Q. What is the difference between an incandescent bulb and LED?
Incandescent creates light by the use of a filament. When power is applied, the filament glows and generates heat - which in turn produces light. LEDs are just the opposite. LEDs create light through a 'cold process'. When power is applied to semiconductors, they're stimulated by the movement of electrons, this creating photons. Photons are the light that is visibly seen by humans.

Q. Why do LEDs use such little power?
LEDs do not use a filament where a conductor is heated and light is created. Filament based lighting consumes more power than the light produced. LEDs produce very little amounts of heat and do not use filaments making them far more efficient in consumption and output.

Q. How long will LED lights last?
The commercial LEDs are rated for 50,000 hours of run time. Even though the price of the LED bulbs is higher, the overall operating cost is much lower. A new LED bulb uses 1/4 the electricity of a conventional tungsten light bulb. The overall savings is substantial over the life of the 1,000 hour bulb.

Q. LEDs are more expensive than other lighting options. Why?
LEDs can operate as standalone devices, but when grouped or clustered they require additional steps to operate properly. LEDs need proper components such as a circuit board, driving components and some cases and housings to endure the elements. LED circuits can be designed rapidly, but to ensure that they operate correctly and for long periods of time they require testing.

Q. How do you get more light out of an LED?
LEDs are made by a process that deposits the junction materials on a substrate material. One of the limitations of LEDs is that imperfections in the material deposited on the substrate reduce the efficiency. Improvements in the manufacturing process have given us brighter LEDs, as have new junction materials.  To a certain extent, you can also make the junction larger to get more light. But you can't extend that very far, mainly due to those imperfections. Their accumulated effect prevents a junction from growing much bigger than a square millimeter. So we won't likely see larger LED junctions without some advance in materials science to overcome that limitation. Since a single LED is a relatively low power device (by comparison with other light sources), constructing LED arrays is attractive.