No Hot Air

New light on new light

Regular readers know that we have a particular issue with  the <5% of people who have a particular issue with CFL lighting.  Stirred up by journalists who look for an issue that should be ignored where it even exists, a few saddoes have been convinced that actually making the break from incandescent lighting (circa 1880) to to CFL lights (circa 1998) is the death of free choice and civilisation as we know it.

We have a particular issue with those journalists too lazy to point out that CFL is so 1998, and that today's choice is between incandescent and LED.

News from Japan that LEDs are nearing mainstream:

Panasonic has launched a new household LED lightbulb in Japan that it says lasts 40 times longer than incandescent bulbs.
The screw-in bulbs are part of the EverLed line, and they're scheduled to hit stores in Japan on October 21, with monthly production at 50,000 units. No changes to lighting equipment used for incandescents are required.
If used an average of five and a half hours per day, the new bulbs can last up to 19 years, according to Panasonic. That's 40 times longer than incandescent bulbs.
The bulbs use only an eighth the power of incandescents. That means a 60-watt-equivalent LED bulb would cost only 300 yen (about $3) a year instead of 2,380 yen ($25.80)--a significant savings over a lifetime.

The 60 watt replacement is advertised as having a 6.9 watt consumption.  Early adopters in Japan can expect to pay 40,000 yen or $40.  But as there are many early adopters out there with $4000 Panasonic plasma screens, we're pretty sure that the light bulbs will be <10% of today's price  within five years.

Let's do some math here.  If we can save 87% of the 25% of home energy bills spent on illumination that adds up to

a) a whole lot

b) a 20% total drop in electricity demand

c) all nuclear generation.  Plus a further 15% of coal fired generation.  Or half of all coal fired generation, we get to keep the nukes and meet 2020 targets years early

d) all of the above

The answer is d of course.  But what's the more important story to get out to the British Public?  Good news (all of the above) or journalists catering to  old ideas instead of creating new ones?

Almost unreal, but coming soon

We pointed out just last week that moaning about CFL lighting is only a short term pleasure for those who can think disaster instead of opportunity at the end of the Edisonian, incandescent age, because LED and more interestingly OLED lighting is the way forward.

Article today in the NY Times highlights as it were, the attraction of OLED not only for industry, but for designers:

But unlike LEDs, which provide points of light like standard incandescent bulbs, OLEDs create uniform, diffuse light across ultrathin sheets of material that eventually can even be made to be flexible.Ingo Maurer...If you make a wall divider with OLED panels, it can be extremely decorative. I would combine it with point light sources,” he said.

Other designers have thought about putting them in ceiling tiles or in Venetian blinds, so that after dusk a room looks as if sunshine is still streaming in.

And the roll out of the flexible lights isn't so far away:

Within a year, manufacturers expect to sell the first OLED sheets that one day will illuminate large residential and commercial spaces...Because OLED panels are just 0.07 of an inch thick and give off virtually no heat when lighted, one day architects will no longer need to leave space in ceilings for deep lighting fixtures, just as homeowners do not need a deep armoire for their television now that flat-panel TVs are common.

The new technology is being developed by major lighting companies like G.E., Konica Minolta, Osram Sylvania, Philips and Universal Display...G.E. is developing a roll-to-roll manufacturing process, similar to the way photo film and food packaging are created; it expects to offer OLED lighting sheets as early as the end of next year.

This will be a fascinating concept that is going to accelerate the structural  changes of declining energy consumption but in ways that aren't just to do with energy economics.

OLED lighting is almost unreal,” said Hannes Koch, a founder of rAndom International in London, a product design firm. “It will change the quality of light in public and private spaces

Lighting as cheap as newspaper

People who should know better like the NY Times Business of Green, and those who don't want to know better like the Daily Mail or (usually, but not always) the Daily Telegraph, were united this week in looking for controversy and problems over the new rules consigning incandescent bulbs to, well, the age of Edison.

The problem is that where there isn't a controversy for 95% of people, the noisy, and usually stupid, minority get the headlines. The problem here is that CFLs are thought of as the permanent solution, whereas it will be an LED and OLED world of illumination sooner than most think.

And it isn't simply a matter of cheap light bulbs, OLED will also replace LCD displays, again for a better product at minimal cost.  Illumination can be anywhere from 20 to 50% of total energy spend for a business.  The issue won't be how to keep the lights on when the lights do the same or better job at  consumption rates of <5% of current use.  In sunnier climes, solar panels and rechargeable batteries will be able to replace grid power entirely.

OLEDs will also impact carbon through generation reduction. Surging supply of natural gas meets accelerating demand destruction.  The future of energy is all good news.  The problem is that those who have made a career of providing expensive solution to big problems will fight a rearguard action to disinform energy buyers over non-existent risks based on anecdote instead of fact.

Latest OLED good news comes from Japan:

“We have discovered a range of conditions using a two-solvent method that can make extremely smooth thin films using electrospray deposition,” says Yamagata. “Using this technology these devices could be manufactured as inexpensively as printing newspapers.”

Well, we think it's sexy.

 Our favourite ever US President, albeit from a very short list,  talks about increased rules for lighting efficiency:

Now I know light bulbs may not seem sexy,” Mr. Obama said, “but this simple action holds enormous promise because 7 percent of all the energy consumed in America is used to light our homes and our businesses.”

The new rule, scheduled to take effect in 2012, will cut the amount of electricity used by affected lamps by 15 to 25 percent

We believe this will be the biggest efficiency savings from any appliance standard ever,” said Steven Nadel, executive director of the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, an advocacy organization.

Putting in something as un-sexy as lower energy bulbs, does more than only annoy Daily Mail readers, something we find valuable in itself. It saves money obviously, and carbon. But reducing electricity use for lighting, which we predict will be far deeper and faster than most realise, will also have an impact across the electricity generation sector, which will put further downward pressure on gas prices.

How far will lighting spend drop?  By 2020, we think there is promise through any number of research avenues to make new lighting technology that makes energy use so cheap as to possibly not be worth the effort of metering it.  An example of how wide the research net has been pushed, is how it's not just about engineers or physicists but also even chemists:

A single molecule that reliably emits white light could speed the development of low-energy LEDs for the next generation of light sources and displays, say chemists

 

As we were saying

The first post we can find on LED lighting was almost a year ago, on June 19 when among other things we pointed out that if LED lighting was to be as successful as envisioned, a by-product would be a massive drop in electricity production. Almost a year later and the NY Times discovers the Green Promise Seen in Switch to LED Lighting

Studies suggest that a complete conversion to the lights could decrease carbon dioxide emissions from electric power use for lighting by up to 50 percent in just over 20 years; in the United States, lighting accounts for about 6 percent of all energy use. A recent report by McKinsey & Company cited conversion to LED lighting as potentially the most cost effective of a number of simple approaches to tackling global warming using existing technology.

The Times points out as we did in January..

The switch to LEDs is proceeding far more rapidly than experts had predicted just two years ago.

The problem of costs are also scheduled to disappear:

But scientists at a government-financed laboratory at Cambridge University have figured out how to grow them on silicon wafers, potentially making the lights far cheaper

“This is a technology on a very fast learning curve,” said Jon Creyts, an author of the McKinsey report, who predicted that the technology could be in widespread use within five years.

The lights are also rapidly moving indoors, where they could have an enormous effect on climate change. About 20 percent of carbon dioxide emissions associated with buildings in the United States and the United Kingdom are related to indoor lighting; in some houses the number is as high as 40 percent

What The NY Times doesn't mention in this piece is that LED is only the beginning.  LED can replace incandescent within five years.  OLED, or LED on printable plastic film will

1. Enhance Illumination - that may actually eat into lighting savings
2. Replace Newsprint -  Constantly updated electronic newspapers, magazine, books, flyers, brochures...the possibilities are endless. So will be the energy and carbon savings
3. Make Display or what is currently called TV, Computers, Movies, Posters and Outdoor Advertising carbon free.

Behind, and below, the biggest drop in electricity use since 1945

According to International Energy Agency statistics, electricity use has dropped worldwide by 3.5%

Three-quarters of the global decline in consumption is accounted for by industrial demand, reflecting the fall in China's manufacturing-heavy economy. Consumption in India, by contrast, is expected to increase by 1 per cent.

But what about the other quarter?  Where did that come from?  Could it be that the link between economic growth and energy use is not as strong as it was?  We said earlier this week that the escalator link between GDP growth and oil appeared to be fraying. Electricity use could be a more immediate indicator of how the link reflects a lasting impact of efficiency measures introduced as demand response to the surge of prices in all components of the energy complex during 2008.

We have been here before. Energy use dropped during the first energy shock of the mid-70s. In many places the relative drop in energy prices that happened at the end of the 70s, caused many economies to hop back on the escalator. But two very smart economies learned the long term lessons: California and Japan continued to use less energy measured against GDP with only positive impacts on GDP growth. Both economies not only mandated efficiencies, but more importantly kept to the course even as prices dropped again.

Are we now seeing a similar impact on a world-wide level?  China for example has dropped electricity  use by 2% while economic growth is still at positive GDP growth of 6.1% in Q1 2009.  Remember China is the big excuse some energy-intensive users in "developed" economies to defend inaction on energy: If we are forced to institute energy saving measures we'll only move the plant to China and emit more energy anyway.

New technology will have a lasting impact on energy use. The theory that increased wealth brings increased energy infers energy is a zero sum game where if energy was only cheaper then people simply use more of it. Some call this the Ryanair effect: Energy saved on an electricity bill is spent going on holiday. Or if gas goes down, then the end user turns up the heat, or leaves the lights on when electric bills lower, or use saving to buy a big TV.

A major impact we foresee will be the impact of smart metering, especially on peak usage. But an even greater impact on electricity use will be LED lighting. It's not there yet, but it can't be too far off:  60 watt bulbs using 1.5 watts, as well as commercial LED displacement of fluorescent lighting.

The average home uses 25% or so for lighting.  If the electricity required for the same lumen level drops by 90%, the savings are so huge that domestic users will have a significant impact.  They may be more careless about leaving the light on more, and they may use more bulbs but they aren't going to buy 40 times more lumens or light bulbs - or electricity.