ScienceDaily.com is a great website to see what the future may bring us. It sells products as seen on the linked page which has to help fund the design and maintenance of the website. Going to the following link instead of reading below would be a worthwhile click.

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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080627163215.htm


ScienceDaily (July 1, 2008) — Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), in cooperation with national standards organizations, have taken the lead in developing the first two standards for solid-state lighting in the United States. This new generation lighting technology uses light-emitting diodes (LEDs) instead of incandescent filaments or fluorescent tubes to produce illumination that cuts energy consumption significantly.

Standards are important to ensure that products will have high quality and their performance will be specified uniformly for commerce and trade. These standards--the most recent of which published last month--detail the color specifications of LED lamps and LED light fixtures, and the test methods that manufacturers should use when testing these solid-state lighting products for total light output, energy consumption and chromaticity, or color quality.

Solid-state lighting is expected to significantly reduce the amount of energy needed for general lighting, including residential, commercial and street lighting. "Lighting," explains NIST scientist Yoshi Ohno, "uses 22 percent of the electricity and 8 percent of the total energy spent in the country, so the energy savings in lighting will have a huge impact."

Solid-state lighting is expected to be twice as energy efficient as fluorescent lamps and 10 times more efficient than incandescent lamps, although the current products are still at their early stages. Ohno chaired the task groups that developed these new standards.

In addition to saving energy, the new lighting, if designed appropriately, can produce better color rendering--how colors of objects look under the illumination--than fluorescent lamps or even incandescent lamps, Ohno says.

NIST is working with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to support its goal of developing and introducing solid-state lighting to reduce energy consumption for lighting by 50 percent by the year 2025. The department predicts that phasing in solid-state lighting over the next 20 years could save more than $280 billion in 2007 dollars.

more= http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080627163215.htm

I built an LED fixture for 14 GU-10 : 3 watt LED bulbs that are shaped
like the reflector halogen bulbs... say 2 inches in diameter.

Well, i started it with these very expensive "white" LED's with a rating of
20,000+ hours... but they burned out very quickly, way faster than their
ratings.. and those bulbs were bloody expensive like 7 quid each. So, as goes
i've replaced the white ones with red, green, blue and yellow ones which seem
to last longer.

Surely 14 bulbs in a row is a fair amount of light yes? No. Its not enough
to light a table. If you want to light a table with LED lighting, you need
50 bulbs... the stuff on the market just isn't bright enough to replace reading
quality lumination. I use the LED light over the computer desk, as its not
bright enough to make any glare, but enough to keep the keypad lit.

So what are we to do for lighting. To replace a quality incandescent spot makes
sense with a halogen replacing say a 75 watt incandescent with a 50 watt halogen
almost seems like for like... but those LED chappies can't compete for
spots, table tops and counters. The sunlight spectrum bulbs are too blue and coldish
like the same white blandness of standard incandescent - and those buzzing transformers.

The corporations are telling us LED and eco-flourescent is ready - bullshit it is.
They have not managed to replace the warm light of a proper bulb - and as long as
its not like for like, and as long as bulbs of such expense last such a short time
the LED bulbs will dog the market. I wouldn't recommend them... i only use the
LED bulbs in this single fixture... I'm sure they'd be great for lighting a toilet,
or a closet, or a stair, or somewhere where dim lighting is helpful for general
navigaion... but its still a value for money issue.

And all this discussion is presuming that we don't turn on lights during the day.
As then, what a tragic waste to have a huge light in the sky and to burn energy
unnecessarily.

Lighting bills could better be changed by making building codes that no new build
structure cost more than 1 watt per square meter to light during the day. But such
legislation would mean getting tough with big corporate building profession that is
slothful and political. So rather, lets fuck the public with some not-ready
products that cost too much that don't replace like for like.

Every time i hear a green marketing pitch, i'm increasinly inclined to whisper "bullshit."
What a power grab.