Raleigh, North Carolina, is setting out to see whether it can go all LED for its lighting. The initial effort will go into a parking lot, where they see a 2-3 year payback period. After that, they will move to streetlights. Now, CFLs/fluorescents are several multiples in price to incandescent bulbs.  LEDs are often an order of magnitude more expensive than the fluorescent. But, in addition to the power savings (CFLs use about 26% of incandescent’s electrical requirements; LEDs up about 20% of CFLs, or about 5% of incandescent bulb’s requirements), there are also the savings from fewer lightbulb replacements and the near destructibility of LEDs. (Pretty hard for a kid with a BB gun to knock them out.)
And, LEDs could have a tremendous impact. ” if 25 percent of the lightbulbs in the United States were converted to LEDs putting out 150 lumens per watt (higher than the current commercial standard), the country as a whole could save $115 billion in utility costs, cumulatively, by 2025. That would alleviate the need to build 133 new coal-burning power stations … In turn, carbon emissions in the atmosphere would go down by 258 million metric tons.”
Now, that would be a tremendous step forward …
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0 responses so far ↓
1 Steve Caratzas // Feb 13, 2007 at 10:03 pm
But how long before the first full blown Boston-esque panic?
2 jimmy // Feb 15, 2007 at 7:42 am
White light LEDs are a tremendous technological break-through. I’m skipping compact fluorescents because the ones I have bought never give the life advertised and I don’t like the hue.
I’ll jump on LEDs though when wide-scale production brings the price down to reasonable levels… and so will everyone else.