keith’s new self

How cool - you can get LED (light-emitting diode) based lightbulbs for your house now. They use very little power, are super durable, and have a much longer lifetime than most other kinds of lighting. I’d like to see how the colour spectrum is on them - my LED headlamp has a lot of blue spectrum, giving things a “moonlight” quality which isn’t that nice for interior lighting.

LED lamps are seen as a solution for off-the-grid places and poorer countries where electricity is a luxury or simply not available. These bulbs are so efficient that you could probably get a couple hours of light in the evening from a small solar panel that charges the lamp all day.

The 12-volt models are perfect for the Ecovillage, where the power comes from a large 12V battery connected to a solar panel. I have a concept brewing of a “low-voltage home”, where everything runs at 12 volts. Instead of regular 120V sockets in the walls, you would have 12V cigarette-lighter sockets, and you would use car power adapters for all your electronics, instead of 120v adapters. Appliances would require an inverter of course, but many off-the-grid places out there don’t have big energy-sucking appliances anyway. This would mainly be a solution primarily for lighting and small electronics. 12V is safer, more efficient in conversion and storage, and eliminates the 60Hz buzz or flicker of AC. The only thing is that you wouldn’t want to run it over long distances, since low-voltage is more susceptible to power loss in the wire. I think 120V AC only makes sense in the context of large, centralized power distribution - it doesn’t make sense for distributed micro power, where the power is being generated close to where it is being consumed.

tags: energydescent, permaculture, ecovillage

posted: 6:16 am