Super Eco

Photo credit: Ocrho, Wikimedia

Considering all the hype I read about LED lighting, I was surprised to come across a piece of negative press this week. The New York Times has quoted James Brodick of the US Department of Energy as saying that commercial-level LEDs aren't yet ready for prime time. While it may be true that we can't yet light a factory with LEDs, there are a whole lot of homes and offices that could quite easily go the LED route and save both money and the environment. Here's why:

LED lighting is the next wave in the reduced-energy-consumption lighting hunt. Traditional incandescent bulbs suck up lots of energy and waste it through heat loss rather than light. Even worse, halogen bulbs make incandescents seem cool, plus many people find the light too harsh. The current savior bulb is the compact fluorescent or CFL bulb. Unfortunately however, these are not dimmable and contain planet-contaminating mercury. 

As technology improves, LED lighting makes more sense. These solid-state lights can be clustered to create strong lighting sources; they consume a fraction of the energy even low-energy CFLs use; and they're dimmable and give off no heat.

The only drawback to LED lighting is the cost (which given that a bulb will last up to 60 years would be recovered eventually, but who wants to pay $440 to light a kitchen?).

It seems, however, that this final hurdle for the LED light has been surmounted. The Cambridge University based Centre for Gallium Nitride has recently discovered a way to make the key component for LEDs (gallium nitride) through an inexpensive process. This means that within a few years households and offices (like the Pentagon) could see up to 75% of their lighting costs go down.

Now that's an idea that turns me on!