A Silicon Valley company called Luxim has developed a tiny light bulb that's capable of delivering full spectrum light and able to give off the same amount of it as a street light but using much less power.
The bulb is based on a plasma of argon gas and operates at temperatures of up to 6000k. It can produce 140 lumens/watt which is much more than standard incandescent lamps(15 lumens/watt) or even high end LED's(70 lumens/watt). The ultra efficient device does not use electrodes to delivery electricity to the bulb, there is something called the 'puck' that delivers the energy by acting as an electrical lens.
There has been a lot of interest in LED's recently and its good to see alternative technologies competing against them. There was no mention of how much these will cost or when you might expect to see one in a street lamp near you. Check out the link below for a video of the bulb in action.
Link:
ZDnet
Luxim
Sunday, 23 March 2008
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As someone who sells light bulbs for a living, I find this advancement to be exciting. Currently, we sell quite a few compact fluorescent bulbs, but many of our customers have concerns about their mercury content. If this technology were to become scaled down to a size that could be utilized by the average consumer, it would be far more efficient (in terms of lumens per watt) than compact fluorescents, and presumably less toxic.
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