Seeing the light: LEDs at work in lighting and in wireless networking

Not only does Philips Lighting North America’s 10-watt LED bulb have the potential for saving billions of dollars in U.S. energy consumption and avoiding millions of metric tons of carbon emissions: it’s dimmable as well. 

The bulb has earned the San Jose, California, company the Bright Tomorrow Lighting Prize from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) — the L Prize — for a 10-watt replacement for the 60-watt incandescent bulb.

Replacing every 60-watt incandescent bulb in the U.S. with Philips’10-watt LED bulb would save 35 terawatt-hours of electricity or $3.9 billion in one year and avoid 20 million metric tons of carbon emissions, according to the DOE prize announcement (enough electricity to power the lights of nearly 18 million U.S. households, or nearly triple the annual electricity consumption in Washington, D.C.). 

Steve Landau of Philips talks about the prize-winning bulb in this SPIE Newsroom video:

LEDs for wireless, too

Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institue for Telecommunications have been working with LEDs as well, looking at transforming energy from LED room lighting into a home wireless network with enough capacity to transmit four HD videos simultaneously to four different laptops.

What other energy-saving uses is LED technology being applied in?