A discussion most illuminating
There’s been a lot of “green” talk, lately, with a big focus on little things individuals can do to help the world out by reducing our power demands. One of those items turns out to be the type of light bulbs used in the home; specifically, the “green machine” wants you to give up the incandescent bulbs for compact florescent lights (CFL’s.) I use some of them in our house, to be sure, but there’s another technology I’ve been touting to my family and friends whenever the subject comes up: LED lighting. I have a few LED flashlights and there are some work locations I’ve been to where they use LED floodlights. Now that Congress has passed a law mandating the phase-out of incandescent lights (you did know about that, right?) I’ve wondered why this technology isn’t getting more notice. That’s especially true given the issues CFL’s have that are now coming to… er, light.
Via Instapundit we have this article at Forbes.com that talks about LED lighting both from the perspective of the science and from that of investing for the future. It’s an absolutely stellar article that gives a good sense of the exciting times ahead for this technology. For example:
Optical scientists cleverly named the visible mix rendered by the colors in light the Color Rendering Index. The CRI gold standard is numerically 100, the color of pleasing Edison incandescence. A CRI below 90 is noticeably nasty to the eye. CFLs produce and are essentially stuck, for physical chemistry reasons, in the CRI 70 range.
But LED lights have been inching up the CRI curve. LED Lighting Fixtures, for example, just started selling a 12-watt product with a pleasing 92 CRI that looks like a standard 60-watt indoor floodlight and uses 50% less energy than a CFL. Others will follow. (Cree recently announced its acquisition of LLF; full disclosure, we were investors in LLF.)
Add awesomely long lifespans to the benefits ledger for LEDs. An Edison bulb burns 1,000 hours before the hammered metal filament flakes out. CFLs achieve 10,000 hours. LEDs last 50,000, and soon 100,000, hours. This feature alone is enough to give LEDs an enormous advantage in lower maintenance costs for many applications, especially in outdoor and industrial environments. 
So LED lighting is already able to achieve a higher quality of light than CFLs and they already last longer. Get a sense of what that last paragraph means to the average joe. A standard light bulb, left to run 24 hours a day, will make it just over 41 days before burning out, on average. Replace that light with a CFL and let it run 24 hours a day and you won’t have to replace it for about 18 months. That’s a nice increase in lifespan. But, replace it with an LED light source instead (one available today) and you won’t be replacing that one for 5.7 years. And it’ll operate at half of the power draw of the CFL. Ah, but what if you replace it with the next generation of LED lighting? That means that a mom or dad letting their 6-year-old help them with the task of replacing the light bulbs in the house with those next-gen LED lights can leave those lights running non-stop around the clock and, barring accident or manufacturers’ defect, they won’t have to replace them until junior is graduating from high school. (11.4 years of 24/7 light, in case you’d like the number.)
And how many of you leave a light in your house running 24/7? (Besides a night-light?)
Read the whole Forbes article. I’ve barely scratched the surface and there’s a ton of good stuff in there. Might just be that the future’s so bright, we really will need shades!
I’m a resident of northern Virginia, near Washington, DC. By profession, I’m a network engineer for a very, very large company in the IT field. I work with several federal agencies in my job. Politically, I lean conservative on most issues dealing with matters of law, finance, national security, and personal responsibility. I’m more moderate in the social arena but don’t confuse that with the so-called “liberal” stance. You’ll get the picture.
I cant use the CFL lights. I had Optic Neuritis at least 3 times in the past few years. (optic neuritis is inflammation of the optic nerve…it’s sometimes the first symptom of Multiple Sclerosis)
The CFL bulbs cause me pain, both in migraines and optic nerve pain. The light is irritating, and it’s difficult for me to see things clearly in that light.
I’m actually pretty ticked off that the government didnt make any allowances for people with vision problems. The LED bulbs arent much better. The only light that doesnt irritate me as much are the incandescent bulbs, and moonlight.
I’d like to see them back track on this decision…at least for the sake of people who have true medical reasons for not being able to use these bulbs.