Michael Kanellos
Rumor: GE to get into LED streetlights May 28, 2008 at 2:37 PM
I haven’t confirmed this, but sources tell me that General Electric, the big kahuna in energy efficiency and green tech, will talk about street lights made with light emitting diodes (LEDs) at Lightfair, a large trade show taking place in Las Vegas this week.
LEDs use far less power than conventional light sources and can provide more lumens per watt than most light sources. To top it off, they last far longer—50,000 hours or more—than a lot of other light sources, which means maintenance costs are lower.
Cree has already been putting LED-based street lights in cities such as Austin and Beijing. GE sells LED-based traffic lights and LED lights for home. But the streetlight market is a big one. Austin earlier this year estimates it could save up to $500,000 a year in utility bills by inserting LEDs into 5,000 street lights. Austin is working with Cree.
Others such as Luxim, which has a breath mint-sized light source, are also aiming at putting solid state bulbs into street lights.
On other notes, GE unrolled an alliance with Schlumberger (the European oil services company) today under which the two will work together on carbon sequestration technologies.
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