LED Blog: LED Lighting And All Things Green

What can you make for a buck?

Oh how I envy the hope and naivety of the young. Kids that have yet to experience the real world and think that they can save the world by turning garbage into art. In this case, it’s a required part of their curriculum, so it’s for a worthy cause, namely getting them a degree. This is a nice gallery of things that you can make for “a dollar” which you definitely can’t get an led light bulb for at the moment. It’s a good idea, but probably not something that I would spend money on. Though if it is in fact, one dollar, then I guess it would be worth it.

I would have enjoyed doing something like this back when I was in school, but my extent of recycling was turning a juice box into a bomb…It’s like the Zoolander concept brought to life….Mugatu’s Derelict.

Design for a Dollar Challenge [Via Fast Company]

California Edison's Lighting Technology Center

Just paid a visit to California Edison over here in Southern California. They’re one of the few utility companies who are taking an ACTIVE role, in LED technology and have an LED testing lab that has been testing LED MR16 bulbs from about 60 different LED manufacturers for about 6 months now. They’re just about finished and we’ll be getting a copy of the report and we’ll be sure to share the results here on the blog!

I was able to dig a little bit and find out some VERY interesting things they’ve learned so far from the past 6 months:

• The range of quality of bulbs varied WIDELY
• “Warm White” can look very different from one manufacturer to the next
• About 60% of the bulbs purchased have either DIED or been removed from the test (because their light output dropped to less than 70%)
• Some manufacturers offered NO warranty *SCARY*

Overall, it seems that many fly-by-night manufacturers are cropping up (mostly in China), but only a handful are creating quality products - as the saying goes - you get what you pay for…

Image Source: http://www.sce.com