Led-World Exclusive - 2010 Ford Mustang Lights Cut Fuel Costs

2010 Ford Mustang Lights Cut Fuel Costs

When it comes to getting the most possible efficiency out of a vehicle, the battle is often one of small steps, not giant leaps. Completely redesigning a vehicle from the bottom up to be the most efficient vehicle on the road is a big challenge. First there’s the extra research and development costs, then, once the vehicle is designed, you’ll likely have to retool your factories in order to produce the thing. So how does one increase efficiency without having to change the industry’s ways? One way that Ford adopted in the Ford Mustang is the use of LED lights.Using a gasoline engine to produce electricity isn’t too hard. Using it to drive a car and produce electricity at the same time results in a lot of lost power, hence lowering efficiency. So, any measure that could decrease the need for electricity has an impact. The LED taillights found on the Ford Mustang, which uses Osram Sylvania’s Joule system use 87% less electricity than a traditional incandescent bulb, and, because they have no fragile monofilament, they are far more durable.

The Osram Sylvania system also realizes the needs of the auto industry by constructing their LED fixtures in shapes and sizes that make them easily interchangable with previous incandescent features. As a parting word, here’s a few figures from Osram Sylvania: LED lights on the 2010 Ford Mustang make for an annual fuel savings of 10.5 gallons and a decrease in cabron emissions of 205 pounds.
This may not seem like a huge amount, but if you were to implement that system on the roughly 250 million light-duty vehicles (cars, pickup trucks, commercial vehicles, etc., according to a recent Osram press release) in America, that would mean a yearly reduction of 51.25 billion pounds of CO2 emissions and the use of 2.625 billion gallons of gasoline. That’s pretty impressive for a small light fixture.

LED GROW LIGHT - Future Trend of LED Light

The Power of LED Grow Lights

With the release of hard-hitting documentaries such as Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and Leonardo DiCaprio’s The 11th Hour energy consumption and its relationship to global climate change has become a prominent issue. What people often fail to understand is that the best solutions are not great actions on the part of a few, but rather small actions taken by the many. For example, if everyone in the U.S. were to replace incandescent lights with fluorescent ones, it could eliminate the need for Middle East oil.
LED Grow lights are another example of a small thing that can make a great difference. If you are growing your own food in a hydroponics garden, you’re already taking a step toward saving the planet. The use of LED Grow Lights allows you to take the next step in reducing your footprint on the planet. Not only to they operate at a fraction of the voltage of conventional bulbs (less than 20 VAC as opposed to 120), but they are free of mercury – a highly toxic metal used in metallic vapor and fluorescent lights.
LED Grow Lights are efficient and economical in other ways as well. Unlike the more general purpose fluorescent bulbs, LED Grow Lights require no electric or digital ballast,that can eventually burn out. They also emit “targeted light;” whereas most standard grow lights emit a broad spectrum of light that includes light wavelength that is useless to plant life, LED Grow Lights emit only that part of the spectrum actually used for photosynthesis. This also means far less waste heat, which requires extra ventilation to carry away. It also means less glare; while this useful light is very bright to plants, humans perceive such light as relatively dim. This also eliminates the need for troublesome shades and reflectors.
Although they can represent a greater upfront investment, LED Grow Lights cost substantially less in the long run. In the first place, they are not nearly as fragile as conventional bulbs and fluorescents. Best of all, they are extremely durable – the average lifespan of an LED Grow Light is 100,000 hours – which is as much as fifty times as long as that of conventional bulbs. This adds up to nearly twelve years under normal conditions.
Because LED Grow Lights are environmentally friendly, they will result in healthier, more productive plants. Because they emit very little in the way of heat, LED Grow Lights allow your plants to keep cooler. Plants thrive at room temperature, receiving all the light they require without growth-stunting excess heat. In addition, your plants will suffer less from heat-related root damage that can occur when hot conventional grow lights heat the soil.
With LED Grow Lights, your plants will also require less watering.
Across the board, LED Grow Lights allow you to grow more economically and in a more environmentally-friendly way.
Susan Slobac operates a hydroponics garden store. She has detailed knowledge of what grow lights are best for hydroponics gardens. Susan is also concerned with the environment and sees LED grow lights as one alternative solution to the traditional energy consuming grow lights most often used. Susan promotes LED grow lights based on efficiency and performance.

LED Grow Lights Can Save Time And Money

When a person decides to begin growing their own plants, they have made a decision which will help them enjoy some of the best variety of plants in their own home. There is a strong sense of accomplishment and fulfillment achieved from growing your own garden, whether the product is vegetables for your table or flowers to brighten your home. You can grow these plants, though, in many ways. Among the best entails the use of LED grow lights.
The traditional method of plant growing is HID lighting. This high-intensity discharge lighting can be seen all over society, for this is the type of lighting used to light parking lots, stadiums, and other large areas. For some time it has been utilized for indoor gardens since it provides a great light source for growing plants.
This is not the best way to proceed, however. There are a great many wavelengths displayed over the range of light and not all of these wavelengths are useful to plants. Of the light produced by HID lighting, only 35% can be used by the plant. Why would someone pay to run the other 65% of energy coming off of these lights which is utterly wasted?
LED grow lights, however, are manufactured to use a great deal less energy when they are run. LEDs will last seven years if used an average of eighteen hours each day. HID light bulbs must be changed much more often. In addition, LEDs only emit light the plant can use, thus reducing the electrical costs of conventional lights.
Other areas will be saved when LED lighting is used over another source. In indoor growing environments, alternative light forms will generate high levels of heat, and a cooling system of some sort will be needed to prevent the light from overheating and presenting a possible fire hazard. This heat is not produced, however, by LED lighting, which means there is no need to spend a lot of money for a cooling system.
Owing to the fact that they can be positioned in nearly any required direction, these lights enjoy a very broad range of accessibility. You can easily arrange plants so that they get enough light. Not only will LED grow panels help grow some of the best plants possible in indoor gardening, they are also a great way to save a lot of money over time.

Led-World Exclusive Comparison : LED Vs CFL

Led-World - The light bulb, the symbol of bright ideas, doesn't look like such a great idea anymore, as lawmakers in the U.S. and abroad are talking about banning the century-old technology because of its contribution to global warming.But what comes next? Compact fluorescent bulbs are the only real alternative right now, but "bulbs" that use light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, are quickly emerging as a challenger.LEDs, which are small chips usually encased in a glass dome the size of a matchstick head, have been in use in electronics for decades to indicate, for example, whether a VCR is on or off.Those LEDs were usually red or green, but a scientific breakthrough in the 1990s paved the way for the production of LEDs that produce white light. Because they use less power than standard incandescent bulbs, white LEDs have become common in flashlights.Established players in the lighting industry and a host of startups are now grooming LEDs to take on the reigning champion of residential lighting, the familiar pear-shaped incandescent light bulb.The light bulb has been running out of friends recently. California and Canada have decided to ban the sale of incandescent bulbs by 2012. Australia is banning them in 2010. The European Union is looking at banning production of the bulbs. A U.S. Senate committee is working on a proposal that would phase out the light bulb in 10 years.And in New Jersey, where the first practical incandescent bulb emerged from Thomas Edison's laboratory in 1879, a bill has been introduced to ban their use in government buildings.Governments are gunning for the light bulb because it's much less efficient than fluorescents, using about five times more energy to produce the same amount of light.Lighting consumes 22 percent of electricity produced in the U.S., according to the Department of Energy, and widespread use of LED lighting could cut consumption in half. By 2027, LED lighting could cut annual energy use by the equivalent of 500 million barrels of oil, with the attendant reduction in emissions of carbon dioxide, the gas believed to be responsible for global warming.Much of that reduction would be possible with today's technology, using compact fluorescents, or CFLs. But consumers haven't warmed to them. The light quality hasn't been satisfactory, most take time to turn on and aren't dimmable.The LED has advantages over the CFL in most of those areas, and judging by this week's Lightfair trade show in New York, it could be a serious challenge to the CFL in a few years. What holds it back is chiefly price, but LEDs are already an economic alternative for niche uses.In the last two years, the diodes have doubled in energy efficiency and brightness, according to Greg Merritt, director of marketing for Durham, N.C.-based LED-manufacturer Cree Inc. In particular, LEDs that produce a yellowish or "warm" light similar to incandescents have improved.Dallas-based Lighting Science Group Corp. showed an LED "bulb" that screws into a standard medium-sized socket and produces a warm light equivalent to that of a 25-watt incandescent bulb, but consumes just 5.8 watts. It costs $50, hardly palatable to consumers who can buy a standard bulb for less than a dollar.Polybrite International, a startup in Naperville, Ill., announced that lighting giant Osram Sylvania, a subsidiary of Germany's Siemens AG, will distribute its LED "bulbs." The intended market is mainly commercial clients, who can afford to pay $15 to $85 per unit, according to Osram Sylvania marketing manager Constance Pineault.The energy efficiency is no doubt a draw for commercial clients like hotels, but LEDs have another big advantage: they last up to 50,000 hours, according to manufacturers. That compares to about 10,000 hours for fluorescents and 1,000 hours for incandescents. Not having to send out janitors to replace burned-out bulbs means big savings in maintenance costs."Right now the applications that make sense are either high maintenance or high power consumption, like parking garages, where the lights are on all the time," said Cree's Merritt.LEDs already beat fluorescents for energy efficiency in some niche uses. For instance, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is putting LED lighting in its in-store refrigerators, where the cold dims fluorescents and incandescents produce too much heat. LEDs also starting to replace flat fluorescent backlights in liquid-crystal displays, or LCDs, where they produce better colors.LEDs don't contain toxic mercury, which CFLs do, though the amount is very small. (Recent stories circulating on the Web about calling a hazmat team if a CFL breaks are exaggerated. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recommends sweeping up, not vacuuming, the fragments, then checking out local recycling options.)The cost of LED lighting should be coming down quickly. Polybrite founder Carl Scianna said the cost of individual white-light diodes, several of which go into an LED bulb and make up much of the cost, have come down in price from about $8 to $1.50 in a year."They're going to keep going down," Scianna said. "By the middle of next year, they'll be priced for consumers."Nadarajah Narendran, director of lighting research at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., cautions that there are still technical issues to work out with LEDs.While single LEDs can demonstrate very high energy efficiency in the lab, when they're combined into fixtures, their efficiency is considerably lower. In part that's a heat issue: the diodes produce less heat than incandescents, but they keep that heat in the fixture rather than radiating it, and the hotter the diodes get, the less efficient they are.He sees screwing LED bulbs into standard sockets "as a waste of talent" that doesn't utilize the inherent properties of LEDs, like their small size and longevity."You could build them in as part of the furniture, part of the cabinetry," Narendran said.Because of their high prices, he doesn't believe LEDs will be ready to replace incandescents in all their uses for the next five to 10 years, but "LEDs, good or bad, will be growing very rapidly."

Led-World Exclusive - OSRAM Takes LED Lighting To The Streets

Time to say goodnight, fluorescents -- looks like the LED is primed to take over. As the world looks for more efficient ways to power businesses, light up streets and keep the world spinning, OSRAM has just introduced two new innovations in the LED lighting space that look to push us one step closer to finally putting those inefficient fluorescent bulbs to rest for good.For starters, the company revealed its unique Golden DRAGON Oval Plus LED, which is designed to provide perfect lumination for energy-efficient street lighting without the need for secondary optics. The secret -- because we just know you're dying to know -- is in the new integrated lens, which boasts an oval radiation pattern in order to deliver directed light and reduce light pollution elsewhere. Since different roads call for different lighting concepts, the LEDs are available in different white tones.



Moving on, we've got an all new ultra-white OSLON SSL LED that measures in at an almost unbelievable 3 x 3mm in size. Requiring just one single watt of power, the light features a high luminous efficiency of 100 lm/W and is said to be ideal for spotlights, desk lights and ceiling floodlights. No prices are given on these, probably because they'll primarily be sold to local governments and businesses, but we can't help but be intruiged. Just think -- in a few years, your car's headlamps, interior lighting and flashlight will likely all be LED-based. Ah, the sweet smell of progress.
Moving on, we've got an all new ultra-white OSLON SSL LED that measures in at an almost unbelievable 3 x 3mm in size. Requiring just one single watt of power, the light features a high luminous efficiency of 100 lm/W and is said to be ideal for spotlights, desk lights and ceiling floodlights. No prices are given on these, probably because they'll primarily be sold to local governments and businesses, but we can't help but be intruiged. Just think -- in a few years, your car's headlamps, interior lighting and flashlight will likely all be LED-based. Ah, the sweet smell of progress.

Top 10 Reasons You Need To Switch To LED Light Bulbs-Led-World Exclusive

Light emitting diodes (LEDs) have been turning up all over the place, which leads one to wonder why. What's so great about these little lights? Why are we seeing more and more LED light bulbs cropping up on everything from cars to traffic lights? LED light bulbs have some very clear advantages over other types of lighting, such as:

1. LED light bulbs last longer. Without a filament to break or burn out, LED light bulbs can last for over 100,000 hours without showing their age (that's over eleven years at full brightness). This lifespan is twice that of typical fluorescent bulbs and twenty times longer than incandescent light bulbs.
2. They are energy efficient. An incandescent light bulb loses 80 percent of its energy to heat, leaving only the last 20 percent for light. LED light bulbs turn this around, giving up a scant 20 percent of their energy to heat loss. Not only that, but they operate at 10 to 20 percent of the power required for incandescent bulbs of similar brightness.
3. LEDs are more colorful. LED light bulbs can be made in a vast array of colors without the use of extra filters, which brings down production costs. They also provide a truer, brighter color than a filtered bulb.
4. LED light bulbs work in silence. The days of humming bulbs came to an end with the creation of LEDs, so there's no need to lose sanity listening to the thrum, tick, or ping of other light bulbs.
5. They are incredibly safe. With so little energy lost to heat and so little energy used overall, LED light bulbs run cool, which means no burnt fingers or burnt down houses. They are extremely durable thanks to their solid-state construction, so there's no broken glass to deal with, either.
6. LED light bulbs are focused. LEDs can be made to focus without the use of extra reflectors or lenses, which means less bulk and lower cost for the same beam of light.
7. They are the best for dimming. Incandescent bulbs turn yellow when dimmed, while LED light bulbs retain their true colors.
8. LEDs are versatile. Thanks to the wide array of colors and shapes LEDs be made to replace most any light bulb. Their diminutive size and power-sipping nature also open up a world of possibility, from infrared remote control lights to ultra-light headlamps.
9. LED light bulbs bring light quickly. Lighting up to their full brightness in microseconds, LEDs are a safer choice when reaction time is a factor, like when that car in the fast lane slams on the brakes.
10. They promise a brighter future. LED light bulbs don't contain mercury, like compact fluorescent bulbs do. Combining that with the fact that they outlast their energy efficient cousins, makes the choice to go LED clear as day.

LED light bulbs have a staggering number of uses, and somehow they keep excelling at all of them. When it's time to shed light on the subject, this jack-of-all-trades masters all.

How To Find the Best Outdoor Lighting Idea

How To Find the Best Outdoor Lighting Idea

Outdoor lighting is great for security reasons. There are some homeowners that use outdoor lighting for aesthetic reasons. Here are some great ideas for excellent outdoor lighting:
- How do you start? It is a fact that there are thousands of different outdoor fixture designs and styles. This can make it even more difficult for you to come up with a great outdoor lighting idea. The best thing to do is to first of all know exactly what you want out of your outdoor lighting. Is it something that you just wish to have for security reasons or do you want your lights to highlight and accent your outdoor property? Do you have a specific theme to your home and outdoor area? Your answers to these questions are crucial in determining the best outdoor lighting idea for you.
- If you are intent on making a grand show of your outdoor property and lighting, then you probably cannot do things on your own. Consider getting the professional opinion and help of a lighting consultant, landscaper and a licensed electrician. An electrician in particular may not be able to add an aesthetic outdoor lighting idea but he can make sure that your fixtures and wiring are compliant with government electrical codes.
- Rather than installing outdoor lighting after your entire home structure and landscape are done, it would make sense to try to incorporate outdoor lighting plans with your entire residential plan while you are still about to build your home or while construction is going on. This can help determine the proper placement of not just electrical receptacles but pipes and wires as well.
- Make an assessment of your property before you decide on any lighting plan. Aside from a possible theme, you should also look for the focal point or points of your property. What exactly do you want people to notice first when they enter. Is it the large tree in your yard, a pool, a statue, a fountain, a walkway or an entrance arch? Once you have determined this, you can pick the right outdoor lighting idea.
- Mix elements. You shouldn’t have just one kind of lighting for your outdoor property. Different areas require different kinds of lighting. Arches and entrances for example would look wonderful in uplights while statues would look better with downlights as would pathways, driveways and walkways. Patios and decks on the other hand would look wonderful with well designed lamps, lanterns, scones, table lighting and floor recessed lighting.
- One thing that you should never forget about your residential outdoor lighting idea is that you should be able to achieve a toned down and soothing effect. In other words, direct glaring lights should be removed. Select lighting with soft or natural glow.
- Consider using portable and movable fixtures. This will allow you some flexibility when it comes to choosing lights for specific events or seasons. You may for example temporarily replace your lawn lamps with tiki torches if you are in the mood for a tropical themed gathering. You can easily do the replacement without necessarily removing your present wiring or socket placement.

LED lighting - The Energy Efficient Way To See

LED lighting - The Energy Efficient Way To See

LED lights are the way of the future, producing brighter light while at the same time using less energy. The bulbs last a lot longer, too, meaning there’s a long term saving in maintenance. Light emitting diodes (LEDS) are being used worldwide to conserve energy.
The LED advantages are numerous:
LED lights have been around for about 40 years and were originally used as small instrument lights like the ones you might have seen in an aircraft. They have progressed to domestic and business use as a very reliable source of light that is energy efficient while at the same time providing superior light output. As the world starts to look for alternatives to save energy, LED lights have gained a very strong following and will probably take over from traditional bulbs in the future.
Longer life: LED bulbs last up to ten times longer than regular bulbs. Some people even speculate that they can last up to 40 years! This saves time, money and gives your business the added bonus of being friendly to the environment, which can mean a lot to modern employees and shoppers.
More light: as mentioned the bulbs have reflectors to increase their brilliance. For this reason they produce more illumination than regular bulbs. This is useful for areas in your home where you need more light.
LED lighting can be used in a number of ways, here are a few:
Strip lighting under cabinets: cabinets can create dark areas around counters and work spaces in kitchens. This can be dangerous as well as unhygienic, making it difficult to work and clean. Some intelligently placed LED lights will create the light needed and enhance the look and feel of any kitchen or similar work area.
Reading lights: LED lights point in one direction, making them ideal as reading lamps. They generate a much brighter light which also makes them the perfect choice for late night reading marathons.
Many people use LEDs to highlight certain areas or show pieces in their home or business. LEDs are perfect for drawing attention to certain areas.
Landscape lighting: entertainment decks really come to life with just a few LED lights in the right areas. They can create highlights or can be used to illuminate the natural look of the deck. They also are ideal for drawing attention to areas of a yard or garden and create different feel than traditional bulbs.
Many colors: LED lighting comes in many colors and this is the real untapped worth of them. Different atmosphere can be created in various rooms or your house or business. You can take advantage of different hues for displays and show pieces. Colored lighting can also be used as a filter on decks and in gardens, just like a photographer would use a filter to enhance the green of a landscape.
LED lighting is the way of the future and everyone’s ticket to a greener home or business. You will save on energy, but at the same time bring better light to areas. As well, you do not have to change your light bulbs as often as traditional bulbs. You are saving your money on a newer, more superior product that gives real results.
About the Author:
Tom Sanderrs is very knowledgeable about under cabinet lighting and you can find more out at this site about under cabinet fluorescent lighting.
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The next technology battle: Laser vs LED

The next technology battle: Laser vs LED

After the HD vs Blu-Ray disc format wars were over, Blu-ray emerge the clear winner, however soon to be replaced by HVD, but that’s another story.
Anywho, it seems we have another technology war upon us, also in the entertainment industry, but this time televisions.
The war this time is between Laser TV (currently backed by Mitsubishi, releasing their new LaserVue TV) and (O)LED, who’s currently being backed by mainly by Samsung (LUXIA), but other companies are heading this route as well like Sony, LG, Philips to name a few.
Mitsubishi LaserVue VS Samsung LUXIA
I’m probably just making more out of this than is warranted. LED TV has been out for a while now, and Laser TV is only just coming out now (that’s not to say the laser tv technology hasn’t been around for a long time, it has). However, now that Mitsubishi is pushing their LaserVue laser TV’s, will that spark enough interest to win over supporters for this technology. Will it be able to break into a market already tapped by LED TV technology?That’s yet to be seen. I think LED is definitely the future, so I don’t know where laser tv will find it’s place in a market against LED competition.
What do you think?
led

Read in the Dark LED Reading Glasses

Read in the Dark LED Reading Glasses
by Matthew on May 5, 2009

If you recently purchased a Kindle 2 and went to read it at night you will have quickly found out that you cannot see it. This is the problem with e-paper in that there is no backlight usually. For those of you who want to read at night these LED reading glasses might work for you. Of course they are compatible with e-books and regular books and what they do is provide light on the edges of the glasses so that you can read in the dark.
The reading glasses have super bright LED’s in each corner of the lenses and 4 batteries are held within the frames. The batteries are good for up to 30 hours of night time reading. The LED’s work with a switch built in to the hinges of the glasses and when the arms are opened the lights switch on.
The advantage of having LED’s built in to your specks is that you don’t have to faff around with a book light every time you turn the page.
In my book, the LED Reading Glasses are a winner! But there is one drawback: the glasses are only available with refractive lenses. In other words, you have to be presbyotic — nearsighted. They are available in 1.5, 2.0, and 2.5 diopter. From Hammacher Schlemmer with a lifetime guarantee.
Available from Hammacher Schlemmer costing $39.95.

Businesses Warm to LED Lighting

AMBIENCE The Chicago Center for Green Technology, which uses solar power, installed LED lighting in its resource center

THE architect Cass Gilbert’s vision for the United States Custom House in Lower Manhattan resulted in one of the city’s grand classical buildings. But until recently it has been difficult to appreciate the subtlety and majesty of the 102-year-old structure when viewing it at night.

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Go to Blog » At its base, huge fixtures produced scattered light that cast strong shadows on the windows, giving the facade the tired look of an insomniac. Aging light bulbs had shifted in color, throwing off an unwanted rainbow of green and pink.

“The lighting was atrocious,” said Patricia DiMaggio, who noticed the poor illumination when walking by the building. “It wasn’t doing the job.”

Unlike most passers-by, Ms. DiMaggio was prepared to take action. A lighting engineer for Osram Sylvania, she was introduced to the right people at the federal General Services Administration. Donating time and material, Ms. DiMaggio promised to relight the building both to restore its grandeur and save energy.

Combining warm-hued LED and metal-halide fixtures, Ms. DiMaggio lighted previously dark areas of the building and removed unsightly shadows cast by aging traditional lamps.

“One person said, ‘I feel like I’m in Paris when I walk by the building,’ ” Ms. DiMaggio recalled.

Using LED-based fixtures, Ms. DiMaggio said, she cut energy consumption for lighting by 43 percent, saving $6,654 a year. With an expected life of 50,000 hours, compared with the 2,000 hours typical of incandescent bulbs, the lights have also lowered maintenance costs.

Although they have yet to substantially influence the residential lighting market, light-emitting diode lamps are increasingly being introduced in commercial buildings. Manufacturers are creating lamps that are reliable, color-accurate and at least as efficient as incandescent or compact fluorescent lights.

LED fixtures still cost more than conventional ones, but the energy savings can help commercial projects to pay for themselves in as little as two years.

That said, the quickly evolving technology is still in its early stages. “In 2006, I had a really hard time to light well with just LEDs,” said Brad Koerner, a designer at Lam Partners, a Cambridge, Mass., lighting firm. “By 2008, there was no longer any problem.”

Mr. Koerner oversaw the relighting of Boston’s Custom House Tower, which is now a Marriott hotel. The building’s lighting had fallen into disrepair over the last 20 years, with much of the upper half remaining in darkness.

Mr. Koerner installed LED-based fixtures from Philips’s Color Kinetics division that resemble warm incandescent bulbs. He replaced the 90-watt halogen bulbs with 50-watt LED fixtures, cutting energy use in half.

“Every month LEDs get so much better it’s amazing,” Mr. Koerner said. “It’s changing that quickly.”

While Derry Berrigan, owner of Derry Berrigan Lighting Design in Rogers, Ark., is using LEDs, she said much of what was currently sold was “pure junk. It’s like the Wild West.”

Seeking out high-quality products, Ms. Berrigan used fixtures from Cree and Insight Lighting to relight a prototype KFC and Taco Bell restaurant in Northampton, Mass.

She placed LEDs in the interior, reducing energy consumption by 81 percent, while LEDs outside saved 77 percent. Installing LED parking lot fixtures, which spread wider beams than conventional lighting, allowed Ms. Berrigan to remove two poles.

Costs can even be cut when a building is receiving its energy off the grid. At the Chicago Center for Green Technology, which uses solar energy, Ms. Berrigan used LED track lighting from Journée Lighting in Westlake Village, Calif., to illuminate the walls in its resource center, along with fixtures from Color Kinetics, Cree, Insight and other companies to provide general illumination.

With a resulting 64 percent drop in energy use for lighting, 47 of the center’s 200 solar panels could provide electricity for purposes other than illumination.

LEDs can also create a look that would otherwise be unachievable. Focus Lighting, based in New York, illuminated Rock Sugar Pan Asian Kitchen, a restaurant prototype in Los Angeles owned by the Cheesecake Factory chain.

Faced with lighting rooms with 25- to 30-foot ceilings and intimate bar and dining areas, Christine Hope, Focus’s designer, said, “LEDs were the perfect solution.”

Fixtures included LED strips behind the bar and, in cubbyholes, dozens of candlelike LEDs using just one to three watts per unit. That “would have been impossible to do with incandescents,” Ms. Hope said.

Color-changing LEDs programmed to cycle through the hues of dawn to dusk were placed behind large Buddhas. LED lights drawing three or six watts were installed in 25 globes in the courtyard.

Needing omnidirectional light in the dining room, Ms. Hope used compact fluorescent bulbs in three fixtures, their yellow shades providing the proper color for the room.

The LEDs reduced energy consumption by at least half compared with traditional incandescent and halogen bulbs, Ms. Hope said. “This restaurant is such a great example of what you can achieve with LEDs,” she said.

LED Lighting Gaining Acceptance

April 30, 2009, 8:30 am
LED Lighting Gaining Acceptance (Sort Of)
By Eric A. Taub
The recent replacement of the incandescent lamps in Grand Central Terminal in New York with compact fluorescent bulbs notwithstanding, the lighting industry continues to believe that LEDs, not C.F.L.s, will eventually be the technology of choice for many lighting applications.

As I note in an article about the commercial use of LED lighting in today’s Business of Green special section, lighting designers who just one year ago were wary of recommending LED products now are much more confident in doing so.

That’s partly due to the move, spearheaded by the Department of Energy, to set Energy Star guidelines for the next generation of lighting to convince consumers and businesses that LED products will perform as claimed.

But it’s also due to the improvement of the lighting itself. LED lamps are becoming more efficient, producing warmer, more inviting colors at higher brightness levels.

On Tuesday, I was shown a new reflector lamp from Nexxus Lighting, similar to the type installed in many kitchen and office ceilings, that produced a warm, pleasing light. It weighs about one-third of a competing lamp and uses 8 watts to produce the light of a 50-watt bulb.

But how many homes and businesses are satisfied with 50-watt lamps? When the industry starts producing 75- and 100-watt equivalents, LEDs will begin to gain traction. (Cree, a lighting company, has announced a reflector lamp that it says produces a similar look to a halogen lamp, uses 12 watts, and can replace up to a 90-watt incandescent lamp.)

Are LED lamps ready for the consumer? Hardly. Most of the strange-looking LED products sold in home improvement stores remain below par. Many manufacturers make unsubstantiated claims about lamp life and brightness.

But for the well-heeled set, there are plenty of highly regarded products that use a fraction of the power of an incandescent bulb. But they come at a high initial price. I recently visited a home in the tony Brentwood section of Los Angeles that was entirely lit with LED “downlights” made by Cree, and I couldn’t tell the difference between the light from those fixtures and standard bulbs. And Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway scooter, has lighted the home he owns on a small island only with Color Kinetics LED products.

The Department of Energy is conducting a seminar in a few weeks to discuss the state of LED lamps that can replace standard incandescents. And more commercial buildings, including a wing of the Pentagon and even a KFC/Taco Bell restaurant, have switched over to the new technology.

But despite these successes, many engineers remain resistant to using LEDs. A major real estate developer in Los Angeles recently showed me correspondence from his engineering team questioning why anyone in his right mind would use LED lamps in a commercial project, citing high cost as a reason to eschew their use. For now, the lighting industry and the building industry often seem to be speaking different languages

Color changing Luxeed U5 LED keyboard is a rave at your fingertips

Color changing Luxeed U5 LED keyboard is a rave at your fingertips

Luxeed's got a fine history of making the keyboard a fantastical piece of wonder, and its newest offering is not exception. The U5 LED keyboard has pretty much everything one could ask for in a colorful peripheral -- programmable, patterned LEDs which are guaranteed to brighten up your day. It boasts support for Windows, Linux and Mac (previous versions were Windows only), so if it's ever made available outside of Korea, we can guarantee you we'll be getting one for every member of our dance posse. They're available for pre-order in Korea now for KRW 99,000 (about $77 USD). One more mountain-moving shot after the break.