Green Promise Seen in Switch to LED Lighting

Green Promise Seen in Switch to LED Lighting from the NY Times.

Good article, but it did not mention the LED equivalent of Moore's Law, haitz law. Each decade, LED prices have fallen by a factor of 10 while performance has grown by a factor of 20. It sounds like LED prices are falling even quicker than this, doubling about every 18 months instead of 24 months.

My translation the $35 bulb this year in 18 months will be $18, and in 3 years $9. At $9 it becomes much more attractive.

LED Power Supply

They got rid of the capacitor, which increases the reliability of the LED Power Supply. And potted it so you can't tell what's inside. A capacitor is a storage device that is one of the challenging areas of power supply design for reliability. Basically two metal plates with an insulator between them with a liquid. And they can pop!

LED Usage

The first major usage of LED's outside of electronic panels was in street lights for Red. When the cost dropped enough came the green and yellow. Now there is starting to be some street light LED's, LED's for lights in Cars, and LED's for household usage. The question is how fast will the price drop making them more competitive with the less costly products that have the dominant market share. It seems to be going faster on the drop in prices than I expected, since I saw LED lights for sale in Costco.

Cheaper White LED's

New, cheaper white light LEDs are created - United Press International.

The new White LED has twice the light of current LED's and has a simpler structure (less cost). Done by Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry within the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

LED in SF

Let there be light-emitting diodes - San Francisco Chronicle

SF is putting in LED's for street lights. $700 each, vs. $150 for the old fashioned type, but 50% more efficient and last 4X as long.

LED's Getting More Publicity

LEDs Light Times Square, But Can They Light Your Office? Discover Magazine - ‎Feb 24, 2009‎ is an example of this, unfortunately it's a bit of a press release it looks like.

LED Street Lights

More cities tap stimulus package for LED streetlights - USA Today.

I did not realize the LED's were powerful enough yet for street lights.

Advantages are 50% savings in energy and last much longer than regular bulbs, cutting maintenance costs substantially. The headache is they currently cost 4X as much as a regular one.

The question is what is the payback period? Per this article 12-15 years, but per this article other studies have claimed 2-3 years. Another study 7 years.

The good news is LED prices are dropping every year.

LED Lights at Costco!

I was pleasantly surprised to find LED lights at Costco. Even flood lights, even if only 45W equivalent. Price was very reasonable. They also had dimmable CFL's.

PerkinElmer buys LED company

PerkinElmer buys LED company - Boston Globe.

Perkin Elmer is a big health care company. Stuff for hospitals, so why LED? My guess is because hospital equipment has a lot of electronics in it, and the future of lighting is probably LED's, and may be at the moment it's just to cheap to pass up in the short term.

Long term, Opto is a parts manufacturer, where Perkin Elmers sells compete systems I believe, so it may not be a good fit strategically.

Philips & LED's

Royal Philips Sheds Old Businesses for New Directions - from the NY Times.

My strategy teacher for my MBA did some work on restructuring Philips 10 years ago in Centurion. Unfortunately Centurion was a good start, but did not go far enough. It's hard to move a super tanker in a new direction. The supertanker has also slimmed down and focused on a few key areas, one of these is LED's which I agree with, has a huge amount of potential.

LED Cost vs incandescent

LED bulbs save money, hassle from a local paper in Kentucky. Basically a $40 LED bulb will last forever and save energy and has color like daylight.

But how many people are going $40 on a bulb, when they can get a CFL for under $5 and an incandescent bulb for under a dollar.

I look forward to more cost reductions so the LED option makes more sense. For an application where you need to get on a ladder, such as my parents house outside light on the 2nd story, it makes sense (that light always burned out). For an easily accessible light, probably not at this time.

More businesses see holiday savings from LEDs

More businesses see holiday savings from LEDs from the SF Chronicle is about Christmas Lights, and how you can save over the 6 week Holiday Season $70 for a string of 300 bulbs.

LED Backlit Screen - Nice

I just got my daughter a new MacBook, one that has the backlit LED screen.  Wonderful color!  It's also more efficient on the color.  Since I have been using PC's since I bought a 286 for work related reasons, my poor Mac SE, this is a big change.

Will LEDs replace compact fluorescent bulbs?

Will LEDs replace compact fluorescent bulbs? | csmonitor.com - Sounds a little bit like this came from a press release for ZetaLux, but I may be wrong. It would have been nice if the article had a cost curve for CFL vs. LED vs. Incandescent over time as well as volumes.

Dell > All LED?

Dell sees the Light...Emitting Diode CNET News, CA - Sep 24, 2008

When Dell does a change, you know that the cost has dropped enough it's mainstream. Dell in the technology area has historically been a follower, where they have excelled is in the supply chain and in the sales area for B2B. The LED displays will be replacing the LCD's that are CCFl technology. The advantage is less power is needed for LED's. The difference basically between a CCFL and an LED, is one is used as a backlight for liquid crystal displays, where the LED generates the light directly and at a much lower voltage.

Energy Stocks After Correction

Sustainable Energy After the Correction - interesting article, the LED's are since it does not depend on subsidies is interesting, now to find out what is considered LED stocks. My worry on LED's is the big players like GE and Phillips will come in dominate the market, both companies already have semiconductor operations and Lights are such a commodity. The only area I would guess has potential (this is without researching) would be in the area of patents.

Three articles I need to read:

• LED Stocks Get Some Respect | Alternative Energy Stocks

• Ten Alternative Energy Speculations for 2008: LEDs and Ultracaps ...

• LED Stocks | Investing in Led Technology

LED's and Prius in Denver at Cedia

When I was out getting lunch at the 16th street Mall, I saw a Prius taxi. This was after getting honked at by a regular taxi.

And in the show there was a booth selling LED's and I had a nice talk with the person. They new the practical side, but not the bigger picture. It's interested they are doing RGB LED's both in the doping as well as in the packaging, so you can get as many colors as you want. And with the power supply, you can put it 100 ft away using 10 AWG wire at 10Volts.

At a place selling power protection, the guy had no idea what he was selling. I spent 10 years in the UPS industry. I stopped by APC and they had a smart power strip, that when the main power plug was not drawing power it shut down the other plugs to save power. Neat idea so that printer is not on when the computer is off.

LED Street Lights?

New Bills: From Saving Energy to Preventing Choking
Gotham Gazette, NY - 2 hours ago
... Lappin of Manhattan introduced legislation (Intro 806) requiring the city replace its current street lamps with light-emitting diode street lamps

or...

LED lights fail city scrutiny
The Grand Rapids Press - MLive.com, MI - Aug 1, 2008
The lamps, which use light-emitting diodes (LEDs) instead of high-pressure sodium lamps, do not throw enough light onto the sidewalks that line his ...

LED Bulbs - Getting Closer

The NY Times has an update on LED Bulbs. - Fans of L.E.D.’s Say This Bulb’s Time Has Come

The article is a bit confusing. First it says a LED bulb would be $100, vs. $1 for an incandescent. Then it mentions somebody used LED's for outside lighting and it cost $18,000 vs. $6000 for regular lighting, but it would save $6000 per year. 3 x to 1 vs 100 to 1 is a big ratio difference.

Venture capitalists go toward the light

Venture capitalists go toward the light from Silicon Valley's newspaper, The Mercury News.

There are a lot of major lighting players, such as GE that are keeping up with the area. The challenge with lighting is it's such a commodity business with low profit margins and high volumes.