LED Bulb That Won Government Contest To Go On Sale

"LED Bulb That Won Government Contest To Go On Sale" is how headlines should read, but the Washington Post and right wingers are instead claiming that this is a government subsidy - emphasis on the subsidy - and that the LED bulbs are more expensive than those that are currently on the market.

Nothing quite like mixing apples and oranges.

First a bit of background. Legislation enacted during the Bush Administration called for the phasing out of incandescent bulbs, starting with the 100 watt and moving down to lower wattage bulbs in the course of a couple of years.

The whole idea was to improve energy efficiency in lighting and to reduce dependency on foreign energy sources. It's a wholly laudable idea and a CFL equivalent to a 100 watt bulb uses a fraction of the energy with the same light output (in lumens). LED bulbs offer the promise of a comparable savings over CFLs, with less concern over releases of mercury that are used in CFL (and even on that point, rules now restrict and limit mercury within the bulbs). LED bulbs would also last significantly longer than CFL and wouldn't suffer from the problems that many CFL bulbs do in terms of time to warm up to full temperature, change in light color as the bulbs age, etc.

However, LED bulbs cost more - a lot more - than CFL bulbs, but the costs are expected to drop as production increases and economies of scale take hold.

To help spur domestic manufacturing of LEDs, which are sophisticated pieces of electronics, the federal government came up with a contest - $10 million to the winning design.

The L Prize was meant to ease this transition by enticing manufacturers to create affordable bulbs to replace the most common type, the traditional 60-watt.

A Philips spokesman declined to talk in detail about the bulb or its price because the product has yet to be formally launched. It is expected to hit stores within weeks and is available online. But the spokesman said the L Prize bulb costs more because, as the contest required, it is even more energy-efficient, running on 10 watts instead of 12.5 watts. It is also brighter, renders colors better and lasts longer.

Still, the contest set price goals. According to the L Prize guidelines, manufacturers were “strong­ly encouraged to offer products at prices that prove cost-effective and attractive to buyers, and therefore more successful in the market.” The target retail price, including rebates from utilities, was to be $22 in the first year, $15 in the second year and $8 in the third year.

Energy Department officials defended the award, saying that they expect the cost of the L Prize bulbs to drop over time. “The L Prize competition played a critical role in driving manufacturing and engineering innovations in the U.S. lighting industry and helping to make the next generation of energy-saving LED lighting options more affordable for con­sumers,” said department spokes­woman Niketa Kumar.

This is a contest along the lines of the X Prize to develop private reusable spacecraft. It's meant to spur development in an area, and it allows for multiple manufacturers to consider ways to improve manufacturing and development.

So, even if the company that won the prize doesn't succeed in its business goals - other companies that participated in the contest might do well because of insights gained as a result of that participation.

Still, it's going to be hard for a domestic manufacturer to move ahead against competition from LEDs manufactured in places like China or India, where manufacturing costs are far lower.

It's meant to spur interest and development in alternative lighting to fuel-hog incandescents and on that point, it's going to save consumers quite a bit of energy costs over the long run.

Retailers Look To Sun For Savings

The New York Times reports on a growing trend among retailers to cash in on tax credits from states and the federal government to install solar arrays to power their stores around the nation.

In recent months, chains including Wal-Mart Stores, Kohl’s, Safeway and Whole Foods Market have installed solar panels on roofs of their stores to generate electricity on a large scale. One reason they are racing is to beat a Dec. 31 deadline to gain tax advantages for these projects.

So far, most chains have outfitted fewer than 10 percent of their stores. Over the long run, assuming Congress renews a favorable tax provision and more states offer incentives, the chains promise a solar construction program that would ultimately put panels atop almost every big store in the country.

The trend, while not entirely new, is accelerating as the chains seize a chance to bolster their environmental credentials by cutting back on their use of electricity from coal.

“It’s very clear that green energy is now front and center in the minds of the business sector,” said Daniel M. Kammen, an energy expert at the University of California, Berkeley. “Not only will you see panels on the roofs of your local stores, but I suspect very soon retailers will have stickers in their windows saying, ‘This is a green energy store.’ ”

In the coming months, 85 Kohl’s stores will get solar panels; 43 already have them. “We want to keep pushing as many as we possibly can,” said Ken Bonning, executive vice president for logistics at Kohl’s.

Macy’s, which has solar panels atop 18 stores, plans to install them on another 40 by the end of this year. Safeway is aiming to put panels atop 23 stores. And other chains, including Whole Foods Market, BJ’s Wholesale Club and REI, the purveyor of outdoor goods, are planning projects of their own.

It's a good thing to reduce their power usage and demand on the power grid to say nothing of helping their bottom line, but I think there's a simpler way that retailers aren't doing as well as they should.

They need to seriously improve their usage of CFLs in places like lighting departments. I've spent considerable time in Home Depot, Lowes, Target, and specialty lighting stores while buying stuff for the house, and the lighting departments in these stores takes almost no advantage of the power savings through CFLs.

These stores clearly have the access to the specialty lighting products that would make those light fixtures sell, and it would also subconsciously give customers the idea that they too can light their homes with CFLs.

Instead, you walk through the lighting departments and you find that the temperatures in those areas are significantly higher than the rest of the store, and you can only imagine the electricity meter spinning furiously to show off those fixtures.

The initial cost of installing the CFLs would be high, but the payoff would be considerable and given that those lights are on during the entirety of business hours, these businesses could get significant cost savings that help the bottom line within months, especially during the summer.

The Future of Lighting?

This is going to be the future of lighting around the world, but it must first deal with the issue of cost. As the price comes down, LED lights will supplant incandescent bulbs and the much maligned CFLs. Eventually.

L.E.D.’s, including new bulb types and applications, dominated the exhibits at Lightfair, the lighting industry’s annual trade event held in May in Las Vegas. Traditional tungsten bulbs were largely absent. L.E.D.’s were shown for street and parking lot lighting, under-counter lighting, residential bulb replacements and office lighting. They are being used in commercial refrigerators, as substitutes for fluorescents and for illuminating the outside of buildings, allowing for easy color changes. Television production studios are installing L.E.D.’s to save money and eliminate the need for climbing in the rafters to change bulbs or filters.

The problem, though, is the price. A standard 60-watt incandescent usually costs less than $1. An equivalent compact fluorescent is about $2. But in Europe this September, Philips, the Dutch company dealing in consumer electronics, health care machines and lighting, is to introduce the Ledino, its first L.E.D. replacement for a standard incandescent. Priced at $107 a bulb, it are unlikely to have more than a few takers.

“L.E.D. performance is there, but the price is not,” said Kevin Dowling, a Philips Lighting vice president and past chairman of the Next Generation Lighting Industry Alliance, an industry group that works with the Department of Energy. “Even at $10 to $15, consumers won’t buy L.E.D. bulbs,” Mr. Dowling said.

It's working its way into more commercial applications, and as production techniques improve, the costs will continue to drop to the point where it will compete with CFLs as a replacement choice for the ubiquitous incandescent bulb.

Phillips is not devoting any of its substantial research and development budget to CFLs, and is instead focusing on LED technologies. They view CFLs as an interim technology, and I tend to concur, though if a manufacturer could develop CFLs that use no mercury in their lamps, they might assuage fears of many over the possibility of contamination of the surrounding area should the CFL lamps break.

The Race For Super Efficient Light Bulbs

This is yet another cautionary tale for those who think that government should dictate to the market what technologies should prevail in lighting. Since the government has decreed that incandescent light bulbs are evil and are too inefficient, they've all but thrown their support behind CFLs, which have a nasty side-effect of producing what amounts to hazardous waste when the CFLs break or need disposal after the end of their life due to the minute amounts of mercury found inside each bulb.

LED bulbs are promising, but this new technology, relying upon plasma, may prove to be the ultimately superior technology. The company producing the high intensity lighting, Luxim, thinks that this technology will ultimately prevail because the color temperature approximates what the sun normally gives off - which would be a pleasing color across the entire spectrum of light. That's in contrast to many other lighting solutions, which may give off yellow or off-color casts.

The technology also promises to be even more efficient than CFLs and LED technologies per watt - enabling nearly 150 lumens per watt, in comparison to 70 for an LED and 15 for an incandescent.

I foresee that state and local governments will eventually move to this technology for street lighting as early adopters because of the sheer energy costs associated with such lighting. (HT: Instapundit)

From Light Bulbs To Thermostats

If at first you can't succeed, the environmentalists in California will try and try again to force their agenda on everyone. Even in defeat, the environmentalists are winning while everyone else is losing a bit of their freedom and rights.

California legislators have tried to essentially ban the incandescent light bulb by mandating that all bulbs sold in the state meet certain efficiency requirements. That bill died a quick death, but the cause was taken up in Congress such that it was eventually included in the energy bill of 2007.

Lighting designers and many people are disgusted with the light produced by the CFLs. I'm not among them. I think the light from the CFLs I've installed have been pretty good. However, I can understand where they're coming from. That doesn't even begin to address the concerns over disposal of CFLs, which varies from municipality to municipality - some treat them as hazardous waste because of the trace amounts of mercury present in the bulbs.

When a technology appears that beats the light bulb, people will gravitate to it. It will become obsolete because of market forces, not because government intervened and possibly fostered a poor technological replacement for the incandescent light bulb.

Then, you have California's latest gambit - to require that all new thermostats installed in the state have a feature that enables utilities to regulate the temperature of homes and businesses remotely in an effort to reduce energy consumption during peak periods.

State energy officials are considering a proposal that would allow utilities to change a building's temperature by remote control.

Supporters say the installation of thermostats fitted with remote-control technology could help ease summertime power emergencies by allowing officials to limit the use of air conditioning.

However, privacy advocates and some lawmakers say going into people's homes to control their electricity is going too far. They say the state should provide incentives and education so people limit energy use on their own.

Energy officials, hoping to ease misgivings, are now proposing a revised regulation that would allow homeowners to block outside control of their thermostats.

Here's a better idea - instead of allowing homeowners to block outside control - that should be the default. If someone wants to enable the utilities to control their energy usage, they must take an affirmative step to do so. The problem for the environmentalists and leftists is that too many people will simply choose not to go along with their agenda and maintain their thermostats as their predetermined levels.

Businesses already engage in programs around the country where they voluntarily reduce their consumption during peak times. Some consumers do likewise. Enabling this additional level of control is disconcerting and troublesome.

Full of Hot Air

President Bush is going to be making an announcement about curbing emissions, including carbon dioxide. Democrats have been pushing for him to comply with a Supreme Court decision that concluded that carbon dioxide should be treated as a greenhouse gas. It wont make much of a difference since the political class is pretty well convinced of this, so they're all looking to see how to make a few bucks on the global warming thing while avoiding actually having to pay for their own actions.

There is no end to the hypocrisy though. The same folks who want to replace incandescent bulbs with CFLs are busy flying around the planet on private jets that emit far more in a single flight than most people will emit over the course of an entire year.

Therefore, if you want to start with reducing greenhouse gas emissions, here are a couple of real and tangible ways to save the planet - and it starts with the candidates for President from both political parties.

1) No candidate can declare themselves a candidate for President in the 2008 elections until January 1, 2008.

2) All politicians running for President must eliminate all private aircraft flights from their schedules and use commercial flights. The savings from this alone would range into the hundreds of thousands of pounds of emissions per candidate. This provision applies particularly to those candidats claiming that they want to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

Since the flights are eliminated, such candidates would therefore not be required to hit up contributors for money to fund such flights and would not need to enter the race sooner in order to get name recognition or the jump on other candidates.

With fewer planes flying in the skies, congestion would be reduced (albeit slightly given the overall number of flights per day - if each candidate flew once on a private jet per day, that would amount to ~1.6% of the total flights per day (based on roughly 1200 flights per day)) and with the reduction in congestion, we'd find that the airlines would save on gas while idling on taxiways awaiting departures or circling airfields waiting to land. Even if the resulting savings are negligible, the fact that these political leaders are willing to cut the flights would be a sign that they are truly committed to being green, instead of simply paying lip service and hoping others do what they themselves are unwilling to do.

These suggestions also have the tangible benefit of moving the political calendar back into its proper place - with 2008 politics discussed in 2008.

Don Surber has additional thoughts on what the candidates ought to be disclosing to the public.

If candidates are not allowed to enter the race until January 1, 2008, this means that all the paper used to make newspapers and weeklies would be put to other, more productive uses. Think of all the trees that could be saved. Think of all the lower costs involved in shipping said lighter papers and magazines.

My proposal has several benefits over other campaign spending and political speech controls in that it not only has the environment covered, but it does not infringe upon the free speech rights. It allows anyone to get involved in the political process and provide funds to candidates, but the limitation is upon the candidates themselves to hold off announcing their run until January 1 of the year of the presidential election. States wouldn't need to race against each other to declare primary days, and the public would have more than ample opportunities to learn about the candidates.

Mercurial Debate on CFLs

It's interesting to watch the various stories about how CFLs must be treated as hazardous waste because of the potential mercury hazard. CFLs need a small amount of mercury - smaller than what is typically found in a standard thermometer - to operate properly.

However, mercury is treated as a hazardous material and must be disposed of properly. So, when one breaks in the course of operation or is broken during installation or removal, what is the homeowner or business to do? Call in a remediation service that might charge thousands of dollars? Well, that's one way to deal with the problem. Another is the method suggested by several utilities and other outlets.

But for those who are trying to squelch the use of CFLs based on mercury, here's a larger question to ponder. CFLs use far less power to make and operate over the course of their lifetime. How much coal is not consumed as a result of CFL usage over the standard incandescent bulb?

That's not a trivial answer, because coal contains significant amounts of mercury, a portion of which is emitted when the coal is burned for power. That portion amounts to 48 tons of mercury per year from coal fired power plants. A CFL has about 4 milligrams of mercury.

Another way to look at this is consider that power plants emit 10mg of mercury to power an incandescent bulb, but only 2.4mg to power a CFL. Over the life of the bulb, you release far less mercury into the environment. It's not a perfect solution, but it does ultimately mean a reduction in mercury emissions when looking at the combination of power generation and light emission.

This doesn't mean that you don't have to take precautions to reduce the possibility of having contamination issues at home. These are common sense precautions:

If a CFL breaks in your home, open nearby windows to disperse any vapor that may escape, carefully sweep up the fragments (do not use your hands) and wipe the area with a disposable paper towel to remove all glass fragments. Do not use a vacuum. Place all fragments in a sealed plastic bag and follow disposal instructions above.

Australia Considers Ban On Incandescent Bulb Sales

The Australian government on Tuesday announced plans to phase out incandescent light bulbs and replace them with more energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs across the country.

Legislation to gradually restrict the sale of the old-style bulbs could reduce Australia's greenhouse gas emissions by 4 million tons by 2012 and cut household power bills by up to 66 percent, said Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

Australia produced almost 565 million tons of greenhouse gases in 2004, official figures show.

Prime Minister John Howard said the plan would help all Australians play a part in cutting harmful gas emissions: "Here's something practical that everybody will participate in."

My comments about the California proposal holds for Australia as well. This is essentially an unfunded mandate.

Still, there might be a factual error in the reporting about what Venezuela and Cuba have been doing in regards to CFLs.

Cuba's Fidel Castro launched a similar program two years ago, sending youth brigades into homes and switching out regular bulbs for energy-saving ones to help battle electrical blackouts around the island.

The idea was later embraced by Castro's friend and ally, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who announced his own program to save energy and in recent months has given away millions of incandescent bulbs in neighborhoods nationwide.

If Chavez was giving away millions of incandescents, then he was actually increasing the energy usage of Venezuela, not decreasing the usage. Methinks that the editor got this wrong and Chavez was actually giving away CFLs, not incandescents.

Also, Cuba's power grid is rickety and can barely sustain itself under normal conditions experiencing blackouts on a regular basis. Their policy is as much about the regime surviving as it is about energy conservation.

The same goes for Chavez in Venezuela. He's using the CFLs as a way to curry favor in the slums, ignoring the big issues like freedom and individual rights.

Dim Bulbs?

Via Don Surber, there's a move afoot in California to ban incandescent light bulbs by 2012.

A California lawmaker wants to make his state the first to ban incandescent lightbulbs as part of California's groundbreaking initiatives to reduce energy use and greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.

The "How Many Legislators Does it Take to Change a Lightbulb Act" would ban incandescent lightbulbs by 2012 in favor of energy-saving compact fluorescent lightbulbs.

Thomas Edison would be spinning in his grave you say? Not entirely. There are good reasons to switch from incandescents to compact fluorescent or LED technologies.

Power savings is a powerful reason. The compact fluorescent bulbs run on a fraction of the power of incandescents, which waste much of the electricity used in the form of heat. Fluorescent translate more of the power to light - though the light created is far from pleasing. There's that annoying yellow/amber hue. Instapundit knows what I'm talking about (and may have found a winning CF bulb in the process). However, the power savings will be substantial as more users switch to the fluorescents.

Cost is a major factor here - the new bulbs cost several times the old bulbs. That might be a turnoff for some, who would rather have the cheaper bulbs, even if the costs are higher once you factor in energy costs.

We bought an eight-pack in Costco and have been replacing burned out incandescents with compact fluorescent as we go along. What we've lost in terms of white light has been made up with a noticable cost savings of maybe $3-5 per month. Those savings will increase over time as the remaining lights are switched to compact fluorescents.

Still, why should these costs, essentially an unfunded mandate, be imposed on California residents by the state legislature? Also, it would appear that the marketplace is moving ahead of the California legislator's plans, as Wal Mart is looking to shift the marketplace to compact fluorescents and the manufacturers themselves are phasing out the production of incandescents in favor of other technologies.

Low Wattage From New York Times

It's nice to see that the New York Times ran a piece on how Wal Mart is going to push the compact flourescent light bulbs over the traditional incandescents. James Joyner isn't too impressed with the whole move, which is a departure for Wal Mart's vision of providing the goods that people want at low cost. Compact flourescents aren't exactly wanted because they don't light nearly as well as incandescents though the energy usage is less.

However, the Times is late to this story, as it was picked up by Fast Company back in August. More here. Instapundit picked up the story in August but didn't find it curious that the Times was nearly four six months behind in reporting this development.

UPDATE:
Fixed the dates - since the story was picked up by Instapundit August 31, 2006.