LED and OLED Home Lighting Systems Almost Ready for Prime Time
by Collin Dunn, Corvallis, OR, USA on 04. 9.08
Photo credit: matthewvenn
Today's New York Times has a special section on innovation in technology, and among the things they see in their crystal ball is LED and OLED lighting systems for the home. Just around the corner, just about within reach.
Benefits of LED and OLED lighting
Among their charms, LEDs and OLEDs have a nearly unlimited ability to be fine-tuned, allowing for things like improved light quality and focused directional light, and, perhaps most notably, are much more energy efficient than their incandescent and compact fluorescent counterparts.
Bringing the LED/OLED technology to market
The technology has been on the horizon for awhile now -- we've seen a sprinkling of LED bulbs and lamps, and have been tracking the development of OLEDs (that's organic light emitting diodes) with interest -- and, as with many technological innovations, they're a little buggy and a little (or a lot) spendy early in their development. But they're getting some help; according to the article, "the Department of Energy is financing projects to overcome technical and marketing problems that have prevented the technology from successfully challenging more conventional incandescent and fluorescent lighting."
A few obstacles keeping LEDs and OLEDs from wide use
Still, there's a ways to go before we can expect to have an LED bulb in every socket, or an OLED in every panel or light box. Cost and light diffusion are two obstacles keeping the technologies from flooding the market, but that's slowly changing; LEDs are finding their place as a replacement for halogen bulbs, and better diffusers are making them more viable as incandescent and CFL replacements. When will this happen? The crystal ball is a bit murky on this one, but it appears that the future of LEDs and OLEDs is brighter than ever. ::New York Times
See also: ::Office Building Lit by 100% LED Light, ::9W LED Bulb Replaces 70W Incandescent, ::Osram Claims Warm White Organic LED Breakthrough and ::Green Basics: Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs
OSRAM Opto Semiconductors and celebrated lighting designer Ingo Maurer have unveiled a revolutionary lighting application based on organic LEDs (OLEDs) at the Light+Building Fair in Frankfurt am Main, Germany (April 6-11, 2008). More about OLED lighting at:
http://www.oled-display.net/oled-lighting
here's another cool LED lamp.
not sure if this is available in the US.
http://www.lighting.philips.com/microsite/living_colors/
I hope they do better than current LED night lights. I put LED night lights in my bathrooms, including one that had an integrated power-failure light function. We had a brief power outage, and none of them has worked since. I'm guessing a power spike killed them. Will I need surge protection on all my (future) LED lights?
My oppinion on this topic is:
Led Lighting, The World's Final Frontier
My oppinion on this topic is:
Led Lighting, The World's Final Frontier
LED lamps are already in prime time. I installed several lamps at home, to replace halogen lamps that burned out. They cost about 2 to 2.5 times as much as the comparable halogen lamps they replaced, but use MUCH LESS electricity. I replaced 50W halogen lamps with 1.5W LEDs.
The LEDs also last much longer than the halogens, which may burn out after a few months. This by itself justifies the higher cost, since each of the LED lamps have already lasted longer than 2 or 3 of the halogen lamps they replaced.
In terms of comfort, the LED's light looks a bit blue compared to halogen and incadescent lamps. The light quality is closer to that of flourescents, but without the flicker.