Author: Hank Green

Just yesterday we brought you news of Cree’s new module that will soon be working its way into lighting fixtures. We asked when we’d see their technology taking the shape of high-brightness bulbs that could fit in for home use.

The answer was within the next year or two. But today GE announced that they’ll have an LED bulb replacement using Cree’s LEDs available by the end of 2010. Now, let’s be clear, this joint project from Cree and GE isn’t as bright or as technologically advanced as the module we discussed yesterday, but it is a huge step forward for LED technology and I can’t wait to get my hands on one (or a dozen).

These bulbs will fit into any traditional bulb socket and will produce about as much light as a 40 watt bulb. It consumes just 9 watts and lasts up to 17 years. It doesn’t contain any hazardous substances but will cost up to $50. 

Of course, over the life of the bulb, it will be cheaper than incandescents, but when you just want a new lightbulb, it’s hard to choose the $50 one over the $0.50 one.

Cree, one of the world leaders in LED-for-lighting technology, is bringing a new product to market that could help rapidly increase the adoption of LED lighting. LEDs are complicated, the drivers to control them, the optics to focus them, even the bodies to house them have to be specially designed for heat management. These are all things that the manufacturers of lighting fixtures are not used to thinking about. They just take the light, plug into into a power source, and it’s supposed to work.

That’s why Cree is going to be producing the LRM4 line of LED modules. Everything is included, so the folks designing and manufacturing the light fixtures don’t have to be experts in semiconductors to make it work.

The LRM4 is also the debut of Cree’s new “True White” lighting technology. By combining specially tuned red and yellow LEDs (you can actually see them in the image above) Cree is able to match the warm light from a 65 watt incandescent bulb quite well. Other advantages over fluorescent lights include longer lifespan (over 12 years before the bulb dims more than 70%) full dimming capability and even higher efficiency.

Of course, the disadvantage is likely to be the price, which Cree wouldn’t disclose in a recent interview.

The lights are directional, so they’re only suitable for directional lighting applications like in-ceiling lighting and desk lamps. The modules will be built into various designs by manufacturers and then those products will be available for sale “soon,” likely first at specialty lighting stores.

Finally, I had to ask Cree about traditional bulb applications and whether this high-quality, high-brightness, surprisingly awesome technology might make it’s way into multi-directional, Edison socket formats they replied, “Those are coming. You will see those come over the course of the next year to two years”

Cree is a leading manufacturer of LEDs and the circuitry and components needed to bring them into our homes and businesses. They’ve been growing like crazy and, thankfully, have also managed to hire someone who knows something about social media. That someone decided to show, very clearly, the effects of incandescent lighting on the Easter Bunny. The result? Incandescent lights KILL THE EASTER BUNNY! So if you don’t want the Easter Bunny to die…you should consider investing in some next-generation lighting technology.

Taryn, an EcoGeek reader, received her subscriptions to Wired Magazine as well as National Geographic this week. A very EcoGeek combination, I must say, keeping up on the beauty and diversity of our world as well as cutting technology. But what she found surprised her. Each magazine had an ad from the same company, from the same advertising campaign with some disturbingly different messages.

The ad in National Geographic brags about Kohler’s “commitment to creating water-saving products”. On the other hand, the full-page advert in Wired seems to indicate that true luxury can only be had in a shower that simulates the drenching power a category five hurricane…an experience Kohler will gladly provide you with.

So which of these is the Bold Look of Kohler: The one that promises “Bold Conservation” or the one that promises “Bold jets of watter hitting you with one gallon per second of fresh drinkable water from every conceivable angle”? Thoughts?

AT&T has just announced a USB-based telephone charger that does not pull electricity from the wall when it’s not charging a phone. I don’t know about you, but my charger is plugged in 100% of the time. That charger pulls a tiny amount of energy from the wall 24 hours a day 365 days a year. Multiply that by 100 million chargers in America, and there’s probably at least one coal-fired power plant in America dedicated entirely to that wasted power.

AT&T’s new charger, however, is a standardized USB charger that does not pull any power from the wall when there’s nothing plugged into it. You wouldn’t think this was a particularly complicated thing to do (especially since chargers routinely cost thirty FREAKING dollars.) But high-markup chargers are a big part of cell phone company’s profit models, so they aren’t generally interested in pulling R&D dollars from that big tasty pie.

But it works, and it will charge a variety of devices, even non-AT&T devices. It’s great news for us all, and at the same cost as a regular (dramatically overpriced) cell phone charger.

Let’s hope the technology makes its way into other vampire power culprits soon. Read the full press release from AT&T here.

A Department of Energy report on light emitting diode (LED) technology has some pretty startling numbers to digest. First, 7% of America’s electricity is used to light our homes and businesses. That number is down significantly in the last few years because of the adoption of efficient lighting. But there is still a great deal of ground to be gained. Indeed, as bright white LEDs begin to make their way to the market, the DOE expects their adoption to result in huge decreases in energy use.

The cumulative savings of widespread adoption of this technology over the next 20 years would be about 1.500 terawatt-hours the price of which, at today’s energy prices, is around $120 billion. The savings would eliminate the need for 24 new large power plants, to say nothing of the decrease in carbon emissions.

The DOE has a host of programs to spur growth in the LED market, including a X-Prize style contest, R&D projects and market-based projects. Of course, we have to do our part too. New technology relies on EcoGeeks to be the early adopters of LED technology. I’ve already got a few lighting up my house.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m extremely excited about Bloom Energy. I honestly think that their technology is a good thing for the world and that it might very well revolutionize the power infrastructure in America and throughout the world. And yes, it will create jobs and make a select few people very rich.

In fact, I think it’s so revolutionary that it doesn’t need to be inflated by false or misleading claims … which is why I’m a little put off by a few naughty little lies in the Bloom press release I got this morning.

Annoying press point #1:
The Bloom Box “energy server” works with “nearly any fuel source.” To me, “nearly any fuel source” means anything containing carbon/hydrogen compounds, ranging from gasoline to wood.

The Bloom Box doesn’t run on “nearly any fuel source” it runs on methane or methane or methane. That methane can be pumped out of the ground or captured from landfills, but it’s still methane, and as I count it, that’s one fuel source.

Annoying press point #2:
Companies using the Bloom Box can “expect a three to five year payback on their capital investment.” This is insane. The average cost per kW/h in California is 14 cents and a Bloom Box produces 100 kW. 100 kW multiplied by 8760 hours in a year times $0.14 per kW means 100 kW of continual electricity consumption over the course of the year will cost a company about $122,000 a year. Add in the cost of the fuel (in whatever form) the cost of maintenance and financing, and I doubt these companies are saving more than $60,000 per year per box.

So I don’t see how they’re going to pay for a $700,000 piece of equipment (even with a 50% government subsidy that won’t last forever) over the course of three years. That number seems to be just plain false.

Annoying press point #3:
Probably what annoys me most about Bloom’s press release is that they claim the box “provides a cleaner, more reliable, and more affordable alternative to both today’s electric grid as well as traditional renewable energy sources.” Again, if it’s not an outright lie, it’s at least very misleading. The Bloom Box might be more reliable than both, but it isn’t cheaper than the grid and it isn’t cleaner than solar or wind.

Marketing double-speak isn’t good for anyone. If you take that sentence at face value, then you might as well cease all development of solar and wind and put 100% of the country’s resources into Bloom Boxes.

Bloom Energy’s technology is fantastic and exciting. It’s much cleaner than our current electricity infrastructure and more practical than distributed solar. It’s great, but there’s no reason to make false claims when your product is this revolutionary.

By telling “60 Minutes” that the device can run on solar power (huh? how?) and saying that it doesn’t perform “dirty combustion” they’re implying that this is the same order of clean energy as solar or wind power. But it’s simply not — they’re turning hydrocarbons into carbon dioxide (and a host of other pollutants, of course) just like every other power plant in the world.

I’m tired of news organizations taking this press release at face value, but I’m even more annoyed that Bloom fed them all these exciting bits of B.S..

The clean tech news of the week is going to be dominated by Bloom Energy‘s emergence from stealth. I can hardly believe that it was almost four years ago that I first wrote about Bloom. Reading that 2006 EcoGeek article, I’m proud to say that we got got the broad picture right, but the details are still tantalizing.

Bloom Energy’s current product is a relatively inexpensive and versatile fuel cell that can power roughly 100 American homes. The devices cost $700,000 a piece an are roughly twice as efficient as natural gas power transmitted through the grid. They’ve sold a bunch of these boxes (with hefty federal and state subsidies) to a bunch of large businesses in California, including Google, eBay, FedEx, WalMart and Staples. The boxes are busy creating “clean” energy as we speak.

Bloom has finally opened the doors to its operation to the press, allowing 60 Minutes a walk-through of their facility as well as providing interviews with the CEO of eBay and former Secretary of State Colin Powell. But I put “clean” in quotation marks because, despite the fact that the words “carbon dioxide” are never mentioned, Bloom Boxes still pump CO2 into the atmosphere, albeit far less than a traditional grid-scale natural gas plant would.

Bloom’s energy is certainly cleaner energy, but while they’re busy comparing themselves to solar power and wind, they’re not true clean energy unless they use bio-gas. I applaud them for using bio-gas when they can, but there simply isn’t enough of the stuff to power Bloom Boxes on a significant scale.

But let’s not spend too much time arguing about whether “cleaner” counts as “clean.” In my book, this is certainly good enough.

Bloom’s true potential is in super-charging the distributed power system. Bloom (very optimistically) wants to shrink its box (in size and cost) so that every American can have one in their basement for around $3000. The box would power the entire house, basically making a connection to the grid a convenience, not a necessity. This may not seem important until we realize that up to half of the power produced at a power plant is lost in transit.

Bloom Energy might also help power the developing world without expensive power infrastructure just as cell phones have created a cheap communications infrastructure.

Bloom’s goals are lofty and it may be that distributed power is going to be a long time in coming if it comes at all, but while they’re doing a great job of making this revelation sound more important than it is in the short term, the chance remains that this could actually be a very big deal.

Solar power towers have proved to be a fairly efficient way of converting solar energy into electricity. In a solar power tower, energy from a large array of mirrors focused onto a tower that captures the heat in some way, and then converts that heat to electricity using a boiler and turbine. It’s a great system, but building that heat-resistant tower and pumping all of those fluids up and down can be pretty expensive.

Which is why researchers at the Masdar Institute, the Tokyo Institute of Technology and Cosmo Oil are working together on “beam down” solar. Instead of having the heat-capturing system up on that big tower, a second set of mirrors directs the light back down at the ground where it can be captured by a system that doesn’t have to be suspended many stories in the air.

It’s certainly cheaper than a traditional solar power tower. The bad news is that the extra set of mirrors lowers the efficiency of the system by about 20%. If that can be made up for with reduced capital costs, however, they could be in business. In the end, creating cheap ways of capturing solar energy is probably going to be more important than creating efficient ways.

Of course, the project is still in the early phases…they haven’t even hooked it up to a boiler yet. But the initial prototype seems promising.

Via GreenTechMedia