Design and Development of a DC Light-Bulb Using High-Power LEDs

Electricity need is continuously increasing along with the increase in human population. The fulfillment of this need must consider the depletion of fossil energy sources as well as the environment protection. The development of renewable energy sources offers a promising solution. Concern on energy saving brings to an idea for reconsidering the use of alternating- current system of electricity. One technology being recently developed is a DC-home system by utilizing renewable energy sources. However, they may not generate enough energy for the house because the renewable resources are not always available at all times. Consequently, it is desirable to develop new home electrical devices that can work optimally using limited power. An important type of electrical load in a house being potential to adapt to the DC-home system is the light bulb. In this study, the use of High-Power LED (HPL) is explored to produce optimal illumination with low power consumption. An HPL requires a driver to activate and a heatsink to dissipate the generated heat. This study uses and LT3590 as the LED driver in conjunction with Arduino Nano as its microcontroller. The energy usage of the HPL is minimized by considering the amount of light entering the room with the help of a Light Dependent Resistor (LDR) sensor. The experiment results show that using a 3-watt light bulb the efficiency greater than 80% with luminous efficacy of 30 - 90 lm/W has been obtained. It has also been proven that operating the LED light by considering the amount of entering light into the room can provide the desired level of illumination with less power.