LEDs and Smart Lighting Can Save Trillions Of Dollars

E. Fred Schubert and Jong Kyu Kim, professors at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, have written a report and firmly believe LEDs will revolutionize the lighting industry the same way transistors did for the electronics industry. Recently there have been number of innovations and when they are adopted in the coming years we can save trillion of dollars in cost savings coupled with a massive reduction in the amount of energy required to light homes and businesses worldwide. The professors predict that a new generation of lighting devices based on LEDs will replace the light bulb in the next few years and will help us save considerable amount of money and also have environmental benefits. LEDs are safer than the fluorescent lamps and compact fluorescent lamps (CFL) and consume less energy than both. The LEDs consume 20 times less power than conventional light bulb and five times less power than CFL. Schubert and Kim have written a paper on this subject called “Transcending the replacement paradigm of solid-state lighting” in the December 22, 2008 issue of Optics Express. They expect LEDs will be widely used in healthcare, transportation systems, digital displays and computer networking areas. Another advantage the LEDs have is that they can be tweaked to work in any situation. Schubert and Kim believe that if all the light bulbs in homes and businesses are replaced with LEDs in the next 10 years, they derive the following benefits: • Energy savings of 1.9 × 1020 joules

• Electrical energy consumption would be reduced by terawatt hours

• Financial savings of $1.83 trillion

• Carbon dioxide emissions would be reduced by 10.68 gigatons

• Crude oil consumption would be reduced by 962 million barrels

• The number of required global power plants would be reduced by 280 They want the industry and researchers to work together to develop a comprehensive LEDs lighting system technology. Schubert and Kim wrote in the paper:

Deployed on a large scale, LEDs have the potential to tremendously reduce pollution, save energy, save financial resources, and add new and unprecedented functionalities to photonic devices. These factors make photonics what could be termed a benevolent tsunami, an irresistible wave, a solution to many global challenges currently faced by humanity and will be facing even more in the years to come.

The smart light application with LEDs can not only be used in homes but also for rapid biological cell identification, interactive roadways, boosting plant growth and reducing the risk of certain type of cancers. We can expect LEDs to be a major force in the next few years.