SHANGHAI plans to apply more lighting semi-conductors to reduce energy consumption from everything including plasma TVs to crop planting, city officials said today.
The plan is based on light-emitting dioxide, or LED, officials of the Shanghai Science and Technology Commission said.
"We are trying LED to improve people's lives in many ways," Guo Yansheng, director of the commission's high-tech production department, said during a Shanghai international LED industry exhibition today.
During the exhibition, the Shanghai Research Center of Engineering and Technology for Solid-State Lighting displayed its latest LED products such as plasma screens, car lights and crop planting.
LED is an energy-saving lighting semiconductor that has great market potential over the next decade because it uses only about 10 percent of the power of an incandescent bulb while providing the same amount of light, officials said.
An electricity meter showed that a LED plasma screen consumed about 50 percent less power than a conventional LCD screen. The LED screen also has better picture quality although it costs at least US$300 more than a conventional one.
Yang Weiqiao, a researcher of the center, said that the center is now cooperating with SVA Group, the city's chief producer of electronics, to manufacture the new screens.
"Hopefully, the new screens will enter the local market by 2010," he said, noting that the technology is on par with international competitors and they are trying to reduce costs.
Shanghai has also started to use LED lights in the Yuyuan Garden area, the science commission officials said.
They said the project is part of the city's efforts to reduce overall energy consumption by 20 percent per unit of gross domestic product by 2010 compared with 2005.
