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LEDs Lighting Up the African Darkness
Peace Corps Online writes "In a non-electrified society, life is defined by the sun and little is accomplished once it sets around 6 pm. Only 19 percent of rural areas in Ghana have electricity. The rest use foul-smelling kerosene lamps to light their huts, which pollute, provide little light and are major fire hazards. But now Philips has partnered with KITE, a not-for-profit Ghanaian organization, to bring artificial light to villages that have no electricity. The new Philips products include a portable lantern which provides bright white light where it is needed, the Dynamo Multi LED self-powered (wind-up) flashlight that provides 17 minutes of light from two minutes hand winding, and the 'My Reading Light,' which is a solar-powered reading light with built-in rechargeable battery. 'People can now do things in the evening,' says Harriette Amissah-Arthur, KITE's director. 'If you could only see the joy these products bring the villagers. You look at their faces; you have to see it to believe it.'"
Doesn't the light attract gunfire?
And excellent PR for Philips.
This isn't the first product Philips have produced for developing countries.
See wood-burning stove: http://www.research.philips.com/newscenter/archive/2006/060227-woodstove.html
I wish they would make them available to buy in the developed world though. I'd love some of this gear for outdoor pursuits.
This article is biased towards Phillips' contribution... Shouldn't there at least have been a mention of the "Light Up the World Foundation" and Dave Irvine-Halliday (U of Calgary)?
http://www.ucalgary.ca/oncampus/weekly/nov4-05/schulich-lutw.html
http://www.google.com/search?q=philips+lutw
This game will waste your life. Don't clicky!
lightbulbs to force their replacement with fluorescent tubes containing hazardous mercury (and which are ill-suited for many applications that require instant operation or even harness their heat), rather than leapfrogging directly to LEDs etc.
they can feel the insomnia we Americans feel. Seriously, I hope this doesn't have a negative impact.
The EU has done no such thing. Yes, it banned the sale of classic lightbulbs (effective September 2012). But what you replace them with is your own choice, you are not forced into buying fluorescent tubes.
As usual, big CO test where nobody cares if they die, get blind, etc, and then *when the right time has come* sell where they need. Africa, raped continent. Has had medicine, technology, and many other breakthroughs before anybody, for free. Many times, they kill, but, who really cares? The article makes me *sick*.
The mercury problem is easily solvable. Just institute a deposit recycling system for the fluorescents, like there exists for bottles in many countries.
By the way, am I the only one to find the light from white LEDs irritating? Somehow I find it harder to see in LED light than with alternatives, even when the light output is theoretically comparable. It is as if the frequencies in its spectrum just miss the the ones my photoreceptors are tuned into...
If god wanted them to see at night he wouldn't have made it dark!
So this is either against the will of god, or, hmm no, no other alternative.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
It mandates that classic lightbulbs be phased out before equivalent, affordable LED replacements are ready for prime time. As in Australia, this does amount to triggering their large-scale replacement with fluorescent ones, and all the calculations and public pronouncements have been precisely to this effect.
I am the only one who thinks kerosene lamps actually do smell quite nice.
- Raynet --> .
Sounds like a plan (best described in /. style)...
1. ban something (pick short-lived widespread household consumable to maximize effect)
2. while there is only one alternative (with unwelcome side effects) available, let alone affordable
3. proclaim "what you replace them with is your own choice" (select from 2.)
4. (whose) profit?!
So Philips is the agent of the Devil?
think of this:
"In an electrified society, life is defined by the television and little is accomplished once it starts around 6 pm".
Philips makes lots of TVs too.... case proven :)
It is as if the frequencies in its spectrum just miss the the ones my photoreceptors are tuned into...
:-)
Well, that's because the LEDs actually are missing (large) components of the spectrum!
Even when your eyes are tricked into believing the light is white (by equally stimuling the three kinds of color-sensitive cells), the light reflected off of objects isn't "correct".
Imagine two green objects. One has true green pigment, the other has a mixture of yellow and blue pigment. Both look the same under incandescent light, because the light from a glowing filament emits a full spectrum .
When an LED doesn't emit a full spectrum the two objects don't like alike. The "true" green objects only reflects "true" green, not yellow + blue. The "yellow + blue" object doesn't reflect "true" green.
That's why it's hard to see in such light.
Your eyes (or brain) can adapt very well to changes in color temperature (yellowy incandescent light, or the blueish halogen light), but it can't cope with holes in the spectrum.
This goes for compact fluorescent lights as well, even as they keep getting better. The cheap ones are really crappy in this respect.
For fluorescent tubes there is a rating for color temperate and color rendition. It isn't used (as far as I know) for compact fluorescents as they score way to low on this scale. That would make the public relations department of the manufacturers unhappy.
"You look at their faces; you have to see it to believe it"
Well, now I finally _can_ see it.
Didn't someone do the sums on this and figure out that the mercury in one of these CFL 'bulbs' was offset by the lower pollution (itself containing some mercury) coming out of the power plant as a result of using the CFL?
Or maybe that was just propaganda from the CFL camp... time to do some reading.
Yes, you are not forced to buying fluorescent tubes.
You could always :-
1 - Sit in the dark
2 - Burn some books to make a dim campfire
3 - Harness the power of naturally light emitting bugs
Of course 1 is no solution at all, just the effect of the initial cause, 2 will piss off the "global warming/cooling/change" crowd, and 3 will piss of the "save the ant crowd".
Any more bright (excuse the pun) ideas ?
Can you name these "many applications"?
The slowest fluorescent bulb I have is in a little bedside lamp and it starts in under a second. It's not fast, but it's not as if I could actually do anything in the time between pressing the button and the light coming on.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
According to wikipedia ... assuming a coal fired plant this statement is correct - the total amount of mercury is lesser when using a CFL:
That's assuming *one* CFL can produce the equivalent light output of one incandescent lamp, which is where it all falls down. To get the equivalent of a 60W bulb using CFLs, you need about 40W worth of them.
Get a light meter and try it.
"The rest use foul-smelling kerosene lamps to light their huts, which pollute, provide little light and are major fire hazards."
In other words, the exact same type of lighting my grandfather's household relied on when he was a child. It's easy to forget that there are many people alive today that only had access to very primitive technology when they were young. And it wasn't because they couldn't afford it, but because it didn't exist anywhere on earth.
While I am sympathetic to the plight of countries that cannot afford modern technology for their entire population, and the massive infrastructure required to support it, I do keep in mind that we are talking about a gap of only a few generations - not centuries or millenia.
Better known as 318230.
If you live in a region where electricity comes from coal power, much more mercury will be put in the air from burning coal to power an incandescent bulb, than is contained in a CFL (which can be safely recycled). Granted a CFL won't work too well as refrigerator light....
Mercury is found in many rocks including coal. When coal is burned, mercury is released into the environment. Coal-burning power plants are the largest human-caused source of mercury emissions to the air in the United States, accounting for over 40 percent of all domestic human-caused mercury emissions.
from US EPA
Think Deeply.
Can you name these "many applications"?
Incandescent bulbs are still very useful, if only because they still have advantages over their current low-cost replacement (fluorescent bulbs) - instant turn-on, stable color rendition, operation at very high or very low temperatures and unity power factor. Never mind the toxcity and disposal issues with CFBs. LEDs address most of these points though.
Incandescent may be loosing its relevance, but banning them altogether is stupid IMHO.
the prospect (now fact) of handing our dwindling resources (including real estate) over to the same handful of felonious bastards who mucked US up scares some of US into further action to compensate.
A friend of mine is a senior researcher at Philips. The LEDs will be there by 2012.
Looks to me like they opened a market for led lamps (and fluorescent lamps of course). It's up to manufacturers to step in this market. What more do you want? Subsidies?
My own experiments, years ago, showed that in real world use CFLs are equivalent to about four times the wattage of standard 1000 hour incandescents, whereas full size fluorescents produce maybe 5 times the output of the same wattage incandescent. Linear 8W CFLs as used on boats and caravans give about the same actual illumination as a 20W tungsten-halogen bulb, because their light output is much less directional, but then they are much better at illuminating dark corners.
Case in point: when we moved to our present house, the kitchen used 3 100W bulbs. These have been satisfactorily replaced with 3 20W CFLs for the last 20 years. As different types of CFL have evolved, there has been no deterioration in light output, though it is important to buy good quality - GE or Philips - bulbs.
I note that the cost of LEDS is now becoming comparable in lifetime cost with CFLs. The main issue is that LED drivers are relatively inefficient because most of them waste a lot of power in series resistors. What is needed is a really efficient current driver IC for LEDs. This would drive up the efficiency of conversion and make them even more useful in the Third World.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Should I say something incendiary like: "This would never happen in America." in order to increase the likelihood of a response, or should I just politely ask for an instance where America banned a product that was widely-used, just because it was to the eventual greater common good...hmmm
No one will ever read this.
1000lm LED packs exist, although not in E27 socket format yet. A 100W LED would be much too bright for most applications (brighter than a 300W halogen lamp).
The "hazardous mercury" is pure scaremongering. Fluorescent lights are the primary light source in many work environments and they cause no problem. CFLs are just small fluorescent tubes with built-in starter electronics. In places where most electricity is produced by burning coal, the mercury pollution caused by incorrect disposal of fluorescent tubes is less than the mercury pollution from the coal.
CFLs can instantly provide 70% of their target brightness. If you choose your CFLs such that the power on brightness is sufficient for your application, you get an extra 50% after a few minutes and still save power and money.
Why doesn't it just tax them at a higher rate?
As big a fan of CFLs as I am (my house lighting is 99% CFL), banning incandescents is stupid. What do you use in the oven? CFLs NOR LEDs can withstand the heat. (Then there is the dryer and freezer, although leds might do the job, CFLs won't fare well there).
My Reading Light? I'm getting annoyed with people naming everything "My xxx". Was this started by Windows? Or was it "My Little Pony". My God. These people should hire some open source developers to name their products.
'If you could only see the joy these products bring the villagers. You look at their faces; you have to see it to believe it.'"
I smell pun... or at least a not so bright attempt at humor
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
While it would be nice to think everyone is going to just do everything they can to help developing countries, but the truth is cost has to come way down before a company will partner and do something like this. However, as it becomes better for the image of the country and create practical applications for a product, I'd like to think this will start getting much more popular in all fields of technology, to create cheaper more durable products at a faster rate.
The musings of just another geek and his junk.
Nothing like spreading the cultures of the modern world like a viral infection.
Why should people do things at night? So they can be productive and sleepless and spiritually void, dead, like the rest of the world? The sun goes down for a fucking reason.
I hope this project ultimately fails.
Fuck America, fuck modern living.
Your eyes (or brain) can adapt very well to changes in color temperature (yellowy incandescent light, or the blueish halogen light), but it can't cope with holes in the spectrum.
That's bullshit. The eye has photoreceptors for three colors. Each type of photoreceptor has a smooth response curve over a wide band of wavelengths. The response from a photoreceptor only varies in intensity when light of different wavelengths strikes it. Missing bands in the spectrum can cause incorrect color rendition, but do not trigger some "subconscious" reaction to otherwise invisible gaps in the spectrum. It's as if the object in question simply had a slightly different color. CFLs with a CRI close to 90 are almost indistinguishable from incandescent bulbs. The small remaining differences are inconsequential in normal environments without special color rendition requirements (like pre-press), and the option to increase the light throughput by 50-100% while still saving power gives CFLs the edge.
Your light meter is broken.
What more do you want?
Freedom of choice, thank you very much.
Who makes these CFLs with a CRI close to 90, and where do you get them?
Most bulbs don't even list the color temperature, much less CRI.
The title is racist!
If I were a hippie ;-) I'd cite lava lamps and illuminated blocks of salt, but suffice it to wish you you best of luck with an LED in your oven and a CFL in your fridge or snow-covered yard.
Oh, and the latter (unlike lightbulbs) even at room temperature do take significantly longer to reach full brightness than the "one second" you postulate.
R-12 comes to mind.
And how about finally giving credit to us pollocks for our contribution of the solar powered flashlight, my people have been ridiculed for long enough on this one.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
The Dulux series by Osram is marked with color temperature and CRI in one number: An 827 CFL is a 2700K light with a color rendering index >80. Osram makes compact 930 lights (CRI>90 3000K), but not (yet) in the "normal" E27 socket format. Consumers looking to replace incandescent bulbs should go for 827 CFLs, as they're the drop-in replacement with a light color and color rendering quality closest to incandescent bulbs. ("Daylight" and other color temperatures >3000K are what most people associate with sterile, cold fluorescent tube light. 2700K is the "warm" yellowish light they're used to from incandescent bulbs.)
banning incandescents is stupid. What do you use in the oven?
Indeed! Neither CFLs nor LEDs give off enough heat to work in an oven.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Unlike the OLPC folks! Let there be light!!!
I have an LED headlight for my bicycle.. its very bright .. and very expensive .. it cost $200, and its the cheapest way to obtain safe night-riding ability.
and ive never ever noticed any weirdness to its color spectrum .. Of course, at night one is not looking for incorrect color rendition .. nonetheless, it works, it makes night into day, it keeps me alive... and for those advantages, its priceless.
tkjtkj@gmail.com
"There are 11 kinds of people: those who know binary, those who don't, and those who could not care less!"
Hear, hear! I'm a big fan of tax credits for this thing-give people an incentive rather than a punishment. Why use a stick when a carrot works just as well?
A legislative ban on incandescents is just plain stupid for the reasons you mentioned. If you follow the electrons incandescent bulbs aren't a problem. Hell, what is the problem in the first place? Greenhouse gas production and pollution, which comes from many sources including electricity production. Look at overall energy use to see the heart of the problem:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_use_in_the_United_States has charts clearly showing that the largest energy use is industrial and transportation, energy which in turn is generated by burning fossil fuels directly as with internal combustion engines or indirectly by electricity generation.
The bottom line: CFL's save drop in an ocean.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
'If you could only see the joy these products bring the villagers. You look at their faces; you have to see it to believe it.'
I bet their eyes light up!
"Congratulations, Boots. Your robot has become self-aware. You're a daddy now." -- Dr. Rho Bowman
Halogen light bulbs use tungsten filaments, JUST LIKE ORDINARY BULBS.
Two main differences:
- The filament is run at a much higher temperature, resulting in higher efficiency (around 20%).
- The gas inside the quartz "bulb" (the inner bulb, if you're buying a large bulb as a replacement) is a halogen gas (thus the name). These molecules combine with tungsten evaporated from the filament and effectively redeposits the tungsten on the filament. This results in longer lifetime.
End result: Longer lasting bulb, higher efficiency, roughly same environmental impact as normal bulb during production and disposal, still incandescent light (so no gaps in the output spectrum).
The one downside to halogen bulbs is that they get a lot hotter. Why? They have lower heat output, right? Yes, they do, but the AREA is a lot smaller due to the close proximity of the quartz. An outer bulb, such as typically present in a large-format "normal bulb replacement" (E26 base in the US), reduces this problem to about the same as for an ordinary bulb.
Pretty much any light that is on for less than an hour a week. That's less than $1 of electricity a year, saving $0.75 of it with a more expensive, slower, less reliable (IME) bulb, isn't worth it.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
If you have to wind it up, you are exchanging one form of energy for another. It is not self powered.
I read Slashdot for the headlines, because the headlines, unlike the articles, are usually original and never duplicated
You can actually see the gaps in the spectrum yourself if you use a refracting object like a prism. It's pretty neat.
(I'm only quoting the most relevant part of your text, but I'm responding to the whole post).
Imagine two green objects. One has true green pigment, the other has a mixture of yellow and blue pigment. Both look the same under incandescent light, because the light from a glowing filament emits a full spectrum .
BS. Normal incancesdents are NOT full spectrum. That's why they produce such a nasty yellow light (color temp around 2700K).
LEDs are available in a variety of color temps, but it is true that it is very difficult to make "full spectrum" LED light. OTOH, Fluorescents, including CFLs, are widely available in full spectrum. Yes, your average $1.50 CFL from Walmart is NOT full specturm, but they are easily available.
I agree on the point that if the CRI rating were listed on all lights, nearly all LEDs and any non-full spectrum CFLs would score horribly. Normal incancesdents would not fare very well either.
If you want quality light, buy full spectrum. If you want really low TCO, buy LED. If you're an old dog who can't learn the new trick of liking non-yellow light, buy anything with a color temp around 2700k.
Thank you /., the place where every nerd can pick nits 'til the apocalypse comes.
I deliminate with tabs. Get used to it.
"But what you replace them with is your own choice"
I think I'll replace mine with foul-smelling kerosene lamps.
Just a tip to anyone contemplating buying an LED headlight for a bicycle. It is cheaper and just as effective to buy a small LED flashlight. I have a Fenix L2D and I mount it with a Twofish Flashlight Holder. At $50 a pop you can get a couple and mount one on the bars and one on your head and still save over a bike specific light. There are many other options. Check out the Electronics, Lighting, and Gadgets forum on bikeforums.net for tons of information and advice.
Normal incancesdents are NOT full spectrum. That's why they produce such a nasty yellow light (color temp around 2700K).
Ok, let me rephrase that. Incandescents have a spectrum without gaps, but are (as all black body radiators) limited in upper frequency. Normal bulbs emit a yellow light (stronger in the red part, not so much towards the blue part of the spectrum), halogen bulbs go somewhat further up the spectrum and thus appear more white. Compared to daylight, even halogen is yellow. The point being made is that the spectrum has no gaps, it is just gradually attenuated at the upper part.
Fluorescents, including CFLs, are widely available in full spectrum.
I have sought high and wide, but I can't get CFL's with good color rendition. Even the ones marketed as "full spectrum" aren't very good! It appears the term "full spectrum" is used to denote "whiter" light, not "gapless" light. I can find excellent fluorescent tubes, but not CFL's. They do get better, but they have a lot of catch-up to do compared to the tube variety. I don't know why, both technologies look the same to me. Apparently they aren't.
LEDs aren't suitable for general lighting. Not bright enough and terrible color rendition. Doesn't matter for some uses, but matters a lot for general use.
I spent some time in northern Sudan as a child. We had kerosine lamps that used wicks, and Petromax pressure lamps that used a mantle (like the Coleman lamps in the USA). As an 8-year-old I loved having my own kerosine lamp to read by in bed. Yeah, it was dim -- but in a pitch black room with dark-adapted eyes, it was plenty.
They DO pollute, they ARE a fire hazard... but the world will be a little poorer when the last kerosine lamp is gone.
I piss off bigots.
At night your color vision isn't all that great anyway. The color photoreceptors aren't as sensitive as the "black and white" receptors.
But, as an experiment you can do at home: find something that has a lot of different colors, but it must not be printed (as the print proces only uses 4 inks to make up all the colors). Perhaps a box of crayons, or paint samples. During daylight (or incandescent light) sort them into a gradual rainbow. Wait until dark, and shine your LED headlight on them. See the difference? Some colors appear way darker / lighter this way. That is the effect of gaps in the spectrum.
That's why they produce such a nasty yellow light (color temp around 2700K).
You mean that's why they produce such a gorgeous soft yellow light. The only light superior to incandescent is candle light.
What really gets me is when they advertise "daylight" bulbs that give off a blue light, when sunlight is clearly yellow.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Analog television.
The EU has done no such thing. Yes, it banned the sale of classic lightbulbs (effective September 2012). But what you replace them with is your own choice, you are not forced into buying fluorescent tubes.
Quite true. You can sit in the dark.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
As a final note, it is possible to produce fluorescents that give a rendering much closer to mean sunlight than do incandescent bulbs, whereas the only way to get the effect with incandescents is to use filters which stop most of the visible radiation from them, meaning that a very high wattage is needed. In the good old days we needed 1000W Photofloods with special film for color indoor photography, which you can do just fine nowadays with standard discharge flashlamps that are built into cameras.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
It is as if the frequencies in its spectrum just miss the the ones my photoreceptors are tuned into...
Well, that's because the LEDs actually are missing (large) components of the spectrum! :-)
Even when your eyes are tricked into believing the light is white (by equally stimuling the three kinds of color-sensitive cells), the light reflected off of objects isn't "correct". Imagine two green objects. One has true green pigment, the other has a mixture of yellow and blue pigment. Both look the same under incandescent light, because the light from a glowing filament emits a full spectrum .
No!
Incandescent light is extremely blue deficient. It's not at all "full spectrum".
Colors look approximately right under incandescent illumination because your eyes are extremely good at color-adjusting the signal to the brain to compensate for the ambient light, and "most" things you tend to look at don't have sharp spectral bands. But in the case you describe, where a green color is synthesized from a blue and a yellow reflectance band, it will look very different under sunlight and incandescent light. (Look up "alexandrite", for example)
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
The mercury problem is easily solvable. Just institute a deposit recycling system for the fluorescents, like there exists for bottles in many countries.
They will end up in the trash in most countries anyway.
By the way, am I the only one to find the light from white LEDs irritating?
Nope. They're fluorescents too. There also exist tri-color white LEDs which have red/green/blue LEDs and some circuitry to balance the color out, but they're far more expensive and don't necessarily converge properly, leading to colored ghosts around the edges.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The EU has done no such thing. Yes, it banned the sale of classic lightbulbs
Do you even know what an incandescent bulb is??
But what you replace them with is your own choice
How can it be "your own choice" if you no longer have the option of the "classic lightbulbs"?
Yeah, I usually try not to name my home porn "My xxx" though.
These people should hire some open source developers to name their products.
How would GNU/My Reading Light be any better?
If you want to be even cheaper, make your own. National Semiconductor LM3405 driver chip and half a dozen associated components (this link has what I consider to be the snazziest design software I've ever seen, that'll crank out a list of the precise parts you need and even send them to you) plus a couple Philips LumiLED LXHL-BW02's from Future
Electronics (the cheapest source) and you have a lovely little light that'll run for days off a 9v battery. Since a 9V is a crappy way to run a light, price/performance-wise, you could use a boost driver like an LM2623 to run your LED's off 2 AA cells, and that's an easy design too.
If it's not obvious from the foregoing, I design parts of these chips, so my referrals of their site isn't altruisic. They're good chips, anyway. Although so are Maxim's.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
SunNight Solar Enterprises Corp has been selling something like this for a few years. You can purchase a pair of rechargeable LED flashlights - one for you, one for charity - for between $50 to $60. You can choose where in the world you would like the donated flashlight to go.
The two I have are best flashlights I've ever owned. They're solid, heavy duty plastic with a durable power switch. I've been using my first one for two years now. The original rechargeable batteries are still working, and the light *just works*.
http://www.bogolight.com/
I replaced all my ceilings with glass, and filled my attic with fireflies.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
The LED's are here now, if you have access to the vast pool of $'s you need to implement them. One article said on the order of $60k to do a nice big home. Even if your home is 1/60th of "nice big" that's still $1k.
Going on means going far
Going far means returning
You need to count the sunlight that gets spread out by the atmosphere, making that lovely blue sky. Add up the blue sky and the yellow-looking Sun, and you get a bluish-white light.
The result is that natural shadows have a bluish cast. People look more natural outdoors because the shadows of their face get this.
To reproduce, method 1:
Cover your ceiling with an array of colored LEDs that point down. Focus the red and green ones to a 1-degree angle. Spread out the blue ones. Of course, this requires about a million LEDs for a typical room.
To reproduce, method 2:
Get a very high ceiling with bluish-white lights way up high. (mercury, halogen, LED, etc.) Focus the lights into 1-degree downward beams. At a normal ceiling height, add a false ceiling made from aerogel. (possibly with glass to support it) The aerogel acts like atmosphere, spreading the blue more than the red and green.
To reproduce, method 3:
Split the light with a prism, then put it back together without the blue. A couple custom plastic parts over a white LED should do the job. The blue is allowed to leak out the side, unfocused.
How can it be "your choice" what to have for dessert if the gubmint won't allow you to have pot brownies?
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
Not one mention of the BoGo lights? Sun Night Solar has been doing this for a long time.
http://www.sunnightsolar.com/
This plan even lets you get one for your self. I have not ordered yet but I still may.
James
I lived in Ghana for 5 years myself. I'm not sure why exactly we strive to turn every other country in to a hustling and bustling society where everything is impersonal and children grow up in broken homes. The more we impress our lifestyle on theirs, the more they will lose their own culture, and Ghana is one of the most modern West-African countries, they have already lost an appalling amount of culture and tradition to the western "movement".
In my experience, inexpensive rechargeable batteries tend to last about a year. If they start dumping these lights on Africans, the only results I can see would be:
One is that they will become addicted--"Getting" to work later means someone will find a way to exploit that work, and it will become a way of life.
If they are cheap and in plentiful supply, they will end up in landfills of otherwise mostly organic material--something that certainly can't be good for the environment (We don't dump our batteries in landfills any more, but we did for decades).
Once they are addicted to this type of work, Phillips will have a steady income stream for a year or two until China figures out how to make and deliver them cheaper.
Overall--I'm not sure I see the win.
Why ban when you can profit? In America, we'll just raise taxes on whatever that product is, to incentify the reduction of use for the eventual greater common good. Cigarettes come to mind...
Actually almost all people have 4 colors, and some have 5.
RGB are the 3 you think of, and the exact wavelength moves around depending on the person. Many (men, usually) are RG colorblind - their R and G are very close together or identical. Many (women, usually - often mothers of the RG blind men - usually called tetrachromats) get a 5th receptor somewhere.
But the _4th_ receptor that everyone has is basically ultraviolet. Most light in this spectrum is blocked by the fluid in our eyes, so we get very, very little of it. But it's why those deep violet LEDs look so neat - they're not in the 3 receptors we get the most use of.
My 'usually' above might be 'always'; I can't remember.
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
Where do people "recycle" their worn out batteries?
In a non-electrified society, even less is accomplished after dusk. Especially in the shorter winter months.
Why doesn't it just tax them at a higher rate?
As big a fan of CFLs as I am (my house lighting is 99% CFL), banning incandescents is stupid. What do you use in the oven? CFLs NOR LEDs can withstand the heat. (Then there is the dryer and freezer, although leds might do the job, CFLs won't fare well there).
Not all incandescent lights are banned, there are exceptions for things like oven lights.
BlueMax offers 94CRI CFLs. There are others.
Or :-
4 - Use halogens
A spokesperson from Phillips mentioned this on the BBC's 'Breakfast' show a few weeks back in response to complaints from visually impaired people that the long(er) warm-up time and limited spectral range of fluorescent energy savers left them in the dark.
And there's LEDs too.
Actually sunlight is blue, the sun looks bluish in space. Its only because the blue frequencies are scattered across the sky that the sun looks yellow on the ground. Bizarre but true.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
I highly recommend not doing it that way. A flashlight mounted on the bike is illegal in some jurisdictions. There are legal requirements for light cones emitted by vehicle lights. An excellent choice is a B+M LUMOTEC IQ Fly senso plus.Powered by a hub dynamo, it uses a light sensor to switch on and off automatically, it stores some energy in a capacitor to keep the LED lit (with reduced intensity) at a stop and the cone of light is optimized for bike use. It's 60 EUR (ca. $75, incl. tax, excl. shipping). All legal reasons aside: Compare that to buying a good quality LED flashlight, a flashlight holder and batteries and having to charge the batteries every 2-3 hours of use. The B+M is well worth the money. The difference between that and a standard halogen bike light is like night and day. The top of the line product is the B+M LUMOTEC IQ Cyo R senso plus, but that's 50% more. (I am not associated in any way with B+M, just a very satisfied customer. The above links are to the manufacturer and not referral links.)
People "did things in the evening" long before electric lights. And they didn't have to crank anything.
The wife may disagree with you.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
"Most people in Africa don't have an abbundance of books, so why do they need a solar powered reading lamp in the tent? Especially if it's only going to attract bandits anyway. "
An Epiphany just occurred to me. Something like the Kindle would be perfect for a third-world country.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
I have modified this project to make bike light that uses single 1.5V battery, four white LEDs in the front light and one red LED in the black connected in series. It can work on 1.2V Ni-MH battery too, it is cheap and easy to build. I have used E core transformer form broken mobile phone charger instead of ferrite bead. The next version I'll build will use single Li-Ion cell and will have integrated recharger.
"LEDs Lighting Up the African Darkness"
How racist..:O
They were plenty light to read by. So long as you are not trying to be wasteful (lighting your driveway or water features etc - which Africa tends to lack anyway) then low lighting is adequate.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I don't think we are replacing them with fluorescent tubes, we have had those for long and most of my light-bulbs are already of that kind. I know where to get LED lights here to so .. Not that I would buy them at their current state since they suck but anyway.
I think people should be allowed to choose themselves though, especially for those who need light with a good range of wavelengths. I have my TV on now even though I'm in another room, all light on, receiver probably on, and so on, people waste lots of electricity anyway, better learn us to try to save and turn things on we don't use/need and so on than banning specific items and believe that will solve everything.
Especially when they are superior in some ways.
I still want a light source with as natural light as possible though, but it's hard to find anything at a decent price. Feel free to suggest products.
and, if you want to get away from electricity, a gas mantle.
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Is it a blanket ban on incandescent bulbs? If the tungsten photonic lattice becomes practical (GE seems to be working on it), we could have good old glass-and-tungsten incandescent bulbs that are two to four times more efficient than they are now.
I heard that Incandescent bulbs were useful in Canada to help reduce the consumption of electrical heating. Don't ask me the math for it. I suppose that it is something like net power = power (for light) - power (dissipated heat).