Science Scene - Starbucks going LED

On a light-by-light basis, changing from incandescent to LED only makes a tiny difference in energy consumption and cost, but when you're talking about retrofitting a thousands of Starbucks stores, the energy savings can be huge.

That's just what Starbucks has found now that the replacing of incandescent and halogen lights in 7,000 stores in the U.S. and Canada has been completed.  The company's Director of Environmental Impact said that the program is on target to cut lighting energy consumption by 80 percent.

The good folks at Greenbiz did the math and figured that each 1,000 square foot store was saving $600 a year and reducing CO2 emissions equivalent to 10 barrels of oil.  The lights also cut total store energy consumption by 7 percent.



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Science Scene - CFL or LED?

Not yet made the transition from incandescent to compact fluorescent, no worries - LED is on the horizon.

For years we have been watching as LED technology has improved and the cost of LED replacement bulbs has gotten lower and lower. Compact fluorescent bulbs have become commonplace, which has been instrumental in saving energy and lowering electricity costs for millions of consumers. But still, we've been waiting for LEDs to reach the point where they start being widely used. And now, it looks like that point may be here.

By the middle of 2011, a new 12-watt LED bulb from Osram Sylvania is scheduled to be available from all Lowes stores.

The Osram Sylvania Ultra A-Line LED bulb produces 810 lumens. This compares quite well with a standard 60 watt bulb (the one I checked is listed at 830 lumens). The LED bulb uses 12 watts, versus the 60 watt incandescent, wich is an 80% energy savings. And the LED bulb should last 25 times as long as a conventional bulb.

The biggest remaining question will be consumer acceptance. Does the LED bulb provide an adequate distribution of light, without the "hot spots" and dim areas characteristic of some earlier LED bulbs? And, is the color rendering of the LED good enough to make it an acceptable substitute for an aincandescent bulb? The A-line bulb has a color temperature of 2700 Kelvin and a color-rendering index (CRI) of 91. (An incandescent bulb has a perfect value of 100.) Most fluorescent bulbs have a CRI ranging from the low 50s to the high 80s, so the quality of the light should be quite good.

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Science Scene - LED Lighting

A Department of Energy report on light emitting diode (LED) technology has some pretty startling numbers to digest.  7% of America's electricity is used to light our homes and businesses. That number is down significantly in the last few years because of the adoption of efficient lighting.


But there is still a great deal of ground to be gained. Indeed, as bright white LEDs begin to make their way to the market, the DOE expects their adoption to result in huge decreases in energy use.  The cumulative savings of widespread adoption of this technology over the next 20 years would be about 1.500 terawatt-hours the price of which, at today's energy prices, is around $120 billion. The savings would eliminate the need for 24 new large power plants, to say nothing of the decrease in carbon emissions.

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Bladerunner or Minority Report - Does it matter :o)

On 6/24/09, at 7:15pm at the Crowne Plaza Times Square, our future changed forever.

A group of media executives put down their cocktails, filed across Broadway as cops halted traffic, and stared back up at the blank hotel. There was a 10-second countdown, and suddenly, a vibrant video billboard appeared where a minute before, there seemed to be only empty space. It was the New York unveiling of something called MediaMesh, an ingenious invention of LED lights strung unobtrusively across building exteriors. At first, the 783-square feet of woven stainless steel mesh, which upon closer inspection looks something like a pigeon net, seems innocuous, but at the flip of a switch, it turns into a giant TV screen.

To view the full story, click here.