Make: Magazine, one of my favorite mags, and subsequently the website, has a really cool and informative movie on the history of LEDs. Did you know the first LED was actually a rock? Yeah, me neither. They also give a quick tutorial on how LED lights work and how to make a simple circuit. Go check it out and learn a thing or two thing Monday morning. At least you’ll know who Nick Holonyak, Jr. is the next time you Trivial Pursuit.
$75 or $2? How much would you pay?
So with the economy in a downturn, it seems that EVERYONE is cutting down on spending now. Lighting included. By now most people know LED’s are AWESOME in termss of energy savings, money savings, environmental benefits but many still aren’t spending the money.
LED bulbs right now range anywhere from $10 (of the Ebay variety) to $150 across the internet. The ONLY way they’re going to get cheaper is simple supply and demand. If there aren’t enough people buying, then manufacturers won’t be able to sell enough quantities to bring prices down. So it seems the path to adoption is sell to large-scale projects like hotels, office buildings, chain restaurants, that can retrofit their fixtures with bulbs like this LED PAR38 (since they use & save the MOST energy) to bring prices low enough to the point where average homeowners can afford LED lighting.
A couple manufacturers and large distributors I’ve spoken to recently have been focusing on targeting large scale projects, government projects (street lighting, government buildings, universities etc.). This makes sense since they’re not as price sensitive and can actually SEE the savings on their final bill by switching out hundreds, if not thousands of light bulbs that are on typically 12 to 24 hours a day.
Now average Joe-Six-Pack *wink*, by switching out 1 or 2 bulbs or even 10 bulbs in his home won’t really see a huge difference. So it seems the strategy for most people/consumers is to “sit and wait till the price drops”. But to how low? How much would YOU pay?
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Powered by rice....kinda.
Imagine a world where you could have a coat or a bag that has solar panels on it that would charge your gadgets while you were using it. What, that’s already been done? Well, sure but what I meant was have it done it a way that doesn’t scream “uber-nerd”. I mean how do we expect Lindsey Lohan to wear something that’s ugly?
Well, this technology may be it. It’s a solar cell that is created using tiny solar cells(1/4 the size of a grain of rice) that can potentially be put into a solution and sprayed on various material like a car, a house, your head, etc. and produces a seemingly unheard of amount of energy for the size/power ratio. Not only that, but they plan to double the power in just a few months. So potentially you could just walk around with one of these LED PAR30 bulbs in your backpack to bring light everywhere you go. I can’t wait for my hawaiian-shirt-powered laptop in the next few years.
[Via Reuters]
