CCFLs with a new acronym based on “Long Life, Controllable, and Decontamination” or “LCD.” “Most of all, the lamp is more affordable than LEDs, and are attractive to eco-friendly proponents,” Lin notes.

The key to longevity of CCFLs, Lin notes, is “cold” activation, in which the layer wrapping the two nickel electrodes, when “sputtered” by high voltage, of a lamp discharges electrons to bump into argon and mercury gas molecules to generate UV rays. In contrast, hot cathode fluorescent lamp (HCFL) emits light by burning filaments, which are coated with electron powder called “emitter” that discharge electrons at high temperature. So CCFLs last relatively longer without eroding an emitter coat. In addition CCFL's “cold” activation allows one million on-off switches, compared with HCFL's 100,000, industry executives note.

Proven Durable

“People tout that LEDs can last 50,000 hours without providing field test data; while CCFLs are proven as backlights with 50,000-hour lifespan. So, it is a mature energy-saving lighting technology,” Lin stresses.

Lin's data shows that LCD lamps outperform T5 and T8 lamps in luminous efficacy. An LCD grid lighting fixture with four T8 CCFL lamps achieves 54.40 lumen-per-watt, compared with 44.67 lumen-per-watt with four T8 tubes, and 44.23 to 49.64 lumen-per-watt for a T5 lighting fixture with four tubes.

Tapping CCFL's dimmability, Aussmak has introduced infinitely-dimmable and step- dimmable lights. One of the company's notable dimmable lights has a built-in three-phase dimmer, which controls light output to 30%, 60% and 100% according to ambient light, achieving saving up to 70% of electricity.

Lin says that although traditional fluorescent tubes and compact fluorescent lamps are also dimmable, such functionality usually compromises durability by 50% to 80%; but not so with CCFLs, which can also work with off-the-shelf dimmers.

By the end of this year, Aussmak will no longer produce non-dimmable lights to distinguish its products from compact fluorescent lamps. “Demand for dimmable lamps is quite strong in Japan and such lamps constituted 10-15% of the U.S. and Europe lighting market last year,” Lin says.

The company targets lighting-fixture manufacturers as customers, offering mainly E27 lamps in globe and spiral designs, T8 tube, under-cabinet lights, T9 tube, and ballasts. “The strategy drives growth and makes us quite flexible when choosing partners,” Lin says.

Bright Outlook

Global warming is driving governments worldwide to ban electricity-guzzling incandescent bulbs, with such energy-conservation trend brightening the prospect of CCFL lighting. Market surveys show that the production of energy-saving fluorescent bulbs in China, which makes 85% of such lights globally, rose to 2.4 billion units in 2006 from 750 million in 2001. The American lighting market saw consumption of energy-saving fluorescent bulbs surge to 397 million units in 2007 from 93 million in 2004, for a market penetration of 20% vs. sub-1% in 2001.

Lin points out that power bills will definitely continue to rise worldwide with dwindling energy resources, fueling demand for energy-efficient products as energy-saving CCFL lamps.

Aussmak taps overseas markets with its “AUSSMAK” brand and as contract maker, mainly targeting public work projects and working with wholesalers and trade suppliers instead of retailers. In Taiwan, it has supplied the Kaohsiung Government in southern Taiwan with street signs using CCFLs, the Taipei County Government in northern Taiwan with backlights for billboards at bus stops, several hospitals and office buildings.

Lin believes CCFLs will likely become mainstream three to eight years before LEDs for being technological mature and acceptably priced. “LEDs may be energy saving and durable, but its higher prices mean longer time is needed to recoup investment from energy saving than that for CCFLs,” he says.