Super-efficient LED lighting now a real possibility within five years
The quest for cheaper, more environmentally-friendly lighting has taken another leap forward with scientists’ new-found ability to produce much cheaper LEDs.
The New Scientist article goes into quite significant detail about how the process was achieved in order to avoid the LEDs cracking during the manufacturing process (due to the high heat required to grow them) so I won’t attempt to look clever here by regurgitating it.
Suffice it to say, the “new” LEDs can be produced for around a tenner per 150,000 units.
Colin Humphreys from the University of Cambridge believes the UK government encouraged consumers to replace their traditional bulbs too soon, saying “We should have stayed with tungsten for another five years and then switched to LEDs.”
The new LEDs could burn for around 100,000 hours before they need replacing. That’s ten times as long as fluorescent lamps and 130 times as long as old-fashioned bulbs. They also don’t contain mercury, which is a fly in the ointment of most current energy-efficient light bulbs.
(Via New Scientist)
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