Taiwan's ITRI forms LED industry alliance

By eGov Innovation Editors | Feb 5, 2012

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Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute  (ITRI), the country's largest high-tech research and development institutions, has formed an alliance that will explained the use of light-emitting diode (LED) in the agricultural sector.

A report in Taiwan Today said ITRI and more than 70 electronic enterprises, farms and biotech companies, researchers agree to use LED technology to help the sector create high value products.

Chu Mu-tao, director of Optoelectronics Device and System Applications Division under ITRI Electronics and Optoelectronics Research Laboratories, was quoted as saying LED bulbs are energy efficient and can lower electricity consumption in farms. “Under a program employing LEDs on white mushrooms in central Taiwan’s Nantou County, a grower saw his annual electricity fees drop from NT$150,000 (US$4,950) in 2009 to NT$60,000 in 2010,” he said.

According to ITRI, LED installations are also set for asparaguses, livestock farms and grouper fisheries in other cities and counties. Officials from the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOA) said the government plans to promote collaborative ventures between the agriculture and high-tech sectors.

Recently, ITRI received two Technology Innovation Awards from the Wall Street Journal for breakthroughs in green technologies. The two innovations were a spray coating that significantly reduces energy consumption in homes and offices, and an electronic paper that reduces paper consumption.