Chances are you've been stopped more than once by an LED. Have you noticed them? Have you looked closely and noticed the change in stoplights. The regular incandescent light bulbs are being replaced by super efficient LEDs (light emitting diodes.) The stoplights look like a cluster of small dots of colored light. This is the front edge of a coming revolution that looks to replace familiar light bulbs with long lasting high efficiency LEDs.

The colored LEDs that are the main ingredients of white-light sources have already made a dramatic impact. Take the ordinary red stoplight. In a conventional setup, one big, inefficient incandescent light bulb sits behind a red filter; the bulb guzzles about 150 watts of electricity and lasts about a year before it burns out, sometimes snarling traffic until the local highway department rushes out with a bucket truck to change it. In a growing number of traffic lights, though, a dozen or so red LEDs sit behind a clear lens, consume about 15 watts, and control traffic for five or more years before requiring replacement.

According to the California Department of Transportation, replacement of conventional traffic-light bulbs with LEDs (red, yellow, and most recently, green) has trimmed at least $10 million from the state's annual electric bill. And nationwide, according to Strategies Unlimited, a market research firm in Mountain View, CA, LED traffic lights are becoming commonplace: as of 2002, 39 percent of red lights and 29 percent of green lights used LEDs.
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More years of research will be needed before we will be lighting our homes and offices with LED based light sources. This is, however, the start. What we will see are creative new designs and applications for LED lighting products that will realize huge maintenance and energy savings.

This promises to be yet another disruptive technology. Just as wireless phones are disrupting wired landlines, e-mail is disrupting snail mail, air travel has disrupted train travel, LED lighting will eventually disrupt Thomas Edison's light bulb. If you are making or selling light bulbs look over your shoulder. That chunk of glowing plastic and crystallized chemicals is going to change the world.

Exhibit A: Artemide: Sui

It's gonna be a great future.