Tags: Technology of a light bulb, Energy saving, lightbulb, energy saving light bulb, light, light bulb, energy saving bulb, energy saving lighting, LED, led lighting, christmas lights, led christmas lights, holiday lights, santa, Holiday lighting, energy saving christmas lights
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Its the Holiday Season and running those Christmas Lights can really jack up your energy costs.. A great solution for this is changing for traditional (incandescent) Christmas lights to LED Christmas lights.
Cherie Jacobs, a Progress Energy spokeswoman, says:
Running 10 strands of 100 LED light bulbs during evenings for the month of December will cost about 70 cents.
• Running 10 strands of 100 conventional light bulbs during evenings for the month of December will cost about $7 — 10 times as much.
The Electric Power Research Institute says if seasonal lights nationwide were replaced with LED lighting, carbon emissions could be reduced by as much as 400,000 tons per year and electricity cost savings would exceed $250 million.
Thanks to By Ivan Penn, Times Staff Writer for the info
Tags: Technology of a light bulb, Energy saving, incandescent lightbulb, energy saving light bulb, incandescent light bulb, light bulbs, light bulb, energy saving bulb, energy saving compact light bulb, energy saving lighting, incandescent lightbulb ban, LED, led lighting, green, new york times, new york times led article, eric taub
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Zoinks! Its me Dr. Z! LED’s are all the rage in lighting and now the New York Times is running another article on their energy saving benefits..Dig this article!
By ERIC. A. TAUB
Published: November 29, 2009
Does the latest generation of energy-saving light bulbs save energy? A comprehensive study conducted by Osram, the German lighting company, provides evidence that they do.
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Rick Friedman for The New York Times
A standard incandescent bulb over its life will use almost five times the energy of an LED bulb, a German study concluded.
That is because no one knew if the production of LED lamps required more energy than needed for standard incandescent bulbs. While it is indisputable that LEDs use a fraction of the electricity of a regular bulb to create the same amount of light, if more energy were used in the manufacturing and distribution process, then the lighting industry could be traveling down a technological dead end.
The study results show that over the entire life of the bulb — from manufacturing to disposal — the energy used for incandescent bulbs is almost five times that used for compact fluorescents and LED lamps.
The energy used during the manufacturing phase of all lamps is insignificant — less than 2 percent of the total. Given that both compact fluorescents and LEDs use about 20 percent of the electricity needed to create the same amount of light as a standard incandescent, both lighting technologies put incandescents to shame.
“We welcome these kinds of studies,” said Kaj den Daas, chief executive of Philips Lighting North America. The Osram study “provides facts where we often have only emotional evidence.” Philips recently became the first entrant in the Energy Department’s L Prize, a race to develop the first practical 60-watt LED equivalent to a standard light bulb.
To calculate what is know as a Life Cycle Assessment of LED lamps, Osram compared nearly every aspect of the manufacturing process, including the energy used in manufacturing the lamps in Asia and Europe, packaging them, and transporting them to Germany where they would be sold. It also looked at the emissions created in each stage, and calculated the effect of six different global warming indexes.
Those included the amount of greenhouse gas emissions created by each process, the acid rain potential, eutrophication (excessive algae), photochemical ozone creation, the release of harmful chemical compounds, and the resultant scarcity of gas, coal, and oil.
Compact fluorescents also contain harmful mercury, which can pollute the soil when discarded.
In addition to the amount of electricity needed for each process, the energy used and the emissions created as a result, were also calculated. In China and Malaysia, where part of the LED production took place, that meant coal and natural gas respectively. In Germany, where the lamps would be sold, electricity is created from a mix of coal, nuclear and renewable sources.
The methodology followed the procedures set down in ISO 14040/44, an industry standard. The results were certified by three university professors in Denmark and Germany as adhering to the standard.
“The difference in energy use between incandescents, compact fluorescents and LEDs is definitely significant,” said Dr. Matthias Finkbeiner of Berlin’s Technical University and chairman of the study’s review committee. “The results are very stable.”
While 60-watt lamps are more popular light sources, they were not used in the study as Osram does not yet have a commercial version. The amount of energy used to illuminate 60-watt-type lamps would increase, but the increase would effect all types of lamps and therefore not change the relative results, according to Dr. Berit Wessler, head of innovations management at Osram Opto Semiconductors in Regensburg, Germany.
Dr. Wessler expects the results to shift even more in favor of LEDs, as newer generations of that technology become even more efficient, requiring less energy to produce the same amount of light.
“Everything I’ve seen strengthens the assumption that LED efficiency will increase,” she said. “There has not been much improvement in incandescent efficiency in the last 10 years.”
How To Cook A Turkey With A Light Bulb And DVD-Rs November 23, 2009Posted by Dr. Z Bulbs in Weird Bulb News.
Tags: Cooking Turkey, Cooking Turkey with Light bulb, Household Hacker, incandescent light bulb, incandescent lightbulb, light bulb, light bulb joke, light bulbs, lightbulb, Technology of a light bulb, Thanksgiving Turkey, Turkey, weird news
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Zoinks! I have seen lightbulbs used for many strange and varied things in my time.. but this one can cook your bird! The people at Householdhacker.com have made the following video to show how you can cook your Thanksgiving Turkey with a light bulb! Why didn’t I think of that?
In this special Thanksgiving episode we will show you how to cook a turkey using a light bulb and 4 DVD-R discs. Happy Thanksgiving from Household Hacker! Our website is at: http://www.householdhacker.com.
How Many Lightbulbs? November 2, 2009Posted by Dr. Z Bulbs in Light bulbs in pop culture, cfl, light bulb, compact fluorescent.
Tags: Energy saving, lightbulb, fluorescent, fluorescent tube, incandescent lightbulb, compact fluorescent light bulb, fluorescent lighting, cfl, energy saving light bulb, incandescent light bulb, fluorescent light bulb, light, compact fluorescent, light bulb, energy saving bulb, energy saving compact light bulb, energy saving lighting, compact fluorescent shape, LED, led lighting, Physicist David Mackay, Cambridge University physicist, heat, wind turbines, Energy Crisis, oil myths, coal, gas, lightbulbs physics science, Science Tips Stephen Fry, Energy Crisis Sustainable Fossil Fuels Climate Control Power Wave Wind
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Zoinks! Check Out Physicist David Mackay’s video of how the light bulb provides a graphic way of communicating to non-physicists the scale of the energy gap now facing our society! Light bulbs will always lead the way for me!
Cambridge University physicist, David Mackay, in a passionate, personal analysis of the energy crisis in the UK, in which he comes to some surprising conclusions about the way forward. The film is based on his new book Sustainable Energy without the hot air, in which Prof Mackay has calculated the numbers involved for the alternatives to fossil fuels like coal, gas and oil.
He debunks some myths about energy saving – unplugging our phone chargers, does not make any appreciable difference. After showing us what won’t work – he goes on to show what will make a difference at home, like turning your thermostat down.
But, his big point is that this will not be enough – individual efforts are not enough. Instead we need to make sweeping national changes to our energy production, and we can’t reject everything available to us. If we are going to follow the advice of climate scientists, and get off fossil fuels by 2050, which currently provide 90% of our energy, Britain’s main options are wind power and nuclear power. But to make this huge change in our power supply, Mackay says that we have to get building now!
For more information go to David Mackays website