Lightning

LED lights save a lot of money, could save even much more

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a LED light bulbAccording to a study carried out in the United States by the local Department of Energy (DOE), the 49 million LED light bulbs already installed helped save a massive $675 million (over 500 million euros) in a single year.

But wait, there is more as if all light bulbs in the United States were replaced by such bulbs, the potential savings could be the absolutely huge amount of $37 billion (27 billion euros) per year !

This would half the amount of energy consumed for lightning in the US. Now let’s imagine what this would lead in terms of decreased greenhouse gases emissions in the United States alone.

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A Kickstarter success, the Nanolight

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the nanolightDo you know Kickstarter, the world’s largest funding platform more used to fund video games and other similar projects ? Well, one of its recent successes is the Nanolight, perhaps the world’s most efficient light bulb.

Only consuming 12 W to offer the light of the traditional 100 W incandescent bulb, the Nanolight was developed by three students from the University of Toronto, Canada thanks to the +$240,000 they gathered (they wanted to gather $20,000).

This light bulb has many other great features including omnidirectional light, full brightness as soon as it is switched on and so on.

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Starry, Starry, Starry Night

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Rio de Janeiro without any lightsYou may perhaps remember the not so distant time when I was posting astrophotography pictures on this very website. I have also wrote a few times on how we are lighting up our cities too much.

Now a fellow Frenchman, Thierry Cohen, created a series of pictures of what the night could look like if cities like Paris, New York, Shanghai or Sao Paulo were to turn of all their lights. The result is quite stunning.

Not that I am advocating turning off ALL lights at night in our cities, I am just thinking that we should see more stars at night.

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Towards sustainability, reloaded : electricity

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For the second part of this series – the first one was on heating – we are having a look at electricity consumption of households and the various ways we can decrease it.

This will enable you to have lower energy bills – always a good thing with the hard times we have – to cut your carbon dioxide emissions and thus enable you to have a more sustainable lifestyle.

From your lightning to the various appliances around you, the opportunities for savings are numerous and this post propose you a selection of three.

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The ten most promising cleantechs

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The Guardian Sustainable Business blog published last week an interesting post on the ten most promising future cleantechs. I have to admit I am not sure all of them really are as I spotted at least one odd out. Indeed, even if algae, zinc air batteries, organic solar cells or marine energy and most other … Read more

For many, the sky isn’t dark anymore

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I already wrote a few articles on dark skies and light pollution. It seems the phenomenon is even worse as one can see with the image on left (courtesy of Stellarium, a great astronomy freeware) This also has an important impact on greenhouse gases emissions. In Australia alone, public lightning is responsible for 1.15 million … Read more

Great astrophotographies – August 2010

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This is time for me to present my selection of the best pictures of the NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD). This month was a bit special as I could only select eight of them. To the NASA, today’s picture :

Storms on the distant horizon and comet dust raining through the heavens above are combined in this alluring nightscape. (…) the composite of 8 consecutive exposures captures the flash of lightning and a bright Perseid meteor.

This might be my last selection of astrophotographies since I am increasingly aware that this kind of posts isn’t at all in the range of this blog. What do you think ?

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Great astrophotographies – July 2010

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This is time for me to present my selection of the best pictures of the NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD). As always, this month was packed with beautiful images. It was difficult to select just ten. To the NASA, today’s picture :

On July 11, after a long trek eastward across the southern Pacific Ocean, the Moon’s shadow reached landfall in South America. In a total solar eclipse close to sunset, silhouetted Moon and Sun hugged the western horizon

I am absolutely still amazed at how many splendors can be seen at night. I just hope we may find a way to make our nights darker so more people can see them.

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Barcelona’s amazing smart lightning idea

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The city of Barcelona and Spanish utility Endesa have been installing smart LED lightning systems that automatically switch themselves off when no one is around. This enables the city to cut by 30 percent its electricity consumption.

I really would like this idea to spread across Europe and even the entire world. Indeed, how many plants are used only to light streets unnecessarily? This would drastically cut costs and would go far beyond the Earth Hour…

Last but not least, this would also improve the night sky quality drastically. As we have seen previoulsy, darker skies would benefit Nature and astronomers alike.

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The huge potential of LED lightning

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The US Department of Energy released last week an interesting study on how LED lightning could enable America to save $120 billion (88 billion euros) over the next 20 years. To Ecogeek : ” The cumulative savings of widespread adoption of this technology over the next 20 years would be about 1.500 terawatt-hours (…) The … Read more

A great video on why CFL are fantastic

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If you had a look recently at the sidebar of this blog, you may have noticed that I added a link on what is RSS just next to the subscription button.

This sends you to a page featuring a great video by the Common Craft Show. This company didn’t stop right there and did the same thing to explain CFL light bulbs in plain English.

In three minutes, those of you who still haven’t switched to these marvels will be convinced to take this first step towards decreasing your bills and CO2 emissions.

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A controversy on low-energy light bulbs

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cfl.jpgI have been reading and enjoying for some months the Business of green blog from the IHT. The RSS feeds of this blog are displayed on my sidebar.

Today I was reading their latest article “Do low energy light bulbs work?” and I felt like giving my humble opinion on that matter and posted a comment.

After some time, my reaction is now online and I got to admit that it is a thrilling sensation to read myself elsewhere than on this little blog.

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