Light is essential to our daily lives, whether at work, at home, or on the go. Without light, people simply cannot perform normal daily activities. So we should probably not be surprised by the huge amount of electricity used in lighting. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, in 2016, residential and industrial / commercial lighting consumed 279 billion kilowatt hours of electricity. This accounts for about 10% of the total energy consumption in these two areas, and is about 7% of the total energy consumption in the United States. The relative value of such electricity consumption in other developed countries in the world is similar.

Traditional basic lighting technology has very low energy efficiency. In fact, the humble incandescent light bulb can only convert less than 5% of the energy used into visible light. Fortunately, this century-old core technology is gradually being phased out, especially as light-emitting diode (LED) technology begins to emerge, this technology has now achieved more than 50% conversion energy efficiency. The decline in the price of LED products and the incentives for users to switch to more advanced technologies have further stimulated adoption. Some estimates say that by 2030, the widespread adoption of LEDs can save 40% of electricity consumption.

In addition to the inherent energy efficiency improvements, LED lighting is also used in smart lighting applications. Smart lighting applications are rapidly gaining popularity as they can save more energy and customize flexible solutions to specific application needs.

But intelligent lighting has its inevitability, and it requires corresponding "smart", efficient semiconductor-based drivers and controllers. In 10W to 100W smart lighting applications for offices, factories, and homes, the combination of FL7740 (primary side) and FL7760 (DC-DC buck) from ON Semiconductor can support a simplified topology and bill of materials. They provide accurate constant voltage regulation and support analog and pulse width modulation (PWM) dimming. They can help smart lighting engineers achieve and exceed design goals and meet and exceed increasingly stringent emerging global standards.

In addition to being able to provide the constant voltage adjustment required in the steady state of LED lighting, FL7740 also has fast response time, low power consumption (including in standby mode, which is a key specification for smart lighting), a high power factor of about 0.9, Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) of less than 10% at half load and universal input.

The FL7760 is responsible for dimming and has an industry-leading 5 to 100% wide analog dimming range; this range makes analog dimming a practical choice for lighting designers for the first time. Although the inherent problems of flicker and audible noise caused by fast and violent switching are not ideal, the device supports PWM dimming over the entire range. A major differentiating innovation of the FL7760 is that it can seamlessly combine analog and PWM dimming when dimming below the 5% analog dimming limit is required.

With the control functions provided by semiconductor technology, LED smart lighting is not only practical, but also easier to implement, making the potential to improve working and living environments and save tens of billions of kilowatts of electricity relatively relatively possible in the near future.