Solid State lighting getting smarter
Interesting article from Clean Edge News about advances in the area of solid-state lighting, which could potentially “cut in half the 22 per cent of electricity used by lighting.”
But this technology goes far beyond energy conservation. Researchers predict that future advances will allow for the creation and manipulation of lights with an eye to improving health, altering mood, increasing productivity, and even boosting crop yields.
Even cooler, the article discusses future applications, such as the use of solid state lighting to allow vehicles to communicate with each other. Rapidly blinking lights at the back of a car would be the human equivalent of reading lips — the car in front could tell the car behind it to slow down quickly in an emerging breaking situation, or some other driving scenario. Think Morse code with LEDs.
Then, of course, there’s the use of LEDs as a replacement for general illumination. “The scaling up of LED chip size and current density will substantially reduce costs, bringing LEDs into offices, homes, and, perhaps, even dining room chandeliers,” the article states.
Tyler Hamilton is senior energy reporter and columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the cleantech market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper. Tyler can be reached at tyler@cleanbreak.ca