Luminous Efficacy

Basics

• This page lists the Luminous Efficacy of various light sources
• Main units are
  • Lumens per Watt
  • and Percent Effeciency

Carbon Air Arc

• ~2-7 Lm/W
• ~0.29-1% efficiency
• VERY obsolete
• No longer in active development

Incandescent Lights

• ~5-25 Lm/W
• 0.7-3.5% efficiency
• Considered Obsolete in most use cases
• No longer in active development

Gas Discharge

• ~30-78 Lm/W
• ~4.4-11.4%
• Still common in projector lamps and vehicle headlight, although they are being phased out for LED
• No longer in active development

Florescence

• ~36-104.2 Lm/W
• ~9-15.62%
• Still common, but are being slowly phased out by led in most applications
• No longer in active development

Gas Discharge

• ~2-200 Lm/W
• ~0.3-29%
• Being replaced by either LEDs, Laser Diodes, or Sulfur Lamps depending on application

Electrodeless Gas Discharge / Sulfur Lamps

• Still barely developed, so may be higher in the future
• ~100 Lm/W
• ~15%
• Also for the numbers there are not many in this category yet, so little averaging, also the current sources are almost SOLELY very high output
• May never be fully developed, future uncertain

LED

• ~102-300 Lm/W
• ~20.3-43.9 Lm/W
• Granted these scale from pixels to ~3cm chips and not much larger
• Also this technology is mostly developed, but new phosphors etc may increase the efficacy slightly
• Technology is being actively developed

Useful Links

• The Wikipedia Page on Light Efficacy data was gathered from here, and thus may be only semi accurate. for most uses it should work (quick glance/comparison) feel free to add more data