Lights Out

Familiar old bulbs going away in switch to greener technology

Make your peace and say your goodbyes. The lights are getting ready to go out on the old-fashioned incandescent bulb.

In less than a year, federal regulations will begin phasing out the century-old technology, a process that's already begun in California, which received a waiver to launch the program one year early.

Manufacturers will no longer make the traditional 100-watt bulb, and stores eventually will sell out of current supplies. Consumers will have to choose from more efficient bulbs that use no more than 72 watts, including halogen incandescents, compact fluorescents and light-emitting diodes, or LEDs.

"These standards will help cut our nation's electric bill by over $10 billion a year and will save the equivalent electricity as 30 large power plants," said Noah Horowitz, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council. "That translates into a whole lot less global warming pollution being emitted."

The change is part of the federal Energy Independence and Security Act that President George W. Bush signed into law in 2007 to reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. The act requires new bulbs to use 25 to 30 percent less energy beginning in 2012 - starting with the 100-watt bulb. By 2014, other incandescent bulbs, including the 75-, 60- and 40-watt, also will be phased out across the country.

Some specialty bulbs, however, will continue to be available. Consumers still will be able to get smaller lights such as yellow bug lights and aquarium bulbs.

Light bulb manufacturers said they haven't received any reports of customers hoarding 100-watt bulbs yet, though that may change once supplies begin to dry up and word gets out.

Whether the local market is ready for the change remains to be seen.

Updating Edison

When the Energy Independence and Security Act was passed, the economy was good and customers were quickly adopting compact fluorescent bulbs, or CFLs, that are more energy efficient. Those bulbs were, and remain, considerably more expensive than Thomas Edison's filament bulb, which can be bought for less than $1 apiece. And in 2009, two years after CFLs hit their peak, the Department of Energy reported sales had dropped by 25 percent, with just one in four bulbs purchased being a CFL.

When it comes to market penetration, California, New York City, Wisconsin and several other states are seeing the highest levels - with California the clear winner at about 28 percent, according to data produced by Energy Star, DOE's energy-efficiency agency. Tennessee, however, is not even on the graph.

Supporters of the technology say the newer energy-efficient bulbs last so much longer that there is a financial savings in the end. For example, while incandescents provide as much as 2,000 hours of light, compact fluorescents can provide light for six times longer. Incandescents, which create light by passing an electric current through a tiny tungsten wire filament, also waste 90 percent of the electricity they use as heat instead of light. Fluorescents, by comparison, apply an electrical current to different types of phosphers to produce light and produce less heat.

The United States isn't plowing new ground with the legislation. Australia was the first to begin phasing out incandescents beginning in 2009, followed by the European Union, the Philippines and Argentina, said Michael Petras, president of GE Lighting. Mexico and Brazil are expected to follow the United States.

Bulb manufacturers here have been retooling their processes to make room for CFLs, but customers haven't yet jumped on the bandwagon, said Ben Taube, executive director of the Southeastern Energy Efficiency Alliance in Atlanta.

"On the production side, manufacturers have been prepared and are ready for the lighting transformation," he said. "On the consumer side, I think it's one of those areas where it's been an ease into education. People react to changes in markets in both positive and negative ways. You get used to the bulb that you like, and that's what you want to have."

Nick Reynoza, manager at Royal Lighting, a Los Angeles designer lighting retailer, said it's a shame the transition comes at a time when alternatives are so much more expensive.

"It's not really an option - you have this or you don't get anything," he said. "The options are more expensive. Four incandescents are $1, the halogens are $5.99 and the LEDs are like $20."

But for the rest of the country, price shouldn't be an issue by the time the deadline rolls around, Taube said.

"The price will drive itself down to be comparable with what we've experienced in the past with traditional incandescent bulbs," he said. "I think we're going to hit price points that are not shocking at all."

Still, although organizations like the Southeastern Alliance for Clean Energy and other conservation groups back the change and the lighting industry has invested heavily in new technology, not everyone supports the law. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, for example, reintroduced legislation this year to repeal the law.

"People don't want Congress dictating what light fixtures they can use," Barton said on his website. "Traditional incandescent bulbs are cheap and reliable."

The consumer side

Adam Gottlieb, spokesman for the California Energy Commission, acknowledged that the change has resulted in a "great deal of hue and cry" on blogs as well.

Recent postings have included the titles "More dim bulbs: California banning 100-watt incandescent light bulbs" and "More evidence that California is nuts."

Gottlieb, however, said it was not a ban and that consumers can still buy whatever bulbs they want as long as they meet the new standards.

"After 130 years Tom Edison's old-fashioned light bulb is getting a 20th century makeover," he said. "The simple truth is consumers will save money."

But fans of the traditional bulb say they provide a softer, more natural light and turn on more quickly. In addition, the difference in CFL technology can create some problems, like cause them to burn less brightly and shorter than advertised, depending on the location, according to the Lighting Research Center, which studies lighting from its home at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York. The organization advises buying CFLs with the Energy Star label and keeping receipts for CFL purchases.

GE Lighting's Petras said the industry is aware of the shortcomings and is working to refine the technology.

"We've got compact fluorescents that look like incandescents," he said from the company's headquarters in Cleveland, Ohio. "We have a product coming out this spring that's a hybrid of compact fluorescent and halogen that will provide energy savings and a better startup time."

At Stokes Electric and Lighting, a Knoxville company with locations in Pigeon Forge and Crossville, Tenn., preparations already are under way for the switch.

Bob Stokes, a branch manager for the company, said the process to alert consumers to the changeover has begun. The company, which has an electrical supply store on McCalla Avenue and a retail lighting center on Papermill Drive, is holding workshops on the new bulbs and regulations.

"I think it's going to be huge," Stokes said. "We're still selling both products and we're trying to educate the public."

Stokes said the changes will affect all lighting, whether for a small utility room or a large stadium. Although newer, energy-efficient bulbs are more expensive than their traditional incandescent counterpart, Stokes believes they will come down in price as the technology improves and they go mainstream.

And while pricey, Stokes said consumers will notice a savings difference in their energy bills.

Stokes Electric and Lighting sales vice president Mike Lakin said he believes CFLs are simply a stepping stone to more efficient, better quality lighting in LEDs.

Government and business already is investing in LEDs, Lakin said, and "the consumer side of it is coming more and more. … It's more of a cleaner light, it's closer to the incandescent."

Meanwhile, utilities are starting the process of educating customers about the biggest light bulb change-out in this nation's history.

"We are in the process of learning about this federal legislation and how it will impact our customers," said Grace McNeilly, KUB spokeswoman. "But we always encourage our customers to purchase products that use less energy."

Except for Californians, said Taube, most people probably don't even know the change is coming - but when it does he doesn't envision any sort of revolution at the local Walmart or home supply store.

"They'll just realize they're not there anymore, and they'll move on," Taube said.

Via

New Technology for Cheaper, More Efficient Solar Cells

The sun provides more than enough energy for all our needs, if only we could harness it cheaply and efficiently. Solar energy could provide a clean alternative to fossil fuels, but the high cost of solar cells has been a major barrier to their widespread use.

Stanford researchers have found that adding a single layer of organic molecules to a solar cell can increase its efficiency three-fold and could lead to cheaper, more efficient solar panels. Their results were published online in ACS Nano on Feb. 7.

Professor of chemical engineering Stacey Bent first became interested in a new kind of solar technology two years ago. These solar cells used tiny particles of semiconductors called "quantum dots." Quantum dot solar cells are cheaper to produce than traditional ones, as they can be made using simple chemical reactions. But despite their promise, they lagged well behind existing solar cells in efficiency.

"I wondered if we could use our knowledge of chemistry to improve their efficiency," Bent said. If she could do that, the reduced cost of these solar cells could lead to mass adoption of the technology.

Bent discussed her research on Feb. 20, at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C.

In principle, quantum dot cells can reach much higher efficiency, Bent said, because of a fundamental limitation of traditional solar cells.

Solar cells work by using energy from the sun to excite electrons. The excited electrons jump from a lower energy level to a higher one, leaving behind a "hole" where the electron used to be. Solar cells use a semiconductor to pull an electron in one direction, and another material to pull the hole in the other direction. This flow of electron and hole in different directions leads to an electric current.

But it takes a certain minimum energy to fully separate the electron and the hole. The amount of energy required is specific to different materials and affects what color, or wavelength, of light the material best absorbs. Silicon is commonly used to make solar cells because the energy required to excite its electrons corresponds closely to the wavelength of visible light.

But solar cells made of a single material have a maximum efficiency of about 31 percent, a limitation of the fixed energy level they can absorb.

Quantum dot solar cells do not share this limitation and can in theory be far more efficient. The energy levels of electrons in quantum dot semiconductors depends on their size -- the smaller the quantum dot, the larger the energy needed to excite electrons to the next level.

So quantum dots can be tuned to absorb a certain wavelength of light just by changing their size. And they can be used to build more complex solar cells that have more than one size of quantum dot, allowing them to absorb multiple wavelengths of light.

Because of these advantages, Bent and her students have been investigating ways to improve the efficiency of quantum dot solar cells, along with associate Professor Michael McGehee of the department of Materials Science and Engineering.

The researchers coated a titanium dioxide semiconductor in their quantum dot solar cell with a very thin single layer of organic molecules. These molecules were self-assembling, meaning that their interactions caused them to pack together in an ordered way. The quantum dots were present at the interface of this organic layer and the semiconductor. Bent's students tried several different organic molecules in an attempt to learn which ones would most increase the efficiency of the solar cells.

But she found that the exact molecule didn't matter -- just having a single organic layer less than a nanometer thick was enough to triple the efficiency of the solar cells. "We were surprised, we thought it would be very sensitive to what we put down," said Bent.

But she said the result made sense in hindsight, and the researchers came up with a new model -- it's the length of the molecule, and not its exact nature, that matters. Molecules that are too long don't allow the quantum dots to interact well with the semiconductor.

Bent's theory is that once the sun's energy creates an electron and a hole, the thin organic layer helps keep them apart, preventing them from recombining and being wasted. The group has yet to optimize the solar cells, and they have currently achieved an efficiency of, at most, 0.4 percent. But the group can tune several aspects of the cell, and once they do, the three-fold increase caused by the organic layer would be even more significant.

Bent said the cadmium sulfide quantum dots she is currently using are not ideal for solar cells, and the group will try different materials. She said she would also try other molecules for the organic layer, and could change the design of the solar cell to try to absorb more light and produce more electrical charge. Once Bent has found a way to increase the efficiency of quantum dot solar cells, she said she hopes their lower cost will lead to wider acceptance of solar energy.

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Transparent Cement Could One Day Save You Money

i.light, might very well be an indicator for energy bill savings.

According to Discovery News, the technology used combines cement which his embedded with resins that are designed to allow a certain amount of light through without compromising the material's integrity.

Read the entire article HERE.