Green Tech

Is it time to make the leap to LED lights for the home? Perhaps, but only if you're willing to make a return-on-investment calculation.

Lemnis Lighting on Friday said that its Pharox60 LED light is now available in the U.S. online and soon will be for sale on Amazon. The dimmable bulb, shaped like a traditional incandescent bulb, consumes 6 watts of power and can replace a 60-watt bulb.

An LED replacement for an incandescent bulb.

(Credit: Pharox)

That dramatic drop in electricity use comes at the cost of $39.95. The premium can be recouped in three years, or as little as one year for consumers with time-of-day pricing tariffs, according to the company. The current price is a special offer; the bulb will cost $49.95 after the beginning of next year.

"Compared to the entry price for solar panels, we feel this is a more accessible energy saving investment," said Warner Philips, founder of the Netherlands-based company whose great-grandfather founded the Dutch lighting giant Philips.

The LED bulbs are estimated to last 25 years, significantly longer than compact fluorescent bulbs, which use more electricity for similar level of lighting output, or lumens. The Pharox60 bulb can be recycled with metal and glass materials, according to the company.

LED backers have long advocated solid-state lighting because it consumes one-tenth the power of incandescent bulbs and lasts longer. But the high price tag has meant that LEDs are mainly used for commercial applications.

Because there is concern that manufacturers will overstate the efficiency benefits or light output, the Department of Energy has set up a "Lighting Facts" Web site and label to guide consumers. Lighting Facts lists the Pharox bulb bulb among those that perform as claimed.

Vu1's conceptual design for its R-30 bulb.

(Credit: Vu1)

A novel design for energy-efficient lightbulbs can produce incandescent-quality light and does not contain mercury like compact fluorescents (CFLs), according to manufacturer Vu1.

The Seattle-based firm has been working on an alternative to CFLs and LED lights for five years and just rolled out a demo video, below.

Vu1's Electron Stimulated Luminescence (ESL) lights can last up to 6,000 hours, about three to four times the lifespan of incandescents and comparable to CFLs. They produce 50 percent less heat than incandescents.

The ESL bulbs contain an electron source that fires electrons at a proprietary luminescent phosphor, which then glows. The screw-in apparatus is encased in standard lightbulb glass.

One disadvantage to CFLs is they contain about 5 milligrams of mercury, a small amount but enough to prompt some jurisdictions to ban dumping them in the trash. Burnt-out CFL bulbs should be disposed of with hazardous waste where possible or returned to the retailer, which then recycles them. The EPA recommends evacuating the room if a CFL bulb breaks.

ESL bulbs will be trash-bin disposable, according to Vu1.

Meanwhile, LED bulbs are energy efficient at around 40,000 to 50,000 hours a bulb but tend to be expensive. For instance, Panasonic's new EverLeds light will likely retail for around $40 when it hits stores in Japan next month.

Vu1's ESL bulb would be around $20 when it hits the market, according to spokesman James Quick. Vu1 might market the bulb in mid-2010 if its funding holds up. It plans to begin manufacturing at its EU plant by the end of this year.

The company says its ESL bulbs would produce light that's "essentially indistinguishable" from incandescents, contrasting it with the greenish or bluish light from CFLs and LEDs. To my eye, the ESL light in the video looks a shade colder than incandescent.

The prototype ESL R-30 bulb, which would replace a 65-watt incandescent bulb, has a color rendering index of more than 90 and a color temperature of 2800K, according to Vu1. It also turns on instantly and is fully dimmable.

ESL looks quite promising. Let's see if this bright idea makes it to market.

(Credit: Panasonic)

Panasonic has launched a new household LED lightbulb in Japan that it says lasts 40 times longer than incandescent bulbs.

The screw-in bulbs are part of the EverLed line, and they're scheduled to hit stores in Japan on October 21, with monthly production at 50,000 units. No changes to lighting equipment used for incandescents are required.

If used an average of five and a half hours per day, the new bulbs can last up to 19 years, according to Panasonic. That's 40 times longer than incandescent bulbs.

The bulbs use only an eighth the power of incandescents. That means a 60-watt-equivalent LED bulb would cost only 300 yen (about $3) a year instead of 2,380 yen ($25.80)--a significant savings over a lifetime.

Panasonic hasn't set a price for the new EverLeds, but Nikkei suggests standard versions will cost about 4,000 yen (about $40).

LED bulbs aren't new. Their relatively high cost is one factor keeping them from gaining popularity, but in Japan at least, Panasonic represents about 50 percent of the domestic bulb market. That means EverLeds should raise the LED profile there considerably.

Panasonic is also doing market research to launch EverLeds in the U.S., Europe, and Southeast Asia.

Researchers from Korea claim to have produced the world's first purely white LED (light-emitting diode).

Soo-Young Park, a professor of organic materials for photonics at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Seoul National University in Korea, led the group, which includes researchers from the University of Valencia in Spain.

LEDs are much more energy-efficient than incandescent or compact fluorescent lightng (CFL), but the quality of light they can give a room is up for debate.

Soo-Young Park, professor at Seoul National University.

(Credit: Seoul National University)

Because LEDs do not naturally produce white light, getting them to look like they do adds to their production cost, making them much more expensive than your average incandescent or CFL. Many companies have been trying to come up with different LED recipes and components to produce a nice white light, while keeping the consumer cost down.

Park and his group claim to have engineered a molecule with one orange and one blue light-emitting material that produces a white light in the visible light spectrum when put together.

In other words, they say they've invented a white-light-emitting diode.

Repeated laboratory tests apparently showed that the new form of LED molecule is efficient, color stable, and able to be reproduced again and again, making it a legitimate candidate for use in LED lighting.

A detailed explanation of the group's molecular work can be found in the current issue of Journal of the American Chemical Society.

"An ideal material for a white-light source should be cost-effective, stable, robust, emit over the whole visible spectrum, not suffer from self-absorption, and its pure color should be easily reproducible. With this goal in mind, we have successfully synthesized and characterized, for the first time, a white-light-emitting single molecule dyad, consisting of two noninteracting chromophores showing excited-state intramolecular proton transfer," Park and his group said in their paper.

Light for Life uses ultracapacitor technology.

(Credit: 5.11 Tactical)

Last year, 5.11 Tactical, which makes clothes and gear aimed at law enforcement officers (but sells to civilians), announced a new high-tech flashlight called Light for Life. Only recently, however, has it become available to order.

What's special about it? Well, the flashlight uses three LEDs, but its key component is Flashpoint Power technology, an ultracapacitor energy storage system from Ivus Energy Innovations.

Light for Life recharges in just 90 seconds and shines at 90 lumens for 90 minutes per charge. The flashlight has three modes: bright (270 peak lumens), standard (90 lumens), and strobe, which is good for dance parties or scaring the neighbors' dog and kids (OK, I'm kidding, but you get the picture).

According to 5.11 Tactical, the 50,000-hour LEDs never have to be replaced and the flashlight is engineered to "offer 10 years of maintenance-free service under typical conditions." (You can recharge it up 50,000 times or one time a day for 135 years.)

I got a chance to play around with the thing at a recent event, and I have to say I was pretty impressed. It's lighter (16 ounces) than it looks, and it feels very durable. The one question I asked was: what happens when the power goes out and you have to recharge the thing? Answer: it comes with a 12V DC automotive charger, so you can use your car to charge it up in the event of a power outage.

The only drawback: Light for Life costs a whopping $169.99. But 5.11 Tactical says that when you add up the cost of all those D batteries over the lifetime of a battery-powered police flashlight, it's still a deal. And then there's all that good karma you get for not chucking those batteries into the garbage or landfill. It's hard to put a price on that.

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The lighting industry is changing from analog to digital technologies, a move that could bring traditional semiconductor and IT suppliers into lighting, said Philips Lighting CEO Rudy Provoost.

Before heading the 117-year-old Philips Lighting business, Provoost was CEO of Philips Consumer Electronics, a position that gave him a good understanding of the digital world.

"Over time, as the shift from analog to digital technology continues, we will indeed see companies in the ICT (information and communications technology) world probably get involved in digital lighting," he said.

(Credit: Philips Lighting)

Potential new competitors would be Asian high-tech manufacturers or semiconductor makers, he said. "The question is not if but how. That landscape is going to change."

Philips is pushing hard into solid-state lighting, having spent about $4 billion acquiring LED (light-emitting diode) lighting companies over the past two years. Provoost this week is in the U.S., where some of those acquired companies are, including LED lighting firm Color Kinetics and Genlyte.

Energy-efficient lighting is one of the areas that is expected to benefit from a government-led stimulus package, which has provisions for retrofitting government buildings, schools, and municipal buildings.

Provoost said that LED lighting is far more efficient than alternatives--five times more than incandescent and halogen lights and at least as efficient as fluorescents--and they last longer than others.

The most promising areas in the short term for LED lighting are office buildings, shops, outdoor lighting for city "beautification" projects that use colored lights, and in consumers' homes.

But he said that Philips' strategy is to invest in energy efficiency across all the lighting technologies it sells.

"North America is an interesting case. If you look at the installed base of lighting, still two-thirds of the buildings are using light sources from lamps that are not energy efficient," he said. "This is an area where other technologies could change the landscape, with solid state lighting being a subset of that."

Too often, building designers and policymakers focus on energy-efficient lighting in new construction. Provoost, who is also chairman of Royal Philips' sustainability board, says retrofitting existing buildings would have a greater impact from an environmental point of view.

Philips Lighting CEO Rudy Provoost.

(Credit: Philips Lighting)

"The issue is not available solutions. The issue is that the lighting industry, other industries, and policy makers have to have a thoughtful discussion and (take on the) moral responsibility (about energy use and the environment), which still isn't getting the attention it needs," he said.

Policy can play a role in getting energy-efficient LEDs to market faster, he argued.

One problem holding back LED lighting adoption is the higher upfront costs. Over the lifetime of a light (LEDs can last decades), an LED lamp will be more cost-effective because of lower energy consumption and maintenance costs.

"The value proposition is just rock solid...(but) we need to find ways to get people over the financial barrier," he said. "We'd love to see more urgency and courage from policymakers in coming up with smart schemes to stimulate efficient lighting, particularly the retrofit part of this opportunity."

Energy-efficient LEDs lamps have reached a point where they can compete with traditional lighting in some applications, but don't expect to find LED lightbulbs at the every supermarket tomorrow, according to Udi Meirav, CEO of LED start-up Luminus.

Luminus announced Monday a partnership with Japanese LED company Nichia to make components for LEDs lamps that give off white light. Until now, Luminus has made chips for colored LED lights that go into projectors and TVs. Other LED companies target commercial applications as well, such as public lighting.

Street lights with LED lamps.

(Credit: Luminus)

Luminus' partnership with Nichia will result in LED lamps that give off white light, making LEDs attractive for a wide range of uses, Meirav said.

Through a cross-licensing arrangement, Luminus later this quarter will make its flat-shaped chips that go into LED lamps using Nichia's phosphorescent technology, which is better suited for white light, he explained.

Rather than try to make a replacement for consumer lightbulbs, Luminus intends to target lighting that demand high-powered output, including street lamps, warehouses, and arenas. That's because Luminus' manufacturing technology, originally developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is best suited for these high-intensity lighting applications.

LED lights can be up to twice as efficient as other forms of lighting and last for decades of use. But they are more expensive to purchase than other forms of lighting, and the quality of the light isn't always as good as incandescent or halogen lighting.

Even with a higher upfront cost, LEDs can be more cost-effective over the lifetime of use, Meirav asserts. He said that the technology continues to improve and that over the comings years, LEDs will become far more commonplace.

"The LED lights themselves are now at a performance that make them viable, even attractive, alternatives today. I couldn't say that five years ago," Meirav said.

What's holding back the rate of adoption has less to do with the technology and more to do with an industry supply chain still focused on incumbent lighting technologies.

"That's the rate-limiting step in this (replacement) process. It's beginning to happen now, but lighting is not a fast-moving industry--not like computers or telecom," he said.

Meirav expects LED lighting companies to benefit from a federal stimulus package now making its way through Congress. The package includes incentives for municipal buildings to invest in energy efficiency.

LED manufacturer Cree has been awarded a contract from the U.S. Department of Defense to supply over 4,200 recessed LED lights for the Pentagon, the company announced Tuesday. Financial details were not disclosed.

Testing commissioned by the U.S. government determined that Cree's LR24 recessed LED lights would offer a 22 percent energy reduction compared with fluorescent lights, and save the Pentagon 140 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year.

The government also commissioned a cost analysis that showed the lights would yield a payback of less than four years once things like energy savings, maintenance, and the expense of properly disposing mercury-laden fluorescent bulbs were taken into account, according to Cree.

The new lighting will be installed in Wedge 5 of the Pentagon, coinciding with the major Pentagon renovation already under way in that area.

The purchase also happens to follow the advice of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan recently proposed by President-elect Barack Obama in his January 3 address.

As part of his plan to reduce reliance on foreign oil and create more jobs, President-elect Obama has suggested that the government will "renovate public buildings to make them more energy efficient."

Analysts have predicted that LED lighting will replace incandescent bulbs, making LED lighting manufacturers a bright spot to watch for within the struggling tech industry.

Before: A Pentagon room before Cree's LED lights were installed.

(Credit: Cree)

After: The same room at the Pentagon after Cree's LED lights were installed.

(Credit: Cree)

We arrive at North Dumpling Island, a.k.a. Dean Kamen's LED Nation.

(Credit: Flickr)

Dean Kamen is best known as the inventor of the Segway scooter and medical devices including a portable insulin pump, a stair-climbing wheelchair, and a robotic prosthetic arm. Like any good inventor or mad genius, Kamen can be called eccentric. He lives in a hexagonal-shaped home, commutes to work via helicopter, and owns his very own island. Kamen has declared his island, the three-acre North Dumpling Island off the coast of Connecticut, an independent state with its own constitution, currency (based on Pi), and navy (a lone amphibious vehicle). The island comes complete with a replica of Stonehenge.

And soon, Kamen's independent island kingdom will become energy-independent.

(Credit: Philips)

Working with Philips Color Kinetics, Kamen is using his island domain as a showcase for energy-efficient LED lights. He is replacing all of the traditional incandescent lights inside and out of his North Dumpling home with LED lights, which will allow it to run exclusively on wind and solar power generated on the island.

Philips estimates that the move from incandescent to LED lights will cut energy consumption by 70 percent. With new lights added--outside the home and in the basement--total energy consumption will be reduced by half.

"With increasing strain on our world's energy resources, our goal is to make North Dumpling a small but prominent example of what can be achieved on a larger scale with today's emerging energy-saving technologies. It's an excellent demonstration of science and engineering as the antidote to the complex challenges of our time," said Kamen.

(Credit: Philips)

Before you gather all of the newly installed CFLs in your home for an LED overhaul, you should know that LED pricing remains prohibitive. According to The New York Times' Bits blog, two Philips ColorBlast lights are used to illuminate a single pillar--at $600 per light.

Interior LED lights are obviously cheaper; I did a quick scan online and found interior LED bulbs ranging in price from roughly $20 to $90. Rather spendy when compared with a buck a bulb for a traditional incandescent or $3 to $4 for a CFL. Still, you can expect LED prices to fall as adoption grows. Until LED bulbs reach a point of mass adoption, I suggest tiki torches for your Stonehenge replica lighting needs.