All month long, Cree has celebrated Energy Awareness Month. Through a series of blog posts, Cree has brought to you information about ways our products and our customers and partners are helping save energy. Today’s final guest blog post is by Cree’s senior director of marketing, LED components, Mike Watson.
Revolution. It’s a popular word these days. Much of the current revolution discussion is politically or socially motivated (the Middle East, Occupy Wall Street, etc.). Here at Cree, we talk about the energy revolution and more specifically, the LED lighting revolution every day.
Many countries outside North America know that to meet future economic demands, they must fundamentally change the way they consume power and they must do it now.
Instead of talking about change, they are making it, via policy directives and government mandates to encourage innovation and implementation of energy-efficient products. Just look at China – it recently completed its largest highway lighting upgrade with more than 10,000 street lights and more than a million Cree LEDs!
When we look back at the last 100 years of lighting, precious little has changed in terms of technology, performance or form factor. Lighting technologies haven’t evolved as demand has increased.
This type of evolution isn’t going to work for LED lighting, nor will it happen fast enough for us to address ever-increasing energy consumption.
The much lauded (and much maligned) CFL has been heralded for more than thirty years, but market penetration has stalled at just about 10 percent. Yes, stalled, despite massive promotions at big box hardware stores, continued rebates from power companies and technical and quality improvements over several decades.
That’s scary, especially to those of us in the lighting biz. Could that same slow adoption curve curse LED lighting?
We can’t wait thirty years for the widespread adoption of a technology that is ready now—ready to change the way we light streets and parking lots, grocery stores and offices, homes and even our cars.
So I’m talking about a revolution. The kind of revolution where we throw out preconceived notions, we cast aside things that don’t work anymore and we step into the brave, new, well-lit world.
That’s why we’re completely rethinking lighting.
It’s not about watts, it’s about lumens. It’s not about bulbs and fixtures. And it’s not about cost per bulb.
It’s about cost over lifetime and getting better light, for longer, with bigger bang for your buck.
It’s time to demand better, more efficient lighting. Don’t you agree?
