Borealis

LED bulbs come in popular sizes including MR16.

Last month, the U.S. Senate passed a bill which could bring the end to Thomas Edison’s incandescent light bulb.

The new legislation, in addition to increasing automobile fuel economy, new laws against energy price-gouging, a big increase in ethanol production, also deals with saving electricity at home.
 
The bill would create new efficiency standards for appliance and lighting -- including changing old-fashioned lighting fixtures in U.S. government buildings, new standards for incandescent lighting fixtures and also calls for federally-funded Bright Tomorrow Lighting prizes for ideas on how to replace standard 60-watt bulbs with new, solid-state devices.

Through grueling experimentation, Edison produced a light bulb in 1879, which could burn for hours.  Except for a few slight improvements, we’ve been hooked on Edison’s design for more than 100 years.

Because of their construction, though, incandescent bulbs are very inefficient when it comes to energy use.  Only a small portion of the electricity is actually used in the light-making process.  The rest is discarded as heat.

Fluorescent bulbs, also a 19th century invention, use electricity to energize mercury vapor in a glass tube mostly filled with inert gas.  Because they’re more efficient than incandescent, fluorescent bulbs became especially popular in factories.  Their biggest downside is that early bulbs produced what many called stark, white, “unnatural light.”

Light bulbs didn’t really change much until the late 20th century.  That’s when modern electronic circuitry improved efficiency and allowed for the creation of compact fluorescent bulbs.

These bulbs not only are efficient but also last a lot longer – thousands of hours longer than their incandescent counterparts. Compact fluorescents have been sold for more than 20 years now, but it’s only in the past decade or so that prices have dropped enough for them to become attractively-priced alternatives to homeowners.

Modern-day inventors haven’t stopped there.  They’ve also been working on an even more efficient bulbs made from glowing LEDs (light-emitting diodes).  In small numbers, LEDs are used as the little indicator lights on a radio or a remote control.  When you use a number of LEDs at the same time they produce a good amount of illumination.

LED bulbs are 100 percent solid-state devices and can be as much as two to three times more efficient than compact fluorescents  They’re also a lot more durable (fewer breakable parts) and have a life expectancy of more than 100,000 hours.

I’ve been testing a number of compact fluorescent samples made under the Borealis brand by PolyBrite International – makers of industrial LED bulbs.  I’ve been very impressed by what I’ve seen.  

The bulbs I’ve tried are made for down-light ceiling and display/accent lighting fixtures.  They're made to approximate different color balances mimicking incandescent, warm white and cool white fluorescents.  One bulb I tried, the MR16, puts out the same amount of light as a 20-watt incandescent but only consumes 3.2 watts of power.
 
At this point, LED bulbs are where compact fluorescent bulbs were 25 years ago. They show promise. But, LED bulbs are currently bleeding-edge technology, which means they’re very expensive. 

 

Industry experts believe it will take a few years before LED bulbs are affordable enough for the technology to make a huge dent in the nation’s energy consumption needs.

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