CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--Scientists need the same sort of computer breakthrough that the spreadsheet brought to business users decades ago, says Craig Mundie, Microsoft's chief research and strategy officer.
Mundie gave a speech at Harvard University here on Tuesday to discuss coming "disruptions" in computing and to argue that computer science is fundamental to solving daunting global problems, including energy, environment, health care, and education.
Without taking advantage of advances in computing, adjacent fields of nanotechnology and biotechnology will not move as fast as they could, he said. At the same time, he lamented how computer science is seen as "so yesterday."
"It's stunning how much people want to fund the fads and they don't put any emphasis on how core computing is," Mundie said during questions. "I hope we can come together and realize that we have to invest in the future of computing if we want a future in all these other areas."
Craig Mundie, Microsoft's chief research and strategy officer urges students to think about coming disruptions in computing.
(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET)The Harvard talk was one of four Mundie is giving this week in an effort to stir excitement in the study of computing, with both computer science students and people in other fields, such as medicine or material science. Less than 100 students and faculty came to the Harvard talk on Tuesday where he demonstrated some of how Microsoft's research can be applied to energy and the environment.
Computing is becoming increasingly embedded in everyday devices, in everything from phones to cars. But even though people are increasingly familiar with digital technologies, there are still disruptive changes on the near horizon, Mundie said.
"We think we understand it but in fact it's at a time that the flux in computing overall is as great as it's ever been," he said.
The amount of computation that's available will continue to increase with multicore processors, which will enable new applications. That includes what Microsoft calls "natural language processing," where people can interact with computers in more intuitive ways than the familiar mouse and graphical user interface. An example is Microsoft's Project Natal, motion-sensing technology where people can use arms and legs to play games.
Two other big technology changes, he said, are three-dimensional displays and cloud computing, where people can tap banks of servers over the Internet for data-intensive jobs.
High-end demos
Mundie showed Microsoft Computational Science Studio, a tool designed by Microsoft Research in the U.K. to allow scientists to run complex and data-intensive computer simulations.
Science Studio could be used to project the impact of rain forest deforestation in South America on other regions of the world. The tool is designed to help experts from different disciplines create a model around different sources of data and visualize simulations.
In this example, the application tapped data centers off-site to run simulations of how changes to the rate of deforestation would affect average temperatures in the U.S.
Generating these models is very practical not just to scientists but to policy makers as well, Mundie said. "Is it better to pay the Brazilians not to cut down trees or to develop genetically engineered crops that can grow in temperatures that are five degrees hotter?" he said. "Those are the kind of choices that our society is going to have to deal with."
In another demo, Mundie showed how a researcher can optimize output from a wind farm. Using an 8-processor computer with a three-dimensional display and pen-based input, Mundie was able to view how different wind turbine blade shapes affect wind flow.
Several energy technology companies are already using IT aggressively. The idea of the smart grid is essentially overlaying digital communications and controls onto the electricity grid. Start-up eSolar uses embedded processors on thousands of mirrors to track the sun and generate the most heat possible with its solar concentrator.
Cloud computing opens up more possibilities for far-reaching energy research, Mundie said. One example is TerraPower, a Seattle-area nuclear power company that has attracted Bill Gates and former Microsoft Chief Technology Officer Nathan Myhrvold as investors.
TerraPower is designing a "traveling-wave nuclear reactor" that could use the spent fuel from traditional nuclear reactors and make electricity from it for decades. To speed its research, the company is using high-end computation, which only now is accessible to start-up companies because of cloud computing, Mundie said.
"These are the types of technologies where scientists, engineers, and computer scientists have to come forward, explore them and, if we can make them work, then of course they represent a real discontinuity in the quest for high-scale, zero carbon energy sources," he said.
The Department of Energy on Monday named the first winners of a program aimed at generating breakthroughs in clean-energy technologies.
The program, called Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), began taking applications earlier this year for research ideas that reduce imports of foreign fuel, cut greenhouse gas emissions, and improve energy efficiency. Funding for the agency is part of the Obama administration's goal to improve the economic competitiveness of the U.S. by investing in energy technology.
The DOE is awarding $151 million in 37 grants to both academics and green-tech companies, most of which are start-ups. The ideas are meant to be high-risk and high-reward, with a number not expected to meet their goals.
Authority to create the agency, roughly modeled on the DARPA defense program that spawned the space race, happened in 2007 but it wasn't funded until earlier this year. ARPA-E now has authority to fund as much as $400 million in research. A second tranche of grant awardees is scheduled to be announced later this fall.
Energy Secretary Steven Chu.
(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET)The naming of ARPA-E grants is being closed watched in the green-tech start-up community and among researchers. There were 3,600 concept papers submitted, followed by 300 full applications and ultimately 37 awardees.
One awardee is an effort at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to make an all-liquid battery, which would make storage of storage of solar and wind power more cost effective.
Another is funding for a bioreactor developed by the University of Minnesota that proposes using two microorganisms to make a vehicle fuel. One bacteria would convert sunlight and carbon dioxide into a sugar, and another would convert the sugar into a fuel.
Two other efforts include developing enzymes that would more effectively capture carbon dioxide from power plants and a low-cost material for making LED lighting. The full list of awardees is at the ARPA-E site (click for PDF).
Energy Secretary Steven Chu is scheduled to speak at Google Monday morning in Google to make an announcement, after which Google CEO Eric Schmidt will speak with Chu. Through its philanthropic arm Google.org, Google has invested in a number of renewable energy companies. It has also developed Web-based energy monitoring software for consumers.
The Gates Center for Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University.
(Credit: Carnegie Mellon University)Please raise your hand if you've spent a lot of time in a basement environment while attempting to master one computer-related art or another.
I'm referring to any room with a noisy ventilation system, windows that don't open, and dim fluorescents overhead. You know the one. It was either so sweltering that you ended up wearing shorts in January, or kept so cold for the sake of the servers that you wore a scarf and fingerless gloves year-round.
Well, that universal rite of passage for computer lovers seems to be over for Carnegie Mellon University students thanks to a $20 million gift from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a $10 million gift from the Henry L. Hillman Foundation, and several other donors.
The Gates Center for Computer Science and the Hillman Center for Future-Generation Technologies will officially open on September 22. The linked buildings will house research space, offices, conference rooms, laboratories, an auditorium, and classrooms for CMU's School of Computer Science.
Inside the atrium of the Gates Center.
(Credit: Carnegie Mellon University)In announcing the scheduled September 22 opening ceremony at which Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates will speak, CMU also released updated information on the Green attributes of the Gates-Hillman complex.
Through landscaping and a series of five green roofs, the university has managed to "double the amount of green space that previously existed on the 5.6-acre site," according to CMU. Professors and students using the buildings will actually be able to breathe in the fresh air created by that surrounding green foliage because the Gates-Hillman complex has over 310 windows, "most of which can be opened."
The green roofs are each equipped with heat exchange system to limit energy loss in the ventilation system. They will also collect rainwater and snow melt (gray water) that will be directed to the building's toilets.
The nine-story Gates Center has seven atria, and roughly 21,000 square feet of interior glass to insure plenty of natural light throughout the building.
"I was truly captivated also by the many cuts and atria in the building (a couple having complex series of stairways reminiscent of Hogwarts). There is even an 'impluvium' that will allow weather--including rain and snow--to enter into the building, all the way to the central 'collaborative commons' area," Peter Lee, head of the Computer Science Department and future Office Director at DARPA, described in his blog.
Both buildings have individual thermostats for each room that can be manually controlled, and are additionally linked with motion sensors to detect when they are empty so they can adjust accordingly.
Rendering of an aerial view of the completed Gates-Hillman Complex.
(Credit: Carnegie Mellon University)While it's not officially open, professors and students have already moved in. Photos of the building have also appeared on The Tartan, CMU's student newspaper.
As you would expect, there's some nostalgia for the old facilities. Mark Stehlik, professor and assistant dean for undergraduate education at the School of Computer Science, had his dim, overcrowded office memorialized with a Gigapan snapshot, according to Lee.
Update 7:22 a.m. PDT: Photos were added to this story since it was originally published.
If changing the U.S. energy supply to be more secure and sustainable is like steering a massive ship, then the direction we set it on today won't be fully felt for 10 or 20 years.
The National Research Council, the operating arm of the National Academies of Sciences and Engineering, on Monday released a report called "America's Energy Future" that seeks to focus the country's discussion on energy and draw attention to the most promising technologies.
One of the messages from the report is that long-term problems require sustained strategies and a break from business as usual. Technology has a big role to play, but none of the academic and business experts who authored the study expects a single fix.
"One of the committee's conclusions is that there is no technological 'silver bullet' at present that could transform the U.S. energy system through a substantial new source of clean and reasonably priced domestic energy. Instead, the transformation will require a balanced portfolio of existing (though perhaps modified) technologies, multiple new energy technologies, and new energy-efficiency and energy-use patterns," wrote Harold T. Shapiro, the chair of the committee on America's Energy Future.
Carbon-heavy: the source for energy in the U.S. The pie chart breaks out sources of electricity generation.
(Credit: Energy Information Administration, 2008.)Although there isn't one solution, certain technologies deserve more research than others, both in electricity and in transportation. Successful development and deployment of them can reduce greenhouse gases substantially in both sectors in the next 30 years using a portfolio approach.
In the short term, the study's authors concluded that efficiency is the easiest and lowest-cost option for "moderating" national demand for energy in the next decade.
Adopting existing building-efficiency products alone could potentially eliminate the need to build any new power plants, although some may be needed to address regional supply imbalances or upgrade existing power plants. Broadly applied in transportation, buildings, and industry, efficiency technologies could reduce energy use by 15 percent in 2020 and 30 percent by 2030, compared to the Energy Information Administration's "business as usual" reference scenario.
The U.S. has a number of good options for diversifying power generation as well but developing the products to do this will likely raise the price of electricity.
Because the U.S. has good resources, renewable energy from wind, solar, and geothermal could provide an additional 500 terawatt-hours per year by 2020 and 1,100 terawatt-hours per year by 2035. Total U.S. electricity consumption is now about 4,000 terawatt-hours per year.
Coal power plants with carbon capture and storage technology, where carbon dioxide would be stored underground, could replace the entire coal fleet by 2035 through retrofits or new construction. "Evolutionary nuclear technologies" could supply up to 850 terawatt-hours of electricity by 2035 by modifying existing plants and building new ones.
However, to take advantage of more renewable energy and run the system more efficiently will require modernizing the electricity system with smart-grid technologies, which the study says is "urgently needed."
Planning ahead
In assessing the transportation sector, the study's authors concluded that petroleum will continue to fuel the country's cars and trucks in the next three decades, although maintaining domestic petroleum production will be challenging. Once again, the best near-term option to cutting oil consumption is better vehicle efficiency.
Making liquid fuels from biomass, such as wood chips, and from coal with carbon capture and storage could replace about 15 percent of today's fuel consumption. But both approaches still have significant technical barriers. Also, there are potential environmental problems from using large amounts of land for biofuels and coal-to-liquid fuels would increase emissions without carbon capture and storage, according to the study.
Where your BTUs come from. This graphic shows the delivery of energy from primary fuel sources shown on the left.
(Credit: Lawrence Livermore Lab, Department of Energy)Meanwhile, making large numbers of electric light-duty vehicles will require advances in battery performance and fuel cells as well as smart-grid technologies to manage the demand.
The authors of "America's Future Energy" said that emerging technologies need to go through pilot tests in the next five years to demonstrate that they can be commercially viable and done at large scale 10 years from now.
The report said the most high-priority "demonstration stage" technologies are carbon capture and storage, evolutionary nuclear, cellulosic ethanol, and advanced light-duty vehicles. Long-term research and development is required for producing liquid fuels from renewable resources, advanced batteries and fuel cells, large-scale electricity storage, enhanced geothermal, and advanced solar photovoltaics.
To overcome technical and other barriers, the study said that policies and regulations and other incentives need to put in place.
"Actions taken between now and 2020 to develop and demonstrate several key technologies will largely determine options for many decades to come. Therefore, it is imperative that the technology development and demonstration activities identified in this report be started soon, even though some will be expensive and not all will be successful: some may fail, prove uneconomic, or be overtaken by better technologies," according to the report.
If you think the lack of technology is the reason we don't have more wind and solar power, think again.
The National Research Council on Monday published a report that finds that renewable energy sources--wind, solar, geothermal, wave, tidal, and biomass--could supply 10 percent of U.S. electricity supply in 2020 with existing technology. Today, renewable energies excluding hydro power are about 2.5 percent of the U.S. electricity mix.
Getting to 20 percent of U.S. electricity by 2035 is possible with sustained policies and investment, it said. To achieve more than 50 percent of electricity generation from renewable sources, excluding hydro power, beyond 2035 would require new scientific advances and dramatic changes in the power-generating industry, the report concludes.
The primary barriers to deeper penetration in the near and medium term are cost, policy, and insufficient transmission lines, the report finds.
More solar power in the cards?
(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET)The study, called "Electricity from Renewable Resources, Status, Prospects, and Impediments," was done to inform politicians on energy policy, which is in a crucial period. The House and Senate are considering bills to mandate more renewable energy and efficiency. The House bill includes regulations to cap greenhouse gas emissions. The National Research Council is the main operating agency of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering.
Of the technologies available, wind and solar offer the most potential in the U.S., which has good resources for both in different regions. Conventional geothermal and biomass resources are also ready for deployment. Enhanced geothermal--which involves fracturing rock underground and injecting water to heat it--and wave and tidal power are still not commercially available.
On-land wind farms could provide 10 percent to 20 percent of current electricity demand. The only technological improvements in the short term revolve around optimizing performance of components and better integrating wind into the grid.
Solar energy--both photovoltaic panels and concentrating solar power systems--"is capable, in principle, of providing enormous amounts of electricity without stress to the resource base."
To increase the penetration of renewable energy beyond 20 percent, the report says that energy storage technologies are required. Smart-grid technology to better manage the flow of energy from variable resources like the sun and wind is also necessary.
Technology, policy, capital
Costs for solar, wind, and other renewable energy sources are going down but are still more expensive than fossil fuel-derived electricity.
The report says that consistent policies, such as renewable portfolio standards, are required to attract investment in renewable energy, which should improve the technology and bring down costs. Attaching a price for releasing large amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere through carbon regulations will make cleaner forms of energy generation than fossil fuels more cost-competitive, it said.
"Currently, use of renewable resources for electricity generation generally incurs higher direct costs than those currently seen for fossil-based electricity generation, whose price does not now include the costs associated with carbon emissions and other unpriced externalities. Some form of market intervention or combination of incentives is thus required to enable renewable resources to contribute substantially to the national electrical energy generation mix," according to the report.
Another key challenge related to cost is industrial scale. Without an increase in manufacturing capacity for energy products, it will be difficult for renewable energy to move beyond single-digit contributions, the study said.
For example, a Department of Energy report calculated that to increase wind power to 20 percent of U.S. electricity would require construction of 100,000 wind turbines, an additional $100 billion of capital, and 140,000 workers in manufacturing and transmission upgrades.
On an environmental level, a significant barrier to wind and solar is conflict over how land is used for power plants and new transmissions lines.
The report says that investments in research and development are needed now to improve costs and for enabling technologies, such as storage and grid management. "Overall, technological developments and consistent policy will need to be coordinated with manufacturing capacity and access to capital in order to accelerate deployment of renewable electricity."
The U.S Department of Energy on Monday launched a $400 million program to fund development of disruptive energy technologies in a program modeled after the Department of Defense program that spawned space exploration and the Internet.
Called Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), the mission is to fund research and development on "transformational energy technologies" to cut the country's reliance on fossil fuels. The Energy Department's ARPA-E office will start taking applications next month for research projects, which will be accepted based on their technical feasibility and potential commercial impact.
Only bold, high-risk ideas need apply, according to the Energy Department, and President Obama has even likened this research to the space race of the 1960s--only it will be harder. "Only truly transformational technologies that can contribute greatly to the ARPA-E's Mission Areas have any chance of funding. We are not looking for incremental progress on current technologies," according to the Energy Department's solicitation document.
So where should this money go? While it's impossible to say what specific programs could land a slice of the ARPA-E funding, there are significant categories that don't generate many headlines but bear watching beyond more established green technologies:
Making solar power cheap
Using the sun to power our world makes sense because it is a massive and free source of energy. But how do you capture it cheaply?
There are thousands of people working on this very problem in myriad ways. For a breakthrough, many scientists have said we need solar power to be as cheap as applying a coat of paint. Some are actually trying to do this. New Scientist reports on researchers in the U.K. who are doing this using dye-based solar cells sprinkled into paint.
The key here, as in so many energy-related endeavors, is the material. Right now, solar cells are made from silicon, which is abundant but expensive, or other chemical combinations. But there's a field of research and development around organic solar cells made from relatively cheap polymers. IBM and Harvard, for example, last year launched a project to pinpoint which are the chemical compounds with the most potential for converting sunlight into electricity.
Biohydrocarbons
Some researchers have found ways to turn plants into the stuff in our fuel tanks--gasoline, diesel fuel, and jet fuel--without having to wait millions of years, of course. There are different techniques but the end goal of researchers and a few companies, including Virent Energy and Sapphire Energy, is to take biomass, such as sugarcane and algae, and convert it into a fuel that's chemically equivalent to what's pumped through our pipelines today.
For biofuels to be a healthy part of the energy mix, the product needs to be produced sustainably and to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions compared to petro-fuels. Determining what's sustainable requires a complicated lifecycle analysis, but so-called green gasoline has the advantage of fitting into the existing fuels infrastructure. And in theory, a plant-based hydrocarbon can use a replenishable feedstock that takes carbon out of the air as it grows.
The perfect battery
If there was ever an area that needs a technology breakthrough, it's energy storage. Better storage would make electric vehicles less expensive and make it easier to use more wind and solar power on the grid. It's difficult to say if there is a preferred method or chemistry. But what seems vital is to design a storage system around a material that is abundant, environmentally benign, and recyclable.
Battery company executives brush off the importance of lithium supply, but the lithium-ion battery boom has raised awareness of lithium supply, which is mostly found in South America and China. As we see different green technologies develop, minerals and metals other than lithium are likely to see a spike in demand.
Thermoelectricity
There are some thermoelectric materials that can generate an electrical current when heat is applied and vice versa. This technology isn't anything revolutionary--thermoelectric modules are what heat and cool car seats today. But what is intriguing is the potential for generating electricity--any form of usable energy, really--from waste heat. Imagine if you could convert all the heat going up the smokestacks of power plants and home furnaces into usable electricity. That would be efficient.
The challenge is similar to cheap solar cells in that the efficiency right now is too low for this technology to be deployed broadly. There are a handful of companies, including GMZ Energy, which is trying to come up with more efficient materials. Auto companies are also trying to outfit cars with thermoelectric chips so that an exhaust pipe, for example, could generate enough juice to make a more fuel-efficient ride.
Microbial fuel cells
What if you could make electricity by plugging an LED light into the ground? Or take waste water or sewage and turn it into usable energy? There are companies and researchers working on these problems using microbial fuels cells, which use an electrochemical energy conversion to make electricity.
One Harvard researcher is pursuing this technology as a way to deliver cheap electricity to developing countries that need off-grid power sources, and the potential market is huge. Others companies, including Emefcy in Israel, see it as a way to treat waste water while generating electricity from a renewable source: waste.
Clearly, these are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the technologies needed to better preserve our natural resources. One could easily list 100 more--hydrogen storage, water purification, marine power, enhanced geothermal, making methanol with carbon dioxide, or for a real home-run swing, cold fusion. What's your moonshot?
Updated at 12:55 p.m. PDT with comments from Foundation Capital. Updated at 3:45 a.m. PDT March 24 with corrected figure for total government investment in clean energy and efficiency.
Seeking to boost the U.S. clean-energy industry, President Obama on Monday announced $1.2 billion for science research at national labs and a proposal to extend a business tax credit for investments in research and development.
At an event at the White House, Obama told researchers and green-technology business people that their work was vital to revitalizing the U.S. economy and cutting the country's dependence on foreign oil. About 120 researchers, lab directors, and CEOs from energy technology companies attended the event.
President Barack Obama at the White House speaking to researchers and clean-technology company CEOs.
(Credit: Screen capture by Martin LaMonica/CNET)"We need some inventiveness. Your country needs you to mount a historical effort to end, once and for all, our dependence on foreign oil," Obama said. "Your country will support you, and your president will support you."
Obama said that his administration's budget proposes a 10-year extension to a tax credit for businesses that make investments in research and development. This tax credit has been in place in the past, but lacked a long-term commitment from the federal government, he said.
For every dollar that the government spends on this tax credit, it delivers two dollars to the economy, Obama said.
Obama also announced the availability of $1.2 billion in basic research at the Department of Energy's national laboratories. In addition to money to upgrade facilities at national labs, grants are available for research in renewable energy, such as solar power and biofuels, as well as in nuclear energy, underground storage of carbon dioxide, and hydrogen.
The stimulus package calls for an additional $371 million in research, which officials have not yet approved, according to the DOE.
Obama said that through the stimulus package, the federal government has set aside $59 billion in direct spending and in tax incentives to promote clean energy and energy efficiency. That investment will lead to 3.5 million jobs, 90 percent of which will be created in the private sector, he said.
During his talk, he singled out a few companies for their innovations and contributions to creating jobs.
Among them was Serious Materials, which makes energy-efficient windows and drywall that uses 80 percent less energy to produce than gypsum. Earlier this month, the California-based company reopened a window factory in Pennsylvania that had closed, resulting in 100 lost jobs.
The research and development investment tax credit is a "crucial tool" for green-technology businesses, said Paul Holland, a venture capitalists at Foundation Capital, which invested in Serious Materials and many other green-tech start-ups.
Many successful tech companies, like Intel and Netflix, would "not be where they are today if it were not for the progressive policies, such as the federal R&D tax credit and the stimulus plan," Holland said.
In an interview, Holland said the federal government needs to play a role in the financing "food chain" for green-tech start-ups that need capital to expand.
"The middle tier of finance--the private equity firms, which were pretty vital to clean tech have been decimated over the last couple of years," he said. "The federal government has become the provider of last resort in that part of the food chain."
On Friday, the Department of Energy said it expects to provide a $535 million loan guarantee to solar start-up Solyndra, the first loan done by the DOE in four years.
Another speaker at the event was Susan Hockfield, the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where researchers have created a number of energy-related innovations over the past few years, such as fast-charging battery technology and more efficient solar energy conversion.
She lauded the Obama administration's commitment to clean energy, saying the investments in research are comparable to the jolt of technology development that occurred during the space race in the 1960s.
"(The research and development tax credits) offer the only route to the breakthroughs we need to address energy security, rapidly increasing energy demand, and climate change," Hockfield said.
Holland said that the clean-tech industry has shown it can effectively spin out companies from research universities or national labs.
"I think this is just a different time," he said. "The focus in Washington is on invention, innovation, getting jobs, and getting various pieces of the clean-tech industry more competitive for the long term."
On paper, it sounds pretty good. You take the carbon dioxide pollution from paper production and transform it into a paper additive.
Carbon Sciences on Monday announced that it intends to target its carbon recycling technology toward paper manufacturers.
The company has developed a process that treats carbon dioxide gas with heat and pressure, then mixes it with other chemicals to produce calcium carbonate. For a video of the equipment in a solar-panel equipped van, click here.
Calcium carbonate, or chaulk, is used in many many industrial processes. Precipitated Calcium Carbonate, or PCC, is used to add gloss or brighten paper.
Technologies to recycle carbon dioxide waste are being seriously pursued. Large polluters, such as factories or power plants, are anticipating regulations to restrict their greenhouse gas emissions.
Several routes are being pursued, including growing algae at power plants and making baking soda. Government research in the U.S. is focused on pumping carbon dioxide underground at power plants.
Carbon Sciences' strategy is to start with the paper industry and then optimize its technology for power producers. It also envisions using its equipment at mining operations which can use calcium carbonate.
"We believe that by focusing our efforts on the existing multibillion-dollar PCC industry, we will be well-positioned to be a major player in the even larger $400 billion CO2 mitigation market in the future. This strategy is in line with our corporate mission of enabling a carbon-neutral world by transforming CO2 into high value products, one industry at a time," company CEO Derek McLeish said in a statement.
McLeish said that the main competitor to carbon recycling is carbon storage underground, an approach that has raised concerns over safety and costs.
High price and a strange color. No, we're not talking about a hairdo. Those are the two factors that have kept light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, from becoming a mainstream light source.
But that might change soon, said Zach Gibler, chief business development officer of Lighting Science Group, which plans to announce distribution deals with major retailers for its LED bulbs that screw into a regular socket.
Lighting Science Group's new LED lightbulbs.
(Credit: Lighting Science Group)LED bulbs for household use have already been around for some time, but their success has been limited. The main obstacles have been that they cost more than incandescent lightbulbs and emit a sometimes unnerving color of light.
Lighting Science Group this week plans to introduce a portfolio of LED replacement white lightbulbs that it hopes will attract more consumer interest. The product line uses the same sockets as Edison bulbs.
According to Gibler, the bulbs perform well on a warmth and color rendering index--blue looks blue, yellow looks yellow, etc.--they have a long life cycle, and consume 80 percent less energy than incandescent bulbs.
Gibler believes 2008 could be "the year of LED" for residential use and lighting in general. The market potential is big, particularly considering that legislation will outlaw the sale of incandescent bulbs by 2012, he said. He compared the adoption of LED lights in homes to another lighting product, the flashlight.
"Three years ago you could hardly find an LED-based flashlight; today it's hard to find one that is not LED light," he said.
Lighting Science Group sells its products through wholesale stores and on its own Web site, but it expects to announce soon distribution deals with one or two retail chains to make the new LED bulbs more available.
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At $40 to $110 apiece, the LED "in-screw" bulbs may still seem too pricey for a lot of consumers. But Lighting Science Group's pitch is that a 50 cent Edison bulb will last for 750 to 3,000 hours, while an LED has to be replaced only every 50,000 hours (or 10 to 30 years). The company says the cost savings is almost $740 over a lifetime due to much lower energy consumption.
Vrinda Bhandarkar, a research analyst at Mountain View, Calif.-based Strategies Unlimited, said she is impressed if the "bulky looking lamps" actually perform as well as the company says. But the price has to come down a lot before consumers--and not just businesses--start buying them, she said. For a proper light in the kitchen it would take at least four big bulbs, which would cost about $440.
"They will be used for retail display, hotel lobbies, for paintings that hang up high, and places where you need a high ladder to change lamps," she said.
Gibler, who has a lengthy career in the lighting industry and took on responsibility for business development at Lighting Science Group last year, believes the price for LED lights will come down as chips get cheaper.
"They will be half the cost in another two years," he said.
Update: The headline on this story was corrected to indicate that the research stems from nanotechnology.
Boston College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said Thursday they have developed a more efficient way to generate electricity from heat, a technology that could let product designers harness "waste" heat.
Researchers said the implications of efficient thermoelectric materials could be wide: car electronics could be partly powered by the heat captured from exhaust pipes, for example, and solar electric panels could become more productive.
The thermoelectric effect, known since the early 19th century, is when certain materials convert heat into electricity and vice versa. The problem has been that those materials often lose heat quickly as well.
Boston College and MIT researchers have been experimenting with using nanotechnology to increase the efficiency of thermoelectricity.
They broke down bismuth antimony telluride, a commonly used semiconductor alloy, and reconstituted it in a way that slowed the passage of phonons, caused by vibration, through it.
The result is far more efficient process, the researchers said.
"By using nanotechnology, we have found a way to improve an old material by breaking it up and then rebuilding it in a composite of nanostructures in bulk form," said Boston College physicist Zhifeng Ren, one of the leaders of the project, said in a statement.
The advantage of using bismuth antimony telluride as a material is that it's relatively inexpensive, environmentally friendly, and can be used in a wide range of products, including embedded chips in electronics, according to the researchers.
