What LEDs Can Do For Your Display

The other day my son said to me, what else could anyone possibly invent? Sometimes it would appear that way, but I think that could not be further from the truth. Back in the late sixties and early seventies anyone realized that light emitting diodes could be used for indicator lights. They only were obtainable in the color red, but that didn't cease anyone, in fact all of us became familiar with that red color in things like calculators and hand held games. That is much where LED's stayed until a few years ago.

Suddenly LED's were obtainable in different colors. A used tremendous bright LED was developed. Controllers made color changing feasible as well as mixing colors to generate any color in the spectrum. A whole new market is emerging now. Lots of municipalities have began to fine-tune over the traffic lights to LED bulbs. I am positive you have seen them; they appear as lots of tiny dots of light for the Red and the Green. Automobile manufacturers are using them inside indicator lights.

The most thrilling aspect of LED lighting for me is the way in of LED's in to residential lighting. They can be used for accent lighting in lots of applications such as under cabinet lighting and inside cabinets. Cove lighting is another application where they can be used. There are LED bulbs that can replace some existing bulbs like an MR 16 low voltage bulb.

As of right now in their development accent lighting is where they are best suited, the time for them to replace conventional light bulbs is not far off. As an example of where LED's can shine is a pool light that can fine-tune in to different colors by turning the regular switch on and off to fine-tune modes. There are other types of color changing bulbs that can be used for decorative purposes. In case you need to do some creative lighting projects, you need to look in to LED's.

If your wondering what is so great about LED's, let me document. They have great advantages over conventional light bulbs. Here is a list of a few things:

Immense energy savings, possibly as high as 80% - 90%

long life some claims as high as 100,000 hours

Long lasting and resistant to heat, chilled, shock and vibration

Countless color possibilities

Instant on with no flickering

Tiny size allows lights in tight spaces

no heat and no UV rays

The place they still are weak in is general lighting use. When they have that ability though the energy savings will be on a immense scale. The traffic lights I mentioned earlier use a0 watt LED bulb to replace a 150 watt bulb used historically in the past. To give you an idea how much this saves at 12.5 cents a KWH, the savings for a single bulb in year is about $75. wonderful, when you think about some 150,000 traffic lights across the country has been retrofitted with these new LED light bulbs. That is an energy savings of over 11 million dollars.