Light is the fastest known phenomenon in the universe, capable of traveling at 186,282 miles per second.
The lighting business, by contrast, is one of the slowest industries in the world.
Think about it for a moment. Consumers and businesses around the world spend over $100 billion on light bulbs and fixtures annually, and over $600 billion on electricity to power them.
Yet the lion’s share of that money gets thrown out the window. The incandescent bulb, still the most popular bulb with consumers in the U.S., typically only uses 10 percent of the power fed into them to create light. The rest gets turned into heat. That explains why you see them in Easy Bake Ovens and reptile terrariums. In all, 23 percent of the electricity in the U.S. gets gobbled up by lighting; 18 percent goes to power bulbs and the remaining 4 to 5 percent gets used to run air conditioners to eliminate the waste heat they generate.
This rampant consumption, moreover, isn’t easy to modulate. Only a small percentage of lights are connected to networks for dynamic dimming. If the lights above your head right now were dimmed by 40 percent to save power, you probably wouldn’t notice, but the capability probably doesn’t exist.
via GigaOM
