Taiwan Pavilion Presents Advanced LED Lighting Technology in Shanghai Expo

The Shanghai Expo which is running from May through October is the largest of its kind ever held in the 150-year history of world expos. More than 240 countries and international organizations are participating this year under the theme of “Better City, Better Life,” and the Taiwan Pavilion is impressing visitors from all over the world with a huge 20-meter “sky lantern” which broadcasts films of Taiwan's scenery and culture 24 hours a day through a 16-meter LED globe.

Shanghai Expo is expected to attract over 70 million visitors during its 184-day run. According to the organizer, the Taiwan Pavilion is among the expo's top five attractions, with crowds of expo-goers flocking in, despite the torrid temperatures, to see the beautiful sky lantern and the images it broadcasts: the butterfly valley, the coastal areas, art creations, mountain and rivers, and folk culture, among other things.

This is the first time for Taiwan to join the world expo since the event was held in Osaka, Japan in 1970. For the resumption of Taiwan's presence, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA), which organized the Taiwan Pavilion, has tried its utmost to make the best presentation possible. It invited CY Lee & Partners, which designed the Taipei 101 tower and several other prominent buildings in Taiwan, to design the Taiwan Pavilion under the theme of “Nature, Spirit, and City.” The pavilion has two layers of walls, the inner layer consisting of the 16-meter LED globe made up of over a million LED bulbs and the outer layer being a 20-meter lantern-shaped glass wall covered with a laminated sheet which automatically adjusts the color of the films shown by the LED globe.

This creative design captures a lot of attention. “It's a comibation of Taiwan's strength in the LED industry as well as the beauty of Taiwan's natural scenery and cultural art,” said TAITRA Chairman Wang Chih-kang.

Green Concept

　　

The Taiwan Pavilion successfully demonstrates Taiwan's prowess in LED technology, which is also evident elsewhere in the show grounds. Green energy technology is everywhere, with over one billion LED bulbs making Expo the largest “LED lighting park” around the world.

The Expo's opening ceremony alone used over 6,000 LED bulbs, which automatically changed color to decorate the event's surrounding area on the bank of the Huangpu River.

“When compared to traditional lighting sources, the LED has two major advantages—one is energy saving (it saves 60-80% compared with traditional bulbs) and the other is computerized control, which makes it possible for a single computer server to control the color changes of thousands of bulbs at the same time,” Wang commented.

China, which used to lag behind western countries in the use of green energy, has been working hard to catch up. The Shanghai Expo is like a world stage where China can demonstrate its determination in the promotion of green energy. Green energy is evident everywhere on the grounds—in electric power, air conditioning, illumination, performance stages, and transportation, among others. For companies, the Expo is like a competition field where they can vie for business opportunities associated with Expo and beyond.

　　

LED Companies

Shanghai Expo indeed provides huge business opportunities to the LED makers. Neo-Neon LED Lighting International, which was first set up in Taiwan in 1979, is one of the major suppliers of LED engineering for the event, using a total of 2,300 LED bulbs of its own.

Neo-Neon is one of the pioneers in the LED lighting field. It began promoting LED applications in 1997 and set up an LED packing factory in 2002, and is now a global leader in the industry with production lines around the world staffed by 15,000 workers producing a full line of LED lighting products.

Opto Tech Corp., a manufacturer of outdoor LED boards, is another winner in the field; it handled the construction of the LED globe for the Taiwan Pavilion, which was the toughest challenge the company has ever faced since its establishment 27 years ago. The company built the LED globe with over one million LED bulbs of eight different specifications, attached to each other at tens of thousands of joining spots.

The Expo's huge demand for LEDs brought numerous business opportunities to LED parts suppliers such as the upstream IC makers Epistar Corp. and Genesis Photonics, and IC packaging companies Everlight Electronics and Unity Opto Technology. Secondary Optics, which focuses on the development of low-temperature illumination, has also benefited from the event as the major LED direction-light supplier for the Coca Cola vending machines installed at Expo.