LED milestone passes quietly

- It passed by without much mention, but early this summer a major milestone was reached in the realm of LED lighting.

Home Depot quietly began taking online orders for a light-emitting diode LED bulb designed to replace a standard 40-watt incandescent bulb. It consumes only 8.6 watts of power, boasts superior light quality, can be dimmed, and unlike compact fluorescent bulbs doesn't contain any mercury.

The milestone is that Home Depot is selling this bulb for $20 US, half the price of most other retail offerings. Sounds pricey, yes, but keep in mind the bulb is supposed to last more than two decades and will save you at least $200 in energy costs over that time.

Industry watchers say the bulb, made for Home Depot by Lighting Sciences Group, will put pressure on other bulb manufacturers, including General Electric, Philips and Osram Sylvania, to speed up their own production plans and push costs down.

A number of manufacturers are expected to come out with 60-watt equivalent LED bulbs before year's end. It will be interesting to see what price points they hit.

"We're in the midst of the great lighting transformation, with solid-state LEDs on the cusp of transforming the lighting industry," Eric Wesoff, a senior analyst at GTM Research, declared. "The Edison bulb will soon be a relic and CFLs an interim step."

If you ask me, it can't come soon enough. I use compact fluorescent lamps CFLs throughout my home, and like most people are happy that the price of these energy-efficient bulbs have come down so dramatically. Too often, however, they have let me down.

The mercury issue bugs me, but with proper disposal I can live with that. Even the light quality of CFLs has improved and won me over. My problem is that they fail prematurely, despite claims of long life.

This happened most recently while sitting in my living room. I have four recessed lighting fixtures in this room that can be dimmed, and one of them contains a CFL bulb that was designed for the purpose.

I moved into this house only three years ago, but just recently the CFL sizzled, popped and died. My plan was to replace the three remaining incandescent bulbs with a CFL when they burned out. Unfortunately, the CFL blew first. That's not how it's supposed to happen.

Still, even at $20 a bulb I'm not sure I'd opt for the LED option just yet. Past studies indicate that $10 is the threshold to fall below before most consumers start biting.

CFLs had to make the same journey. The average cost of a standard CFL hit about $19 back in 1996, fell to $11 in 1999 and below $6 by 2003, according to a four-year-old report by U.S.-based Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Today, they're about $1.50 each.

Will it take seven years to get to a $6 LED bulb, and 14 years to get to $1.50? Given market demand for energy-efficient products and government attention to energy efficiency and conservation, I'm convinced LEDs face a much shorter path.

In 1996, for example, retailers such as Wal-Mart and Home Depot weren't using their purchasing power to accelerate the introduction and adoption of green products and put pressure on rivals to do the same. Today, exerting such influence is creating strategic benefits in the retail market.

As we wait for more affordable consumer LED products, it's encouraging to see many niche markets taking off.

One example is streetlights, most of which are based on high-pressure sodium HPS fixtures that give off a yellowish, gloomy light and contain mercury. These HPS lights need to be replaced every few years for between $100 and $250 per fixture.

LED lights don't have these maintenance costs – once installed they can be left alone for 20 years or so. They give off a better quality light, and they consume less electricity. Energy savings can range from 50 to 80 per cent, and that's excluding the savings on maintenance.

Halifax-based LED Roadway Lighting, which can churn out up to 5,000 of its LED streetlight fixtures each week, says there are 4.3 million streetlights in Canada. Assuming all were HPS lights, the company estimates total costs to municipalities and provinces would be nearly $16 billion over 20 years, about $12 billion of that related to electricity and $3.27 billion to maintenance.

President and co-founder Charles Cartmill says total cost would be reduced to $6.73 billion if all HPS lights were switched to his company's LED streetlight fixtures. His fixtures would cost nearly four times as much, but electricity costs would be 60 per cent lower and maintenance would be a staggering 99 per cent lower.

"Business is taking off," says Cartmill.

There's little wonder why.