Beautiful Lighting Ideas

Top 8 Things You Didn’t Know About LEDs

1. A light-emitting diode, or LED, is a type of solid-state lighting that uses a semiconductor to convert electricity into light. Today’s LED bulbs can be six-seven times more energy efficient than conservative incandescent lights and cut energy use by more than 80 percent.

2. high-quality-excellence LED bulbs can have a useful life of 25,000 hours or more -- meaning they can last more than 25 times longer than long-established light bulbs. That is a life of more than three years if run 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

3. Unlike incandescent bulbs -- which release 90 percent of their energy as heat -- LEDs use energy far more economically with little wasted heat.

4.From traffic lights and vehicle brake lights to TVs and display cases, LEDs are used in a wide range of applications because of their unique characteristics, which include dense size, ease of maintenance, battle to breakage, and the ability to focus the light in a single path instead of having it go every which way.

5.LEDs contain no mercury, and a recent Energy Department study determined that LEDs have a much smaller environmental blow than incandescent bulbs. They also have an edge over compact luminous lights (CFLs) that’s expected to develop over the next few years as LED technology continues its steady enhancement.

6. Since the Energy sector started funding solid-state lighting R&D in 2000, these projects have received 58 patents. Some of the most successful projects include budding new ways to use materials, extract more light, and solve the underlying industrial challenges. 

7. The first visible-spectrum LED was imaginary by Nick Holonyak, Jr., while working for GE in 1962. Since then, the technology has speedily advanced and costs have dropped tremendously, making LEDs a viable lights solution. 

8.In 2012, about 49 million LEDs were installed in the U.S. -- saving about $675 million in annual power costs. Switching entirely to LED lights over the next two decades could save the U.S. $250 billion in energy costs, reduce electricity consumption for illumination by nearly 50 percent and avoid 1,800 million metric tons of carbon emissions.

9.Most recently, the Energy Department announced five new projects that will focus on cutting costs by improving industrialized equipment and processes.