Major report on LED lighting due out Monday

[dnix71]

http://www.opticsinfobase.org/oe/abstract.cfm?uri=oe-16-26-21835

The "realistic" efficiency of LEDs is 2 1/2 times that of floruescent tubes, according to the report. Roughly 1 Billion barrels of oil would be saved over 10 years by making a dedicated effort to replace existing incadescent and flourescent lighting with LED's, and 1.8 trillion dollars US saved.

Has a link on the page to download the report in PDF form. If you save-link-as it gives you a file called viewmedia.cfm. Rename the file viewmedia.pdf and it opens fine.

[electrondady1]

1.8 trillion !

 gee, that's more than enough to pay off all those crooked bankers.

you know,the ones that have sent the entire world economy into the toilet.

[BigBreaker]

LEDs generate a lot of heat in the fixture.  It will be important for LED's efficiency to be even higher than today's commercially available ones so that consumers can use them in regular sockets.  Today's models need big heat sinks that are expensive and odd looking.

Spectral characteristics and diffusivity could be better as well.  LEDs by nature only generate a single narrow band of color.  Most people like broad spectrum white light which is a combination of all the colors.

So right now LEDs are good at a narrow range of lighting uses.  That will expand, but it takes a while.  Organic LED (OLED) technology is an interesting direction that some of the research has taken.

[fcfcfc]

So far I am unimpressed with the LED products I have tried. I bought the LED night lights from WM and 6 months later the light level was so low it was useless. At least a 4x drop in intensity. Seems like they might be OK for low duty cycle applications...

.....Bill