Energy Saving Star – LED Lighting

In your home, lighting may be 10 percent of your bill. But in an office building it’s probably 40 percent, and so if you reduce your lighting energy consumption by a large fraction, the savings will be huge,” said James Brodrick, who leads the DOE’s solid-state lighting program.

A fact sheet from Brodrick’s office says this about LEDs: “In the coming decade, they will become a key to affordable net-zero energy buildings, buildings that produce at least as much energy annually as they use from the grid.”

The technology is advancing quickly, and costs will continue to drop, Brodrick said. The DOE tests LEDs and sets performance and efficiency guidelines under its Energy Star program.

LEDs are directional lights, used in recessed lighting and under-counter lights, for example. They’re not yet available as bulbs that cast light all around and fit in ordinary sockets.

“There’s an enormous and exciting potential, but we have a long way to go before we see anything besides directional lighting,” said Jeffrey P. Harris, the vice president for programs at the Alliance to Save Energy, a nonprofit group that promotes energy efficiency.

Even so, LEDs already are used to light offices, hotels, restaurants and other businesses.

The DOE predicts that LEDs will have better performance capability than fluorescent lighting in the next few years, and that they’ll continue to improve after that. They’re now comparable with fluorescent fixtures in efficiency, and the DOE says its Energy Star LEDs last two to five times longer.

Cost is the biggest reason that LEDs aren’t used more widely, Brodrick said.

LEDs have other advantages: They can be dimmed, don’t emit heat, don’t contain mercury – unlike compact fluorescents – and can produce warm-toned light.

Home Depot, the world’s biggest retailer of light bulbs, is starting to stock LED bulbs this summer and plans to have 10 kinds by September, said Jorge Fernandez, who’s in charge of light bulb purchases for the company.

Philips is working on many kinds of LEDs, including one to replace a 40-watt incandescent bulb that’s scheduled to be available next year, she said.

Derrick Hall of RE/Construct Inc. in Asheville, N.C., said that residential customers weren’t asking for LEDs because of the high upfront cost. Still, he’s hearing of some nonresidential customers who are looking into LEDs for the energy savings.

LEDs are much better than other lighting options, Hall said. The quality of the light is “far superior,” they offer big energy savings and there’s no cost to society for dealing with mercury, he said. Mercury, a neurotoxin, is found in small amounts in compact fluorescent bulbs.

Night Vision LED Book Light

Introducing a LightWedge Night Vision LED Book Light, which is an innovative customized design of LightWedge Original Booklights specially made for sailors, astronomers and pilots to provide an easier reading experience without waking others that may be within eyesight of you.

The red LED light illuminates the pages uniformly and helps in reading charts and maps in total darkness. In fact this can be used by geeky bookworms too who love to read in the night. The red light is extremely soothing for the eyes and the light doesn’t really spread beyond the page and hurt the eyes of the reader or disturb other people around.

The LightWedge LED booklight are the true reading lights and are more useful than the usual table lamps. They are portable, battery operated and when placed on the pages they just uniformly illuminate the prints and make night reading a true pleasurable experience. Each is only $45.89, with different models and colors available.

This Night Vision innovation will be useful for sailors, astronomers and pilots who need to consult charts and maps while navigating in the dark. Red light doesn’t really illuminate the darkness around like the white light. It can be used along with Night Vision Goggles with which one can see far in to darkness.

One can really hide in the dark and read comfortably in night vision lights. And if one wants to read something on the sly no need to hide under the bed or blankets with torch lights or table lamps, use LightWedge Night Vision LED Bookcase instead!

Do You Want to Make Your Bath Time More Fun?

We have always marveled at the simplicity and the beauty of the new shower head, which uses LED lights to give it an extra charm and makes the cleaning up time more colorful and fun, especially great for kids.

I haven’t really seen anything like this, and I think it is quite amazing. Using this shower, bath time will never be dull again, whether you are 3 years old, or you are 80. There are four different colors that appear on the shower, illuminating the water.

These lights are not just really cool to look at, but also have a certain level of practicality associated with them. The color of the LED light changes with temperature, and so if you have really hot water coming out of the shower, the lights glow red,and the color automatically changes with any fluctuations in temperature, going through yellow and blue and finally green for really cold water. This really helps because you will no longer have to test the water temperature before you step into the shower, and you can adjust the water accordingly until you reach the color that you want to.

The best part is you don’t need any additional batteries to operate the lights, they are powered by the water pressure, and this makes it an eco-friendly option. The shower head is also just the right size, very easy to install (just unscrew your old shower head and replace it with this one) and very sturdy, having been made with ABS plastic. They fit on to the standard shower pipe size, and so they are suitable for almost every bathroom.

This is most definitely the perfect accessory to make bath time more romantic, or even to entice your kids into showering. It is said that its price is around $67, so I think it isn’t even too expensive to consider, right?

No Charging LED Timer Light

This looks kind of cool. Any idea if it will make a ticking sound. Sort of like an old fashion kitchen timer. This interesting LED light concept will surely go well with those looking to add a little mood lighting while staying eco-friendly. Designed by Jasper Hou, the Timer To Light device is powered using mechanical energy. That’s right, no batteries, so no charging. In a way, it works like a wind-up toy. In this case, the base is rotated to store energy, which can then be used to light up the LEDs while it slowly unwinds.

From the images, the Timer To Light concept comes in several pleasant hues, which should blend easily into any room in the house. While no details were given as to how long the light will last, we’re hoping the timer ratings at the base refer to minutes rather than seconds. Else we can only imagine the frantic and rather pointless exercise of cranking up the device for a few moments of ambient-light enjoyment.

LED Light for City Night

Nighttime commuters may notice a bluish glow coming from the ten pairs of street lights lighting their way. Mounted 40 feet above the traffic, similar to those found in stoplights and laser pointers, the lights are not bulbs but rows of LEDs.

“This is the first interstate highway to be lit with LED lighting,” said Kevin Orth, director of sales for Wisconsin-based Beta LED, which makes the lights. LEDs are coming to the streets of Eden Prairie, where officials are replacing the city’s old street lights, and already illuminate the parking lot of a Cub Foods store in St. Paul’s Phalen neighborhood, which last month became the second certified energy-efficient supermarket in the country.

For large projects like these, the long-run savings in energy and maintenance, as well as the environmental concerns, generally outweigh the short-run costs.

This growing use of LEDs by government and industry marks a move away from traditional incandescent bulbs and, more recently, the more-efficient fluorescent lights that have come on the market. Although LEDs cost more to manufacture than other lighting options, they consume a small fraction of the energy of even fluorescent bulbs and last 25 to 30 years.

Lighting still accounts for as much as 20 percent of electricity used around the world, so improving lighting technology by even a little bit can lead to great savings in energy and reductions in greenhouse gases.

The Kast LED Task Light

The beautiful, sleek, yet simple design of the Kast light is complemented by its quarter-shaped array of two five-watt LED clusters which are precisely angled to deliver glare-free light projection.

Kast has been manufactured with sustainability in mind, using over 80 percent recyclable aluminum and steel, composed of 40 percent recycled material with 27 percent post-consumer recycled content, and 100 percent solvent free powder coat finishes. The LED light helps make the task light affordable to the user, offering an average rated life of 100,000 hours which is ten times greater than most compact fluorescent lamps. In addition, the LED diodes are nearly 25 percent more energy-efficient than comparable compact fluorescent technology.

This is the first year for the Green GOOD DESIGN Award. It is a specialized edition of the GOOD DESIGN Award program which was founded in 1950 by architects Eero Saarinen, Charles and Ray Eames, and Edgar Kaufmann Jr. The GOOD DESIGN Awards bestow international recognition on designers and manufacturers for advancing innovation and originality. The awards are presented by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and the European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.

The purpose of the Green GOOD DESIGN Award is to emphasize the importance of sustainable design and to develop a public awareness program to the international general public educating about which companies are doing the greatest job creating sustainable design for our world environments. The Green GOOD DESIGN Award received hundreds of submissions from over 40 nations. Only 105 products, programs, people, government, environmental planning, and architecture were selected as outstanding examples of Green Design.

The Kast(TM) LED task light by Details, a Steelcase company, recently received a 2009 Green GOOD DESIGN(TM) Corporate Award. This award sets the bar for outstanding examples of Green Design. The beautiful, sleek, yet simple design of the Kast light is complemented by its quarter-shaped array of two five-watt LED clusters which are precisely angled to deliver glare-free light projection.

Lighting Going Green

As the adoption of more energy-efficient light sources becomes more widespread in the coming years, the resulting energy savings naturally will increase. “LEDS are semiconductor light sources that produce directional light. Thus, the light is delivered precisely where it is needed so much less light is wasted as scattered light, and light pollution is reduced,” said Dr. Berit Wessler, Head of Innovation Management for OSRAM Opto Semiconductors (Regensburg,Germany). “LED light sources already consume much less electricity than most other conventional light sources.”

Light-emitting diodes have considerable potential for increases in brightness and efficiency, and can deliver even more potential energy savings than traditional light sources. Development work is ongoing and light-emitting diodes already are penetrating the general illumination sector.

The Imaging Source (Charlotte, N.C.) announces a new series of cost-effective LED lighting modules, which seamlessly integrate with The Imaging Source USB, FireWire and GigE cameras. Features include: very bright LEDs; direct connection to the camera; all parameters can be set via the shipped software, IC Capture and IC Imaging Control or by custom-built software; compatible with The Imaging Source USB, CCD, FireWire and GigE cameras. All cameras manufactured by The Imaging Source ship with IC Capture and IC Imaging Control.

As a result of CoolLED’s (Andover, Hampshire, U.K.) continuous development program, the company is pleased to announce the latest release of new LED wavelengths for its fluorescence excitation products. The new wavelengths are at 365, 380, 440, 470, 550, 615, 700 and 770 nm. These wavelengths are provided on LAMs (LED Array Modules) that can be interchanged within CoolLED’s modular fluorescence excitation sources and systems.The additions expand the wavelength range into the UV and IR regions. CoolLED offers its LED technology for wide-ranging applications. A total of 18 wavelengths now are available. CoolLED’s LAMs are arrays of LEDs that are actively cooled for the highest stability and intensity. Lifetime is measured in tens of thousands of “on” hours with no warm-up or cool-down periods required. There is very little reduction in intensity over lifetime. Switching is almost instantaneous.LED technology does not use hazardous materials.

Multi-chip LED Belt out up to 2,000 Lumens

It is said by LedEngin (a US LED company) that the high flux LED gives the brightest 40W light source with the highest light output and flux density for architectural and general lighting applications.

The LED light source has a thermal resistance of 0.7 C/W, and the company claims, is brighter than the competition by between six to 10 times.

The company is also offering 24 and 35 lenses optimized for the LED and mazimizes the light with uniform color. LedEngin says that there are no shadows or fringe effects that other lenses offer.

The 40W LED and lenses are available now, and the company is sampling them on a custom MCPCB for easier installation and alignment with the lens and lens holder.

New Light Standards for Energy Saving

Just like the public telephone, the conventional incandescent bulb’s and the ubiquitous (and ugly) fluorescent tube’s days may be numbered in U.S. New federal standards announced June 29, 2009 sets new national minimum energy standards for the standard bulbs that light our offices, homes, stores, and factories. The standards also phase out conventional incandescent reflector lamps, effectively extending the phase out of inefficient incandescent products initiated by Congress in 2007 to the common cone-shaped bulbs used in recessed light fixtures and track lighting.

According to the Department of Energy (DOE), lighting uses nearly 40% of all electricity used in commercial buildings. The standards announced today affect the more than 500 million fluorescent tube lamps and 265 million reflector lamps sold each year in the United States. About 7% of all energy consumed in the United States is for lighting.

According to DOE, the new standards announced today will save up to 1.2 trillion kilowatt-hours over thirty years, an amount about equal to the total consumption of all homes in the U.S. in one year. Businesses and consumers will gain up to $35 billion in net savings and global warming carbon dioxide emissions will be cut by up to 594 million metric tons, an amount equal to the annual emissions of nearly 110 million cars.

For the past several years the City of Milwaukee has actively tried to reduce energy use in City Hall and other city facilities. Since 2005 or so the Department of Public Works has been installing LED traffic signals throughout the City of Milwaukee. An LED (light emitting diode) traffic light provides as much or more light as a conventional bulb using a quarter of the energy, while lasting much longer. Mayor Barrett was quoted in today’s Milwaukee Journal  Sentinel that street lighting aacounts for well over 50% of the energy used by the city. According to Ann Beier, Director of Environmental Sustainability, the city has been replacing incandescent bulbs with fluorescent lamps and replacing older, less efficient fluorescent lamps with smaller, more efficient bulbs.

With the change of standards it should get easier for the average consumer to make the shift to more efficient light bulbs. No more standing in the store aisle and reading labels to make sure the bulb in your hand is “energy smart”.

Test on SAMSUNG LED TV B7000

LED is a kind of tiny light-bulb like those we use as break light at the rear of the BMW or Mercedes. Compare to the former CCFL Cold cathode fluorescent lamp on LCD TV, the LED light is brighter, no heat, last longer and more energy efficient. Samsung has incorporated an LED light-source in order to accentuate a deeper black, more dynamic contrast, enhanced visual fidelity and definitely the inevitable charm of slimmer panel design.

4 Picture Mode (Dynamic / Standard / Natural / Movie)

Black color variation range to bright white is nicely detailed.

Sorry Mr. Bond but your wrinkle is clearly countable due to glass panel.

Great depth and color vibrant.

Picture quality is so high that we can read out the multiple choice selections.