Paradiddle7
New member
This is slightly off topic but it relates to the future of lighting for our aquariums, so one might find it interesting.
As most people know, LED lights are the most efficient, environmentally friendly, and cost effective lighting solution. What most people don't know is that there are practical consumer and industrial LED lighting applications available today. Most people think that LED lights are only good for indicator lights on your DVD player or on a screen of your laptop or ipod. Take a look outside one night and realize that every light you see will be replaced by an LED within the next 10-20 years. Congress has already passed a bill to make regular incandescent lights extinct in 2014 (date from memory, could be wrong). IMO, LED's will be the most prolific man made entity on the planet.
For any geeks out there who know what Wolf's law is, you must also consider that LED technology is growing at a far faster rate than CPU's ever have. LED technology, based on lumens per watt, is about 2-3 years ahead of schedule. They are already producing LED chips that are as bright as what they predicted for 2010.
Now, let's talk about the practical LED solutions available.
I'm redoing my house and I'm replacing about 10-20 6" recessed cans with the CREE LR6 6" down light. http://www.creells.com/LR6.htm
To summarize, this light uses only 12 watts but produces 650 lumens. I already installed a test unit and it provides brighter and far better quality light than the 65w flood it replaced. The unit cost me $99 shipped to my door. That seems expensive but if you consider the benefits, it will pay for itself in 2-3 years easily and then it will save me roughly $250 over the lifetime of each bulb. How? The bulb will last over 23 years if I use it 6 hours a day. It also uses 8 times less energy than an incandescent and half as much energy as a PC. It also doesn't emit any heat compared to other bulbs, so my AC won't be compensating for hundreds and hundreds of watts of heat generated by incandescent and pc bulbs. Also consider that PC bulbs are very difficult to dispose of in an eco-friendly manor. They have mercury and lead in them and PC's have a very short life for an expensive bulb. Another advantage LED's have over PC's is that LED's are more dimmable than PC's. Most PC's aren't dimmable at all, and if they are they have only 2-3 dimmable levels. Since LED lamps have many more LED's in them, they will have far better dimmable capabilities.
How does this relate to us in the hobby? We have all seen the first generation of programmable LED solutions. While they are too expensive for most hobbyists, we will see even better, brighter, and cheaper solutions within the next couple of years, as LED's become brighter and cheaper to manufacture.
There are other practical LED lighting solutions, such as bulbs for track lights and spot lights, desk lamps etc... One drawback of LED light is that it is highly directional. This can be overcome by optics (glass lenses) etc... The LR6 I use is 1 solid state unit with all electronics and optics, and fascia combined in a well built unit.
Another huge application for LED lamps that is occuring now are street lamps and parking lot lights. Many cities and colleges are switching to LED lamps. Anchorage, Alaska just swapped all their street lamps to LED lamps. They will save over $300,000 in electricity per year and they won't have to pay tens of thousands of dollars a year to replace light bulbs, since the LED will last them 10-20 years.
Now, let's talk about trying to capitalize on this LED revolution.
There are some major players in the LED space, such as Phillips, GE and Sony (OLED mostly), but you can't invest in them and plan to make any money because they are involved in LED's; there business is too diverse for their share price to reflect profits from LEDs. There is one pure play that only makes LED's, which is CREE (The company who makes the light I just bought). There is also a pure play in the OLED space called Universal Display Corp (ticker PANL). Thanks to the financial markets disaster, CREE's stock price has come down from the mid 30's to 18, and is now at 22. This happened while CREE's earnings have grown and they have successfully changed their busines plan to better position themselves as a full solutions provider of LED products, rather than just a chip maker.
Anyways, thanks to this hobby, I was made aware of LED's for bright lighting applications and I started doing research. I was able to find a great product for my home, which will save me money, is eco friendly, and now I own stock in 2 companies that are 100% leveraged to the next technological revolution. Even if CREE and PANL only get a very small slice of the pie, they will see huge gains in share price because the companies have small market capitalization when considering the potential market for LEDs.
Here are an article that you might find interesting:
Wall Street Journal - Bright Future
I'd love to hear any feedback.
As most people know, LED lights are the most efficient, environmentally friendly, and cost effective lighting solution. What most people don't know is that there are practical consumer and industrial LED lighting applications available today. Most people think that LED lights are only good for indicator lights on your DVD player or on a screen of your laptop or ipod. Take a look outside one night and realize that every light you see will be replaced by an LED within the next 10-20 years. Congress has already passed a bill to make regular incandescent lights extinct in 2014 (date from memory, could be wrong). IMO, LED's will be the most prolific man made entity on the planet.
For any geeks out there who know what Wolf's law is, you must also consider that LED technology is growing at a far faster rate than CPU's ever have. LED technology, based on lumens per watt, is about 2-3 years ahead of schedule. They are already producing LED chips that are as bright as what they predicted for 2010.
Now, let's talk about the practical LED solutions available.
I'm redoing my house and I'm replacing about 10-20 6" recessed cans with the CREE LR6 6" down light. http://www.creells.com/LR6.htm
To summarize, this light uses only 12 watts but produces 650 lumens. I already installed a test unit and it provides brighter and far better quality light than the 65w flood it replaced. The unit cost me $99 shipped to my door. That seems expensive but if you consider the benefits, it will pay for itself in 2-3 years easily and then it will save me roughly $250 over the lifetime of each bulb. How? The bulb will last over 23 years if I use it 6 hours a day. It also uses 8 times less energy than an incandescent and half as much energy as a PC. It also doesn't emit any heat compared to other bulbs, so my AC won't be compensating for hundreds and hundreds of watts of heat generated by incandescent and pc bulbs. Also consider that PC bulbs are very difficult to dispose of in an eco-friendly manor. They have mercury and lead in them and PC's have a very short life for an expensive bulb. Another advantage LED's have over PC's is that LED's are more dimmable than PC's. Most PC's aren't dimmable at all, and if they are they have only 2-3 dimmable levels. Since LED lamps have many more LED's in them, they will have far better dimmable capabilities.
How does this relate to us in the hobby? We have all seen the first generation of programmable LED solutions. While they are too expensive for most hobbyists, we will see even better, brighter, and cheaper solutions within the next couple of years, as LED's become brighter and cheaper to manufacture.
There are other practical LED lighting solutions, such as bulbs for track lights and spot lights, desk lamps etc... One drawback of LED light is that it is highly directional. This can be overcome by optics (glass lenses) etc... The LR6 I use is 1 solid state unit with all electronics and optics, and fascia combined in a well built unit.
Another huge application for LED lamps that is occuring now are street lamps and parking lot lights. Many cities and colleges are switching to LED lamps. Anchorage, Alaska just swapped all their street lamps to LED lamps. They will save over $300,000 in electricity per year and they won't have to pay tens of thousands of dollars a year to replace light bulbs, since the LED will last them 10-20 years.
Now, let's talk about trying to capitalize on this LED revolution.
There are some major players in the LED space, such as Phillips, GE and Sony (OLED mostly), but you can't invest in them and plan to make any money because they are involved in LED's; there business is too diverse for their share price to reflect profits from LEDs. There is one pure play that only makes LED's, which is CREE (The company who makes the light I just bought). There is also a pure play in the OLED space called Universal Display Corp (ticker PANL). Thanks to the financial markets disaster, CREE's stock price has come down from the mid 30's to 18, and is now at 22. This happened while CREE's earnings have grown and they have successfully changed their busines plan to better position themselves as a full solutions provider of LED products, rather than just a chip maker.
Anyways, thanks to this hobby, I was made aware of LED's for bright lighting applications and I started doing research. I was able to find a great product for my home, which will save me money, is eco friendly, and now I own stock in 2 companies that are 100% leveraged to the next technological revolution. Even if CREE and PANL only get a very small slice of the pie, they will see huge gains in share price because the companies have small market capitalization when considering the potential market for LEDs.
Here are an article that you might find interesting:
Wall Street Journal - Bright Future
I'd love to hear any feedback.
