Shedding light on LEDs

Some time ago, a fella called God is said to have declared there should be some light on the subject.

Nearly instantly, if you believe the marketing hype, light appeared from a not insignificant source we came to call the sun.

Now, if God were to make the same declaration these days, odds are he'd be doing his reading by the light of an LED - a light emitting diode.

Unless you were asleep for the first two years of primary school, you'll understand what "light" and "emitting" mean, but not everyone knows (or admittedly even cares) what a diode is.

For those who do, it is a two- terminal electronic component that conducts electric current in only one direction. It looks like a small nub of plastic with two wires sticking out from it and essentially that is what it is.

The reason for all the fuss about the LED, a technology that has been around for decades, is that it has recently become available in white.

Before that, it was usually red and every one of us saw it when we left our TV on standby. Yes, that little dot was an LED.

Which hardly explains all the fuss now.

Well, the fuss starts, as mentioned just seconds ago, with the white light LED because that means they now have the potential (I stress potential) to replace many of those horribly wasteful incandescent lightbulbs.

These are the lightbulbs that have gone largely unchanged since they were invented a hundred or so years ago by that bright spark Thomas Edison.

They are the same lightbulbs the Labour government joined many countries of the world in trying to phase out due to their energy inefficiencies.

Coincidentally, they are the same type of lights the National government then turned around and unphased just in case people thought little old New Zealand was becoming a nanny state and not the jelly-spined populist one we have come to enjoy.

Anyway, some estimates have the world using 20 per cent of the energy it produces lighting up areas, and much of that is with incandescent bulbs.

Ever see a picture of the world at night from space? Europe is one big blob of light. So is Japan and Korea and the United States. Well, enough said. Millions of kilowatts of environmentally and monetarily expensive energy are being pumped into the sky and those pictures don't even capture the heat generated by all those lights.

It would be enough to keep Palmerston North warm many times over, if anyone were inclined to bother.

LED lighting consumes 50-percent less energy than traditional sources and is four times more energy efficient than regular light bulbs because more of the energy is converted into light than is lost as heat.

Replace those regular bulbs with LED and global energy consumption has the potential to drop remarkably and continue to do so as LEDs become more and more efficient. And more than that, the little buggers last for thousands of hours if you treat them right.

Of course, there are cynics among us who believe the benefit this technological advance will give us will be lost as people simply use more lights.

Sadly, this is likely to be true and nowhere is there better proof of this than in the myriad useless gadgets that now come with a LED light attached.

Despite the addition of a light, these gadgets are still useless to almost everyone except those people with enough time on their hands and an IQ of such challengingly small dimensions as to regard the Magnamail catalogue as a book of serious scientific breakthroughs.

These are the type of people who yearn for a pair of barbecue tongs with an LED attached, who can't wait to recharge their LED outdoor umbrella light and simply could not imagine owning a handheld fan if it did not have a handy LED light in the middle.

It warms the heart to know the planet's resources are being used in such gosh-darned useful ways.

However, there are some uses of LEDs that are actually worthwhile in a very practical sense if still quite unnecessary on the global scale of things.

A set of LED Christmas tree lights will probably last you until you lose them. A LED torch will hardly ever need its batteries replaced and at last there is a lighting source of decent strength (and not the greyish light of a fluroscent) that can be powered from a few solar panels.

But one of the best things about LEDs is they contribute to the growing potential we have as a society to create real energy efficiencies and thus reduce not just the need for more expensive power stations, but our personal power bill as well.

Which will leave us all with more money to get that second or third car we have always wanted.

Go, LED, go!

Kind of interesting LED facts

Television sets marketed as LED TVs aren't, quite. More accurately, they are expensive LCD sets that use LEDs for their backlighting. LED- backlit LCD TVs can cost as much as twice their standard LCD or plasma counterparts.

The development of LED technology has seen their efficiency and light output increase exponentially, with a doubling occurring about every three years or so since the 1960s. The advances are generally attributed to the parallel development of other semiconductor technologies and advances in optics and material science.

Most traffic lights have been replaced with LED versions. Look closely and you will see each light is made up of dozens of little LEDs all cooperating to make one big light. It warms the cockles of your heart.

Replacing your incandescent lights with their LED equivalent is an expensive business at this stage. LED bulbs of a 40W equivalent start at around $60 and increase in price with lumen value (they only go to about 60W equivalent now). These prices are expected to plummet in the coming years.

LED gadgets you don't really need

Waterproof Dynamo LED Torch & Cellphone Charger, $34.95 at www.nznature.co.nz

This gadget hardly needs an explanation. It's a torch you charge up by winding a handle, which you can also use to charge your mobile phone.

Just one minute of winding gives you 20 minutes of light or two to eight minutes of telephone talk time. Great for when you lose your regular charger or if you just want a very low impact workout.

LED Lenser - Hokus Focus $102.55 at www.prepare.co.nz

The world's best-selling LED Lenser torch is now available in New Zealand. Great stuff, right? Well, not really, because despite its hefty price tag, it does not ensure your spiritual happiness and general well-being, which is what I would expect from a hundred-dollar torch. That being said, on a purely torch basis, it is an excellent piece of kit that can be focused from a spot to a flood beam.

DSE Solar LED Shed Light - $39.98 at Dick Smith New Zealand

Easy to install, this little sucker runs on batteries charged by the sun, which means it's free - which means no bills to pay. Not only that, the light comes with a magnet so you can stick it on the wall or ceiling of your shed with little fuss. Of course, this does mean you don't get to use that entirely unnecessary DeWalt hammer drill you bought yourself for Christmas, so it's not all good.

- © Fairfax NZ News