LED Blog: LED Lighting And All Things Green

Blue LED + Yellow + Orange = ?

So where does $60 million in LED research going? It seems a large chunk of grants from the department of Energy is going towards improving the 3 things that we’ve been talking about for a while: Price, light output and color.

Looks like CREE, Philips and GE are receiving the bulk of grant money. It will be interesting to see what they can come up with as well as what the future brings for LED lighting… My question is how long until all this great research is APPLICABLE to us? 2,3,4 years? Let’s hope not…

Source: Popular Mechanics

Is there any other investment that can guarantee this kind of return?

Everyone KNOWS that LED bulbs save money. With the appearance of LED bulbs in more and more places ( Philips LED bulbs just popped up in Home Depot), the general public is starting to become more aware of the products that are available, but the consensus is they’re STILL too expensive.

The truth is what few are saying is that it really doesn’t make sense financially to switch out to LEDs if you’re using them less than 8 hours a day.

Compared to a “traditional investment”, if you are only using an LED bulb 6 hours per day, you’re making a measly 5% return on your investment - i.e. if you spend $10 for the LED bulb, you’ll “make” $0.50 per year(in savings).

The numbers get really interesting when you starting getting to 12 hours usage per day and more. In this example, we plugged the numbers in for California ($0.15 /kWh) into our trusty LED energy evaluation calculator at 16 hours usage a day and the average return on investment is an astounding 76%! - i.e. if you spend $10 for the LED bulb, you’ll “make” $7 per year (in savings).

Now imagine in commercial applications where you have HUNDREDS of bulbs…this savings are just immense. Is there ANY investment vehicle out there that can guarantee a return like this?

See the full LED evaluation here.

There’s always something to complain about isn’t there? Apparently, one of the main benefits of using LEDs in the millions of streetlights around the U.S. is turning out to be it’s unforseen downfall. Or at least an oversight, now that the weather has gotten chillier.

Never mind that the LEDs will last years without replacing, not to mention the work it takes to get a guy in a cherry picker to replace it, and the inconvenience of having to stop at every broken light. The fact that it uses 1/10th of the energy of regular light bulbs, saving the city thousands of dollars a month in electricity (Wisconsin saves $750,000 a year) also means that not a lot of heat is being produced by the lights. Heat that would generally melt the snow and ice that would accumulate during the snowy season. This has resulted in accidents, even a death, at the hands of “malfunctioning” traffic lights. And ergo you could say that LED lights KILL PEOPLE.

Ok maybe that’s a stretch. But who would have thought that excess waste heat from inefficient bulbs would be a good thing? I guess it depends on the environment, but I can totally relate. My PC tower definitely keeps my room a degree or two warmer than normal, which is a benefit now that the weather is finally dropping below freezing. And I remember back in college when I’d turn up the Wal-mart halogen floor lamps all the way up to heat up our apartment. I guess in this case, they might need to add a heating element to the lights. I have a great solution though. Two actually.

1. Assuming the average light stays mostly on green and red for at least a minute or two, but only on the yellow for a few seconds each cycle, then the heat generated from an incandescent bulb in the yellow slot could be just enough to keep the light free of ice and snow without wasting too much energy. This would be the “cheapest” solution and they enough stock from the lights they removed before to last many years into the future.
2. Retrofit a heating element in the housing so that it warms the lights/lens and keeps snow/ice from accumulating. They could have this set on a switch that turns them all on when the weather gets too cold, rather than having it on 24/7. This would be pricier, but would probably save more energy and you’re not going back to incandescents.
3. Do nothing. The likelihood of the right conditions for the wet snow and wind to be the right consistency to stick to the the lights is very low. Have crews go around and airblast the snow off of lights that are blocked. And have everyone be smart enough to know that a non-working light means you should treat it as a stop sign. The latter is probably the hardest part to implement.

Your welcome Transportation Authority. Please send checks to my P.O. box.

[via Yahoo]

The BEST 100W alternative around right now

The team over at littlegreenblog.com have done a pretty detailed review about what they thought of our new Quanta-18 100W flood replacement (Retail $99.99). They’ve even got a cool video that shows the actual light output in a real-world application! Get it here.

R + G + B = White!

The guys over at littlegreenblog.com have written a GREAT article on exactly what CRI and Color Temperature are and how to get the exact LEDs you need if you plan to build your own LED lights. It’s a little bit technical, but an easy read - and definitely some good knowledge to have even if you plan on just purchasing LED light bulbs (already-made) in the future.

We’re excited to announce that the Eternaleds HydraLux-4 is currently featured in the October 2009 issue of Popular Science as one of their “12 Must Have Products”! Exciting stuff!

We’re Popular Science readers ourselves and would like to thanks the staff at Popular Science for picking us. It just affirms to me that we’re on the right track bringing the most innovative LED products out to all of you. We’ll be featured in some other international magazines in the coming months so keep a look out.

Chocked full of tips on "living green"

The folks over at littlegreenblog.com are doing big things. Besides providing a ton of PRACTICAL tips on living green from greening your home and how to eat right, they’re planning to delve into building their own LED lights as well!

It’s always great to find people who share similar views on the toxicity of CFL’s and they hit the nail on the head with this post:

http://littlegreenblog.com/green-technology/energy-saving/leds-a-new-generation-of-lighting/

saying that CFL’s are just an interim solution to energy efficient lighting. It’s sad to hear that even in the UK, quality LED light bulbs still aren’t readily available. It’s people like Richard over at littlegreenblog.com who  take an active role in spreading the word for LED lighting that we appreciate.

Richard comes from an Electrical Engineering background and plans to build his own LED lights using his home as a testbed and showing homeowners how they can build their own lights that put out usable quality light. From what Richard has said, he’s been experimenting with LED chips that put out 1000+ lumens!

We’re excited to see it, and you can guarantee we’ll keep you all posted when he comes out with his writeup.

I saw this on one of those do-it-yourself websites and I was thinking that it looks uncannily like our Eternaleds company logo. Coincidence? I think not.

Wheres the number for my lawyer?

In fact, if I were make a real life version of that, that’s exactly what I’d do. Except instead of soil, it would be powered by pure awesomeness. Actually you could call this a solar-powered lightbulb and you wouldn’t be too far off. Looks really clean to boot. If I ever get a thumb green enough, I’ll try this and post it up.

At least I know what I can do with the bulbs I’m not using anymore

[via Instructables]

Looks like a fiery upside-down tulip

So personally I love lights. And I love cool applications for lights such as the Iron Man costume, but for me part of the charm and wonderment stems from an almost magical sense that the light is coming from nowhere. This artsy ceiling light by Designer Christopher Moulder accomplishes this by making the entire shade part conductive. Pretty neat idea. It uses little 10W xenon bulbs, which combined, total almost 300 watts. Could probably be more efficient if LEDs were used but maybe the xenons are extremely bright. Either way, I’d love to see some more designs that use LEDs since they would not only look good, but taste good be good for the environment as well. I have a few projects in mind in the next few months utilizing the portable nature of LEDs, so we’ll see what I can come up with. Stay tuned.

[via Gizmodo]

Chinese manufacturer logo - surfing babies what?! - are you kidding me??

I just got an email in our inbox today. We get spammed about 5x a day from different manufacturers in China trying to get us to sell THEIR LED products. This one was particularly funny since it DID get my attention, but not in a good way, with their attached logo of a chinese baby “catching a wave”. (I can’t make this stuff up people)

The emails generally consist of a Dear sir/madam - followed by extremely broken English, with an attached pricelist asking us to consider them to be our manufacturer.

Here’s an excerpt:

“Dear Sir,
This is Vickey  who come from Shenzhen *** ,LTD .I am kindly know you are in the market of LED lights.I would like to indroduce our comapny and products to you ,Hope to we could build business relatioship in 2009.”

I left the spelling errors in there on purpose. Do they REALLY expect us to buy their products, if the first sentence in their email is plagued with grammatical and spelling errors?

There are literally hundreds of new manufacturers in China trying to jump on the LED bandwagon, and make LED light bulbs. The question is what % of them are complete garbage?. We’ve taken the time to contact a number of manufacturers and tested their products thoroughly, before deciding on who to go with which is why we can offer a 2 year warranty and 30 day guarantee.

Once again, buyer beware - there’s a ton of new websites cropping up selling LED lights, at LOW prices. Their manufacturer can very well be the one who can’t even hire someone who speaks english, or uses surfing chinese babies in their logo…would you spend $40-$100 with them?

Anyone else seen some questionable websites? We’ll be happy to scope them out and give you the lowdown.