New $3 LED Bulb Lasts 60 Years
The battle between CFL and LED bulbs may finally be over thanks to researchers at Cambridge University who have developed a $3 LED bulb that lasts for 60 years. The bulb, which is smaller than a penny, is 12 times more efficient than tungsten bulbs and three times more efficient than fluorescent bulbs.
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Cambridge’s new 100,000 hour, mercury-free LED bulb uses a man-made semiconductor called gallium nitride that is grown on a cheap silicon wafer. Previously, gallium nitride has only been grown on pricey sapphire wafers.
According to researchers working on the project, the first low-cost LED bulbs could be in stores as early as 2011.
Photo Credit: Graham Turner
Nice… The really big story here is “Mercury Free”! Can’t wait, hopefully they’re out before 2011
I wonder how the color will be in the early models. It took awhile for CFLs to get it right.
Color isnt too hard to adjust in LEDs since its just a mixture of phosphorescent materials.
Really a lot more mercury, and carbon, and soot will be reduced at your local coal plant rather than not using a cfl.
Always in the future !!!
I have been hearing this kind of song and dance for 50 years.
It is just a scheme to get investor money and it never pays a dividend.
just watching is right. Ive never even heard of these so called “led lights”. I call shenanigans.
wow hopefully it will be in production.
LED replacement light bulbs are here TODAY. I just bought a bunch at Sam’s Club. Made by Lights of America, $14.86 for 3, 40W of soft white light for 1.5W of power consumption. Just replaced a bunch of 7W CFL’s in our ceiling fans. Turn-on time is instant and they work great in cold temps outside, unlike a lot of CFL’s. Color is perfect….they just need to market them with frosted glass to reduce the glare when you look at it.
Now is the time to get a seed - starter grow bed going, and may be hydroponics in the winter months will pay off with nice greens for Northern climates! If this is true, and the power consumption is the typically low LED levels, we have a food miracle on our hands! Growing indoor gardens in the darker months will become child’s play! One Web site now instructs on the use of xmas LEDs and has great success, these larger, brighter fixtures will revolutionize home gardening and have the potential to feed hungry people world wide! They will also reduce power consumption by a credible factor and obviate the use of heavy copper wiring in homes for lighting, a huge environmental and cash savings! We are on the threshold of a new era! Post (GRD) great republican depression Americans will have been conditioned by the catastrophic events of the GRD to make mind bending changes in their lives, this will be one of them, more solar and wind powered homes, more greenhouses, and may be they will even see their way to doing things mathematical metrically, as the entire world outside their small backwards little space does! Who knows! Electing Obama was a miracle, seeing GM go to the bottom and beg for socialistic government help was another! Come on G d, fill in the rest of the blanks, we are waiting!
Sounds great, but I agree that the real question is when it will come to market and how much it will cost. For a good solution available right now, check out the new Pharox LED bulb. Requires just 4 watts of energy (!) to replace a 40-watt incandescent. Prices on this latest generation of LED bulbs are getting more reasonable too… http://tinyurl.com/d2ar8o
- Aaron Dalton, Editor, 1GreenProduct.com