DOE Shines $21M on Advanced Lighting Research

coondoggie writes to mention that the US Department of Energy is planning to fork over close to $21 million for 13 projects promising to advance solid-state lighting research and development. "SSL lighting is an advanced technology that creates light with considerably less heat than incandescent and fluorescent lamps, allowing for increased energy efficiency. Unlike incandescent and fluorescent bulbs, SSL uses a semi-conducting material to convert electricity directly into light, which maximizes the light's energy efficiency, the DOE said in a release. Solid-state lighting encompasses a variety of light-producing semi-conductor devices, including light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). "

Comments

SSL

[homey of my owney]

OK, so the light is encrypted?

Re:SSL

[dippitydoo]

Can we get the key for it? I need lights man!!

Re:SSL

[Anonymous Coward]

No, its doubly bright.

Re:SSL

[Mononoke]

Only when you keep it on a flash drive.

Re:SSL

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, moded offtopic. Quick, tell the comedy police - we'll have non of this frivolity thank you

Re:SSL

[Anonymous Coward]

Brings a whole new meaning to the phrase "I see the light!"

Re:SSL

[Mesa MIke]

Yup.

And you have to accept a new SSL certificate whenever you change the lightbulb.

Re:SSL

[big_spaz]

Yes, and although they use less energy thus saving money the license required to decrypt the light is insanely expensive.

Re:SSL

[Jester998]

How else are they going to put DRM on it? Bloody lightbulb pirates!

Re:SSL

[rwyoder]

OK, so the light is encrypted?

Yes, it looks plain white until you use hardware decryption to see the colors. The hardware is called a "prism".

Re:SSL

[Adambomb]

So, how many computer scientists does it take to change a light bulb again?

Re:SSL

[Durrik]

So, how many computer scientists does it take to change a light bulb again?

10 One to change the lightbulb and one to make a bad binary joke.

Re:SSL

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have ever wondered why US is in debt, (not that most people have) It's because it costs our government $21 million to find out that LEDs exist and they use less energy.

Re:SSL

[orgelspieler]

I know you're joking, but remember the whole DRM print cartridge thing. It could come to pass that GE or Phillips will sell fixtures that only work with GE or Phillips brand LED bulbs. They could put a chip in there to check and make sure it's authentic. And if the contents of the chip are encrypted, suddenly the DMCA comes into play, and they can claim copyright infringement if you try to make a bulb that would work with the GE fixture. Sure, the compatibility exception would probably apply, and you would probably win the lawsuit, *if* you had enough money to pay your lawyers for however long that would take..

Save energy: don't send so much light into space

[CRCulver]

One would think that the government would encourage energy saving by ensuring cities weren't shining so much light up at the sky where it hardly does any good. I mean, just see Mizon's Light Pollution about not only how it has ruined astronomy, but how it's simply wasteful as well. But I imagine the energy lobby, who continues to fool the public into thinking that the more light street lamps produce the better, maintains its influence.

SSL lighting

[Fnord666]

Do you use SSL lighting to illuminate an ATM machine that is connected to a VPN network?

Re:SSL lighting

[travisd]

Do they use the DHCP Protocol on that network?
Can I take my car with the CVT Transmission to buy SSL Lighting?

Re:SSL lighting

[Anonymous Coward]

Solid State Lighting Lighting? You need to re-learn your AA BB CC's god god dammit dammit.

Re:SSL lighting

[curunir]

There's actually a pretty good rationale for saying the last word of an acronym...it makes what you're saying unambiguous.

For example, without those trailing words, you could have been talking about an encryption technology (Secure Sockets Layer) illuminating a network layer (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) connecting to a branch of the Vietnamese military (Vietnam People's Navy).

Sure the last one is a bit of a stretch, but there are a ton of acronyms that get re-used that can end up being ambiguous. If I say SOA architecture or SOA authority, it's clear whether I'm using marketing-speak or whether I'm talking about configuring a DNS system (which itself, without the trailing "system" could have been referring to a computational fluid dynamics simulation).

You can only really leave off the trailing word when there is either no other possible meaning for the acronym (e.g. SCUBA) or when the context in which you're speaking precludes any other meaning (context being both the people you're speaking with and the rest of what you're saying).

Re:SSL lighting

[Amorymeltzer]

It's all just a simple case of RAS Syndrome.

Re:SSL lighting

[msaavedra]

Do you use SSL lighting to illuminate an ATM machine that is connected to a VPN network?

Of course. You have to be able to see well enough to enter your PIN number, right?

Re:SSL lighting

[MachineShedFred]

Only when interfacing using a NIC card.

Re:SSL lighting

[d34thm0nk3y]

I have an even better idea, one that completely removes the ambiguity. After each letter of the acronym say the word it stands for. That will save all sorts of time!

Re:SSL lighting

[Eternauta3k]

After each letter of the acronym say the word it stands for

As in sself-ccontained uunderwater bbreathing aapparatus?

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought about this the last time I was flying across the country at night. "Why am *I*, at almost six miles up, able to see all these street lights and parking lots and malls and houses? What a waste of energy."

Seriously, we need to think about our light placement and usage.

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[Smidge204]

There is already a Dark Skies Initiative program in my area, and many areas, which makes light pollution a government regulated issue to begin with. It has little to do with energy policy so you can put away your "energy lobby" conspiracy theories.

=Smidge=

Color Issues??

[clonan]

The last I heard there wasn't a very good "White" LED.

Does anyone have a good lreference to the current sate-of-the-art?

Re:Color Issues??

[Overzeetop]

There are no good white basketball players...

Oh, sorry, I had a top secret flashback for a moment. White LEDs, iirc, are essentially fluorescent light sources which use the LED to stimulate emission in several bands based on the phosphors used. As such, they are still discrete (though not monochromatic) frequency lights and cannot creat and exact replica of incandescent (i.e. blackbody) radiation. I've not seen much on LED CRIs or color temps...most people are just so amazed that they produce "white" light that they don't seem to care. White LEDs, as a result of how they work, are only about 1/2 as efficient per watt as their more efficient monochromatic counterparts.

Re:Color Issues??

[modmans2ndcoming]

darn... so rather than 1 watt of energy usage I use 2 watts... forget it then, I will stick with my 15 Watt CFL or my 60 watt ICL

Re:Color Issues??

[Erioll]

I don't know about state-of-the-art, but the Light up the World foundation has been using high-efficiency white LEDs for a few years now in 3rd-world country lighting projects. Their website may have more info on exactly how their technology compares to what's "bleeding edge" current in this area. But regardless, White LEDs (WLEDs on their site) definitely exist and are in-use.

Re:Color Issues??

[MasterC]

As such, they are still discrete frequency lights and cannot creat and exact replica of incandescent (i.e. blackbody) radiation.

However, that is irrelevant due to the biology of our eyes. IOW, it doesn't matter if you see light of a violet frequency or, instead, a combination of red and blue (aka purple). Really, the LED needs to just mimic the spectral sensitivity (570nm, 540nm, & 430nm) of our cone cells. This means we don't need actual white light (frequencies ranging from red to violet) to have white light insofar as our eyes care.

And, no, LEDs are not fluorescent. Fluorescent bulbs stimulate mercury to emit UV light. The UV light hits the phosphorus which makes it fluoresce and produce visible light. LEDs work by jumping electrons across a band gap and a photon is emitted when it jumps back down. The high efficiency comes into play because it doesn't take much more energy than that of the band gap to make an electron jump.

Re:Color Issues??

[stdarg]

Hmm... if you have trichromatic light of wavelengths 570nm, 540nm, and 430nm shining on an object that absorbs everything except 550nm, then the object will appear black won't it? Whereas if true white light were shining on it, it would reflect the 550nm wavelengths and our eye would interpret that as... yellow or something. Is that wrong?

Re:Color Issues??

[Anonymous Coward]

And, no, LEDs are not fluorescent. Fluorescent bulbs stimulate mercury to emit UV light. The UV light hits the phosphorus which makes it fluoresce and produce visible light. LEDs work by jumping electrons across a band gap and a photon is emitted when it jumps back down. The high efficiency comes into play because it doesn't take much more energy than that of the band gap to make an electron jump.

Wrong. The most common way to produce white LEDs is to take a blue LED and combine it with a yellow emitting phosphor made with YAG. The yellow stimulates the red and green receptors and gives us the impression of white... It's not a particularly pleasing white, and this is used in most flash lights... But it works. The spectral density sucks ass and renders colors badly, particularly reds and greens. LEDs intended for general purpose lighting, with halfway decent spectral emission characteristics do in fact use a near ultra violet LED, and combination of red, blue and green phosphors to make white light. Both methods rely on fluorescence.

Re:Color Issues??

[Relic of the Future]

Those curves are pretty wide.

Sure, in most in-home uses, LEDs are (once the manufacturing costs come down a bit more) going to be great; but I've got, for example, a friend who does lighting-design for plays and such; and she FLIPS OUT over LEDs because they do not interact properly for what she tries to do with color.

But that, I think, is an edge case; she can keep using incandescents (although she'll need a bigger budget when production is scaled back.)

Re:Color Issues??

[DrWho520]

What is the PDF about those frequencies? And how about for the general population? People see at the average frequencies of 5700A, 5400A and 4300A, but there must be quite a bit of variation there from person to person. Let alone people who see two shades of red, green and blue.

Re:Color Issues??

[Rei]

There are a lot of problems with LED lights. I really was looking to switch to LEDs recently when I was running low on fluorescents, but the choices out there aren't very good. Most are either too narrow field (they tend to be like spotlights) or too dim. The one that I found that had a high enough brightness for regular socket applications was not only very large, but it got horrible ratings on the sites that were selling it, ranging from the light color being an eye-hurting blue to it not actually seeming to make the room any brighter than an equivalent wattage CFL.

I decided to wait. I'll check up on the tech again in a few years.

Re:Color Issues??

[Agripa]

The three color receptors are relatively broad. I remember reading about a study where they presented subjects across the world with color chips to find out which shades of red, green, and blue were the most saturated. The idea was to see if everybody saw color in the same way excluding the known forms of color blindness and tetrachromates. Everybody picked the same shade of red and blue but there were two different shades of green which they later tracked down to two different alleles for the gene which encodes the green receptor molecule.

Re:Color Issues??

[Jherek Carnelian]

Hmm... if you have trichromatic light of wavelengths 570nm, 540nm, and 430nm shining on an object that absorbs everything except 550nm, then the object will appear black won't it? Whereas if true white light were shining on it, it would reflect the 550nm wavelengths and our eye would interpret that as... yellow or something. Is that wrong? I believe you are correct.

There has been some work on front-projection screens to produce material that reflects only the specific wavelengths that a (matched) projector produces. The goal being to use such a screen in a bright environment where it will absorb almost all of the visible spectrum, and thus appear black, except for the specific RGB wavelengths in the projected image. Thus greatly reducing the "washout" effect of using a projector in a brightly lit room.

I think sony has a half-assed implementation that they have been selling for a few years now - sorry that I don't have a model number, once I learned it needed more ass I didn't pay too much attention to it.

Re:Color Issues??

[MasterC]

halfway decent spectral emission characteristics do in fact use a near ultra violet LED, and combination of red, blue and green phosphors to make white light.

You do understand the difference between a light-emitting diode fluorescing (which it can't) and the phosphorus coating the LED fluorescing, right?

The diode bumps an electron across the gap and a photon is emitted as the electron drops back down. When those photons strike the phosphorus, lose some energy, and emit a photon of lesser energy (i.e., lower frequency, longer wavelength) you get visible light. The former is electroluminescence, the latter is fluorescence.

Just because you slap some phosphorus on a LED, it doesn't mean the whole is still an "LED" but instead a "phosphorus coated LED". Don't confuse technical terms with a marketer bastardizing the term, especially when correcting someone who is clearly using the correct definition of LED.

Re:Color Issues??

[modmans2ndcoming]

Yeah, LED lights have a ways to come, it can be done though, perhaps some sort of scattering method.

Re:Color Issues??

[slashtivus]

If I recall correctly, some languages do not even have separate words for 'green' and 'blue'. They are considered different shades of the same color. I think this was in a SciAm article about eyesight roughly one year ago.

Re:Color Issues??

[Doppler00]

Your wrong! Most white LED's use a layer of phosphorescent. White LED's emit UV frequencies that stimulate a small yellowish phosphor layer on the top. You can see this if you look at them close enough. I even have some surface mount UV LED's at work that come with phosphor filters that emit white light. In the future, I think they will get more efficiency out of RGB LED's since they don't have to go through the phosphor layer, but it will be hard to get broad spectrum out of them.

Re:Color Issues??

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you call an LED unit encapsulated with some phosphors strapped to it a "fluorescent light", or do you call it an LED? Everyone else on the fucking planet calls a "white LED" an LED... Even the manufactures who make them. It seems that everyone calls the entire internal assembly, including reflectors, etc. an LED, even if the only technical part which can be described as an LED is truly the actual semiconductor. Therefore, the usage is indeed correct, at least pragmatically. The only people who call every widget in existence by their precise technical description are those who live in their mother's basements, not getting laid by other humans.

The poster to which you replied and promptly disagreed with said "White LEDs, iirc, are essentially fluorescent light sources which use the LED to stimulate emission in several bands based on the phosphors used.", which is a perfectly reasonable, if truncated, technical explanation of how the ******VAST MAJORITY****** of white LED "packages" work. So what if the diode is the engine behind the machine? The form factor is exactly the same.

So, hadn't you better GFTO of my internets and go back to using your Kleenex® brand bathroom tissues to store the results of your masturbating to KP?

Re:Color Issues??

[Knitteddoom]

Your cone cells (there are 3 types) are attuned to a small range of wavelengths to which they have a strong response, but the still respond to proximate wavelengths. The L type responds most to 564-580nm but has a normal distribution response ranging from 425-700nm. The M type peaks at 534-545nm but responds from 375-675nm. The S type peaks at 420-440nm but responds from 375-550nm. Based on the ratio of activities from the three types of cones, your visual systems can integrate the information and give you the sensation of (sort of limited) color.

Re:Color Issues??

[Anonymous Coward]

cannot creat and exact replica of incandescent (i.e. blackbody) radiation. I've not seen much on LED CRIs or color temps...most people are just so amazed that "white" light that they don't seem to care

Obviously with LEDs we ideally only want to reproduce the visible portion. We don't want to replicate the black body radiation of an incandescent light, as this contains a lot of infra-red which is wasted (and it's why we are going to more efficient lighting).

Re:Color Issues??

[Bourbon Man]

An easy test to see if this is true is to look at a printed rainbow by the light of a CRT that is viewing a blank white page. By your hypothesis, only three bands in the rainbow print would show up in color, corresponding to the three colors used in a CRT display. I'm unable to test this right now because I'm at work in a bright office with windows.

From the

[Yetihehe]

Solid State SSL Lighting, from the Department of redundancy department.

Re:From the

[NC-17]

Pah! The Department of redundancy department? We're the Redundant department of redundancy!
Solidarity, brother...

Re:From the

[corsec67]

Solid State SSL Lighting, from the Department of DRD Redundancy Department.

FTFY

Re:From the

[orclevegam]

Solid State SSL Lighting, from the Department of redundancy department. Bah, beat me to it. In related news, be sure to check out the DRD Departments other fine products, including PIN Numbers, and TCP Protocol.

Re:From the

[Paradise Pete]

be sure to check out the DRD Departments other fine products, including PIN Numbers, and TCP Protocol.

They were also behind the ATM machine. Then they got caught by the cleaning lady.

Can't beat incandescents

[kovo]

I believe the luminous efficacy (lumens per watt, light per power invested) of solid state lamps still lags that for incandescents or arc lamps. So, I don't thing the "maximizes the light's efficiency" thing in the article is really accurate. SSL is great for neat things like integration into building materials, though. Or making traffic lights with a low probability of burning out.

Re:Can't beat incandescents

[kovo]

Oops, did I say incandescents, I meant fluorescents.

Re:Can't beat incandescents

[GregPK]

The best flourescent out there gets roughly 70 lumens per watt. LED's have already passed the 100 lumens per watt barrier.

Re:Can't beat incandescents

[marcop]

Actually, the two biggest problem (and there are other problems out there) is heat management and cost. Incandescents and fluorescents radiate heat out of the luminare whereas LED's conduct most of the waste heat. The current Edison socket infrastructure are thermal insulators, so you either need large heat sinks or a completely new fixture. So if designers start changing fixtures then there is always the question of AC vs. DC powering of the fixture.

Re:Can't beat incandescents

[dstar]

Does this take into account the fact that LEDs are extremely directional?

Re:Can't beat incandescents

[imsabbel]

That doesnt changa a thing for the lumens. Thats integrated per definition
And they are not _extremely_ directional. Or have you never seen a led besides those 5mm ones?
Nice nearly lambertian 180 degree leds are easily available, and that helps total efficiency a lot, because you dont need a reflector.

Re:Can't beat incandescents

[Mydron]

T5 flourescent tubes easily give at least 90 lumens per watt, maybe more. These are tubes that you can buy right now almost anywhere.

Care to provide a link where I can get the LED you speak of? Certainly this summary of lighting efficiencies do not agree with your thesis. Perhaps in a few years.

Re:Can't beat incandescents

[dstar]

No, actually, I haven't, and when I looked for commercially available options for using LEDs for lighting in my house (I live in Texas -- every watt of heat produced by a light bulb is a watt of heat I have to remove from my house with prejudice), I couldn't find anything that was workable, much less feasible from a cost basis.

Admittedly, it's been a couple of years; have things changed?

Re:Can't beat incandescents

[Anonymous Coward]

T8s give about 95% of the lumen efficiency of T5s. Most of your gains when comparing T12 to T8 for retrofit are found in the ballast. A good T12 bulb with a modern solid state ballast /can/ be almost as efficient as T8. It's much easier to find an efficient, good spectrum, low mercury T8 than a T12, however. And by the time you've considered the greater disposal cost for T12, the ~10% energy cost and the generally lower bulb life there's not really a good reason to use T12.

I don't know why anyone would use T5 right now, though; you're talking about 3X the materials cost for a lumen gain so low that it will be more than offset by your choice of lens for the fixture.

Re:Can't beat incandescents

[Anonymous Coward]

Dumbass.

Re:Can't beat incandescents

[zippthorne]

They're only directional because the typical enclosure is a spherical polymer lens.

Re:Can't beat incandescents

[greyhueofdoubt]

Sodium vapor lamps get anywhere from 50-200 lm/W.

-b

Re:Can't beat incandescents

[Anonymous Coward]

LEDs have the potential for very efficient lighting, but currently the most efficient LEDs are low power LEDs. Higher throughput decreases the efficiency to well below that of fluorescents. One problem with LEDs is that the whole crystal emits light, but lots of it is instantly absorbed again because it is emitted from within the crystal, not on the surface. This means that efficient LEDs use very small crystals (volume goes up faster than surface with size increases,) but then you run into heat dissipation problems which reduce the lifetime of the LED and limit the maximum throughput.

Re:Can't beat incandescents

[Anonymous Coward]

What?

I have a 54 watt T5 HO lamp that puts out 5,000 (initial) lumens. 5,000/54 = 92.5 lumens/wa
Looks like you haven't read up on this stuff. It's pretty common knowledge that many fluorescent light sources are better than 70 lumens per watt.
T5 normal output puts out around 105 lumens per watt
T8 normal output puts out 80 to 95 lumens per watt

It's the old, thick style old T12 tubes that putssout 60 to 70 lumens per watt.

From the numbers I've seen, the compact fluorescent ranges from 60 to 85 lumens per watt.

I have some high power LEDs that put out around 80 lumens per watt. Some of the more expensive Luxeon and Cree LEDs put out over 120 lumens per watt. These are still quite expensive compared to fluorescent though.

An even better lighting technology

[Anonymous Coward]

From http://www.blacklightpower.com/applications.shtml,

The power from the BlackLight Process forms a plasma (a hot, glowing, ionized gas) that represents a primary light source as well as a primary energy source in the form of heat. Systems have been developed that harness the power primarily as light. Prototype lighting devices comprising a cell similar to a conventional light bulb but containing a catalyst of the BlackLight Process as well as a source of atomic hydrogen have produced thousands of times more light for input power using 1% the voltage compared to standard light sources. Projected into a product, these results indicate the possibility of a light that could deliver the power of conventional fluorescent and incandescent lighting, but operate off of a flashlight battery for a year without an electrical connection.

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[Quiet_Desperation]

There's even studies that show a lot of lighting does NOT deter crime. All it does is let the crook see what he's doing.

$21M paltry sum for such a large energy concern

[Rog7]

Don't get me wrong, any amount they can put into this research is a good thing, but on the scale of things compared to funds they put elsewhere, it seems rather low to me. This is an area that needs significant changes soon, but unfortunately it looks like we're going to get incremental adoption of more fluorescents first.

It's astonishing to me that the energy and environmental problems are so obvious, but so little effort is put into the solutions.

Re:$21M paltry sum for such a large energy concern

[Bombula]

I hope the 'dropinthebucket' tag refers to your point, rather than cynically suggesting that LEDs and other SSL technologies wouldn't make a massive difference in energy consumption worldwide. They would.

Re:$21M paltry sum for such a large energy concern

[Belial6]

Part of the problem is that the vast majority of people fall into 4 categories:

Those that don't care.
Luddites that use the environmental movement as an excuse to say that everyone should live a retro lifestyle.
Those that are looking for control of other people.
People that don't understand the issue at all, but think that being 'environmental' is cool. Even if their actions are worse than what was happening before.


The number of people that understand the issue, want to solve the problem, and still want to improve the lifestyle of humans is very small.

Re:$21M paltry sum for such a large energy concern

[greyhueofdoubt]

Gov't is good at funding things that don't guarantee a ROI. Tang, for example, or nuclear weapons. Or ARPAnet. You know what I mean. This lighting technology seems to be one of those things that the gov't shouldn't be spending as much of my tax money funding. They would be reinventing the wheel since so many commercial labs are working on the same problem, and with a huge motivation: Profit.

The money would be better spent advertising high-efficiency appliances and lighting to (heretofore ignorant) consumers instead of researching new devices that no one will buy.

-b

The Real Questions

[Nom du Keyboard]

The real questions are:

Where do I buy them now?

Do they fit into my regular sockets, including BR30 form factors?

Will they give me at least as much focused light?

How much do they cost?

How long do they last?

How much better than fluorescents?

Are they dimmable?

Are they protected against lightening strikes near by?

What toxic materials do they contain?

Will they let me adjust for the color balance I desire (a highly desirable feature)?

Who is exploited in their manufacture, and which country is getting all my money from them?

Going to a new lightening system is seldom as simple as unscrewing one and screwing in another. Many trade-offs exist.

Re:The Real Questions

[Anonymous Coward]

Where do I buy them now

EarthLED Light Bulbs which are more efficient, last longer, use less energy, and are greener to produce than even CFLs (which are greener than incans).

Do they fit...

Yes!

... as much ... light?

Yes! I own two (would own more but see price). etc. etc. Read the page, it answers your questions. They are dimmable, etc. etc.

Re:The Real Questions

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up

Re:The Real Questions

[EMeta]

Now you're a real /.er, not even reading the title. I salute you.

This is an article about money being allocated for future research. Ergo, they're not making them yet and really don't know their capabilities, much less price.

Re:The Real Questions

[Ironsides]

What the heck is a BR30? Look at the link

http://www.superbrightleds.com/edison.html

Re:The Real Questions

[marcop]

These may put out as much light, but it seems as if the light would be concentrated. The link mentions as much light as a 100W bulb. Does this mean as much light in a 1 sq-ft area as a 100W bulb, or as many lumens as a 100W bulb but concentrated in a much narrower beam?

Re:The Real Questions

[MikeUW]

A bit of searching would provide answers to many of your questions.

Where do I buy them now? There are definitely some suppliers out there, depending on what exactly you are looking for. Here's one site that I've come across before: http://www.ccrane.com/lights/led-light-bulbs/index.aspx

Do they fit into my regular sockets, including BR30 form factors? I don't know about BR30, but it seems like most standard sockets are available. I don't think the form factor is a significant constraint with SSL.

Will they give me at least as much focused light? As much as what? You'd have to compare specs, but I think for now it depends on how much you're willing to spend. I suspect improving this sort of thing is part of the object of this research project.

How much do they cost?
How long do they last? See the information on the web page linked above for an example.

How much better than fluorescents? Better in which way? Again, I think you'd have to compare specs, and decide for yourself.

Are they dimmable? Yes, some definitely are.

Are they protected against lightening strikes near by?
What toxic materials do they contain? Good questions...I'm too lazy to look for answers though. Maybe work from the proposed project will help shed light on these (no pun intended). WRT to the chemicals, have you had that same question answered about all the other tech products you use regularly? There's lots of poisonous stuff around us, but as long as you don't stick the stuff in your mouth, you're probably fine. I suspect the same generally applies to SSL.

Will they let me adjust for the color balance I desire (a highly desirable feature)? I imagine that can be done (e.g., my mp3 player has an OLED display, which inherently does what you're describing, though it certainly doesn't light up a room).

Who is exploited in their manufacture, and which country is getting all my money from them? This is also an important question. My bet would be some poor/marginalized communities in various developing countries. But has that sort of problem stopped you from buying cellphones, computers, and other such tech? What about that sweater you're wearing, or your shoes? While nobody likes the idea of exploitation, how sure is the average person that nobody was exploited in the production the products they use every day?

As for where the money goes, my bet would be on some large corporation, probably in America (but if a corporation controls the money, does it really matter what country it is in?).

Going to a new lightening system is seldom as simple as unscrewing one and screwing in another. Many trade-offs exist. This is true...certainly in the short-run. I think this is point of doing the research though - to overcome the trade-offs that currently exist in order to advance the usability of more efficient SSL technologies.

Re:The Real Questions

[afidel]

Those aren't all that great, their ~40W equivalent uses 8W, a decent CFL of similar lumens uses ~10W, so only a 20% savings. That's at a cost of $50 vs $1.50 (GE CFL's at your favorite warehouse store). Until they can get the price down and the max lumens up they can't compete, but I guess that's why the research is being funded. Of course I would prefer to bring the cost of manufacturing down, but perhaps the technology really isn't there yet.

Re:The Real Questions

[rs79]

It seems to me practical solid state lighting is 10 years off from whenever you ask and has been this way for almost 40 years.

Here's the latest (albeit dismal) report from the field:

http://fins.actwin.com/aquatic-plants/month.200801/msg00059.html

Re:The Real Questions

[Anonymous Coward]

Do they work with dimmers? What's the color spectrum like?

Re:The Real Questions

[Paradise Pete]

It seems to me practical solid state lighting is 10 years off from whenever you ask

That's a nearly universal truth when it comes to technology. Ten years means "stuff has to happen that we are nearly clueless about how to do." Once the clues come in the estimates drop to five years or less, in which case is usually really is ten years.

Re:The Real Questions

[amirulbahr]

Going to a new lightening system is seldom as simple as unscrewing one and screwing in another. Many trade-offs exist. Not really. You're screwed either way.

Re:The Real Questions

[moosesocks]

Right. Pick the right tool for the job.

Hopefully, we'll move to a point where we have decent alternatives to incandescent bulbs for a wide range of applications.

Right now, I'd like to find a nice alternative to CFLs that doesn't require mercury or other moderately hazardous chemicals to manufacture. After that, we can rest for a bit, and work on reducing energy consumption elsewhere. The amount of power used by CFLs is absolutely negligible compared to most other devices.

Oh, and get rid of the damn street lamps. I'm not even an astronomer, but I can appreciate that the earth doesn't need to be lit up like a torch while we sleep. There's no reason for the parking lot of my grocery store to be illuminated 8 hours after it closes. Or just install motion sensors....

Re:The Real Questions

[Ironsides]

I think part of the cost (in this case) is volume. For all they sell, it's still (probably) a niche product right now. Probably not all of it, but a chunk at least.

Re:The Real Questions

[Chris Shannon]

Are they a fire hazard?

Some light bulbs have design flaws that cause them to be a fire hazard. As a matter of economics, if a light bulb will save me $100 in electricity over its lifetime, but has a 0.1% chance of burning down my $400,000 house, it's not going to save me any money.

So

[moogied]

This really uh shines some light onto what the DOE is all about eh? *sigh*..

Parent is a joke

[SterlingSylver]

What happened, mods? Encrypt your sense of humor and lose the key? This is why encryption is dangerous!

Why the hyperbole?

[FUCK-U-MODS]

"I mean, just see Mizon's Light Pollution [amazon.com] about not only how it has ruined astronomy"

WHAT WHAT WHAT!!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_space_telescope
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_Observatory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keck_telescopes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_Astronomical_Observatory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranal_Observatory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RATAN-600
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Bank_Telescope

How come no one told these guys astronomy was "ruined"?

Light pollution makes things harder, but nothing is "ruined" as you cliam. I only bring this up because seeing rampant hyperbole like your modded up pisses me off and requires an honest, non-hyperbolic refutation.

Re:Why the hyperbole?

[CRCulver]

My fault, I missed specifying amateur astronomy. The links you have provided are to professional observatories.

Re:Why the hyperbole?

[Orange Crush]

It certainly ruins naked-eye astronomy. I still remember the first time I was far enough away from city lights that I could look up and see how breathtaking the sky is on a clear night. In a city you see a couple of stars, even when the moon's not up and forget about the constellations.

It makes me sad to realize that so many people will grow up and never realize how fsking *AMAZING* a sky full of stars is when they can see it with their own eyes, wonder what's out there, be drawn to astronomy, physics, even poetry and literature. The current state of night skies above our cities is anything but inspiring, in my not so humble opinion . . .

Re:Why the hyperbole?

[Anonymous Coward]

...requires an honest, non-hyperbolic refutation.

So is this an elliptic or euclidean refutation?

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[Pedrito]

There are also studies linking light pollution to increases in breast cancer. On the face of it, might seem a little whacky, but basically the theory is, light at night causes decreased endogenous melatonin production (it doesn't take much light to cause a significant drop in melatonin production) Melatonin is a strong anti-oxidant that they theorize helps keep breast cancer in check. Anyway, that's the current theory to explain the studies.

DoE ACTUALLY doing energy work

[gnick]

I'm just happy to see the Department of Energy doing something other than nuclear stockpile maintenance.

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[Bellum Aeternus]

An increased cost of energy after a certain usage point will fix this problem by itself, but it'd be too unpopular for any elected official to implement they way things currently are. Also, there's the issue that light bounces, so shine a light down and it'll still reflect back up. The only way to prevent that is to absorb it, which just transform it into heat waste (which is worse). Most lights that point up do so for a reason, such as guiding airplanes - I don't think you're suggesting that we do away with those. Although, no planes would mean more trains and a more efficient means of travel. Who am I kidding? Americans would just drive cross country in their SUVs instead.

Until you shine it on a black hat

[EmbeddedJanitor]

then it becomes visible

Not so much research

[afidel]

As production capacity and demand. If they really wanted to speed the adoption of LED lighting they would use that $21M to buy LED lights for government offices. Even better would be a law requiring the government use energy efficient lighting technology, that would provide for large orders and a guaranteed market which will lead the market to fill the need. It would have the benefit of reducing energy waste by the largest employer and landlord in the world.

Re:Not so much research

[Ironsides]

They already use fluorescents, which are more efficient than any commercially available LED I have seen. Note the "commercially available" part.

Re:Not so much research

[Doppler00]

$21M wouldn't buy too much in the government. Maybe they could convert about 100 buildings, and that's pretty minor considering the size of the government. Wouldn't it be better if they even made 1 discovery that made LED lighting 10% more efficient? Multiply that times the millions of potential commercial customers and the $21M in research more than pays for itself. Still, even more could be done just about educating people about how wasteful incandescents are. I'm amazed at how many $500k homes I've been in that have dozens of 60W bulbs running (with another 120W/ea of AC to offset the heat in the summer).

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[Ucklak]

I thought Dihydrogen Monoxide was a contributing factor to breast cancer.

What rubbish

[EmbeddedJanitor]

LEDs are far more efficient than incandescent. I have an LED/incandescent flashlight that lasts far longer in LED mode than incandescent mode but is not quite as bright. ie. Led brightness * LED time far greater than incandescent brightness * incandescent time.

Re:What rubbish

[Anonymous Coward]

Rubbish?? Yes and no. There is a school of thought that under certain conditions incandescents aren't less efficient. It depends on the application and environment. Standard Incandescant bulbs are considered "inefficient" because they spend more energy creating heat than light. However, if that heat by-product can be used then it isn't really "wasted".

As an example, take an average home in the northern US. During the winter months when you are heating the home, the heat from the bulb is not wasted. The heat energy disperses into the environment and that is that much less heat energy that your heating system needs to provide.

I completely admit that this is a very narrow situation and there are still a bunch of variables that affect this like the type of light fixture, the placement of the fixture, etc. Not to mention the fact that this is only true during the heating season, but it does show that there are certain conditions where incandescents are at least more efficient than numbers would suggest.

Just a thought.

Unsigned

[kcbanner]

What happens if I self sign my light SSL certificate, am I susceptible to a man-in-the-way-of-my-light attack?
In other news, Alice and Bob figure out how to screw in a lightbulb.

Re:Unsigned

[Quadraginta]

am I susceptible to a man-in-the-way-of-my-light attack?

Sound like you need one of these.

Re:Unsigned

[Daimanta]

Unforunately Alice and Bob are unable to screw in the lightbulb and call in the help of the technician, Eve.

Re:Unsigned

[sm62704]

(Before you flame me for not being politically correct, my heritage is Irish and my hair was blonde as a kid)

How many Irishmen does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
Three: one to hold the bulb and two to drink until the room spins.

How many blondes does it take?
Three, one to hold the bulb and two to turn the ladder... oh you heard that one already?

How many women does it take to change a light bulb? None, they just ask a man to do it for them.

How many psychaitrists does it take to change a light bulb? Only one, but the bulb has to want to change.

How many hookers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
Hookers are too large to fit in a light bulb

How many feminists does it take to change a light bulb?
THAT'S NOT FUNNY ASSHOLE!

Okay...

[neowolf]

Seems like a good idea. Although like someone else- I'm amazed that the DOE actually cares about something like this...

Right now- LED lighting is great for some applications, especially portable lighting, automotive/truck lighting, and small things like night/marker lights in the home. It is ridiculously expensive for home lighting, even when you consider the lifespan of the lamp assemblies. Then again- CFL lights used to cost 3-4x what they do now too, so maybe cheaper manufacturing processes can be developed.

Fluorescent have mercury == bad

[EmbeddedJanitor]

You should handle fluorencents as toxic waste. This makes them hard to deal with in regualr household/office waste streams.

LEDs might have heavy metals in them but this is well encapsulated and amortized over a far longer lifetime (100k hours vs 10k hours).

Re:Fluorescent have mercury == bad

[ajlitt]

Home Depot and Ikea offer free fluorescent (tube and CFL) recycling. Of course, you still have to handle the bulbs properly during use and recycling, and I'm assuming that recyclers can recover a large portion of the mercury.

Re:Fluorescent have mercury == bad

[networkBoy]

*bullshit*

Today's fluorescents have less mercury than that bluefin sushi you just ate for lunch.
-nB

Re:Fluorescent have mercury == bad

[sm62704]

Also, an incandescant running on coal-fired electricity spews out far more mercury into the atmosphere than a CFL "twirly bulb" has in it PLUS the mercury from the coal.

Re:Fluorescent have mercury == bad

[afidel]

Yeah, and millions of them going to the dump each year won't raise the levels in your drinking water supply at all.... Individually they have small amounts, but in aggregate they are potentially a large source of environmental mercury. Of course coal power plants dwarf them, so the reduction in coal being burned probably offsets the amount going into the waste bulbs. Ideally you have an LED light that lasts a decade or longer which is what this article is about. There's still waste in the manufacturing process but it's concentrated and so easier to deal with.

Re:Fluorescent have mercury == bad

[Anonymous Coward]

And we should be treating the emissions of coal plants as toxic waste. Guess what? We blow the shit all over the place, including all of the mercury, uranium, thorium, and other toxic metals which reside in all coal sources. I wouldn't be surprised if there were a hundred thousand mercury units blown into the air for every 1 mercury unit in a fluorescent bulb that was incorrectly disposed of. KTHXBYHE.

Re:Fluorescent have mercury == bad

[Agripa]

. . . you still have to handle the bulbs properly during use and recycling . . .

So . . . sword fights are out?

Re:Fluorescent have mercury == bad

[dbIII]

In low gravity environments with no pollution controls at all on the power stations traces of heavy metals in the coal could be a very big problem. However we have no coal fired spacecraft and have found no coal on moons or planets with low gravity yet.

On earth it all comes out of the bottom in the heavy ash, and other stuff ends up in the ash dam with the light stuff that is removed by the large amounts of water used in pollution control systems. How many solids and liquids do you really think make it out the very tall stack in a system designed to remove gasses such as NOx and SOx?

Widely spread propaganda by an opposing industry has unfortunately stuck. There are plenty of other reasons to limit coal fired power stations without making stuff up.

Money Well Spent

[organgtool]

This is really something worth looking into. LED's are much more power efficient (which means they also give off less heat) and last much longer (need less replacing) than our current forms of lighting (incandescent, CCFL, etc). Car manufacturers such as Nissan are already starting to replace bulbs in their taillights with LED's. The only downsides I can see people complaining about are the fact that LED's are more directional than other forms of lighting and some may have issues with the shade of color they produce.

Now if our government would start looking into algae to power vehicles it would show that they're really interested in finding alternate and more efficient ways of powering our everyday devices.

Re:Money Well Spent

[corsec67]

The main problem I have with the LEDs that car makers are using now in brake lights is that they FLICKER, at about 60Hz. That is especially annoying at night, where the contrast between the blinking light and the environment is much greater.

Hint: the power in a car is DC, if you need to pulse the LED to get more brightness, please use something above 250Hz, preferably >1KHz.

Re:Money Well Spent

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a simple solution. Face them backwards and then use a parabolic reflector to get the direction you would like. :) Also, the light covers act as diffusers anyway, reducing the directionality of the lights currently used and giving it the glow that we all love and know as gridlock traffic.

Re:Money Well Spent

[WarJolt]

I'm not saying those lights don't flicker, but I haven't really noticed.
Why would brake lights flicker at 60Hz? They are not connected to the power grid AC which alternates at 60Hz.
The car runs on DC. The the voltage from the alternator fluctuates a little bit, but shouldn't cause it to flicker.
Maybe the flickering is intentional.

Re:Money Well Spent

[corsec67]

My complaint is that they do run at 60Hz, when as you pointed out, there is nothing else in the car that runs at that frequency, and the main power is DC.

Either they use Pulse-width modulation, or I think I recall a method to increase the brightness of the LED using pulses, but my google-fu is weak.

In either case, 60Hz is horribly low, and should be much higher.

Re:Money Well Spent

[evilviper]

LED's are much more power efficient (which means they also give off less heat) and last much longer (need less replacing) than our current forms of lighting

Except, of course, for the fact that they aren't...

Fluorescent lights are significantly more efficient than LEDs.

Now if our government would start looking into algae to power vehicles

Yes, those DECADES and DECADES of research they've put into it clearly prove they hate the idea...

Re:Money Well Spent

[catalina68]

"Well Spent" are the last words I would use to describe this. These are my tax dollars being WASTED. This type of research would be great if it were being conducted by a corporation. The Federal Government, on the otherhand, is prohibited from wasting money in this way by the Constitution! This is the second article in a few days documenting unconstitutional behavior conducted by the DOE. Given the logical basis of the work done by the majority of the people who frequent this site, I am constantly appalled by the way so many of them refuse to acknowledge that most of what the government is doing is illegal. The way people turn off a significant portion of their brains so that they can justify their socialist/communist views when it comes to what they want the government to do really makes me worry about the future of this country.

Re:Incandescent lights arent the problem.

[Thornburg]

The funny thing about blackle is that so many people are using LCD monitors (or laptops with built-in LCD displays), which draw the same amount of power regardless of the colors on the screen. Perhaps LED backlighting will help alleviate this problem, but traditional LCD displays must have the backlight on any time there is a single non-black pixel on the screen.

If you really wanted to save energy, blackle would need to blank the display, and only bring it back after your search results appear. Even then, it would only be saving a minuscule amount of energy unless the entire world used it.

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[Anonymous Coward]

There's even studies that show a lot of lighting does NOT deter crime. All it does is let the crook see what he's doing.

The studies I saw were about all street lighting. Street lighting creates plenty of shadows near houses as does improper home lighting. I see nothing that says, that proper home lighting doesn't help, but I also rarely see such lighting. It's amazing how many times you see "security" lighting which only illuminates the law. Are they scared someone will steal the grass?

suckered!

[Quadraginta]

Blacklight Power is a well-known combination of perpetual-motion and pyramid scams.

Re:suckered!

[networkBoy]

To be fair they claim 1% of the voltage, not 1% of the energy...
Technically they could be drawing 1.1V at 1,000,000 amps and not be lying.
-nB

My holy grail

[Iphtashu Fitz]

As far as solid-state lighting goes, I'll be impressed when they can create a cost-effective replacement for stagelights. I work with a variety of stagelights on a regular basis, the most common of which use 500-1000 watt halogen bulbs. If they can create a replacement that provides similar characteristics (dimming, lumens, color, etc) but use less power and generate less heat then I'll really be impressed.

Re:My holy grail

[MrSteveSD]

That would be great. One of the main reasons that amateur films look so crappy (aside from the acting) is the poor lighting. It's the one thing that digital technology doesn't really help with. Maybe LED lighting will make it more practical to do some decent lighting for amateur films.

Re:My holy grail

[natoochtoniket]

I can imagine a whole new category of stage lights.

Imagine panels of pixels, with each pixel being a small, independent spotlight, steerable by software. Cover the front of the balcony, and the upper lighting balcony, with these panels. Then the software can steer the required amount of light (number of pixels) of the required color(s), to any point on the stage, for each independent scene in the show. Floods could be simulated by hundreds of parallel spots, or some of the individual sources could be wider than others. Getting hard shadows or lines might be difficult, but I can see lots of advantages.

There would not be a need to point hundreds of individual fixtures during setup on a new stage. Just mount the panels on the trusses and use the software to align the system to the stage dimensions. And, instead of a few hundred sources for a few hundred scenes, you could have millions of sources for thousands of scenes. Finally, with millions of sources, it isn't a big deal if one of them burns out during the first act.

During rehearsal, the director says "I want a spot on that". In a few seconds, the lighting guy moves a mouse and the spot of light appears on the stage. The director says, "make it more amber", and again it happens in a few seconds.

You might still need some special effect units, but for general scene illumination it could be very nice.

Re:My holy grail

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm at home right now, but I'm talking to a supplier of such boxes (we want to use them for retail spots)...
They're still hot, finned enclosures, but not nearly as hot as traditional cans. Plus they can use DMX networking and are capable of strobe effects (don't try that with the old can!).

I'll post an update here tomorrow, or you can email me at lights.thormj (at) spamgourmet (dot) com

I'm trying to get some samples from them as toys -- you wouldn't believe how hard it is to move people from "traditional" lighting (not that I entirely blame them, but some are still comparing modern T5 & T8's with old magnetic ballasts).

-Thor Johnson

Re:My holy grail

[0111 1110]

It's the one thing that digital technology doesn't really help with

Actually in many cases it's the 'digital technology' that is causing the problems. To save money, some amateur productions shoot on video. Often digital video. One problem that video suffers from vs. film is a greatly reduced dynamic range. The darks suffer from 'black crush' turning subtle shadows into complete blackness, and from wash out at the other end of the exposure spectrum, which causes outdoor scenes to resemble home movies.

They typically cannot afford to hire experienced DOPs/lighting experts to light their sets. Instead they often just use available light or poorly thought out lighting which rarely works out as well as they hope.

Re:My holy grail

[Anonymous Coward]

Many stage lights use HID lamps now. They are a different color temp, so they can't be mixed with halogens, use an iris or shutter as a dimmer, and require heavy ballasts. However, HID lamps put out at least double the lumens for the same wattage, and last four times as long.

On the other hand, there already exists LED par cans.

dom

Re:My holy grail

[MrSteveSD]

What I mean is, it's pretty cheap to get a digital video camera and computer editing software. But all that huge, heavy and power hungry studio lighting you need is outside most peoples budgets. So they end up just using the normal lighting in a room which is not good enough. If some brilliant white led studio lights were available, that might change things.

Is this dynamic range issue due to the video compression used rather than the CCD?

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[modmans2ndcoming]

There are low light pollution lights for outdoor environmental lighting. The feds should give grants to cities that deploy such systems.

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[vbraga]

I've heard it has been banned already in some states.

There is still research to be done on this!

[Anonymous Coward]

As much as I agree with everyone that wishes there was more action involved in this announcement. I looked pretty deeply into LED technology about a year ago when the first (hyper-expensive) LED lightbulbs hit the market. There are serious drawbacks to the initial consumer generation of LED bulbs. The light was actually too focused because of the use of chip-borne micro-LEDs arranged in clusters. The tightly packed nature of the micro-LED clusters produced too much heat, and that heat also lead to durability/longevity/safety issues.

If they are spending this money on research to develop high efficiency LEDs and OLEDs that produce significantly less heat (while developing high economy production techniques in tandem, i.e. so we can buy them cheap when they hit the market), I think this is totally worth it.

I changed over my entire house to CF bulbs over 2 years ago, and have only needed to replace 2 of them since then (both larger higher output outdoor bulbs). I don't want to buy into home LED lighting until the products are more reliable, last even longer AND are even more efficient than CF bulbs, while also providing a traditional spread/focus of light at an appropriate color temperature.

LEDs should be able to produce nearly any visible color temperature without a problem, but their output temp is based on how they are manufactured, so don't expect so see any that you can adjust manually somehow. But there is the potential to select your preferred color temp when you are buying them, kind of like buying "soft white", etc. Incandescent/CF bulbs. LED bulbs are also naturally well suited to applications that involve dimmers, their color temp is dependent on how they are manufactured (filament material/casing material) so they don't change color as energy input changes, only output intensity changes and unlike CFs they don't require a ballast of any kind so they have no minimum output threshold under which they won't even come on.

Trust me LEDs are frickin sweet, they have the potential, but there surely is still research to be done to make them even better (approaching perfect actually!) and I for one am willing to wait a little while longer for the next couple of generations to be designed and produced before I invest in them. If the DOE wants to invest in this research I am all for it!

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[robertjw]

Interesting. Do you have any references for properly lighting your home for maximum crime deterrence?

I have a streetlight right in front of my house, but have still had a couple minor criminal incidents.

already happening

[scrout]

Uh, just a little late with our money. There is a huge push into this technology already. I am aware of a major plant underway in China as we speak. The money would be better spent on incentives or converting govt spaces.

You forgot.....

[Mesa MIke]

Do they run Linux?

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[spun]

Contributing factor? In every single case of breast cancer, the woman had consumed so much dihydrogen monoxide that their bodies were composed of 70% of the stuff! Also, women who discontinue the use of dihydrogen monoxide never die from breast cancer.

it's not a large concern

[Quadraginta]

According to government data, only about 9% of the household electricity used in the United States is used for lighting. Most household electricity goes to refrigeration, water heating, air-conditioning, space heating, clothes drying, and so forth. That's why electricity usage spikes in the summer and in hot weather.

For that matter, only about 20% of our entire energy usage is represented by electricity, the rest being direct use of thermal energy (i.e. burning stuff like oil and gas) in factories, home heating furnaces, and in cars, trucks and railroad engines.

So overall the amount of our energy usage that goes to household lighting is 0.09 x 0.20 = about 2% of our total energy usage. If you manage to make lighting that is, say, 10 times more efficient than incandescent, then you will replace 2% with 0.2%, for a grand savings of 1.8%. Not impressive.

Re:it's not a large concern

[mapsjanhere]

World annual oil consumption is something like 27 billion barrels. 1.8% of that is about 500,000,000 barrels, or 50,000,000 tons, or some 100 supertankers full. Seems rather impressive to me.

Re:it's not a large concern

[Quadraginta]

Of course it is. That's because you're only one person. But it isn't impressive to an entire nation, or an entire world, just the way you probably thought your mother and father were enormous mighty giants when you were six months old, but you don't now that you have a larger perspective.

Let's put it another way: divide that world consumption by the world population to see what your share is. The answer is less than a tenth of a barrel, or about 4 gallons of oil a year. You probably burn 100 times more oil in your car every year. Would you pay a few hundred dollars to save 4 gallons of oil a year? Or can you think, perhaps, of some better uses for that money, even if you restrict yourself to energy conservation?

The goal in life is not to randomly pursue every goal that is desirable, willy nilly. The goal is to pursue desirable goals in order of their importance. First you make sure you have a job you like, then you make sure your cubicle is decorated pleasantly. If you reverse the order in which you pursue these goals, you will not be happy.

Similarly, the sub-goals under the overall goal of energy efficiency should be pursued in order of their importance. Better traffic management on major city freeways -- linking cars through low-powered radios, say, and adding GPS receivers and some good traffic algorithms in an on-board module that can suggest optimal routes to drivers in real time -- would save more oil in a week than replacing everyone's desk lamp with an LED lamp would save in a century.

Building codes for sunny climates that take into account air-conditioning costs, so that, for example, windows are placed strategically to minimize solar heating, roofs are designed to avoid trapping hot air, attic fans are routinely installed, windows are double-glazed and weather-stripped to avoid heat losses, etc., would also save much more.

The plain fact is that most energy we use is used to either move heat from one place to another, or to move things from one place to another. Improving efficiency in those areas is the low-hanging fruit. Improving lighting efficiency is a glitzy feel-good measure that does very little, except that if it sucks up all the oxygen in a public energy efficiency impulse, it prevents us from doing stuff that really would have a serious impact.

Re:it's not a large concern

[flyingsquid]

So overall the amount of our energy usage that goes to household lighting is 0.09 x 0.20 = about 2% of our total energy usage. If you manage to make lighting that is, say, 10 times more efficient than incandescent, then you will replace 2% with 0.2%, for a grand savings of 1.8%. Not impressive.

Not by itself, and for that matter, it's unlikely that any single energy-saving technology is going to make a significant difference. But what if we were able to get a 2% reduction in energy usage on 5 different fronts: internal lighting, building cooling, building heating, electrical appliances, and internal combustion engines. That would be a 10% reduction in our overall energy usage, which would be a lot of energy, given the size of our economy and how much energy we consume.

Think about the development of the laptop computer, and what it took to make that possible. There wasn't a single development that made it possible to make computers that weighed under 10 lbs., it was a whole host of new technologies: thin displays, powerful batteries, smaller hard drives, and then some clever application of existing technologies. Likewise, if your goal is to reduce energy consumption, it will probably take a whole host of new technologies and some careful considerations of how to better use our existing technology to do the same job with less energy.

Re:it's not a large concern

[RingDev]

The vast majority of electric power generation in the US is coal based. So you could change every light bulb in the US and still have no effect on world oil consumption.

-Rick

Re:it's not a large concern

[mapsjanhere]

I stand corrected. Please substitute an insignificant coal train 1,000,000 cars long instead.

Re:it's not a large concern

[RingDev]

Who cares? Unlike peek oil, peek coal in the US is still 180 years away. And why blow the cash on improving light fixtures for 1M cars of coal when blowing cash on improving wind power generation and distribution could save millions more? Or heck, $21M in tax rebates/incentives to buy high efficiency washers/dryers/refrigerators/AC/Heaters etc...

My dryer shorted out a few months ago. It was an ancient hand me down from a friend. We replaced it with a new more efficient model with auto shutoff and moisture detection. It dried clothes a bit faster and would shut off when they were dry, regardless of the timer. It saved us a bit of energy and a tiny amount of cash every month.

My washing machine went up in smoke last week. Literally, it was not a pleasant experience. It was an ancient piece of junk, a matching item to the previously mentioned POC dryer. Wanting to be responsible, I plunked down the extra cash to get a HE front loading washer (~$540 instead of a traditional low efficiency top loader for ~280). This new front loading washer uses significantly less water, which saves my aging water heater (by aging I mean it really should have been replaced 5 years ago) a lot of work. Not only that, but the rinse cycle is so much more efficient that my dryer time is almost 1/2 of what it used to be.

Those two appliances combined will generate more coal savings in 1 month, than replacing every one of the CF light bulbs in my entire house with best case SSL/LED lights over their entire life. (excluding production requirements, no idea on those numbers)

And THAT is why lighting is not a large concern.

-Rick

Re:it's not a large concern

[Quadraginta]

So what's your point? Should we attempt to pursue every conceivable technological development that might shave energy usage, even by teensy percentages? That's not possible. We don't have infinite resources.

My point is just that goals should always be prioritized, either personally or as a nation. Assuming energy efficiency is a reasonable national goal, technologies which improve it should be pursued in order of their likely cost-benefit ratio. That means we work on stuff like improved traffic flow before we work on LED lights everywhere. How much gasoline is wasted by cars idling on the 5000 miles of Los Angeles freeway system twice a day? Compare that to how much energy you might save if you got a realistic fraction of people to switch to LED bulbs.

Or for that matter, how much energy is wasted by cars that aren't properly tuned up? By building codes that encourage saving money up front on things like sensible window placement and good insulation, at the cost of several decades of magnified heating and cooling costs?

The thing to do is rank all these things in order of what kind of savings you can get for what kind of investment, and start from the top. When I look at (1) the small amount of electricity used for lighting, (2) the modest gains in efficiency represented by white-light LEDs over incandescents, (3) the substantial cost of converting millions of lighting fixtures from trailer-park porch lights to kitchen lights in ritzy mansions to LEDs, and (4) the fact that most people like incandescent light and it will take massive subsidies or heavy-handed regulation to get them to switch....I have the strong suspicion that this particular investment is not likely to pay off.

I could be wrong, of course. But the question must be asked, and a credible positive answer given, before one can say big government investment in LED lights makes any kind of sense.

Re:it's not a large concern

[rush22]

Those two appliances combined will generate more coal savings in 1 month, than replacing every one of the CF light bulbs in my entire house with best case SSL/LED lights over their entire life. (excluding production requirements, no idea on those numbers)

but you do have some idea on those first numbers? no you're making this up. why do people do this.

"well, ok then I'm just saying it's *probably* true"

Re:it's not a large concern

[RingDev]

Well lets see, both the original dryer and the new dryer ran at ~5000 watts. And we run probably 10 loads of laundry a month. The original dryer had a hard set timer for 1 hour's worth of drying. The new dryer would auto stop when the laundry was dry (which usually took about 50 minutes). So, over a month, the old dryer would use ~50kW and the new dryer would use ~41.7kW.

Switching from the old non-energy star rated top loading washing machine will save a lot of energy in water heating as well (but I don't have any numbers on that as I just got the dryer last week). But the one thing it has done impressively is to get more water out of the clothes before the end of it's cycle. This has cut our drying time down significantly. The auto stop on the dryer on average kicks in at 35 minutes. So over a month, the new dryer is using ~29.2kW.

So, excluding any energy savings in water heating, or in the washing machine it self, in one month I have saved 20.8kW.

All of the lights in my house are 15w CF bulbs with the exception of some full sized tubes in the kitchen. My wife is a light Nazi, she leaves all the lights off during the day and limits lighting to only the parts of the house that are in use at night. For argument's sake though, lets say we leave the (2) living room, (2) dining room, (2) stairway, and (3) bedroom lights on from 6 to 11. 9 x 15W x 5h = 675W per night, 246kW per year, 2.5MW over the lifetime of the lights.

I can't find much for solid info on SSL bulbs, but the best I'm seeing for comparable LED lighting is in the range of 2W. So 9 x 2W x 5h = 270W per night, 98.5kW per year, 1 MW over the lifetime of the CF lights. So a 1.5MW savings.

So my statement was a bit of a hyperbole, the saving from one month of using a high efficiency washer/dryer (counting only the dryer's savings) will save ~21kW. It would take 72 months (6 years) for the dryer to save as much energy as the lights.

Now this rationalization is heavily flawed as it is taking a worst case scenario for lighting and maintaining it for 10 years, it doesn't include the savings in the washer's power consumption, nor the savings in water heating. So I think it is a fairly safe statement to say that replacing inefficient washers and dryers would save significantly more energy than any further improvements in lighting.

If that $21M was distributed instead as a $200 tax rebate to anyone who had purchased a HE washer or dryer, we could have replaced 105,000 units. At 9kw-12kw energy savings each month per unit, that would save 945kW-1.2MW monthly. Heck, that's almost half a GW over a year, and again, that doesn't include the energy savings from heating water, or the washing machine itself. And that's not a theoretical "if we pay, they might invent, and it might make it to market in 10 years" kind of investment. That's a right here, right now, by the end of the year more people will be saving more energy, kind of investment.

2 birds in the hand > 1 in the bush.

-Rick

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but then there are the studies that show 90% of studies are bunk...

The Future- Photonic Bandgap Materials

[DrLudicrous]

The ultimate future of solid state lighting resides in a combination of two existing/developing technologies. The first is the LED, already in commercial production, which will continue to be refined with respect to spectral output. The second is a technology that is mostly still in the lab- visible spectrum photonic bandgap materials. Basically, these are kind of "perfect reflectors". By creating an LED in a photonic bandgap material, reabsorption of emitted photons would be eliminated, or at the very least steeply curbed. This would increase the effective efficiency of the LED, giving you more light for the same amount of electrical energy. It would make lighting incredibly inexpensive with regards to energy usage, but the when the combination of LEDs and PBG materials comes out, it will be very expensive, just as with any new technology. It will eventually prove superior to other lighting paradigms due to longevity (how often do LEDs burn out?) and operational costs, especially for industrial users whose premises use a lot of light 24 hours a day.

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[rand(coward)]

Mention in Wikipedia with sources, for the lazy.

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[Adriax]

I'm doing a study on the study of studies. Would you care to quote on that study?

Why not just admit you were wrong?

[Anonymous Coward]

"The links you have provided are to professional observatories."

Which all do astronomy. Which you claim has been "ruined". A claim, by the way, that you have yet to admit was wrong.

And you didn't miss "specifying amateur astronomy". You chose not to, and instead chose to overstate the situation and apply it as generally as possible for maximum coercive value.

You are the worst kind of liar, the kind that attempts to couch his lies in truth. Even your current lie is false however, as I personally looked at the moon last week. I am an amateur, and the light did not ruin my activity, so your statement about amateur astronomy is just as false.

captcha is : pathetic (clearly referring to you and your inability to avoid lying and hyperbole, as well as your failure to admit you were caught making shit up)
Despite that, your ego will never permit you to admit you were wrong, no matter how I prove it to you. You are simply to small minded t be able to admit lying like you did.

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[sm62704]

Oh man, don't tell me that! Dihydrogen Monoxide is my second favorite beverage, and what's worse, there's a lot of Dihydrogen Monoxide in beer too.

Damn, I guess I need to switch to whiskey. There's not nearly as much in it.

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[misleb]

Seriously, we need to think about our light placement and usage.

Lit streets and parking lots are a matter of public safety. There's nothing wrong with it.

Excellent Points

[pragma_x]

I've always wanted to know the pollution concerns myself. Add to that:

- The cost of manufacture and disposal of SSL fixtures vs incandescent bulbs, at the scale of production for incandescent bulbs.

If we wind up with something that is more efficient in the socket, but three times as energy expensive cradle to grave, then watt's* the point?

(* so sorry)

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[sesshomaru]

"Hello lamppost. What'cha knowing? I've come to watch your.... power flowing,"

- C. Montgomery Burns, [2F16]

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[bannerman]

Are you suggesting that women need to expose their breasts to the light more often? Interesting...

My Science Project

[HTH NE1]

Bob Roberts: This device is producing light and energy without heat.
Michael 'Mike' Harlan: How is that possible?
Bob Roberts: It's not possible. At least, not on this planet.
Vince Latello: Woah, what other planets are we talking about?

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[smooth wombat]

Also, there's the issue that light bounces, so shine a light down and it'll still reflect back up.

No problem. Just make streets out of the darkest material yet created.

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[Anonymous Coward]

I find your views intriguing, and wish to subscribe to your newsletter .

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[Quiet_Desperation]

Well, I was speaking more about street and public lighting in commercial areas. They thought one of the factors was that a crook has to use a flashlight, and that's noticeable.

I'd like to see your sources

[siesindallerscheisse]

I have several that disagree, and several that are contradictory.

Also, why are you assuming that "does not deter" automagically helps the crook "see what he is doing"? I didn't see a single study that supported that idea, and many that rebutted it.

http://www.britastro.org/dark-skies/crime.html

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know what an "answer" to it is, but I think everyone's point is that lit *streets*, visible from the ground, are a good thing. Streets lit such that they're visible from space though, is probably overkill.

This isn't remotely realistic, but having every steet enclosed and made of a reflective substance on the interior would mean light keeps bouncing around where we want it, instead of disappearing off into space. We would need much less lighting to illuminate streets if that was the case.

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[emilper]

haven't you seen the statistics ? The areas with lots of shiny lights visible from IIS get rated as "urban". Would you choose to live in a "village" instead of living in a "suburb" ?

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[geekoid]

No it doesn't; However, it only works to a point. You're giving attackers fewer places to hid.

There are people that will commit the crime anyways and it does nothing to deter those peiople.

Where I live, there are too many and they are too bright.

I had one as a child 40 years ago

[LM741N]

Granted, it was not incredibly bright, but it did a good job of converting 110VAC to a nice greenish night light.

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[Anonymous Coward]

There's even studies that show a lot of lighting does NOT deter crime. All it does is let the crook see what he's doing. Which means that fewer fat chicks get raped. See? Lots of light does deter crime.

Indoor Gardens : Death of the Office Fern?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ive got a follow up question:

Does anybody know how LED lights are for plant growth?
I am an avid gardener (and before anyone asks, this doesn't mean pot...) in a northern climate. I have been germinating my plants indoors under "daylight"(6500k) CFLs with decent success.
CFLs work well for me as they are relatively cheap, put out enough light for germination and the initial growth stage, and don't use a lot of power and generate execessive heat like more exotic High Pressure Sodium (HPS) solutions...

IF LED lights don't work for this; it would be an issue to us gardeners.
Also anyone to anyone who enjoys an office fern/lilly, which grow resonably well under the standard office flourescent lighting.

Re:Indoor Gardens : Death of the Office Fern?

[Anonymous Coward]

You need thousands of LEDs and the experimental results have not been good. Doing away with huge boards of LEDs, and replacing them with clusters close to individual leaves may be the answer but, from what I've read, this is not a good solution.

You can buy LEDs at the correct wavelengths but they're not cheap and they're hard to find.

I know you said 'not for pot' but this is where you'll get the most feedback on the subject. Try a UK 420 site...

Stick to what you know best for now.

Didn't Heinlein write a shortstory about this...

[CrimsonAvenger]

About 60 years ago?

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[Anonymous Coward]

"Do you have any references for properly lighting your home for maximum crime deterrence?"

Yes.
All you need is one relatively small spotlight, shining on a man-shaped target with
6 bullet holes clustered neatly around the heart area.
Place this in a conspicuous place in your yard.
Problem solved.

Sometimes heat is good.

[Joce640k]

In winter, or if you live in a cold place, the heat produced by incandescents isn't wasted, it's neatly subtracted from your heating bill. :-)

Re:Sometimes heat is good.

[NewbieProgrammerMan]

Heat produced that way still isn't as cost-effective as that provided by a heat pump, so it might not be that great unless you're using resistance heaters in your home. Modern heat pumps provide more than three Joules of heating for every Joule of electrical energy consumed.

Re:Sometimes heat is good.

[yada21]

Yeah of course they do ... I've got a bridge you might be interested in buying.

White LEDs are different

[sd.fhasldff]

And, no, LEDs are not fluorescent. Fluorescent bulbs stimulate mercury to emit UV light. The UV light hits the phosphorus which makes it fluoresce and produce visible light. LEDs work by jumping electrons across a band gap and a photon is emitted when it jumps back down. The high efficiency comes into play because it doesn't take much more energy than that of the band gap to make an electron jump.

*White* LEDs don't work that way. You might assume that white LEDs are simply three (or more) normal LEDs combined in a single package. While it is possible to make white LEDs this way, it's not the method usually used (for several reasons, including "color integrity").

Instead, white LEDs are typically made by coating a BLUE indium-gallium-nitride (InGaN) LED with phosphorous. This is not all that different from a fluorescent bulb, which is what the GP postulated.

Different color temperatures can be achieved by varying the phosphorous coverage. Lower coverage lets more blue through (cooler temperature), whereas higher coverage causes more blue to be absorbed and thus more of the phosphorous emission spectrum to be emitted. The dominant line in the most commonly used phosphorous for LEDs is around 580nm (yellow).

It's also possible to get white LEDs that are made by coating a near ultra-violet LED with phosphorous (thus getting even closer to the fluorescent bulb of the GP).

This might change in the future, with serious work being conducted in the field to improve on reliability, efficiency and color characteristics. To the best of my knowledge, however, none of the new methods (go search for yourself) are commercially available and as we all know, many things that seem promising in the lab never make it to market for any number of reasons.

For reference, red diodes emit at ~ 630nm, blue diodes at 470nm, green at 530nm. The exact wavelength of the emitted light depends on the materials used in the LED, of course.

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[awrz]

If you can convince manufactures and government to tighten up restrictions let me know.

I work for an engineering firm and there are "dark sky" requirements for many of the buildings/sites we engineer. We're constantly trying to spec the most economical fixture while meeting dark sky requirements.

It really should be in the best interest of the manufactures to make better fixtures; they'll get more of our (and other firms) business.

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[itlurksbeneath]

That's why crime goes up around a full moon and a clear night. You can see better outside. I've heard that from a lot of cops about full moon and crime and when I mentioned the extra light to see by at night, the light bulb went off over their head.

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't remotely realistic, but having every steet enclosed and made of a reflective substance on the interior would mean light keeps bouncing around where we want it, instead of disappearing off into space. We would need much less lighting to illuminate streets if that was the case.

f this is your notion of a clever idea, I'm glad I don't have to maintain your code.

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[Paradise Pete]

Problem solved.

Sure, right up until somebody steals it.

Um, no.

[dj245]

Most electrical power companies are doing everything they can to reduce consumption. Many have efforts promoting CCFL's, notices encourageing people to turn off the lights, etc. Why? Because at the rate our electrical usage is increasing, the power companies are having a hard time keeping up with demand. Sure, they have more income, but building out generation infrastrcture isn't cheap or easy. There are many places in the US you can't build a power station anymore because of all the NIMBY people. Nevermind that it lowers their electrical bill. Increased demand is one of the last things the electrical industry wants. Its hard enough replacing all the old plants and meeting current emissions standards.

The fact that a large proportion of power engineers are reaching retirement age isn't helping either.

Re:Um, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

Americans don't have to worry about power stations nor pollution or anything else, they just plug stuff in and flip switches and it works. Why should they care?

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[sheepofblue]

Or government could stay the heck out of something that is has no constitutional requirement to do. Instead if YOU or anyone else can figure a way to not waste all that light (aka energy) then you or anyone else could easily sell it to the cities so that they can save big $$$$ Government causes more problems than it cures.

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[BlendieOfIndie]

There's even studies that show a lot of lighting does NOT deter crime. All it does is let the crook see what he's doing.

It doesn't matter if it deters crime or not - light makes people *feel* safe. If you had the choice of walking down a dark alley or a well lit alley, which would you choose?

---

BTW: i agree that all the *extra* light is a tremendous waste of energy

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[vought]

This isn't remotely realistic, but having every steet enclosed and made of a reflective substance on the interior would mean light keeps bouncing around where we want it Gee, and I was just thinking that shielding street lights would be a good first step. Didn't think we'd have to build a hamster cage.

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[Charcharodon]

Why can you see it? Well because light goes really really fast and even a small amount pointed in your general direction is easily spottable from a great distance.

As a GA pilot, city light is a love hate relationship. I love it because it helps keep the vertigo (no barfing or flipping the plane over because of a lack of visual references) at bay, I hate it because it's freak'n pain in the ass to pick out the airport out of all the background clutter.

On my first night cross country flight on the way back to base my instructor complimented me on my navigation skills, that I never peeked a look at the GPS, and kept a solid heading. Not the easiest thing to do since since you are half flying IFR once you get away from the city lights with no moon out. What I didn't mention to him is that I could see the new baseball stadium style lighting on one of the parking ramps of our destination airport even though it was over 80 miles away and mostly hidden behind some low mountains. I could see the lights directly, I'm sure the sky glow would have been visible at a much further distance.

Cool, but

[WindBourne]

Lets quite sending these to be manufactured at what will be the enemy in the future. It is time to keep it IN-HOUSE (or at least a nations that are friendly to us such as anybody in EU).

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[eln]

I demand federal funding to study this issue! Heck, screw the federal funding, I'll run the study for free.

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[Rei]

It's more often more about the perception of safety than actual safety, at least when it comes to crime. Lights leave shadows where objects block them. When your night vision adjusts to the light, the shadows, and anything in them, get proportionally dimmer to you, making it harder to see someone "lurking in the shadows".

There's a lot more we could do about night lighting. A hundred years ago, almost everyone lived in a Bortle scale 1 area. Now, almost nobody in the first world does, and even much of the third world has elevated Bortle limits. What percentage of Americans do you think have ever seen zodiacal light, gegenschein, shadows cast from Scorpius and Sagittarius, or had Jupiter and Venus affect their dark adaptation? It doesn't have to be this way. Some types of lights are subject to far less atmospheric scattering. Properly designed fixtures can eliminate most of the overhead glow and even give you more light for the areas you're trying to illuminate. And so on.

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[Jherek Carnelian]

Not necessarily specific recommendations but a good read about the subject in general:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/08/20/070820fa_fact_owen?printable=true

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[RockedMan40]

Really ? And how is it working out? Making any difference in the area? How do the 'regulate' light pollution? Not being snide - serious question.

street lighting and urban ammenity

[Macgrrl]

You might be interested in the Lunar Society to see how street lighting affected social nightlife...

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[misleb]

It's more often more about the perception of safety than actual safety, at least when it comes to crime. Lights leave shadows where objects block them. When your night vision adjusts to the light, the shadows, and anything in them, get proportionally dimmer to you, making it harder to see someone "lurking in the shadows".

Yeah, maybe if we were talking about ninjas, but I seriously doubt that your average thug is really going to lurk in the shadow cast by garbage can. Does this happen where you live? Besides, it isn't just about seeing a potential attacker it is about being seen by others in case you are attacked. And what about more innocent things like being seen by a car in a parking lot? I MUCH prefer to drive in the city with lit streets. It makes a huge difference. Ever seen a city block during a blackout?

There's a lot more we could do about night lighting. A hundred years ago, almost everyone lived in a Bortle scale 1 area. Now, almost nobody in the first world does,

You know why? Because people like having the outdoors illuminated... particularly public areas. It is a luxury that we in the so called "first world" can afford.

and even much of the third world has elevated Bortle limits. What percentage of Americans do you think have ever seen zodiacal light, gegenschein, shadows cast from Scorpius and Sagittarius, or had Jupiter and Venus affect their dark adaptation?

That's because they aren't very bright.

It doesn't have to be this way. Some types of lights are subject to far less atmospheric scattering. Properly designed fixtures can eliminate most of the overhead glow and even give you more light for the areas you're trying to illuminate. And so on.

At what cost? And what does it really accomplish?

-matthew

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[wtansill]

Do you have any references for properly lighting your home for maximum crime deterrence?

I recommend muzzle flashes from a high-powered firearm of your choice.

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[peragrin]

Do you know the difference between a 15 watt bulb and a 60 watt bulb at lighting an area? how about a 400w watt one?

Lighting a parking lot or a dangerous stretch of the road is for saftey. The problem is if an old man with cataracts can't see then it isn't bright enough and we simply double the wattage until all is well.

When you can simply place the lights in better locations with shiny reflectors and you can solve the same problem with lower costs. The answer isn't more light but better light. In many regions towns are noticing that too much light is ugly and wasteful and are placing restrictions on how much light you push onto the neighbors or roads.

You want a good reason why? drive down a suburban neighborhood at least one house will have 200 watt flood lights directed at the road were they can blind drivers.

I can light up your home in simple elegant ways so that the house is visible, the drive way and paths are visible, people would be visible, but your not lighting up the superdome. you will save money on electricity. Not much but a little here and a little there is better than just wasting everything.

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[Rei]

Yeah, maybe if we were talking about ninjas,

"In Future News, misleb died last night after being hit in the neck with a throwing star. Hir last words reportedly were, 'If... only... I had listened.'" ;)

Realistically, if you're trying not to be seen, do you:

A) Stand in the light, or
B) Stand in the shadows, or
C) Pat Buchanan

Besides, it isn't just about seeing a potential attacker it is about being seen by others in case you are attacked.

So... we now are in a world where people can see you clearly enough to tell that you're being attacked but can't hear you, and the criminals can't force you out of the light? Is this crime going on in the middle of a Vegas casino where the victim is superglued to a slot machine?

And what about more innocent things like being seen by a car in a parking lot?

Now that wouldn't be about crime, now would it? If so, that would make it unrelated to my original post which specified "at least when it comes to crime", now wouldn't it?

Because people like having the outdoors illuminated...

Speak for yourself.

particularly public areas

This wouldn't have anything to do with that "false sense of security", now would it?

That's because they aren't very bright.

But in a Bortle limit of one, they *are*, which is part of what makes it so amazing. You've never been to anywhere that dark and looked up at a moonless sky before, have you? It's really incredible.

At what cost?

In most cases, negative cost. Low scattering lights, like sodium, tend to be relatively cheap for how much light they provide, and proper fixtures direct more of the light where you want it.

And what does it really accomplish?

We spend a fortune trying to keep 180 degrees of our view (the ground) pristine in appearance. Yet we seem to have no problem with obliterating from view the equally stunning 180 degrees of view above us. Why? Probably because most people have never even seen it.

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[robertjw]

Do you have any references for properly lighting your home for maximum crime deterrence?

I recommend muzzle flashes from a high-powered firearm of your choice.

Obviously that is the first choice, but now that the writer's strike is over I can't sit on the porch all night with the 12 gauge. I have TV to watch.

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[misleb]

So... we now are in a world where people can see you clearly enough to tell that you're being attacked but can't hear you, and the criminals can't force you out of the light?

Being seen AND heard is better than just being heard. And it would be kind of difficult to force a person out of the light if the whole parking lot, for example, is illuminated.

Look, I'm not saying that lighting a parking lot magically makes the world a crime free, but it is definitely nice to have in urban and suburban areas.

And what about more innocent things like being seen by a car in a parking lot?

Now that wouldn't be about crime, now would it? If so, that would make it unrelated to my original post which specified "at least when it comes to crime", now wouldn't it?

And my post was about public safety in general. So you can find one or two specific situations (ninja attacks, for example) where lighting might not help. Big deal? My broader point still stands.

Because people like having the outdoors illuminated...

Speak for yourself.

...and everyone else who is weary of walking through a dark parking lot or driving down a poorly lit city street.

particularly public areas

This wouldn't have anything to do with that "false sense of security", now would it?

You haven't shown it to be false.

That's because they aren't very bright.

But in a Bortle limit of one, they *are*, which is part of what makes it so amazing. You've never been to anywhere that dark and looked up at a moonless sky before, have you? It's really incredible.

Bright enough to see it in the sky and being bright enough to illuminate your surroundings are two different things. I've spent plenty of time outdoors at night away from the city and it is incredible, but I sure wouldn't rely on it for outdoor lighting in an urban area. Any significant artificial light would ruin your night vision. It is an "all or nothing" sort of thing. SInce you can't extinguish all lights in the city, you kind of have to use artificial illumination.

In most cases, negative cost. Low scattering lights, like sodium, tend to be relatively cheap for how much light they provide, and proper fixtures direct more of the light where you want it.

Don't street lights use sodium lamps? And what is wrong with the fixtures?

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[khallow]

I understand motion sensor floodlights tend to be more useful, as long as they don't trigger frequently (wind, malfunction, or small animals). They can still be deliberately broken, but if they are, that's an indication that some sort of hanky panky went on or is shortly to happen.

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[IHC Navistar]

Hmmmmm..... Which would you prefer for nighttime deterrence? The muzzle flash from the Mosin Nagant M91-30 (Russian Dragon), or the repetitive knockdown power of the M1A?

Hmmmmm.....

[IHC Navistar]

I'll bet the light their shining on Adavnced Lighting Research comes from a big pile of $21M that they set on fire.

Plus, what use is it if the results of Federally-funded research and development end up being used and patented by private companies?

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[Smidge204]

By passing odinances requiring certified "Dark Skies" light fixtures and adding requirements for municipality approved lighting plans. All exterior building lighting and parking lot lighting installed since ~2004 (that I know of) has been required to meet these requirements.

For example, no measurable light must be cast above the rim of the fixture. IE: Cast light can not shine greater than 90 degrees up from the vertical ("cutoff luminaires"). This is trickier than is sounds because it includes any light reflected off of the fixture and supporting structure itself. This is usually accomplished by specially designed reflectors that focus and direct the light to very predictable patterns rather than flooding an area like older designs.

In some municipalities the calculated total foot-candles at ground level must be between rather tight tolerances.
=Smidge=

Re:Save energy: Use sunshine.

[chris_sawtell]

Use sunshine to:

1. Dry the washing on a line like the rest of the world does.
2. Heat your water.
3. Generate electricity.
4. Use the energy which is currently being wasted in power-station cooling towers for something useful.

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[ill stew dottied ewe]

Studies are right next to experiments in causing cancer, especially in lab rats. It has also been confirmed that smoking is a leading cause of statistics.

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it's not the energy lobby you should be worrying about, but the retailers themselves.
Home Depot, BP, and many others *want* as much light to be tossed into the air as possible to give the store a "standing out effect" in the night atmosphere....

Bleh.
If I'm going to a gas station, I can see the pricing boards from the interstate.
If need home-fixit stuff, I generally know where to get it without "scanning the horizon for a blip".

There are plenty of "shielded" fixtures that direct light so that it is not wasted; this saves on:
    1. Energy of light -- if you're not shining 200W into the sky you can use a 300W bulb instead of a 500W bulb.
    2. Lamp Life -- the hotter the bulb, the less it lasts, generally. The hot ones are especially fickle in the environment.
    3. Properly directed light has much less glare...

I for one welcome the astronomers!

As an example of poor design (anecdotal), there was an ATM in Canada (I don't remember the bank) that wanted to increase its security, so it added a 400W sodium light directly above the ATM. Muggers waited in the ornate bushes in the surroundings; after you stepped out of the light, you were pretty much blind for 10-20 minutes.

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[mikael]

What really gets to me is the construction of new playing fields which have huge stadium lights that remain on all night, even though the field is not being used or even undergoing maintenance. In cloudy weather, the clouds directly above are glowing white, while in fog, the entire block is covered in a brilliant white haze.
How much electricity are the owners spending on the electricity bill?

Color Issues.

[JackHoffman]

Wrong, all of it.

The spectral composition of light sources is far from irrelevant. The only case where it doesn't matter is when you look directly at the light source (TV, computer monitor) or at a surface which reflects the spectrum of the light source evenly (e.g. a projection screen or a white wall.) In every other case, a spiky light source spectrum results in improper color perception. One red color (e.g. a flower) can modulate the spectrum in a completely different way from another red (e.g. a shirt), even though they look exactly the same under a black body radiator light (light bulb, sun) at a certain temperature. The same two reds can look as different as red and black under a light source with only a very narrow band of red light in its spectrum. The difference in the color perception can only be reduced by making the emitted spectrum as similar to that of "natural" light as possible. That's why LEDs are still primarily used in effect lighting, to shine cones of colorful light onto known surfaces.

And yes, white LEDs are fluorescent. The yellowish stuff on the LED chip absorbs blue light and re-emits it as a broad spectrum from red to green. Because it's all so tiny, the exact amount of fluorescent spectrum light and the mixture with the original blue light from the chip is hard to control, which is why the light color of white LEDs is never the same.

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[ElAsturiano]

um...
what is the name of that theory that says that if a civilization has the resources/technology to build a shield around the entire planet then they are so advanced that they dont NEED a shield?
how about something way simpler. invest in motion detectors that turns lights on as you approach them (variably of course: 1 mile away for highways, 200 feet for hallways, you get the idea)

Mercury emissions are not propaganda

[Gary W. Longsine]

Propaganda by an opposing industry, you say. Do you mean that bastion of the vast left wing conspiracy against mercury known as the Christian Science Monitor?

Mercury Rising:
"SMOKY SKIES: The coal-burning Gavin Power Plant in Cheshire, Ohio, is one of the US's top producers of mercury, according to the EPA. In the US, power plants account for 60 percent of all mercury released into the air by industry."

Or do you mean an organization like the Department of Energy which has been controlled by an administration which is absurdly friendly to the energy industry? (See: Mercury Emission Control R&D).

Dude. Nobody, and I mean nobody, is in doubt about the mercury released into the atmosphere from human activity, and which then falls into the oceans. Even according to the Bush administration, about a third of this is apparently from burning coal. Oh, and look! The data in the DOE chart is from 1994 and 1995! The data from the Christian Science Monitor is ten years newer. Huh. Imagine that. As mercury emissions are reduced form other industries, the proportion of emissions from coal fire plants has gone up. Bummer. Undermines the DOE case against actually doing anything about the problem of emissions from coal fire plants in the US, which just doubled in importance, right then, by taking the time to understand the attempted deception in the graph.

There are a few reasons that any mercury is released at all from coal burning:

1. Coal has mercury in it,
2. we haven't widely deployed the best available technology for scrubbing the mercury out of the emissions, and
3. we haven't the technical ability to scrub it all out, even with the best available technology, and
4. even the best available technology is apparently widely variable in effectiveness, ranging from not effective at all (scrubbing zero percent of the mercury from the emissions), to somewhat effective (a third to half of emissions captured).

Although global mercury emissions have fallen in recent decades, they are still absurdly high. Human activity is causing a rising level of mercury found in top level predator fish, the kinds people like to eat, like tuna.

Mercury is a neurotoxin, and a general toxin, and it accumulates in organisms (Bioaccumulation of mercury). In tiny quantities, it's bad for you. It's particularly bad for those unborn children that the "Christian Right" proponents of "Family Values" love to go on and on about. They don't seem to care much if those children are born healthy, only that they get born. But I digress.

Were this not the case, we would not have research programs designed to figure out how to reduce these emissions, under this pro-industry, head-in-the-sand Republican administration. Unfortunately, the "propaganda" is on the other side of the issue. Even though the DOE can't deny this problem, due to the overwhelming nature of the evidence, they can still obfuscate it. Notice how the first paragraph of this article differs pretty dramatically in gestalt view of the problem, as compared to a paragraph from deeper in the body of the content:
Mercury Emission Control R&D

"Trace amounts of mercury can exist in coal and other fossil fuels. When these fuels burn, mercury vapor can be released to the atmosphere where it may drift for a year or more, spreading with air currents over vast regions of the globe. In 1995, an estimated 5,500 tons of mercury was emitted globally from both natural and human sources. Coal-fired power plants in the United States contributed less than 1 percent of the total."

Re:Mercury emissions are not propaganda

[dbIII]

Feel good assumptions are nice but gravity happens here :)

It's also amusing that so much was read between the lines to generate such a long post, including a special little "for the children" bit to make sure anybody questioning stuff that is drifting way off topic looks like a monster. The infidelity link was also amusing. I suggest we lay off the emotive stuff, you go and read a materials safety data sheet on Mercury to see exactly where we agree (I read it on the net via gopher even before the web existed so it is definitely there). Then consider that a lot of the discussion about traces of Mercury and other hazardous materials in coal is exactly so we take dangers into account and don't design things that will give us industrial revolution killer fogs. Unfortunately this sort of information has also been taken out of context notably by advertisers working for the Nuclear lobby.

Coal does have enough problems that we don't need to make up extra ones or assume that power plants have 1890's design boilers and bottom ash (gravity existed back then too) dumped into rivers. That is about when point 2 above was addressed in most of the world, point 3 is rather odd - where did that come from? Point 4 above relies on point 3 being true. If your emission controls in the USA were really all that bad you would all be arse deep in acid rain from the sulphurous coal there. Perhaps you are in some spots if there is sufficient corruption but the technology is not new. In short the greasy Moorlocks are keeping you safe by worrying about keeping dangerous stuff out of the air and water while others wander in the garden babbling about "Chemicals". You cannot run an industrial society without pollution controls, China has taken a few not paticularly large shortcuts and that's enough for a lot of health problems which are not related to mercury but the vast amounts of other nasty stuff you get when you burn vast amounts of fuel.

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[gr8scot]

This isn't remotely realistic, but having every steet enclosed and made of a reflective substance on the interior would mean light keeps bouncing around where we want it, instead of disappearing off into space. We would need much less lighting to illuminate streets if that was the case.

If this is your notion of a clever idea, I'm glad I don't have to maintain your code. No, it's neither realistic nor clever, but an array of mW semiconductor light sources would be more resilient than 100W+ light sources spaced 100ft+ from one another. The advantage is very similar to that which was DARPA's motivation for the Internet itself: redundancy and also failover.

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[totally bogus dude]

I'm not up to date on my lighting technology, so I wonder if this would actually be more efficient. Doesn't turning things on usually require a fairly significant burst of energy, comparable to simply leaving it on for quite a long time?

Not to mention the cost of all those motion detectors; keeping in mind that street lighting isn't only useful for cars.

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[totally bogus dude]

Yet we seem to have no problem with obliterating from view the equally stunning 180 degrees of view above us. Why?

I think it's more likely just to be that most people don't care. You want to look at the night sky, go on vacation somewhere that lacks light pollution. Just like how people who live near the great natural wonders of the world don't go and gawp at them every day because they get old fast, the night sky only holds interest to most people for a very short while. So while we could go to heaps of trouble to have cities only lit as much as they absolutely need to be, very few people would sit around marvelling at the night sky because they'd be used to it after the first few nights.

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[ichigo 2.0]

No, he's suggesting that women should expose their body to the light less often.

it's not a large concern-Heat load

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot to acount for the decreased heat load by going with a more efficient light source.

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[graft]

This is why the modern world sucks. The ancient world marveled at the night sky all the time. They wrote paeans to it. Us, we're willing to trade beauty for functionality. That's why the landscape is polluted with ugly wires, light, square-edged buildings, concrete barriers, asphalt roads, etc. That is depressing. What value does a beautiful landscape have to a society? An immeasurable quantity, so in dollar terms, none. But frankly I find it abhorrent that we're so obsessed with fungibles and don't give a shit about poetry.

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[Anonymous Coward]

Crooks are nearly invisible in the dark, unless they open their mouths.

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[Quiet_Desperation]

Interesting. Do you have any references for properly lighting your home for maximum crime deterrence?

Not handy. Google is your friend. The studies were more focused on commercial zones, if I recall correctly.

I have a streetlight right in front of my house, but have still had a couple minor criminal incidents.

Oh, well, that disproves everything then.

DO NOT leave lights on to "save" energy!

[BrunoUsesBBEdit]

This myth was busted on Mythbusters. Please stop spreading it.

Out of respect for the investment in a show's production I think you should always link to the official site when using content. http://discovery.com/mythbusters/

Annotation excerpt from http://kwc.org/mythbusters/2006/12/episode_69_22000_foot_fall_lig.html

Based on the amount of energy consumed turning on the bulb, they were able calculated how long the bulb would have to be turned off in order to make it worth the energy savings, i.e. "It's best to turn off the bulb if you are leaving the room for":

• Incandescent: 0.36 seconds
• CFL: 0.015 seconds
• Halogen: .51 seconds
• LED: 1.28 seconds
• Fluorescent: 23.3 seconds

In other words, its almost always best to turn the bulb off. Even the 23 seconds for the fluorescent lights isn't very long, and the rest of the times are pretty much blinks of an eye.

Don't be lazy. Google before you post!

Re:DO NOT leave lights on to "save" energy!

[totally bogus dude]

Well, thank you for setting me straight. My next question was of course going to be "what about bulb longevity?" but that's also answered on the same page, though I'm having trouble parsing it in a way that supports their "busted" conclusion:

They tested one final element of this myth: frequently turning lights on and off decreases their life span, thus leading to greater costs. Grant setup a timer and relay to turn the bulbs on and off repeatedly every 2 minutes. After six weeks, only the LED bulb was still working. Based on this test, they extrapolated that it would take five years of ordinary usage to cause the bulbs to burn out.

* busted *

So by setting up a test in which turning the lights on and off every two minutes caused nearly all of them to die within 6 weeks they were able to extrapolate that more "normal" usage patterns would make them last for much, much longer? And their conclusion is that turning them and on off doesn't affect their longevity?

I suppose the real conclusion is "yes it does affect their life, but it's only a very small factor and unless you're really abusing the light it won't make a difference compared to the other factors".

Don't be lazy. Google before you post!

ObYouMustBeNewHere.

Re:DO NOT leave lights on to "save" energy!

[BrunoUsesBBEdit]

I think it breaks down like this:
1. Bulbs can handle about 30240 (60 minutes * 24 hours * 7 days * 6 weeks / 2 minutes between toggles) power toggles.
2. It would take 5 years of normal usage to see 30240 toggles. (We are just accepting this as a statistic.)
3. Incandescent bulbs tend to be rated between 750 and 3000 hours based on http://genet.gelighting.com/LightProducts/Dispatcher?REQUEST=RESULTPAGE&CHANNEL=Consumer&FILTER=FT0010:General+Purpose_Standard&CATEGORY=Lamps_Incandescent_A-line_A19&CATEGORY=Lamps_Halogen_A-line_A19&BREADCRUMP=General+Purpose_Standard%23A19
4. There are 8760 hours (24 * 365) in a year, and 43800 hours in 5 years.
5. The bulb will burn out from its limited hour rating long before a normal user would damage it with toggles.

I think that makes sense. Does it to you?

Re:DO NOT leave lights on to "save" energy!

[totally bogus dude]

Well, it supports my conclusion so of course I think it makes sense! ;) Thanks.

I guess a lot of it is just perception; it sure seems to me like the majority of my bulbs go when I'm turning the light on, not while it's running. I'm not sure if that's true or if it's just because we notice it more than we notice lights going while the light is on. My kitchen light went the other day and I don't know when it happened, I just know that when I went to switch it on it didn't do anything.

Re:DO NOT leave lights on to "save" energy!

[BrunoUsesBBEdit]

The filament is most likely to do its separation during the high speed increase in temperature that happens when turning it on. But the deterioration that leads to the separation is (under normal usage) caused by the accumulated hours of illumination rather than the number of power toggles.

The landscape erosion is caused by wind and rain. In our analogy the power toggles are the wind. The Grand Canyon would have still been carved if there was less/no wind. (No analogy is perfect, don't nit-pick it. ;-)

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[MobyDisk]

I don't have any links, but I can tell you my experiences.

Behind my house, there is a nice spot for the local kids to sit and drink. That problem was eliminated by a flood light with a sensor positioned on the second floor. That area already had a street light illuminating it. IMHO, the sensor makes the difference because it gives the impression that you were "caught" and that someone could be watching you, as opposed to a constant light source covering the whole area.

The Chi Phi fraternity house at Ohio Wesleyan University used to have beautifully flood lights every few feet. They illuminated the building and the sign on the front lawn. The house was a constant target for theft and vandalism until they changed the lights to point at the grounds, not at the house. You need to be able to see the trespasser, not the other way around.

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[Gruneun]

Interesting. Do you have any references for properly lighting your home for maximum crime deterrence?

It's more about distribution of light than the intensity. For example, I have a small flashlight that mounts to my Sig .45 and a larger flashlight duct-taped to my German Shepherd's head.

It's all a concern

[Rog7]

Facing all of the problems together is the better solution IMHO. None of these energy usages are small unless you put them in percentages as you just have. This one is still on the list of significant, it should not be excluded or instead-of, it should be as-well-as.

The more solutions, the better.

Re:It's all a concern

[RingDev]

Just saying, investing $21M now in increasing penetration of high efficiency appliances will have a significantly larger impact on the economy and environment than investing $21M on a technology that is years (if not a decade) away from entering the market designed to replace an already efficient system.

-Rick

reflections

[White Yeti]

Agreed about the placement and usage, but almost all of those lights ARE pointing down. You're not seeing a line of street lights, you seeing a long strip of the ground lit up by street lights. Ture, it's usually a long unoccupied strip. How to account for "security" and public safety? The lights either stay on all the time, or use motion/heat sensors, or everyone has to wear a head-light that turns on automatically.

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[kimvette]

Yes it is a matter of safety, but take a look at the variety of fixtures available. In some towns there is widespread use of street light fixtures where there is NO horizontal face in the light's bezel; it's all down-facing, directing the light to the ground. There is some reflection from the ground to the sky of course (that is unavoidable) but in those areas the sky is much darker than it is in towns where conventional street lamps with the convex half-globes are used, with a lot of horizontal and even upward light emission.

Likewise for home lighting - why should any light be visible from ABOVE the lamp's install location? The light should be directed to the ground where it is needed, not up into the sky, not lighting the trees, and so forth. All it does is crap up the sky so we don't even know what the milky way looks like any more. Where I grew up I thought the sky was dark (it was probably somewhere between Class 4 and class 3, but then I've read about class 2 and class 1 sky and that the milky way is actually quite visible - not just as a faint lighted haze but with definite features, similar to what one sees in time-lapse photography. It's really sad that we never get to see those features. I'd rather look up and see the gorgeous galaxy we live in than to see an orangy glow at night.

How is sky 'darkness' rated?

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/08/20/070820fa_fact_owen
http://x.astrogeek.org/articles/article.php?article_id=1

How should light pollution be controlled?

http://www.darksky.org/mc/page.do?sitePageId=58881

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[kimvette]

Oh -- and when driving, how often are you blinded by the glare of street-side spot or flood lights, and your night vision trashed? I'm talking about ground-level floodlights and flood lights shining directly into oncoming traffic (usually those lights are for signs or flagpoles or decorative landscape or hardscape), or parking lots where the lights are aimed parallel to traffic? Those are wasteful, they are polluting the night sky with excessive light, and they are also safety concerns.

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[Anonymous Coward]

I can light up your home in simple elegant ways

Are you Harry Potter?

Fluorescent mercury not a huge problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the dangers of the mercury content of fluorescent lights are typically exaggerated.

"CFL bulbs each contain up to 5 milligrams of mercury, about 1/100th the amount in a thermostat or dental amalgam, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency."

Even breaking a bulb does not present any real health risk in terms of mercury vaporizing. More information is here: http://realestate.msn.com/Improve/Green/Article2.aspx?cp-documentid=6022543

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[ivan256]

Yeah, maybe if we were talking about ninjas, but I seriously doubt that your average thug is really going to lurk in the shadow cast by garbage can. Does this happen where you live? Besides, it isn't just about seeing a potential attacker it is about being seen by others in case you are attacked. And what about more innocent things like being seen by a car in a parking lot? I MUCH prefer to drive in the city with lit streets. It makes a huge difference. Ever seen a city block during a blackout?

[...]

You know why? Because people like having the outdoors illuminated... particularly public areas. It is a luxury that we in the so called "first world" can afford.

That's because they aren't very bright.

Sounds like somebody has never left the suburbs in his entire life.

The rest of the world can be quite nice. It'll be OK if you're more than 5 miles away from your mommy for a little while.

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[misleb]

Sounds like somebody has never left the suburbs in his entire life.

Sounds like somebody has no idea what they're talking about. I happen to live in Portland. And in case you don't know, we don't get a lot of clear skies at night most of the year. So even if we lived in a perfect world where cities gave off no light polution, I wouldn't be able to rely on the night sky to illuminate the environment.

Also, you do understand that ANY bright local light will ruin ones night vision and make the feeble light of the heavens totally useless, right? So unless you're willing to mandate that ALL lights be off at night in a city, there's just no way to rely on the night sky to illumunate things... even if you could guarantee that there'd never be cloud cover.

The rest of the world can be quite nice. It'll be OK if you're more than 5 miles away from your mommy for a little while.

WTF is your problem?