Maybe you’re one of those people who thinks it’s hard to get excited about a light bulb. Then you’re also one of those people who hasn’t heard about General Electric’s new 100-watt equivalent LED bulb, just introduced at the Light Fair conference in Las Vegas.
CNET and the Cleveland Plain Dealer have the specs. (GE has an LED lab in Cleveland.) GE’s calling it the Energy Smart LED bulb, and though it gives off the same amount of light as a traditional 100-watt bulb, GE’s bulb only consumes 27 watts. The bulb gives off 1,600 lumens, and will last for 23 years at three hours per day. For the specs junkie: the bulb’s “color temperature” is 3000 Kelvin. For the layperson: that’s white light.
The greatest innovation embedded in the new GE light bulb appears to be something called “synthetic jet cooling technology,” from a company called Nuventix. LED lamps produce a lot of heat, which can shorten the bulbs’ lives. But a diaphragm embedded in the GE bulb vibrates to create a current of cool air. That’s pretty high-tech for a light bulb, and Nuventix reportedly collaborated with GE for over a year to miniaturize the tech. (More details on that technology, which resembles the vibrating surface of a speaker, can be found here.) As John Funk of the Plain Dealer points out, here’s something we sure haven’t seen in a bulb before: breathing.
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