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Boing Boing's Maggie Koerth-Baker writes:
Trouble is, they're being oversold, like whoa. For about two-and-a-half years, I've been reporting on LED lighting for a trade magazine called Architectural SSL*. During that time, I've watched mainstream press and enviro blogs tout LEDs as the green energy miracle light. Often, with a level of enthusiasm seldom seen outside rooms full of puppies. Don't get me wrong. LEDs are pretty cool. There are places where they're useful now, and places they probably will be soon. But if you're just hearing about the awesome, you aren't getting the full story. And, as more LED products start showing up on store shelves, that really starts to matter.Join me, won't you, as we put on our Sober Assessment Goggles and take a peek at the current state of light bulb of the tomorrow...
Lighting + Appliances make up 26% of home energy usage:
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/kids/energy.cfm?page=us_energy_homes
Could find anything the breaks down lighting all by itself, but even if we consider all of that part of the pie to be lighting, it's still not the biggest chunk by far.
Efficiency wise, CFLs are already pretty good, and they're cheep enough that you can buy a pack now and then and slowly replace all the lights in your house--there's no need to remortgage anything to do it. Heating/cooling is by far the single biggest energy user, but there's only so much that cheep improvements can do there.
In other words, we don't particularly need new lighting technology. We need to get what we have spread out there more.
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CLFs aren't all they're cracked up to be, their biggest failing is that they add to the electromagnetic pollution whch may yet finish us. Try listening to AM radio with one on. Is this simply poor design or is it a fundamental fault, does anyone know?
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As a fellow lighting enthusiast i'd have to agree with the points you've made. Many of the products on the shelves are simply useless especially here in Australia. There may be applications for Led lighting but they're far from main stream. Im interested to see which manufacturers will start to utilise some of the new Seoul LED's and the higher end Cree products. I found these guys that may be useful to whoever is in Australia: http://www.led-lighting.com.au
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