The only light more efficient than an LED is an LED that is turned off. Demand-based lighting, network controlled is the next step.
Cree already sells Power-over-Ethernet powered and controlled light fixtures to do this: http://www2.cree.com/smartcast-landing-page
Or, you can just buy a keychain or a torch made using this principle. Will provide continuous light for +10 years: http://www.kitmonster.co.uk/product_info.php/products_id/638
Which is fine for my Luminox watch, but not fine for a wizard's staff.
Also, the light is pretty weak. You can only see it in a dark environment. Again, that's fine for a watch.
[1] http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2008/10/led-light-cfl-b.html
While LED lights have certainly allowed for new applications, that article is nearly 10 years old and the future predicted has not come to pass. There has been no wave of LED-encrusted buildings. The roads don't glow. My bookshelves and whatnot don't either.
If LEDs deliver a 10x improvement in energy use, we'll have to use 10x as much light to offset the energy gains. How likely is that?
Lol. Give them time. Here's two examples off the top of my head, in my city: http://urbantoronto.ca/news/2015/07/aura-illuminates-downtow...
http://canderelresidential.com/files/styles/building/public/...
Speak for yourself :)
I agree, though; I use a lot more lights around the house, but they're small and very directed for their purpose. Many of them are controlled by cheap, ubiquitous PIR modules so that they're only on when needed, with absurdly low quiescent current. I use less light overall because it's only where I need it to be, and I find this to be much nicer on my eyes, and generally pleasing for the evening. The added efficiency is just a bonus on top of all that. Many are undervolted, as well, so should last a very long time; the main concern is the lifespan and quality of the power supplies.
Lots of led encrusted buildings.
I freaking love what Asia is doing with their urban environments...
I just wish that the US developers would take note.
We are building the tallest building in SF ("salesforce" tower) and its a mundane peice of shit building. Literally zero aesthetic innovation.
There are those solar roadway people who are hoping to fix that. (I'm not optimistic, though. :) )
For a while the color temperature was terrible, but cheap and reliable warm phosphors have mostly fixed that.
As for private outdoor lighting, I'm not sure that less cost really affects that. People that made poor lighting choices (too much, too cool, too much spill) don't do it because it's suddenly cheap. They just paid more before. The answer to this is likely some degree of local regulation.
Read the same thing about four wheel drive cars, where the added safety is eaten up by drivers taking increased risks.
Interesting psychology.
Oh good, Auernheimer can wake me up in the middle of the night.
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/hacker-weev-made-thousands-...
Efficiency is much less important, if you also pay to heat your home.
That doesn't mean they're superior to LED, but it does change the cost/benefit to make it a little less lopsided! :-)
While, sure it makes the argument less lopsided, you'd be crazy to consider the heat output from bulbs as a benefit when replacing them with LEDs.
Don't forget, in the summer you have to pull that heat out of your house also.
http://news.mit.edu/2016/nanophotonic-incandescent-light-bul...
I didn't see that claim in the article, but I thought these two paragraphs were wonderfully specific:
One quantity that characterizes a lighting source is the so-called luminous efficiency, which takes into account the response of the human eye. Whereas the luminous efficiency of conventional incandescent lights is between 2 and 3 percent, that of fluorescents (including CFLs) is between 7 and 15 percent, and that of most commercial LEDs between 5 and 20 percent, the new two-stage incandescents could reach efficiencies as high as 40 percent, the team says.
The first proof-of-concept units made by the team do not yet reach that level, achieving about 6.6 percent efficiency. But even that preliminary result matches the efficiency of some of today’s CFLs and LEDs, they point out. And it is already a threefold improvement over the efficiency of today’s incandescents.
Which details in that do you question?
Yes. They say they are currently at 6% efficiency, which is better than the worst CFL's and LED's, but far from matching the best.
as theoretical efficiency of white LEDs is also around 40%
Yes, although one should probably include the power supply. I think the advantage of the incandescent approach is that there are no losses here.
I'll consider incandescents once the efficiency of commercially available ones reaches the efficiency of commercially available leds.
Sure, sounds wise. Light quality and longevity might be factors too.
But what does this have to do with the claim that the article says "LEDs are only twice as efficient as traditional bulbs"? The article can be read as claiming that the worst commercially available LED's are about 2x the efficiency of the best incandescents, and perhaps this is false, but I don't see this as reason to discount the rest of the details.
Here's earlier discussion of this approach, which includes a link to the actual paper: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11771001
https://www.google.com/amp/phys.org/news/2012-03-efficiency....
Also, the "theoretical efficiency of LEDs" is a very different number than the "theoretical efficiency of white LEDs". I think when talking about white LEDs, they are assuming a monochromatic LED pumping a phosphor.
But while it's not that practical, in that it's limited to picowatts (10^-12 watts), it is interesting nonetheless. Another similarly surprising example is that the theoretical maximum efficiency of some fuel cells also exceeds 100%, for similar reasons of extracting heat from the environment.
And PWM lighting is annoying in a lot of ways.