Perpetual Innovation

Category: LED

  • Cree Likes its LEDs… Helps colleges and others save lots of money & energy.

    San Diego Community College District – San Diego, CA

    San Diego Community College District is the recipient of the APPA’s 2015 Sustainability Award recognizing and advancing sustainability excellence in educational facilities. An CREE want a little school credit. The upgrades used Cree® LED lighting upgrade with SmartCast® Technology.

    Looks good.

    In the meanwhile, Ikea stores are moving to only selling LED lights by 2016. Read here about Idea’s LED ideas.  They argue that about 20% of electric energy use in the world comes from lighting. So if LED lights can reduce that by about 85%. That is a BIG Woo Hoo for the environment too.  The savings of energy/electricity are really only a small part of the savings. Other lights produce huge amounts of heat, which generally increase air conditioning costs. It takes time and money to buy replacement bulbs, install the new and dispose of the old. The costs to a business are huge. Whereas the LED light will not be replaced in many of our lifetimes. 

    LED lights now have much better light quality, and many are dim-able. 

    Oh. And if you love CREE’s products and services, be careful buying the stock of the company.  Even with all their patents and proprietary technologies, this is an overly competitive market. 

    Very cool. 

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  • Day Light Savings Time… And Energy Efficiency… and Sustainability

    While you are are staying up late, thinking about saving time and saving money…
    Give a look at the past blog post here on EE and DST and California’s discussion about Daylight Savings Time.

    This is the heart of sustainability: things that we can do right here, right now, to move toward more sustainability. Some of them might be only small changes, like adjusting the clock to start earlier in the day, when sun gets up earlier…

    One other idea is to move to LED lights. If 10% of our utilites comes from lighting, and LEDs will save us about 70%…. That cuts about 7% of our electric production. if utilities are about 2.5% of our $16.15T GDP… That’s $28B per year. Every year. As a perpetuity at 5% interest that would be a half trillion dollars ($565B). These are rough numbers, but the concept holds up nicely.

    GDP Factor $16.15
    		 T
    $ Energy 2.50%  $  
    403.75     		B
    % Lights 10%  $    
    40.38     		B
    Savings 70%  $    
    28.26     		B
    Perpetuity 5%  $  
    565.25     		B

  • Cree News: Cree and SemiLEDs End Patent Litigation

    Cree News: Cree and SemiLEDs End Patent Litigation:

    It looks like Cree has won this round. The settlement says that SemiLEDs won’t sell in the USA and will pay a one-time infringement settlement. Infringement suit and counter suit are all settled.

    This stops the infringed LED imports into the USA. It is unclear how this related to trade around the world.

    One would expect Cree to jump a bit in trade, up 6-8% over a couple days. SemiLEDs (Symbol: LEDS) really jumped, up 8% today and about the same the previous day(s), but it is really erratic. Semi is only an $83m company vs. $3B market cap for Cree. Just a little bit different in size.

    So, it seems that both company’s are happy to have this legal wrangling settled and move on with their businesses.

    Want to know more about the patents in question. Visit priorSMart.com.

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  • Daylight Saving Time – Saving Time, Saving Energy… EE Efficiency…

    Daylight Saving Time – Saving Time, Saving Energy:

    Remember to move your clocks forward an hour today. Your laptops and cell phones should give you the right time. But, while you are at it, PONDER THIS….

    This is actually a pretty good play on energy efficiency and smart(er) energy policy.

    The idea is that spending more wake time when the sun shines will result less energy usage. The greenest possible killowatt is the KW saved.

    Although Daylight Savings Time was first mentioned by Ben Franklin it was a century later that it fully got its start:

    “Though mentioned by Benjamin Franklin in 1784, the modern idea of daylight saving was first proposed in 1895 by George Vernon Hudson [8] and it was first implemented during the First World War. Many countries have used it at various times since then; details vary by location. ” (Daylight savings time, 2012, para. 2).

    The savings turns out to be somewhat sporadic and not conclusive. But it ranges from 0% to about 4% for residential savings of electricity use. A California study showed only a modest savings of electricity (.4% to .2% for winter and summer) but a significant savings of money because of the peak-time shift in usage (California Energy Commission, 2011). The Department of Energy study in 2008 (related to prior years) estimated 0.5% savings. (But this study has several limitations.)

    With about 2.5% of the US GDP devoted to electricity, the savings over a year would be somewhere between $2B and $20B savings per year.  The back-of-the-envelope computations are shown in the following table.
    Electricity as % of GDP:
    2.5%
    Growth in US GDP:
    2.0%
    ($T) US 
    Est. Elect
    DST Savings
    DST Savings
    DST Savings
    DST Savings
    Year
    Economy
    Usage $B
    0.5%
    1.0%
    2.0%
    4.0%
    2012
    $15.30
    $382.50
    $1.9
    $3.8
    $7.7
    $15.3
    2013
    $15.61
    $390.15
    $2.0
    $3.9
    $7.8
    $15.6
    2014
    $15.92
    $397.95
    $2.0
    $4.0
    $8.0
    $15.9
    2015
    $16.24
    $405.91
    $2.0
    $4.1
    $8.1
    $16.2
    2016
    $16.56
    $414.03
    $2.1
    $4.1
    $8.3
    $16.6
    2017
    $16.89
    $422.31
    $2.1
    $4.2
    $8.4
    $16.9
    2018
    $17.23
    $430.76
    $2.2
    $4.3
    $8.6
    $17.2
    2019
    $17.57
    $439.37
    $2.2
    $4.4
    $8.8
    $17.6
    2020
    $17.93
    $448.16
    $2.2
    $4.5
    $9.0
    $17.9
    2021
    $18.28
    $457.12
    $2.3
    $4.6
    $9.1
    $18.3
    10-yrs Savings
    $4,188.3
    $20.9
    $41.9
    $83.8
    $167.5

    The 10 year savings is between $21B and about $200B savings for the US. Multiply that times all the northernmost and southernmost countries in the world, and the savings could add up.
    Of course this is a paltry amount of savings compared to something like switching away from incandescent light bulbs.
    TIP: When changing all the clocks in the house, it is advised to check/change the batteries in smoke detectors and pressure in fire extinguishers. Also, while at it, check all the electricity use appliances and replace the most frequently used incandescent lights with compact fluorescents… or even better with some of the new LED lights that use a fraction of the electricity.
    But let’s take our savings wherever we can get them.

    DST does help many retailers, so arguably it helps the economy in that respect if in no other!-)

    Shop ‘til you drop, starting when the sun comes up.!

    References
    California Energy Commission. (2011). Saving time, saving energy: daylight savings time: Its history and the reason we use it. Retrieved March 11, 2012 from: http://www.energy.ca.gov/daylightsaving.html
    Daylight saving time. (2012, March 11). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 14:31, March 11, 2012, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Daylight_saving_time&oldid=481293297

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