Monday, December 17, 2007

Light

Humphry Davy gets no respect. Have you ever heard of him? More than 75 years before Thomas Edison filed his patent for an "Improvement in Electric Lights," numerous others, Davy being the first, had conjured photons from flowing electrons. Edison, not to diminish his achievements, simply built a better mousetrap.

We've come along way since Davy connected a battery to a thin platinum strip. More to the point, we've come a long way since Edison made a better vacuum, found a better filament, and envisioned a systemic application rather than an isolated instance of "look what I can do!" Edison's light bulb has been the standard for more than a century. Even though more efficient flourescent lighting is not much younger than incandescent lighting, still, incandescence has been the standard. Until now.

There is a movement building. At the grocery store, at the home improvement store, and especially at your local mega-retailer, we are seeing the new "compact fluorescent bulbs" (CFLs). Environmental blogs and magazines all seem to be pointing at these "new inventions," as the answer to our most common energy concern: how do we lower the cost? Never mind for a moment that evironmentally speaking CFLs are a disaster for the environment, they will lower your electric bill each month. And that's the problem. People equate a savings in their bank account with saving the planet.

You're probably wondering why I call CFLs a "disaster for the environment." Especially when we all know that they last four or five times as long as an incandescent bulb and often deliver the same light for a fraction of the electrical consumption. What is hidden, what is not seen, are the costs to the environment in producing the electronic ballasts and the increased loading of mercury to our landfills, and ultimately, our water supply. And although it may seem a minor consideration, have you looked at the packaging for a standard incandescent compared to the packaging of a CFL? We don't need a complex model to immediately discern the important differences here.

So why are CFL's gaining popularity? They do allow the user to save money on electricty today. And they're here now for a relatively inexpensive price. I just hope they're not the incandescent bulbs of the future. Fluorescent light should have been the standard but they lagged behind Edison's incandescent system by at least a decade. Today, we are seeing the emergence of this new CFL standard and unfortunately, lagging it in time, and in price, is what should be our newly embraced standard for the future:

LED

Light Emitting Diode lighting is almost here. Well, it is here. It's just not as bright as we want it for the money we have to spend. It's not that big a stretch to get a consumer to spend $5 on a light bulb instead of $1 as is the case with CFL vs. incandescent. But it's still an almost impossible leap to get someone to spend $40 on the LED when they could "feel good" about spending that $5 on the CFL.

But it is still cheaper in the long run to go with LED - if only we would embrace it as the standard now! In terms of it's potential envrironmental impact it is vastly superior to CFL. It also consumes much less energy. And it emits much less heat. And it is available in a variety of colors and configurations that will satisfy any application.

It's not my intention here to provide statistics and figures and cite reports. There are endless stats available on the internet quanitfying the efficiencies of each type of bulb. I'll leave that for you should you have an interest in discrediting or crediting my words herein. My intention here is only to say, "let's not make the same mistake again." Let's look to the future and embrace the newest technology. Let's not let CFLs become the standard for the next century when there is a far better choice already available.

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