Light bulb, got to go

[Dardedar]

LEDs emerge to fight fluorescents



Established players in the lighting industry and a host of startups are now grooming LEDs to take on the reigning champion of residential lighting, the familiar pear-shaped incandescent light bulb.

The light bulb has been running out of friends recently. California and Canada have decided to ban the sale of incandescent bulbs by 2012. Australia is banning them in 2010. The European Union is looking at banning production of the bulbs. A U.S. Senate committee is working on a proposal that would phase out the light bulb in 10 years.

And in New Jersey, where the first practical incandescent bulb emerged from Thomas Edison's laboratory in 1879, a bill has been introduced to ban their use in government buildings.

Governments are gunning for the light bulb because it's much less efficient than fluorescents, using about five times more energy to produce the same amount of light.

Lighting consumes 22 percent of electricity produced in the U.S., according to the Department of Energy, and widespread use of LED lighting could cut consumption in half. By 2027, LED lighting could cut annual energy use by the equivalent of 500 million barrels of oil, with the attendant reduction in emissions of carbon dioxide, the gas believed to be responsible for global warming.

Much of that reduction would be possible with today's technology, using compact fluorescents, or CFLs. But consumers haven't warmed to them. The light quality hasn't been satisfactory, most take time to turn on and aren't dimmable.

The LED has advantages over the CFL in most of those areas, and judging by this week's Lightfair trade show in New York, it could be a serious challenge to the CFL in a few years. What holds it back is chiefly price, but LEDs are already an economic alternative for niche uses.

In the last two years, the diodes have doubled in energy efficiency and brightness, according to Greg Merritt, director of marketing for Durham, N.C.-based LED-manufacturer Cree Inc. In particular, LEDs that produce a yellowish or "warm" light similar to incandescents have improved.

...

The cost of LED lighting should be coming down quickly. Polybrite founder Carl Scianna said the cost of individual white-light diodes, several of which go into an LED bulb and make up much of the cost, have come down in price from about $8 to $1.50 in a year.

"They're going to keep going down," Scianna said. "By the middle of next year, they'll be priced for consumers."

The Rest

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

We seriously need to switch to either fluorescents or LEDs, especially in the southern states, for lighting because that extra energy the incandescents use is given off as heat. That should automatically result in fewer of them being made. However, we don't want to get rid of them altogether or make them illegal altogether. The 40-watt incandescent is great for incubating chicks for a 4-H project or building a chemical dryer for a junior high science class. Basically only use incandescents when we WANT that heat generation.

[ChristianLoeschel]

Barbara, theres MUCH more efficient ways of heating than an incandescent bulb (ever compare electric heat to gas heat in your house? which is the more efficient one?). Give them a fluorescent bulb or LED and warm them in some other way.

[Dardedar]

MUCH more efficient ways of heating than an incandescent bulb (ever compare electric heat to gas heat in your house? which is the more efficient one?).

DAR
That's a good question. When I was shopping for furnaces I read that electric furnaces are (by definition) 100% efficient. That is, they don't have a exhaust pipe wasting a percentage of their heat like a gas furnace does. So I don't know which one is more efficient. It used to be that a natural gas furnace was a lot cheaper to run but since natural gas has gone up so much I am not sure. I also have a gas water heater but I don't know if an electric one would be "more efficient." We are planning on buying a new house soon (new to us) and I really want to play with some energy efficiency methods/ideas.

D.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Gas and electric companies define efficiency differently for their own sales purposes. An electric heater does turn all the electricity it gets into heat, but the process of burning something to make electricity for heat loses some 40% (compared to gas and more than that compare to oil or coal) over just burning the original substance for heat. If we were tapping the natural gas from closed landfills and factory farms to burn directly in furnaces, we'd have a "no net gain" of CO2 and a more efficient start-to-finish heating system than taking that same gas and turning it into electricity (there's a plant that does that just outside Chicago) and then turning it back into heat. The latter, however, is at least environmentally more sound/efficient than using fossil natural gas.

As to "MUCH more efficient ways of heating than an incandescent bulb" - that defends on what you are trying to heat. An incandescent bulb turns about 75% of its energy into heat (that's why they are so inefficient as lights), and a 40-watt bulb in a cardboard box under a wire rack makes an excellent chemical dryer for lab class experiments needing a minimum of moisture to work. I'm pretty sure that it's a 40-watt bulb in a box for 4-H baby chick projects as well. They work very well for any small, enclosed space needing a heat source that isn't an open flame and doesn't outgas.