Expo Park becomes the world's largest LED lighting demonstration area

When the night of Shencheng approached, a beautiful “landscape light show” was staged at the Shanghai World Expo Park: The East and West Pavilion of the Expo Pavilion was shimmering with the starry lights, and the outer wall of the Expo Center was quiet and elegant. White light and the Expo Axis Sun Valley in the movie screen project a dazzling array of designs. The China Pavilion, the Cultural Center, and the Oil Pavilion are all eye-catching in the setting of LED light sources...

This "light show" is not only a visual feast, but also a feast of science and technology. As the globally recognized fourth-generation lighting technology, solid-state lighting technology using light-emitting diodes (LEDs) has been fully demonstrated at the Shanghai World Expo. According to report, the total amount of LED chips used in the Shanghai World Expo Park is more than 1.003 billion pieces, of which 80% of night lighting in the park uses LED technology. The Expo Site has become the world's largest LED demonstration area.

The Shanghai World Expo is so "love" LED, with the forward-looking LED technology is inseparable. Director of the High-Tech Department of the Shanghai Municipal Science and Technology Commission and director of the Semiconductor Lighting Engineering Research Center Guo Yansheng said in an interview with reporters that compared with traditional light sources, LED technology has two significant advantages: energy saving, environmental protection, and controllability. In terms of energy saving and environmental protection, LED technology saves an average of 60% to 80% energy savings over traditional light sources. At the same time, the LED light source can form a combination of different light colors under the control of the computer to achieve a variety of dynamic changes. It is this characteristic that allows visitors to the Expo to see the changing lighting effects in the Sunshine Pavilion, Cultural Center and more.

Looking back at history, every leap in human lighting technology has left a footprint in the history of the World Expo. At the Vienna World Expo in 1873, the invention of the electric motor ushered in the era of electrification. At the Paris World Expo in 1878, the incandescent light bulb invented by Edison was installed on the Eiffel Tower, lighting the entire Expo Park. In 1939, the New York and Los Angeles Expo demonstrated the first practical fluorescent. “The Shanghai World Expo may become the first year of human solid-state lighting,” said Wang Gang, general manager of Shanghai Everlight Lighting Co., Ltd., whose company provides a large number of LED lamps for the Shanghai World Expo lighting.

The large-scale application of LED technology in the Expo site shows that this technology is not far away from people's lives. Guo Yansheng said that the Ministry of Science and Technology of China launched the “Ten Thousand Cities” program in 2004 to promote LED lighting in 21 cities in China. At present, LED lighting has been used extensively in Shanghai's municipal construction lighting. “The government is taking a number of measures to reduce the cost of LED lighting,” he said. “I believe that LED can enter millions of households within three to five years.”

In terms of scale, China is already a big country in the LED industry. However, there is still a gap between China and the advanced countries in the field of technology. It is reported that most of the World Expo LED lighting has achieved localization, but most of the LED chips use imported chips. Lu Wei, a researcher at the Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, pointed out that the inconsistency of industrial standards is a bottleneck that restricts China's LED industry from becoming stronger. He expressed that he hopes to further promote the development of the LED industry through the platform of the Shanghai World Expo.