Clever technology is bringing LED-based light bulbs a lot closer to what consumers are willing to pay for them.

LED lighting could slash energy consumption in every standard socket on Earth, saving energy and cutting power-plant emissions. But today’s LED bulbs can cost $25 or more, and who’s going to pay that much when they’re used to getting a bulb for less than a buck?

TI has the solution. By introducing high-frequency power-conversion techniques in the electronics of LED bulbs, TI is helping drastically reduce the bulbs’ cost – and making inefficient incandescent bulbs as antiquated as oil-burning lamps.

High-frequency power usually sacrifices energy efficiency. But TI is developing innovative circuits and reducing other components to minimize efficiency losses, resulting in a 100x increase in frequency with little or no reduction of power efficiency. And there’s more: High-frequency power conversion also dramatically reduces the cost of a bulb’s other electronic components. Suddenly LED bulbs get a lot closer to what consumers are willing to pay.

LED bulbs consume just one-fifth the power of incandescents and half the power of compact fluorescents. And they boast 40,000 hours – that’s 4.5 years – of continuous operation. That’s 40 times how long an incandescent is rated to last.

How is that possible?

• LEDs convert an astounding 80 percent of electricity into light.
• Incandescents convert just 20 percent of energy into light and lose 80 percent as heat. (You might say incandescents are heating devices that just happen to also produce illumination.)

To put this all in context, with an LED bulb that was on for six hours a day, you could raise a daughter and put her through high school before ever changing the bulb.

Plus LED lighting can be tunable, which means you can adjust it at will: Soft and warm for entertaining guests, bright white for reading a book. And TI’s work is helping achieve the U.S. Energy Department’s ambitious goal of a $5 LED bulb by 2015.