ESL - Newest Lightbulb Tech Combines Advantages of Incandescent, Fluorescent, and LED

Some very intersting news on a new type of lighting technology that seems to be production ready today.

http://www.popsci.com/environment/article/2009-09/better-energy-efficient-light-bulb

Glad to see this although it looks initially like they are building flood type lamps as it appears the technology of how it works is better suited to a flood shaped lamp. They do say other styles are possible. Anything that's better than CFL is welcome. If they can keep the cost reasonable I'd gladly buy some.

like little one-pixel TV's, except not R, G, or B, but warm white instead.

They did mention in the video that they would come to market with a price point that is competitive with higher end CFL's. I would be interested to see how long before we see this new tech in stock on Walmart shelves.

Hopefully the tech scales well enough when applied to conventional bulb shapes so as to maintain the overall effeciency claims mentioned in the video.

Let's wait and see!

Looks like I can escape this LED and fluorescent purgatory after all!
Hopefully this doesn't fade away into obscurity like so many other new lighting technologies.
Is it really necessary to ban incandescent lights? Are they going to straight out ban them? Or scale down the production of incandescent bulbs?

Not sure I see the point. They don't use mercury-that's their main advantage over CFLs. But they only last 6000 hours, cost the same as high-end CFLs (i.e. in other words, more than most of the general public is willing to spend), and are still made of breakable glass. As for their claimed color rendering advantage, CFLs could do a lot better than they do with better ballasts and more expensive phosphor BUT the general public has shown they're unwilling to spend the money, even if it means better quality, unless the lamp has a very long lifetime (i.e. 50,000+ hours). Now if they can get the lifetime up substaintially without increasing the cost much, then perhaps I can see these being of interest in the commercial sector. Interesting technology though, sort of like a mini-CRT with only warm-white phosphors.

About the only non-LED technology I might put my money on long-term would be induction lighting. Induction lighting is more efficient than CFLs and lasts up to 100,000 hours. However, induction lighting seems more suited to the commercial sector owing to its high initial cost and long payback period. The only technologies I see taking over residential lighting long term are LED and OLED. Sure, we may have ESL lamps, CFLs, even IRC incandescent for a while, but long-term none of these technologies seem capable of reaching the lifetime and efficiency numbers LEDs have proven to be capable of. I'd love to be proven wrong of course, but when you look at the numbers things don't seem good for any of the "gas and glass" technologies.

Interesting also how when a disruptive technology like LED comes along, you suddenly have all sorts of innovation in old-school technologies. Reminds me of what I read when diesel locomotives first started appearing in the early 1940s. Steam locomotive technology suddenly incorporated all sorts of innovations (high-pressure boilers, superheating, automated coal feeding to name a few) which until then were deemed "not commercially viable". Steam locomotives reached a pinnacle of performance by the late 1940s. But in the end it didn't save them from extinction. I see the same thing happening now in the lighting world. Still fun to talk about these new developments, however.

UVLaser said:

Is it really necessary to ban incandescent lights? Are they going to straight out ban them? Or scale down the production of incandescent bulbs?

Click to expand...

Even China said it will cease production of incandescent lamps within a decade. Most countries are either banning them outright, or having efficiency standards which are a defacto ban. As for the reasons why, for starters there's a monumental amount of waste from manufacturing and eventually disposing of these lamps. Also, in some places the grid is already stressed. You can't easily or quickly increase grid capacity. The only thing left to do is reduce power usage. Besides that, over the long haul energy-saving lighting technologies save the consumer lots of money.

thanks for posting this


here in Australia
they just announced they will ban the sale of incans for home use
e.g. no more incan light bulbs avail in shops any more

I would think you could still get them in speciality shops (at extra cost)

so stock up if you are a fan of oldschool retro lighting :laughing:
in 50 yrs they'll be on ebay like nixie tubes and valves :tinfoil:


at least these new bulbs will look similar to incans and be available soon ...so they say

So, it's basically a TV that you screw into a lightbulb socket -- or if you prefer, a more-useful version of those cool Atom Smasher globes with the pink electrical tendrils that shoot out from the center.

It's a cool idea, but it's basically just a compact fluorescent lamp that uses the entire front face of the bulb as the anode. It could be adapted to work with globe-shaped lightbulbs by putting a cathode on a peg in the middle of the globe, but I don't see it doing anything a CFL can't do, especially considering it will still need a ballast and still use a fluorescent coating inside the glass. It might even need a DC rectifier to work properly, I'm not sure.