DOE Shines $21M on Advanced Lighting Research

coondoggie writes to mention that the US Department of Energy is planning to fork over close to $21 million for 13 projects promising to advance solid-state lighting research and development. "SSL lighting is an advanced technology that creates light with considerably less heat than incandescent and fluorescent lamps, allowing for increased energy efficiency. Unlike incandescent and fluorescent bulbs, SSL uses a semi-conducting material to convert electricity directly into light, which maximizes the light's energy efficiency, the DOE said in a release. Solid-state lighting encompasses a variety of light-producing semi-conductor devices, including light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). "

SSL

[homey of my owney (975234)]

OK, so the light is encrypted?

Re:SSL

[Mononoke (88668)]

Only when you keep it on a flash drive.

Until you shine it on a black hat

[EmbeddedJanitor (597831)]

then it becomes visible

Re:

[Mesa MIke (1193721)]

Yup.

And you have to accept a new SSL certificate whenever you change the lightbulb.

Re:SSL

[Durrik (80651)]

So, how many computer scientists does it take to change a light bulb again?

10 One to change the lightbulb and one to make a bad binary joke.

Save energy: don't send so much light into space

[CRCulver (715279)]

One would think that the government would encourage energy saving by ensuring cities weren't shining so much light up at the sky where it hardly does any good. I mean, just see Mizon's Light Pollution [amazon.com] about not only how it has ruined astronomy, but how it's simply wasteful as well. But I imagine the energy lobby, who continues to fool the public into thinking that the more light street lamps produce the better, maintains its influence.

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[by Anonymous Coward]

I thought about this the last time I was flying across the country at night. "Why am *I*, at almost six miles up, able to see all these street lights and parking lots and malls and houses? What a waste of energy."

Seriously, we need to think about our light placement and usage.

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[Rei (128717)]

It's more often more about the perception of safety than actual safety, at least when it comes to crime. Lights leave shadows where objects block them. When your night vision adjusts to the light, the shadows, and anything in them, get proportionally dimmer to you, making it harder to see someone "lurking in the shadows".

There's a lot more we could do about night lighting. A hundred years ago, almost everyone lived in a Bortle scale 1 area. Now, almost nobody in the first world does, and even much of the third world has elevated Bortle limits. What percentage of Americans do you think have ever seen zodiacal light, gegenschein, shadows cast from Scorpius and Sagittarius, or had Jupiter and Venus affect their dark adaptation? It doesn't have to be this way. Some types of lights are subject to far less atmospheric scattering. Properly designed fixtures can eliminate most of the overhead glow and even give you more light for the areas you're trying to illuminate. And so on.

Re:

[peragrin (659227)]

Do you know the difference between a 15 watt bulb and a 60 watt bulb at lighting an area? how about a 400w watt one?

Lighting a parking lot or a dangerous stretch of the road is for saftey. The problem is if an old man with cataracts can't see then it isn't bright enough and we simply double the wattage until all is well.

When you can simply place the lights in better locations with shiny reflectors and you can solve the same problem with lower costs. The answer isn't more light but better light. In many

Re:

[Rei (128717)]

Yeah, maybe if we were talking about ninjas,

"In Future News, misleb died last night after being hit in the neck with a throwing star. Hir last words reportedly were, 'If... only... I had listened.'" ;)

Realistically, if you're trying not to be seen, do you:

A) Stand in the light, or
B) Stand in the shadows, or
C) Pat Buchanan

Besides, it isn't just about seeing a potential attacker it is about being seen by others in case you are attacked.

So... we now are in a world where people can see you clearly enough to t

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[Smidge204 (605297)]

There is already a Dark Skies Initiative program in my area, and many areas, which makes light pollution a government regulated issue to begin with. It has little to do with energy policy so you can put away your "energy lobby" conspiracy theories.

=Smidge=

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[Quiet_Desperation (858215)]

There's even studies that show a lot of lighting does NOT deter crime. All it does is let the crook see what he's doing.

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[robertjw (728654)]

Interesting. Do you have any references for properly lighting your home for maximum crime deterrence?

I have a streetlight right in front of my house, but have still had a couple minor criminal incidents.

Re:

[Paradise Pete (33184)]

Problem solved.

Sure, right up until somebody steals it.

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[Pedrito (94783)]

There are also studies linking light pollution to increases in breast cancer. On the face of it, might seem a little whacky, but basically the theory is, light at night causes decreased endogenous melatonin production (it doesn't take much light to cause a significant drop in melatonin production) Melatonin is a strong anti-oxidant that they theorize helps keep breast cancer in check. Anyway, that's the current theory to explain the studies.

Re:

[Ucklak (755284)]

I thought Dihydrogen Monoxide was a contributing factor to breast cancer.

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[bannerman (60282)]

Are you suggesting that women need to expose their breasts to the light more often? Interesting...

Re:

[Adriax (746043)]

I'm doing a study on the study of studies. Would you care to quote on that study?

Re:Save energy: don't send so much light into spac

[Bellum Aeternus (891584)]

An increased cost of energy after a certain usage point will fix this problem by itself, but it'd be too unpopular for any elected official to implement they way things currently are. Also, there's the issue that light bounces, so shine a light down and it'll still reflect back up. The only way to prevent that is to absorb it, which just transform it into heat waste (which is worse). Most lights that point up do so for a reason, such as guiding airplanes - I don't think you're suggesting that we do away wit

Re:

[CRCulver (715279)]

My fault, I missed specifying amateur astronomy. The links you have provided are to professional observatories.

SSL lighting

[Fnord666 (889225)]

Do you use SSL lighting to illuminate an ATM machine that is connected to a VPN network?

Re:

[travisd (35242)]

Do they use the DHCP Protocol on that network?
Can I take my car with the CVT Transmission to buy SSL Lighting?

Re:SSL lighting

[curunir (98273)]

There's actually a pretty good rationale for saying the last word of an acronym...it makes what you're saying unambiguous.

For example, without those trailing words, you could have been talking about an encryption technology (Secure Sockets Layer) illuminating a network layer (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) connecting to a branch of the Vietnamese military (Vietnam People's Navy).

Sure the last one is a bit of a stretch, but there are a ton of acronyms that get re-used that can end up being ambiguous. If I say SOA architecture or SOA authority, it's clear whether I'm using marketing-speak or whether I'm talking about configuring a DNS system (which itself, without the trailing "system" could have been referring to a computational fluid dynamics simulation).

You can only really leave off the trailing word when there is either no other possible meaning for the acronym (e.g. SCUBA) or when the context in which you're speaking precludes any other meaning (context being both the people you're speaking with and the rest of what you're saying).

Color Issues??

[clonan (64380)]

The last I heard there wasn't a very good "White" LED.

Does anyone have a good lreference to the current sate-of-the-art?

Re:Color Issues??

[Overzeetop (214511)]

There are no good white basketball players...

Oh, sorry, I had a top secret flashback for a moment. White LEDs, iirc, are essentially fluorescent light sources which use the LED to stimulate emission in several bands based on the phosphors used. As such, they are still discrete (though not monochromatic) frequency lights and cannot creat and exact replica of incandescent (i.e. blackbody) radiation. I've not seen much on LED CRIs or color temps...most people are just so amazed that they produce "white" light that they don't seem to care. White LEDs, as a result of how they work, are only about 1/2 as efficient per watt as their more efficient monochromatic counterparts.

Re:Color Issues??

[MasterC (70492)]

As such, they are still discrete frequency lights and cannot creat and exact replica of incandescent (i.e. blackbody) radiation.

However, that is irrelevant due to the biology of our eyes. IOW, it doesn't matter if you see light of a violet frequency or, instead, a combination of red and blue (aka purple). Really, the LED needs to just mimic the spectral sensitivity [wikipedia.org] (570nm, 540nm, & 430nm) of our cone cells [wikipedia.org]. This means we don't need actual white light (frequencies ranging from red to violet) to have white light insofar as our eyes care.

And, no, LEDs are not fluorescent. Fluorescent bulbs stimulate mercury to emit UV light. The UV light hits the phosphorus which makes it fluoresce and produce visible light. LEDs work by jumping electrons across a band gap and a photon is emitted when it jumps back down. The high efficiency comes into play because it doesn't take much more energy than that of the band gap to make an electron jump.

Re:Color Issues??

[stdarg (456557)]

Hmm... if you have trichromatic light of wavelengths 570nm, 540nm, and 430nm shining on an object that absorbs everything except 550nm, then the object will appear black won't it? Whereas if true white light were shining on it, it would reflect the 550nm wavelengths and our eye would interpret that as... yellow or something. Is that wrong?

Re:

[Jherek Carnelian (831679)]

Hmm... if you have trichromatic light of wavelengths 570nm, 540nm, and 430nm shining on an object that absorbs everything except 550nm, then the object will appear black won't it? Whereas if true white light were shining on it, it would reflect the 550nm wavelengths and our eye would interpret that as... yellow or something. Is that wrong?

I believe you are correct.

There has been some work on front-projection screens to produce material that reflects only the specific wavelengths that a (matched) projector produces. The goal being to use such a screen in a bright environment where it will absorb almost all of the visible spectrum, and thus appear black, except for the specific RGB wavelengths in the projected image. Thus greatly reducing the "washout" effect of using a projector in a brightly lit room.

I think sony has a half-assed implemen

White LEDs are different

[sd.fhasldff (833645)]

And, no, LEDs are not fluorescent. Fluorescent bulbs stimulate mercury to emit UV light. The UV light hits the phosphorus which makes it fluoresce and produce visible light. LEDs work by jumping electrons across a band gap and a photon is emitted when it jumps back down. The high efficiency comes into play because it doesn't take much more energy than that of the band gap to make an electron jump.

*White* LEDs don't work that way. You might assume that white LEDs are simply three (or more) normal LEDs combined in a single package. While it is possible to make white LEDs this way, it's not the method usually used (for several reasons, including "color integrity").

Instead, white LEDs are typically made by coating a BLUE indium-gallium-nitride (InGaN) LED with phosphorous. This is not all that different from a fluorescent bulb, which is what the GP postulated.

Different color temperatures can be achieved by varying the phosphorous coverage. Lower coverage lets more blue through (cooler temperature), whereas higher coverage causes more blue to be absorbed and thus more of the phosphorous emission spectrum to be emitted. The dominant line in the most commonly used phosphorous for LEDs is around 580nm (yellow).

It's also possible to get white LEDs that are made by coating a near ultra-violet LED with phosphorous (thus getting even closer to the fluorescent bulb of the GP).

This might change in the future, with serious work being conducted in the field to improve on reliability, efficiency and color characteristics. To the best of my knowledge, however, none of the new methods (go search for yourself) are commercially available and as we all know, many things that seem promising in the lab never make it to market for any number of reasons.

For reference, red diodes emit at ~ 630nm, blue diodes at 470nm, green at 530nm. The exact wavelength of the emitted light depends on the materials used in the LED, of course.

Color Issues.

[JackHoffman (1033824)]

Wrong, all of it.

The spectral composition of light sources is far from irrelevant. The only case where it doesn't matter is when you look directly at the light source (TV, computer monitor) or at a surface which reflects the spectrum of the light source evenly (e.g. a projection screen or a white wall.) In every other case, a spiky light source spectrum results in improper color perception. One red color (e.g. a flower) can modulate the spectrum in a completely different way from another red (e.g. a shirt),

Re:

[Agripa (139780)]

The three color receptors are relatively broad. I remember reading about a study where they presented subjects across the world with color chips to find out which shades of red, green, and blue were the most saturated. The idea was to see if everybody saw color in the same way excluding the known forms of color blindness and tetrachromates. Everybody picked the same shade of red and blue but there were two different shades of green which they later tracked down to two different alleles for the gene which

From the

[Yetihehe (971185)]

Solid State SSL Lighting, from the Department of redundancy department.

Can't beat incandescents

[kovo (1238844)]

I believe the luminous efficacy (lumens per watt, light per power invested) of solid state lamps still lags that for incandescents or arc lamps. So, I don't thing the "maximizes the light's efficiency" thing in the article is really accurate. SSL is great for neat things like integration into building materials, though. Or making traffic lights with a low probability of burning out.

What rubbish

[EmbeddedJanitor (597831)]

LEDs are far more efficient than incandescent. I have an LED/incandescent flashlight that lasts far longer in LED mode than incandescent mode but is not quite as bright. ie. Led brightness * LED time far greater than incandescent brightness * incandescent time.

Re:Can't beat incandescents

[GregPK (991973)]

The best flourescent out there gets roughly 70 lumens per watt. LED's have already passed the 100 lumens per watt barrier.

Fluorescent have mercury == bad

[EmbeddedJanitor (597831)]

You should handle fluorencents as toxic waste. This makes them hard to deal with in regualr household/office waste streams.

LEDs might have heavy metals in them but this is well encapsulated and amortized over a far longer lifetime (100k hours vs 10k hours).

Re:

[ajlitt (19055)]

Home Depot and Ikea offer free fluorescent (tube and CFL) recycling. Of course, you still have to handle the bulbs properly during use and recycling, and I'm assuming that recyclers can recover a large portion of the mercury.

$21M paltry sum for such a large energy concern

[Rog7 (182880)]

Don't get me wrong, any amount they can put into this research is a good thing, but on the scale of things compared to funds they put elsewhere, it seems rather low to me. This is an area that needs significant changes soon, but unfortunately it looks like we're going to get incremental adoption of more fluorescents first.

It's astonishing to me that the energy and environmental problems are so obvious, but so little effort is put into the solutions.

it's not a large concern

[Quadraginta (902985)]

According to government data [doe.gov], only about 9% of the household electricity used in the United States is used for lighting. Most household electricity goes to refrigeration, water heating, air-conditioning, space heating, clothes drying, and so forth. That's why electricity usage spikes in the summer and in hot weather.

For that matter, only about 20% of our entire energy usage is represented by electricity, the rest being direct use of thermal energy (i.e. burning stuff like oil and gas) in factories, home heating furnaces, and in cars, trucks and railroad engines.

So overall the amount of our energy usage that goes to household lighting is 0.09 x 0.20 = about 2% of our total energy usage. If you manage to make lighting that is, say, 10 times more efficient than incandescent, then you will replace 2% with 0.2%, for a grand savings of 1.8%. Not impressive.

Re:

[flyingsquid (813711)]

So overall the amount of our energy usage that goes to household lighting is 0.09 x 0.20 = about 2% of our total energy usage. If you manage to make lighting that is, say, 10 times more efficient than incandescent, then you will replace 2% with 0.2%, for a grand savings of 1.8%. Not impressive.

Not by itself, and for that matter, it's unlikely that any single energy-saving technology is going to make a significant difference. But what if we were able to get a 2% reduction in energy usage on 5 different fron

Re:

[Quadraginta (902985)]

Of course it is. That's because you're only one person. But it isn't impressive to an entire nation, or an entire world, just the way you probably thought your mother and father were enormous mighty giants when you were six months old, but you don't now that you have a larger perspective.

Let's put it another way: divide that world consumption by the world population to see what your share is. The answer is less than a tenth of a barrel, or about 4 gallons of oil a year. You probably burn 100 times more

Re:

[RingDev (879105)]

The vast majority of electric power generation in the US is coal based. So you could change every light bulb in the US and still have no effect on world oil consumption.

-Rick

The Real Questions

[Nom du Keyboard (633989)]

The real questions are:

Where do I buy them now?

Do they fit into my regular sockets, including BR30 form factors?

Will they give me at least as much focused light?

How much do they cost?

How long do they last?

How much better than fluorescents?

Are they dimmable?

Are they protected against lightening strikes near by?

What toxic materials do they contain?

Will they let me adjust for the color balance I desire (a highly desirable feature)?

Who is exploited in their manufacture, and which country is getting all my money from them?

Going to a new lightening system is seldom as simple as unscrewing one and screwing in another. Many trade-offs exist.

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

Where do I buy them now

EarthLED Light Bulbs [thinkgeek.com] which are more efficient, last longer, use less energy, and are greener to produce than even CFLs (which are greener than incans).

Do they fit...

Yes!

... as much ... light?

Yes! I own two (would own more but see price). etc. etc. Read the page, it answers your questions. They are dimmable, etc. etc.

DoE ACTUALLY doing energy work

[gnick (1211984)]

I'm just happy to see the Department of Energy doing something other than nuclear stockpile maintenance.

Not so much research

[afidel (530433)]

As production capacity and demand. If they really wanted to speed the adoption of LED lighting they would use that $21M to buy LED lights for government offices. Even better would be a law requiring the government use energy efficient lighting technology, that would provide for large orders and a guaranteed market which will lead the market to fill the need. It would have the benefit of reducing energy waste by the largest employer and landlord in the world.

Re:

[Ironsides (739422)]

They already use fluorescents, which are more efficient than any commercially available LED I have seen. Note the "commercially available" part.

Unsigned

[kcbanner (929309)]

What happens if I self sign my light SSL certificate, am I susceptible to a man-in-the-way-of-my-light attack?
In other news, Alice and Bob figure out how to screw in a lightbulb.

Money Well Spent

[organgtool (966989)]

This is really something worth looking into. LED's are much more power efficient (which means they also give off less heat) and last much longer (need less replacing) than our current forms of lighting (incandescent, CCFL, etc). Car manufacturers such as Nissan are already starting to replace bulbs in their taillights with LED's. The only downsides I can see people complaining about are the fact that LED's are more directional than other forms of lighting and some may have issues with the shade of color they produce.

Now if our government would start looking into algae to power vehicles it would show that they're really interested in finding alternate and more efficient ways of powering our everyday devices.

suckered!

[Quadraginta (902985)]

Blacklight Power is a well-known combination of perpetual-motion and pyramid scams.