Japan Govt to promote LED lamps, ban fluorescents - Great News

Jiji Press TOKYO (Jiji Press)


The government plans to tighten its energy-efficiency standards for lamps to effectively ban production and imports of fluorescents and incandescents, informed sources said Thursday.
The move is aimed at promoting the replacement of such lamps with light-emitting diode ones, in an effort to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
According to the industry ministry, the adoption rate for LED lamps in Japan came to 9 percent in fiscal 2012, which ended in March 2013, while the government targets achieving almost 100 percent by fiscal 2030.
LED lamps are durable for longer periods of time than other lamps are, and their power consumption is about one eighth of that of incandescents.
But LED lamps are much more expensive. In large home electronics stores in the country, a 60-watt fluorescent bulb is usually priced at around ¥700, much lower than some ¥2,000 for an LED one.
Under the current “top runner” system, energy-saving requirements are set for each product category, based on the highest energy-efficient performance in each category.
LED and other lamps are treated separately in the system, but the government now plans to unify lamp categories so that only LED lamps can meet requirements for the unified category.
Details of the plan are expected to be drawn up by an industry ministry panel by the end of fiscal 2016.

New Buzzword "Li-Fi" 100 Times Faster Than "Wi-Fi"

 

But that may all change with the newly tested technology of "li-fi", which can achieve stable speeds up to 100 times faster than wi-fi. Well, scientists have just announced they have innovated a form of wireless computer communications that they claim to be 100 times faster than Wi-fi. The data was received by a binary code by flashing LED lights on and off by creating a morse code. The new wireless technology uses Visible Light Communication (VLC) or infra-red and near ultra violet spectrum.

BBC reports that Estonian start-up Velmenni recently completed the first real world test of visible light spectrum-based Wi-Fi, cleverly dubbed Li-Fi by Edinburgh University professor Harald Hass after first demonstrating the technology in a 2011 TED talk. Li-Fi might just be the next one.
"When a constant current is applied to an LED [light-emitting-diode] lightbulb, a constant stream of photons are emitted from the bulb which is observed as visible light. We're also performing a pilot project having a personal client where we're establishing a Lifi system to get into the Internet within their workplace space". "We only had to keep your micro-control board in front of the laptop screen (GUI) and the data was transferred wirelessly using visible light communication". Today, professionals took Li Fi out of the research for that first time, screening it in offices and professional situations. Because gentle can not pass through surfaces, think about it, that you don't have to be anxious about your annoying neighbour looking to compromise into your internet and stealing knowledge. Rather, the two systems may be applied together to accomplish secure and more effective systems. That address was delivered four years ago, and many people speculated that, like a lot of apparent revolutionary breakthroughs, Li-Fi would go the way of other "next big things" and not come to fruition.
But the technology also has its drawbacks - most notably the fact that it can not be deployed outdoors in direct sunlight, because that would interfere with its signal. Li-Fi is a bidirectional, fully networked wireless communication technology similar to Wi-Fi, which works at very high speed.