The Energy Blog

FYI: LED Headlights This Year

OSRAM Opto Semiconductors has carried out pioneering work in the development of thin-film LEDs – supported by Fraunhofer researchers from Jena.  . . .  the efficiency and luminosity of LEDs have never yet been sufficient to achieve a major breakthrough. Now, thanks to new technologies for chip manufacturing, structural design (OSTAR) and beam shaping . . . the light output of the low-price, energy-saving LEDs has been vastly improved.  . . . The company took a major step forwards when it devised chip technology that permits the extraction of light in a single half sphere. A novel platform for the thin-film LEDs ensures efficient temperature management and allows all colors of LEDs to be combined. To use the light emitted by the LED chip as fully as possible, a special optic for the respective application is required and was accordingly designed and implemented by the Fraunhofer researchers. It consists of two parts: a primary and a secondary lens. The primary lens collects the light emitted by the LED close to the chip and combines it to form a beam. The secondary lens homogenizes the light beam.  . . . OSTAR modules will be made standard equipment in car headlamps as of 2008.  . . . more

Power Innovations Energy Efficient Power Supplies

Did you realize that about 10% of household energy consumption is wasted in the standby mode of devices in your home, costing over $5 billion annually in the U.S?  The Lawrence Berkeley National Lab estimates that a 75% reduction is possible in new equipment by replacing inefficient linear power supplies with smarter switch-mode power supplies, such as those made by Power Integrations.

Balu Balakrishnan, CEO of Power Integrations, Inc., (NASDAQ:POWI) appeared on CNBC's Street Signs, see video, today, marking the 10th anniversary of the companies founding.  Their energy efficient power supply components are one of the items that receive little publicity, yet contribute significantly to the reduction of our power usage. Their integrated circuits with EcoSmart(r) technology are used in power supplies, which convert high-voltage AC power from a wall outlet into the low-voltage DC power needed by most electronic products.

Up to 90% of standby power is wasted energy consumed by inefficient power supply designs and unnecessarily energized components.  The Lawrence Berkeley National Lab estimates that a 75% reduction is possible in new equipment and that nearly all standby functions can be performed with a total appliance standby power of one watt or less.  This can be achieved by using improved power supply technologies and designs, namely, by replacing inefficient linear power supplies with smarter switch-mode power supplies.

LED Lights Save Energy for Atlanta and Your Home

Cree, Inc. (Nasdaq: CREE), a U.S.-based leader in Light Emitting Diode (LED) solid-state lighting components, and the City of Raleigh, NC,  have formed a joint initiative to test, deploy and promote LED lighting technology. The “LED City” initiative is designed to create a “living laboratory” to deliver the economic, environmental and usage benefits of LED lighting to the residents of Raleigh. As part of the commitment to creating an “LED City,” Raleigh plans to deploy LED lighting, through its living-laboratory initiative, to serve a number of lighting applications, including garage and parking lot lights, street lights, architectural and accent lighting, portable lighting and pedestrian and walkway lighting over the next 18 months.

LEDs are one of the world’s most energy efficient light sources and the newest models deliver approximately 70 lumens per watt, using approximately 17% and 50% of the energy consumption of incandescent and compact fluorescent (CFL) lamps, respectively. The LED's, with a lifetime of over 50,000 hours, last more than 20 times longer than incandescent and 5 times longer than CFL bulbs, which lowers maintenance costs. Cree's LEDs are now used in products for residential as well as commercial and industrial use.

Google Offers to Share Power Saving Technology

Google, the internet search engine giant whose service is powered by hundreds of thousands of servers, is lobbying the computer industry to improve the power efficiency of its products.

Simple changes to PC power supplies could save billions of dollars for industries with high computer use, the company told computer hardware developers yesterday, and Google's top engineers offered to share its secret in-house technology to help create an industry standard.

Power supplies to standard PCs and servers typically waste 30-40 per cent of their energy, but Google engineer Luiz Barroso told attendees at the Intel developers' conference in San Francisco that it had cut that waste to just 10 per cent.