One of the hurdles to taking LED lighting mainstream has been the high cost of creating white-light LEDs. Current manufacturing processes use a sapphire substrate as the base, which can be expensive.

Purdue University researchers have recently implemented a new process using a silicon base, with metallic layers stacked on top.  This is good news because silicon is not only cheaper, but is heat conductive, which means that the LEDs can be left ON the silicon base, eliminating some costly extra manufacturing steps currently associated with sapphire grown LEDs which have to be removed from the sapphire base and attached to something more heat conductive. This also means that the LEDs will last longer.

There remain some flaws in the manufacturing process, but the researchers believe that they can be overcome fairly easily. Its possible that we could see LEDs made from the new process as early as a couple of years.

For more detailed information, click here:

http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/21140/page1/

Public Service Electricity & Gas (PSE&G) in New Jersey is testing out a public LED program for the external lighting of several New Jersey neighborhoods. There are a number of potential benefits to making the change that will be looked at during this pilot program.

• LEDs use up to 70% less energy (consider this against over 330,000 lights)
• Environmentally sound, with no harmful gasses or materials
• Environmentally sound AND economical when you consider that an LED can potentially last 10-15 years, whereas a standard street lamp lasts only 2-3 years.

The largest drawbacks at this time are the high cost of LED lights initially, though that price is expected to drop once the technology goes mainstream, and the fact that LEDs MIGHT be temperature sensitive, producing more light in cold months and less light in warm months.

More information can be found here:

http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/jersey/index.ssf?/base/news-11/121696064563810.xml&coll=1

In our household we’ve known about the economic, environmental and therapeutic benefits of LED lighting for a while. And while we’ll probably do our own write-up on the subject at some point in the future, we came across this article today and thought you might enjoy reading it for yourselves.

http://www.trendir.com/archives/000257.html

The article is written more for home decorating than for therapy of any kind, but it still outlines a lot of the basics of LED lighting and gives some links to other articles on the subject as well.

Now, please understand that our home is NOT lit up like the underside of an inner city street racing car. Its just not our decorating style, so I found amusement, and even some befuddlement at the fixtures portrayed here. However, I kind of dug the illuminated dining table, though it seems less like a formal dining experience and more like a game room table to me. SEEING the temperature of the water coming out of a faucet by its color could be very helpful, especially for families with small children or infirmed. Finally, I’m thinking that self-lit fixtures in the bathroom would certainly make 3 a.m. trips to the bathroom much more comfortable than having to either blind yourself by turning on the lights or else fumbling around in the dark. Hmm.

Honey, what do you think of this waterfall shower with mood-lighting?…