A famous Japanese lighting manufacturer, Toshiba has continued to put great effort in the development of the lighting industry since they sold their first incandescent light bulb in 1890. In the initial stages of LED lighting development, Toshiba designed a series of LED lighting replacement projects for the Louvre, and also announced that they will no longer produce incandescent lights starting from 2010. Over the years, Toshiba has continued to eliminate inefficient lighting sources and has been dedicated to energy saving and LED lighting. What are their plans for future development of the company’s products? How did they develop a mature lighting market to expand the LED lighting market development? During Lighting Japan 2013, LEDinside visited Toshiba’s product exhibition center CO-LAB and interviewed Katsurayama-san, and was fortunate to have the opportunity to further understand the development of Toshiba’s lighting products.

The Design of LED Omni-directional Bulbs And The Increasing CRI Requirements
Due to the energy-saving policy, Japan has been most rapidly replacing conventional lighting products with LEDs. In such progress, LED bulbs were the first to appear on stage. In the second half of 2012, major Japanese manufacturers began to launch omni-directional bulbs. The beam angle of Toshiba’s omni-directional bulb is up to 300 degrees, and the heat dissipated from LED is released by the three arch cooling plate. LED products currently sold on the market include 800lm, 60W equiv. LED bulbs, and 1000lm bulbs will be launched this year.

In addition, Toshiba has also targeted the cosmetics market and launched キレイ色 kireiro LED bulbs, emphasizing that its high Color Rendering Index (CRI) could show the true color of the skin. Many bulbs with a CRI value up to Ra90, and E17 and E26 (540 lm / 410lm / 610lm) are already sold on the market, and 380lm bulbs will be launched in April.

High Bay Lighting Product
Due to the high directivity of LED lighting and increasing industrial projects, Toshiba has successively launched high bay lighting products in 2012 to replace MF250W, MF400W, MF1000W, HID 400W, and HID 700W. Other than providing customer’s needs, they also emphasized that the lifetime of the product is up to 60000 hours, which is a great advantage that could meet the needs of industrial lighting, especially safety and long lifetime.

T/Flecs Lighting Control System, Targeting Commercial And Industrial Lighting Markets
The integration of LED lighting and a variety of intelligent sensor systems has gone mainstream. However, sensor systems used in general lighting are sometimes too sensitive; they may detect slight movements of the human body and cause confusion. Toshiba has introduced the T/Flecs system—a system that combines LED lighting and photographic surveillance technology—to the commercial lighting market. If there is no people in the range of photographic surveillance technology system for a certain period of time, the lighting energy control system will automatically shut down the lighting within the monitoring range but retain the necessary lighting in order to save energy as well as provide customers a good experience.

 Long-term Development Trend: LED+SMART / Home Energy Management Systems (HEMS) / Building Energy Management Systems (BEMS)
Toshiba is focused on LED+Smart in the long-term development of LED lighting. Resources are integrated with energy generation, storage, and saving facilities, and through Bluetooth or the Internet, customers are able to remotely monitor the current power consumption and even set their own mode to adjust energy usage and energy saving according to individual needs. Emerging countries that are about to develop infrastructures such as Vietnam are starting to follow this trend.

LEDinside Perspective
Many aspects are considered by Toshiba in the development of LED lighting; not only did they focus on home lighting, but also develop numerous product lines in the industrial and commercial lighting markets. Energy generation, energy storage, and energy saving should be emphasized in the long-term development, and new light sources such as LD and OLED should be fully utilized in order to develop more applications. On the other hand, LED lighting is still dominant among new energy sources and the LED lighting market. With prominent international manufacturers leading the lighting development, the LED lighting market is bound to expand.