LED Blog: LED Lighting And All Things Green

$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]

Chevy Volt...Yay!

Ok so we’re finally ALMOST there. I was lurking through my favorite blog the other day, and they seem to have put up some new ads on their site. This time, it’s about the Chevy Volt. For those that have been living under a rock, the Volt is supposed to be the “new hotness” when it comes to green vehicles. Now it does not have the fame of being the first well-known “green” car (that honor would go to the very homely Honda Insight) but it is the first highly publicized made-for-the-general-public primarily electric model.

When I say primarily, I mean that it still swings both ways, but definitely has a penchant towards liberal rather than republican. It’s getting all the attention because even though it has the same overall parts as the past hybrids, this one has a trick up its sleeve. (No doubt they’re probably use an LED light bar or two for interior lighting). Through normal everyday driving, providing it’s under 40 miles, the car will use only use electrical power. So if you’re going back and forth from work everyday, then you never have to fill up the tank. Once it goes beyond that, the battery won’t be able to keep up and the engine kicks on. Pretty novel idea and seems like something that a lot of people are  excited about.

This is not by any means the holy grail (since it still sips dead dinosaur juice), but from a usability standpoint, goes a long way towards almost never having to fill up a tank. One of my good friends swore that he would get one when it comes out, so if that happens, I will definitely be doing an in-depth review of the experience. Or maybe I should just go to the lot for a test drive….

Either way, I’m definitely excited about the possibilities of it all, and maybe in a few years, we can completely wean ourselves away from foreign and domestic oil, for the better of the economy, and ultimately, the planet.

[Via Chevy Volt]

So Apple, who had only a year and a half ago, won the top….err…bottom spot by a good margin of the LOWEST score of “un-green-est” electronics company by Greenpeace, have now turned a new leaf, at least when it comes to the new iPod nano. No mercury and recyclable? That’s a good thing. Now the nano is such a small piece of sexy kit, that what should it matter if there’s a bit of unhealthy stuff, you may ask?

Just like they say, the secret is strength in numbers. With iPod selling over 160 million iPods worldwide since its inception, even 1mg of mercury and other harmful elements will add up in the environment. This argument can also be duplicated for fluorescents bulbs (FYI LED lights contain NO mercury). The smaller compact variety average about 4mg of mercury per bulb (more for large versions) and the longer office fluorescents range from 6-25mg per linear tube. In the U.S. alone, consumers have bought over 300 million bulbs just in 2007 (Wal-mart themselves pledged to sell 100 million the year before). Now extrapolate that to how much mercury that is (easily over 5000 lbs) and it looks like we’re starting to have a problem. Where does all that mercury go? Ideally, we would take all our bulbs and electronics and had them over to a recycling facility, where IDEALLY they would recycle and reuse it. But we don’t live in an ideal world. The reality is that it goes to wherever it makes sense fiscally and conveniently. The dollar(or is it the Euro now) is king. And we’re lazier than we’d like to be. But at least by “greening” things it doesn’t give us the option to handle harmful goods. And that’s all we can ask for right now…

Greenpeace rating for companies 2006

Here’s how the other companies are doing this year, as according to Greenpeace.

[Via Gizmodo Live Blog and Greenpeace]

So I was sitting at home playing jacks and I couldn’t get out of my head how the Luxim bulbs can possibly be so efficient. It must be some sort of voodoo magic. So I did some more research, of what little there was, and found a little animation on the mechanism that causes this little Tic-Tac sized bit of glass to emit this enormous amount of light.

So apparently the way these things work is that it’s like a cross between a halogen and a fluorescent. With halogens, the filament material heats up (much like a standard incandescent bulb) and microscopic bits evaporates into the high pressure bulb. With fluorescents, a plasma is formed that emits electrons onto a phosphor to create visible light.

Now with the Luxim, the plasma is created from the gas, and then some metal halide elements in the bulb evaporate (assuming because of the heat from the plasma) and that combination of plasma and evaporated metal halide creates a light that could blind even a deity.

You can take a look at the animation and the description of it.

It looks pretty amazing with some just as amazing claims. The heatsink and heating mechanism looks ridiculously big though, from the picture, so it seems like it may be a while till it’s ready for prime time. I’d be totally interested in seeing one in real life and how it compares to LED lights. Though from what I read into mechanism of how the bulb gets heated up and the temperatures, I’ll make sure to wear my codpiece at the viewing.

It’s a brave new world! There’s a new sheriff in town and he’s called Luxim. If you haven’t heard yet, check out the video. Pretty amazing stuff. Apparently, this single Tic-Tac sized bulb can put out the power of a 400W Halogen bulb, and using only 250W. In comparison, I think that’s the ceiling of power as far as LED light bulbs go. Also, it’s purported to be twice as efficient as LED’s (thus 4x as efficient as CFL’s)

The interest specs :
Luxim Bulbs - 140 lumens/watt
LED’s - 70 lumens/watt
Incandescents - 15 lumens/watt

Inside the bulb, it forms a plasma (so says the video) at 6000 degrees Kelvin (that’s one spicy-ah meatball), which is as hot as the sun. If I was a kangaroo, I’d jump on this in a second as it sounds like the next great thing. Having over $40 Million in VC funds behind it definitely helps. As great as it sounds, it seems almost too good to be true. I mean the technology seems kosher, but is it something that is commercially viable at the moment? If they can figure out the crazy heatsink issues and somehow put it into something the size of a lightbulb, I’m on the next train to LuximLand. I will be following this like a hawk and see what other info I can scrounge up in the next few days. Stay tuned!

Tonight at 6PM PST, Jeff is doing an interview with Mark Ryan at Green Health Live. The URL you can see him at, AND participate with questions to ask him are :

LIVE STREAM:
http://www.thestream.tv/series.php?s=11
WEBSITE:
http://www.greenhealthlive.tv/

Green Health Live is an online talk show (which is part of a larger video and entertainment site) that does weekly segments on how to live greener and educate people on green issues that they may not be aware of. I watched a few episodes (The Fish and Recycling episodes are good) and I like the style that they use, it’s not preachy or boring (as content like that *could* be in another person’s hands) and actually makes it fun to learn about how to do your part for the environment. It caters towards the general public which is really nice, especially if you don’t know a lot of the acronyms or technologies that are just thrown around nowadays. Personally, in this age of fast-food entertainment, if you lose my attention or go over my head for even a second, my hand is already on the back button to see the newest Youtube viral video.

Of the episodes that I saw, Mark kept it interesting with his funny quips and comments, and co-host Carrie is a good bastion of knowledge on the medical aspect of each show. I think just the fact that he sports a faux-hawk while talking and interviewing guests is entertainment enough, but then again, I just have a natural predilection towards mohawks. Jeff will talking a little bit about the industry/business, but the focus of the interview will be on more informational topics such as

• What LED stands for and how it works
• Comparing and contrasting with conventional incandscent bulbs and fluorescent lights
• Environmental impact and health implications of each
• Cost and savings of LED technology
• Interesting stories and thoughts

It should be interesting to see how well Jeff does, and if anything, this will be a great resource for people that want to find out about or want a general introduction about LED lights. I’ll be posting the video up after it’s finished tonight. Stay tuned! Or better yet, watch the show and submit a question!