Slashdot wrote:A Silicon Valley company, Luxim, that has developed a tiny, full-spectrum light bulb, based on a plasma of argon gas, that gives off as much light as a streetlight while using less power.
The Tic Tac-sized bulb operates at temperatures up to 6000K and produces 140 lumens/watt, almost ten times as efficient as standard incandescent lamps, and twice the efficiency of high-end LEDs.
The new bulbs also have a lifetime of 20,000 hours. There's no mention of mercury or other heavy metals, which pose a problem for compact fluorescents.
Funky, I'd prefer solar powered street lights, but then again why not have both . Now the problem is what are the production costs, since it doesn't seem to have as many other applications as LEDs (Which can be used in portable/consumer electronics as well as other applications beyond standard "room lighting").
Also, anything with plasma in its title gets my vote, scientific accuracy be damned (Whether it is or not is irrelevant as far as i'm concerned)
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My bet is "very" since as far as I can tell it's a refinement of existing xenon arc lights such as the ones used in luxury cars, except it uses argon. The bulb by itself will cost at least a hundred bucks and the control electronics won't be any cheaper. Bulb life isn't all that great either, usually around 1000-3000 hours for the ones used in flashlights & cars, and they really don't like being turned on & off very often. Cycle them on & off too much and they die fast. The big ones such as the ones found in commercial buildings and searchlights are good for around 10,000-30,000 hours, for whatever reason bigger is better with arc lamps.
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Comments on various forums seem to indicate that it's related to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfur_lamp (yeah, wikipedia, but . Apparently the bulbs last around 60k hours, but the magnetrons only last 20k hours. It doesn't look like the bulb would cost much, since it looks like it's just a quartz glass envelope containing argon w/ no electrodes; anyone know how much a magnetron that puts out 400 watts costs? I'm hesitant to just look at the prices of microwave ovens...
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. Now the problem is what are the production costs, since it doesn't seem to have as many other applications as LEDs (Which can be used in portable/consumer electronics as well as other applications beyond standard "room lighting").
