New technology for lower cost LED lights....

Today's post: Wednesday, 10-6-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 4 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post: New technology for lower cost LED lights

Late last week, it was in the technology company news for the Silicon Valley that there is a new company with a technology that may dramatically cut manufacturing costs for LED lights.

As many know, the two reasons that LED lights have yet to completely take over the market for homes and smaller businesses for light bulbs are

that almost none of them fit the lamps and sockets people now have that did fit their old incandescent light bulbs;

&

that LED light bulbs despite dramatic savings on the electricity to operate them of 4 or 5 to one over incandescent light bulbs and they last over 10 times longer, they cost almost 100 times as much per bulb.

Philips is rumored to have begun to make LED light bulbs that fit the lamps and sockets people now have that did fit their old incandescent light bulbs. And, as a company large enough to get an economy of scale, their bulbs may cost $45 instead of $75 or $100 apiece.

But only really serious people about supporting clean energy an energy efficiency will buy at that price.

But if the LEDs themselves cost a fifth or a tenth as much to make, they would rapidly take over the market for light bulbs once they come out in the right sizes.

Maybe that will happen in the next few years.

Here’s the announcement.

GLO-AB-Establishes-Engineering-Center-Silicon-Valley in Sunnyvale

Founded in 2005, glo AB is a venture-backed, development-stage company focused on development and commercialisation of entirely new, highly energy efficient and very low cost nanowire light-emitting diodes (nLED)

glo employs novel, cutting-edge semiconductor nanotechnology to dramatically lower production cost at the die level of Ultra-High-Brightness (UHB) light emitting diodes (LEDs).

A novel type of LED-chip - each with millions of nanowire LEDs or nLED - is expected to offer all the advantages of state-of-the-art conventional planar UHB-LEDs, including high lighting efficiency with very low energy consumption, long lifetime and good functionality,
but at radically lower manufacturing costs.

This is expected to open the door to solid state lighting (SSL) for general illumination markets worldwide.

Sweden's Glo Opens Sunnyvale Facility, Lands $25M and New CEO
Sunnyvale, Calif. -- Glo AB, a Swedish developer of nanowire semiconductor LEDs, said on Friday it has raised $25 million in new funding and established a new engineering center in Sunnyvale. The company also named Fariba Danesh as its CEO. New investor Wellington Partners joined previous backers Provider Venture Partners, Hafslund Venture, Agder Energi Venture, Teknoinvest and VantagePoint Venture Partners.