LED Blog: LED Lighting And All Things Green

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.

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.

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]

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]

Super cool 21W bulb with an insane heatsink

Sorry guys, for the lack of updates. We’ve been VERY busy looking for some new manufacturers and new products. LED light bulbs and the technology that powers them is changing so fast, I’d almost say that the ones you’ve seen online 1 year ago are already obsolete.

The biggest advance we’ve seen is with heatsinking technology. Since LED dies/chips only get marginally better, the only other thing that manufacturers can do is cluster more LED’s together, and drive them harder.

More power means more heat, so they’re forced to come up with some insane heatsink designs (they’re starting to look like computer CPU heatsinks). I wonder if any CPU heatsink manufacturers are making LEDs……

The guy you see on your left is a whopping 21W LED floodlight that is DIMMABLE and is meant to replace about a 100W incandescent flood. 80% savings and it lasts 10x longer…NICE. Price? Well, let’s see if we can get them over here and we promise you we’ll get the lowest price possible.

So stay tuned and we’ll keep you updated on our status in the hunt for better, brighter LED bulbs. What’s the most common bulb you’d like to replace in your home or store? Floodlights? Halogen or Globes? Leave a comment and let us know…

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.

[Make via Gizmodo]