LED lighting…reducing energy consumption by 10%

After a few conversations with people about the price of gasoline spurred more thinking around our nation’s dependence on foreign oil (or oil at all for that matter!), my thoughts turned to Light Emitting Diodes (LED’s). Knowing that they were being used currently for atypical and unique applications instead of general purpose lighting for now, I nonetheless have been increasingly enamored by them because, of all things, a “never needs batteries” windup flashlight!

On the 5th Annual Dad & Son Adventure to the North Shore of Lake Superior a couple of weeks ago, we took along two windup LED flashlights like the one at left (two in a package for $19.95 at Costco). They never need batteries, the LED bulbs are rated for 10,000 hours, and one minute of cranking gives an hour of cool, bright, white light. They were very useful.

So I thought long and hard about what I’ve skimmed in articles in the past year or so about LED’s: They’re energy efficient and could reduce consumption by 10% as of 2020 (using LED’s vs. incandescent light bulbs), the light is at a higher Kelvin temperature since they’re a more efficient process making them brighter, and the initial high cost of the current manufacturing processes would be obviated by the length of burn time of these LED’s.

Seems prudent to find numerous ways to drive down energy consumption. 10% here…10% there…pretty soon we’re talking about real savings and reduced dependence. Take a peek at the differences in LED’s vs. incandescent lights:

• How LED’s work
• How incandescent lights work

One more thing: I think about how useful water resistant lighting like this would be in areas like New Orleans (though food and water are a higher priority), and also in third world countries where there are an abundance of people that would glady trade one minute of hand cranking to enjoy an evening of one hour of illumination.