LED Blog: LED Lighting And All Things Green

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.

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