Germany’s annual power consumption is approximately 500 terawatt-hours (TWh) or 500 trillion watt-hours, with lighting accounting for almost 12 percent of that figure.

Today, as much as 11.5 TWh or 20 percent of the electricity needed for lighting could be saved in Germany alone if incandescent lamps were consistently replaced by more energy-efficient LEDs. The potential saving is equivalent to the annual output of a large-scale power plant.

Over the coming three years, Germany’s seven partners of the “EnLight” (Energy Efficient and Intelligent Lighting Systems) research project funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) aim to further reduce energy consumption by up to an additional 40 percent compared to today’s LED systems.

The partners from industry and research are shouldering about €5 million or approximately 45 percent of the project costs. Contributions of around €4.1 million and €2 million are made by the BMBF and the European Union, respectively. The EnLight project partners, alongside the German project leader Infineon Technologies AG, are BJB GmbH & Co KG, the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, Insta Elektro GmbH, NXP Semiconductors GA GmbH, Osram AG and RWTH Aachen University.

EnLight aims to exploit the full potential of LED-based lighting for saving further power through groundbreaking innovations in the LED lighting modules that include the LED and the driver electronics. Another goal pursued by EnLight is to develop programmable controls and innovative sensors for intelligent LED lighting solutions.

The German partners’ work is integrated into the European ENIAC Joint Undertaking project “EnLight”, headed by Philips. The European joint research project brings together 30 partners from six countries whose collaboration will further strengthen Europe’s leading global position in the lighting system sector.