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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). "
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
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.
LEDs might have heavy metals in them but this is well encapsulated and amortized over a far longer lifetime (100k hours vs 10k hours).
Engineering is the art of compromise.
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.
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.
They already use fluorescents, which are more efficient than any commercially available LED I have seen. Note the "commercially available" part.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
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).
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
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.
"Is Donald Trump a racist? I'll let you decide 'Yes' for yourself."
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.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
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.
"Is Donald Trump a racist? I'll let you decide 'Yes' for yourself."