Good news on LED lighting....

Today’s post: Weds, 5-7-2008

According to an article in today’s San Jose Mercury News in their business section, venture capitalists are beginning to put a LOT more money into funding LED light companies. In just the first 3 months of 2008, they invested $100 million. That compares to $13 million in 2005, 88 in 2006 & 91 in 2007.

One of the more interesting companies mentioned in the article today was Bridgelux Inc in Sunnyvale, CA.

They were listed as intending some of their LED lights to be used in homes – not just in traffic lights or backlighting on electronic devices, etc.

I phoned Brian Fisher, their media contact, who said that they do anticipate that some of their customers will make Bridgelux’s LED light products into light bulbs. It seems that companies like Bridgelux Inc do for lighting manufacturers what semiconductor companies like Intel do for PC makers. They make the components instead of the devices used by end users.

However, he said that a replacement using their LED’s for a 75 watt incandescent light bulb that generates 1100 lumens of light would use 10 watts.

Compact fluorescents generating that amount of light would use more like 18 to 20 watts & LED lights from other companies are reported to be in the 11 to 12 watt range for that much light.

Since Bridgelux Inc may also be able to make their LED products for less than other companies – according to their website -- it’s easy to see why they have raised over $70 million in venture capital including $40 million last month.

The other thing he said I did not know before is that LED lights are both more rugged in use than other lights & can do better in really cold places such as inside freezers or in facilities that are not heated in extremely cold climates.

(If you want to check out this company, their website is: http://www.bridgelux.com/ )

The article also listed four other LED lighting companies. Three others are in the Silicon Valley & one in Massachusetts has a Silicon Valley based venture capital investor.

The other encouraging news is that the article reports that WalMart is already making substantial use of LED lighting for its stores.

Since WalMart is profitable & has lower prices, they often pioneer effective cost saving methods. So, as this news gets out, other stores may well begin using LED lights as well.

And, it’s also clear that once LED light bulbs are widely sold & begin to come down in price, WalMart will sell the less expensive ones in large volume.

My take on all this is that LED light bulbs for the home are about where personal computers were just before the Apple II came out.

Some company will do it well enough that customers will buy; get extremely good & world wide publicity; & the explosion in LED light bulbs will then follow over the next 15 to 20 years after that.

My hope is that once LED light bulbs are widely available & that fit existing light sockets we will see gradually & then rapidly increasing carbon taxes on incandescent bulbs until they cost as much as the LED light bulbs which will gradually cost less over that same time period.

And, once that happens, I hope that compact fluorescent light bulbs that contain mercury are banned.

We will then have a market where a small amount of incandescent lights are still made & used for special situations, particularly those where the heat they generate is valuable. We will have no compact fluorescent light bulbs or we will have compact fluorescent light bulbs that contain no mercury in some applications. But 95 % of all light bulbs will be LED lights.

What I’d like to see soon is a company that already makes light bulbs for home use, develop LED bulb replacements for 60, 75, & 100 watt incandescent light bulbs that fit the sockets & lighting fixtures incandescent light bulbs have been used in until now along with a way for customers &/or utility companies to finance the people who buy them.

GE can do that & may do that at some point. But so far, such innovation has usually been done by venture backed startups. For example, Hewlett Packard passed on the idea of building a personal computer until Apple pioneered the idea & IBM and other companies jumped in.

That’s the company I’m waiting to see & hope to see within the next two or three years.

If any of the readers of this blog discover one, please let me know as a comment on this post on another post on this blog.