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Efficient Lighting Through History

Brian Nitz — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 09:43:04 +0000

From the Hebrew Hannukah to Peak Whale Oil, Brian uncovers an illuminating story of how our lighting is becoming more efficient.

Each December as nights grow long, people of the Jewish faith celebrate an ancient miracle of efficiency. In our oil-soaked, electrified age it is difficult to understand what it meant for the Maccabees to enjoy eight days of light from one day’s supply of oil. This miracle of Chanukah allowed restoration of their temple in accordance with Talmudic law which requires that only pure olive oil from the first of three pressings of each of three harvests should beaten for the light of a menorah. Exodus 27 also commands that the tabernacle lamp should burn continuously. The Maccabees temple restoration took place in Jerusalem in the second century BCE, but it was by no means the only example of a cherished light. Aladdin finds his magic within a dusty lamp. The Christian Bible tells us that Jesus is the light of the world and that he told his followers that it is foolish to hide their lamps at their feet.

Eternal lights also appear throughout history, from Zoroastrian divine sparks to the eternal flame at the temple of Delphi. In his novel Moby Dick, Herman Melville referenced a 16th century English voyager’s description of a Turkish Mosque, built in honor of Yunas (Jonah). The Mosque contained a marvelous lamp which consumed no oil. But until very recently, all practical lamps were based upon the principle of incandescence, they burned something to produced light and eventually consumed that substance. At first they burned animal fat or olive oil. Kerosene lamps first appeared in ninth century Baghdad in Al-Razi’s Kitab al-Asrar (Book of Secrets). This lamp sparked the world’s first petroleum industry and began a 2000-year-old quest for a more efficient lamp.

The Second Oil Peak

Elsewhere the next thousand years would bring only gradual refinements to the prehistoric oil lamp. By the 1700s, whale oil became the biofuel of choice because it produced a steady smokeless light.

Theoretically this was a renewable resource, but utilization patterns were not sustainable. Whale harvesting far outstripped the rate of replenishment so that the peak whale harvest curve resembled the Hubbert curve for a non-renewable resource. According to History of the American Whale Fishery from its earliest inception to the year 1876 by Alexander Starbuck, annual whale oil production peaked in 1845 at about eighteen million gallons.

By the time Herman Melville published Moby Dick in 1851, the easy whale oil was gone. Whalers who had once prospered in local waters now roamed the far corners of the earth in order to eke out a living, much as modern petroleum workers must now toil aboard deepwater rigs and in the high arctic. Moby Dick’s narrator Ishmael warns:

“For God’s sake, be economical with your lamps and candles. Not a gallon you burn, but at least one drop of man’s blood was spilled for it.”

During peak whale oil, as many as 10,000 right whales were killed each year but by the end of the nineteenth century it is estimated that less than 30 female right whales existed and to this day the northern right whale has yet to recover beyond 300 individuals. The lights of the industrial age relied upon a rapidly declining resource. We needed another miracle.

All We Need is a Miracle

In 1854 a Canadian named Abraham Gesner expanded his oil-shale kerosene company into the United States. A man named David Melville introduced gas lights to some industrial and street lighting applications, but a factory explosion in 1859 damped enthusiasm for bringing these dangerous and smelly lamps into our homes. The kerosene lamps used in Baghdad 1000 years earlier finally became popular in the west. Kerosene was also smelly and dangerous but camphene, a cleaner-burning alternative fuel, was taxed out of the market because it contained drinkable alcohol.

Thomas Edison’s incandescent electric light was a brilliant idea which grew out of necessity. For the next century pop culture would represent such ideas with light bulbs floating over inventor’s heads. But Edison himself once said that inventions are 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration. As with the Baghdad lamps, inspiration didn’t always guarantee universal progress.

Several types of electric lights had been invented in the decades before Edison’s more famous breakthrough. Humphry Davy demonstrated a brighter electric light in 1806. A.E. Becquerel invented fluorescent lights in 1867, and Canadians Henry Woodward and Mathew Evans patented the carbon thread light in 1874. Edison purchased this patent and refined it into a relatively efficient and long-lived electric lamp in 1879. He also developed the infrastructure necessary to make electric lighting commercially successful. Edison was the Steve Jobs of his time, perfecting and promoting existing technology into products which captured the public imagination.

For God’s Sake, Be Economical With Your Lamps!

Luminous efficacy is a measure of how much light the human eye perceives for each watt of energy input. The efficacy of Edison’s first electric bulb was 1.4 lm/W, a 200% improvement over the theoretical maximum of 0.65lm/W for kerosene lamps. What is more, Edison’s bulb could be powered by the clean hydroelectric power of Niagara Falls or, if powered by fossil fuels, the power plant could be located far away from consumers.

Oil lamps had brought smoke, smell and soot into homes along with their light. But users of electric lights were isolated from the air pollution and other negative effects of their electricity consumption. Users can’t see these negative impacts when they perform a cost/benefit analysis against the immediate and obvious utility and convenience of electric lights. The same is true for the electric power company. Until an electric company’s generating capacity is exceeded, each watt sold contributes to profits regardless of whether that watt maximized total net societal benefit.

Edison lights did use far less oil than their predecessors, but they still wasted 95% of their energy as heat. They were thermodynamically inefficient but they were perceived to be socially efficient because the negative effects were hidden. Units of energy consumption (incandescent equivalent) watts became the standard unit for brightness rather than the more direct, utility-focused units of candelas or lumens. So if someone had invented a 15 watt electric light bulb in the 1960s, consumers would only assume that it wasn’t very bright. Ishmael’s message of sustainability “For God’s sake, be economical with your lamps!” would fall on deaf ears for the next century and a half.

Winners and Losers

Edison’s electric light was a perfect fit for the industrial age. It allowed factories to produce products day and night without reliance on dangerous and dim gas and oil lamps. Extra capacity from the electrical generating infrastructure would soon be used to run machinery in factories as well as electric lights. But this new invention provided virtually no advantage to rural Americans. This is because, until the 1930s electricity could only be efficiently transmitted about four miles from the power plant. So cities enjoyed the benefits of this new invention while rural areas were stuck in the kerosene age. The US government tried to compensate for this differential affluence with the Rural Electrification Act (REA) of 1936, but a global imbalance in electricity access persists even to this day.

Peak Deja-vous

As we approach another Hubbert peak at the end of the third oil age, and coal’s previously hidden negative effects are revealing themselves globally, we can no longer afford to throw away 95% of our lighting energy. This is forcing us to reassess our cost/benefit analysis of incandescent lighting.

Once again we look for a miracle. And once again the miracle was found in an existing technology. The florescent lights pioneered by A.E. Becquerel in 1867 had been refined and miniaturized into compact fluorescent (CF) lights which could produce three to five times the light per watt of a typical Edison incandescent light bulb. Light Emitting Diodes (LED) and Electron Stimulated Luminescence (ESL) lights are also competing to replace the Edison bulb. These technologies already have luminous efficacies of more than ten times the best Edison incandescents and they could provide the equivalent of almost six-months light from one day’s supply of lamp oil.

But it can take generations for a new technology to work its way around the globe. Wealthy nations are trying to force upgrades by banning incandescent lights. People who live in poorer regions might not be aware of the alternatives. So billions of Edison bulbs continue to waste energy in parts of the world where few can afford to waste anything.

India’s Lighting a Billion Lives campaign (LaBL) campaign estimates that 2.2 billion liters of kerosene are burned for lighting each year, most to serve the 1.3 Billion people who don’t yet have access to electricity. So as northern nights grow long, some of us will celebrate a time of abundance in food, material goods, electricity and light.

But we must remember that technological breakthroughs don’t come out of the lab and immediately solve intractable problems. We are on the verge of a third oil peak and face a growing threat of catastrophic climate change. All we need is a miracle.

Whale fishing, facsimile of a woodcut “Cosmographie Universelle”, 1574. Public domain via wikimedia

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Are LED lights a health hazard?

Brian Nitz — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 07:17:10 +0000

In teddy bears, iPhones and baby sleep monitors: turn off those LED lights at night before they affect your sleep cycles and health!

Professor Abraham Haim, an authority on the biological effects of light pollution, presented his findings at the International Congress of Zoology (ICZ) in Haifa Israel.

World experts discussed, “Light Pollution and its Ecophysiological Consequences” and came to a consensus that light pollution does have health consequences.

Professor Haim’s team studied the effect of night light on blind mole rats and seeing rats. He presented his research findings indicating that the biological effects of nocturnal lights included damage to metabolic rates, body mass, oxygen consumption and the level of certain hormones including melatonin– which is known to impact sleep cycles and mood and is believed to suppress some cancers and tumors.

Studies seemed to indicate that the short-wavelength blueish light emitted by Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) has an especially strong effect. Ever since humans brought light into their homes in the form of candles and oil lamps, we’ve considered artificial lights to be a positive influence in our lives. World religions reinforced this belief with the miracles of menorahs, eternal flames and the light of the world.

Up through the invention of incandescent bulbs indoor lights had a color which was warmer (redder) than natural sunlight. This changed somewhat with the advent of greenish florescent lights. But a more dramatic change came very recently with the invention of efficient white light Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs).

The history of LED lights

H.J. Round was working in the UK’s Marconi labs when he noticed electroluminescence of a cat’s-whisker silicon carbide diode in 1907.

LEDs which followed in 1927 were so dim as to be impractical until Biard and Pittman of Texas Instruments made the first practical red LED in 1961. The color of an LED is proportional to the bandgap voltage which is proportional to energy which is proportional to the chances of burning out your LED before you can say, “Hey, look what I invented!”

Decades passed with only dim red and yellow-green LEDs commercially available. Finally in 1993 Shuji Nakamura worked for Nichia Corporation in Japan and combined blue LEDs with a yellow-white phosphor to produce the first white light LEDs. He moved to the University of Santa Barbara and won the millennium prize for inventing brighter green, blue and white LEDs as well as the blue lasers which make blue-ray video players possible.

The problem with LED lights

We may have learned this in grade school, a perfect mix of the primary colors red, blue and green will make white. Existing red LEDs along with Nakamura’s bright green and blue LEDs finally made this possible.

Only that’s not how most white LEDs work. After years hovering just the other side of impossible, blue LEDs became more efficient than their red and green grandparents. So most white LEDs are actually deep blue LEDs with Nakamura’s yellow-white phosphor coating. Yellow-white + blue = white.

But even though our eyes try to average it out, the strong blue spectral component remains. And that’s where the trouble comes from. It seems that the human biological clock evolved around fire so isn’t as easily fooled by reddish-yellow incandescent lights. Blue light is different: As soon as it hits our pineal gland, our melatonin levels fade and our biological clocks are reset to wake-up time. That’s all fine if you’re only exposed to blue light shortly before sunrise.

But blue-white LEDs aren’t just inside eco-efficient LED fixtures. They’re in your television and the mobile phone you use to checked your Facebook status and the iPad you use to read your bedtime novel. My son’s teddy bear, baby monitor and night light all contained blue or blue-white LEDs. And all of these devices emit enough blue light to potentially effect hormone levels and sleep patterns or cause other biological effects.

Alternatives to LED lights?

Electron Stimulated Luminescence (ESL) lights are one alternative which can replace both mercury-laden CFLs and expensive blue-white LEDs but they aren’t yet easy to find and their bulky shape makes them a poor fit for many of the tight spots where LEDs shine. It is possible that by refining LED composition and control circuits, an efficient white LED will be invented which does make use of a warmer balance of red, green and blue LEDs. LEDs are rugged, efficient, long-lasting and very bright but nearly every new technology has a hidden downside which must be studied and balanced against the advantages. LEDs are no different.

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Recycled Tea Strainer Lamp Creates Soothing Glow

Karen Chernick — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 19:38:37 +0000

As an alternative light fixture, Israeli designer Marina Rudinsky lights up a string of loose tea strainers.

Items found in the kitchen are often endowed with unusual shapes and holes, and many a designer have found ways to convert kitchen tools into light fixtures. Pasta strainers are an obvious choice, but small, delicate loose tea strainers pose a good option too and Israeli designer Marina Rudinsky has assembled them in a luminous fashion. (Tea paraphernalia has been upcycled in other ways as well, with tea wrappers being masterfully crafted into origami pieces.)

Filled with small white Christmas lights and strung together in a cluster, the tea strainers are then hung from a small free-standing stand.

The lamp almost looks like a dangly pearl earring, or as though all the tea strainers are seeping in one glowing, communal mug.

If the lights used to fill the strainers were energy efficient LED lights, Rudinsky’s tea strainer lamp would make an even eco-friendlier gift.

Marina Rudinsky is a designer and art director, who describes herself as loving strong colors, happy people and big animals.

: Marina Rudinsky

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Light Bulb Terrarium and 5 New Uses For Old Light Bulbs

Karen Chernick — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 16:08:04 +0000

Just because incandescent light bulbs are less energy efficient than CFLs doesn’t mean you need to toss them. Upcycle them!

IKEA Israel won’t even sell incandescent light bulbs any more, and people are gradually switching to more energy efficient compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs). No need to toss the baby out with the bathwater, though – those incandescent bulbs can still be useful. Read on for 5 great ways to turn those old bulbs into something new – including a how-to tutorial on making a light bulb terrarium.

1. Upcycled Light Bulb Terrarium

As shown in the photo above, a light bulb terrarium is literally a green way to reuse an old incandescent bulb. These small terrariums are a bright gift idea and are perfect for decorating a desk, shelf, or window sill. Check out instructions on how to pull this off at Instructables.

2. Light Bulb Christmas Ornaments

Ho ho ho and and an old halogen light bulb (or other form of incandescent bulb). With the Christmas season upon us, some upcyclers may be looking for ways to make Christmas ornaments. Light bulbs are easily personalized and decorated with yuletide cheer. Get some inspiration at Instructables.

3. Converting Light Bulbs into Chemical Glassware

A more scientific project would be to convert your old light bulbs into chemical glassware. This idea is not new (it was published in Popular Science in 1933, as seen above), but it’s still relevant. Check out the full instructions at Modern Mechanix.

4. Light Bulb Hanging Vase

Small, clear, and vase-shaped already, old incandescent light bulbs are easily transformed into miniature vases. You could either build a stand for the bulb, or have it hang with thread or wire. Place a flower plucked from your garden in the bulb vase, or alternatively you could use it to keep your basil fresh. Easy instructions can be found at Instructables.

5. Light Bulb Oil Lamp

Brooklyn-based designer Sergio Silva sells similar light bulb oil lamps for a hefty sum, but you can make your own with fairly basic equipment. Make a single oil lamp or a set of nine as an alternative and upcycled Hannukah menorah. Learn how at Instructables.

Note: Before attempting any of these projects, make sure that you have safely hollowed out the wiring from the light bulb.

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Help Kickstart a Sustainable Lighting Project

Karen Chernick — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 15:37:40 +0000

Israeli designer Adital Ela Asks for help with her WindyLight sustainable lighting project on Kickstarter.

Kickstarting a new sustainable lighting project that employs wind in generating energy to create light is sustainable Israeli designer Adital Ela. Her project, WindyLight, is a “family of self-sufficient outdoor lights that perform on free, clean energy and create a unique and sensual illuminating experience. [The WindyLights] are designed to dance to the rhythm of soft gusts of wind and to provide light even in the urban environment.”

But Ela doesn’t plan on doing it alone and is asking for the public’s support via Kickstarter, an online funding platform that helps get small creative projects off the ground. You could help fund this project starting at as little as $1.

The WindyLights themselves are small pinwheel-like modules that collect wind energy and convert it into electrical current, allowing the LEDS in the pinwheels to shine through. The WindyLights are designed with the intention of grouping several pinwheels together to create a bright and beautiful effect.

In Ela’s words, “launching the product will also support us in creating urban lighting installations in prominent locations around the world followed by community activities to stimulate creative thinging towards sustainability design solutions.”

In order to bring WindyLight into the world, she needs to raise $65,000 (and over $12,000 has already been raised over the past 10 days).

Since KickStarter has an “all or nothing” policy, though, the remaining sum must be raised over the next 40 days or none of the backers will be charged at all. The clock is ticking on WindyLight, and Ela is hoping to appeal to potential backers by offering them either an actual WindyLight, silver brooch, or t-shirt.

To read more about WindyLight and help support the project, visit the WindyLight Kickstarter page.

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Lightexture Lamps Combine Ethereal Light and Energy Efficiency

Karen Chernick — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 13:48:05 +0000

Lightexture’s lamps are beautiful and energy efficient.

Sustainable designers interested in the field of light fixtures often focus on making the lamp base out of recycled or repurposed materials, and don’t necessarily think about energy efficient light. We’ve seen lamps made out of industrial pipes and chandeliers made out of ice cream spoons, but when thinking of mood lighting it is sometimes hard to think of compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs). Emitting a notoriously harsh white light when they first came out, CFLs have a bad reputation that is slowly being restored as their glow comes closer to the yellow warmth associated with (non energy efficient) incandescent bulbs. Israeli design duo Yael Erel and Avner Ben Natan of Lightexture are helping the CFLs’ popularity by creating beautiful lamps in which they shine.

Yael and Avner, of Lightexture

Coming from two different fields – Yael is an architect while Avner is a lighting designer – these designers wish “to explore light through the construction of unique designer lamps which adjust through time, and draw light and texture in space.”

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVxl-Lm8tTA[/youtube]

Creating textured light that is more noticeable than an invisible and pervasive light, Lightexture’s lamps and light fixtures are made from various ready-made objects (such as strainers and cheese graters), lighting components and constructed elements.

The team’s Clayight and Earthlight series, which they developed through collaboration with ceramic artist Sharan Elran, focuses on sustainable light that is eco-friendly and atmospheric. The materials used to create these lamps are natural, such as in the ceramic Totem lamp at the top of this post or the rice paper used in the Earthlight Seedlamp above.

These lamps are also intended to be fitted with CFLs, which can surprisingly create this beautiful yellow glow due to the design of the lamp itself.

“One of our goals,” write the Lightexture duo, “is to create energy efficient fixtures, while maintaining our focus on their atmospheric and spatial performance.”

::Lightexture

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Solar Bottle Lights a Bright Idea for the Developing World

Karen Chernick — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 12:15:11 +0000

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBWi3NtND68[/youtube]

This idea is so simple, yet so brilliant. Maybe it could help light up the Middle East?

Filipinos living in simple corrugated metal homes have had problems lighting their homes for generations. Even since the invention of electricity, electric lighting has been used sparingly by certain communities due to its cost. It is frustrating that Filipinos live in such a bright, tropical country and yet that some of them have been living mostly in the dark. But now a creative and entrepreneurial Filipino man has found a cheap, easy, electricity-free (and eco-friendly) way to light people’s homes and is installing his lighting system one home at a time.

The materials needed to create the lights are simple: a clear plastic soda bottle, water, and some basic tools.

A small round hole is cut through the metal roof of the home, and a clear plastic bottle filled with water is inserted so that it hangs down from the home’s ceiling. Free, bright solar light pours in and is reflected through the water in the bottle, and immediately the home is lit up.

In countries that often have bright, sunny days this solution makes a lot of sense. It could probably be successful in nomadic or poorer communities in the Middle East, such as the Bedouin community (where women are already beginning to introduce solar power).

The significantly reduced need for electric lighting has freed up money in these Filipino families to spend on other, more important things such as education and training. This bright idea is having far-reaching effects, not only improving the environment but also the economic situation of certain communities.

Image via: Ralph Aichinger

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IKEA Israel Stops Selling Incandescent Bulbs

Karen Chernick — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 12:55:20 +0000

There may be a lot of things that IKEA is doing wrong for the environment, but ceasing to sell incandescent bulbs isn’t one of them.

Swedish furniture superstore IKEA has gotten into environmental trouble over lots of things, and at first some of the local Israeli population protested IKEA’s entrance into the market. The company does not exactly espouse sustainable furniture design, with its inexpensive and intended-to-be-disposable furniture. Even if it has increased design awareness in Israel, it continues to offer a cheap, easy alternative to more sustainable and eco-friendly home furnishings. The company’s most recent move may somewhat redeem it in the eyes of environmentalists, though – IKEA Israel has become the country’s first retailer to discontinue sale of incandescent light bulbs.

Incandescent light bulbs, such as the one pictured above, are universally used and beloved for their glow’s similarity to the light of a candle (hence the name “incandescent”). That glow comes at a price though, as the large majority of the energy used to power the bulbs is wasted by the heat that they create.

Compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) use 75 percent less energy than incandescents and can last up to 10 times longer. Since they emit no heat, they are more energy efficient.

Some people believe that CFLs emit a cold, white neon light, but those days of the early CFLs are gone and now bulbs can be found that emit a warm yellow light similar to incandescents.

IKEA’s new policy became effective on September 1st, and it remains to be seen if other retailers will follow.

: Arutz Sheva

Image via: Anton Fomkin

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Lights Out During Earth Hour 2011 in Israel this Week

Karen Chernick — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 07:43:56 +0000

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyMNbXVxj8s&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

20 Israeli cities will be participating in this year’s annual lights-out Earth Hour.

Following an initiative that began in Australia in 2007, Israeli cities (spearheaded by Tel Aviv) have observed Earth Hour for the past few years. Earth Hour is a global movement that urges individuals, businesses and governments to support action on climate change by powering down their lights for an hour – at the same time. Thankfully, this year is no different and 18 Israeli cities will be turning off their lights on Thursday evening between the hours of 8pm-9pm.

Tel Aviv has traditionally observed Earth Hour by gathering residents in Rabin Square for a free biodiesel and/or cyclist-energy-powered concert by a popular musician, and this year will be no different as The Giraffes (seen in the clip above) will be performing together with Carolina and Red Band.

Israel will be observing Earth Hour two days earlier than the rest of the world this year, but nevertheless joining around 6000 cities that are powering their lights down this week.

Lights will be turned off during different times around Israel:

20:00 – Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Yerucham, Modi’in-Maccabim-Reut
20:10 – Jerusalem, Dimona
20:20 – Petach Tikva, Nes Tsiona, Ra’anana
20:30 – Netanya, Rehovot, Arad, Eilat, Yavne
20:40 – Ashdod, Givataim, Herzlia, Bat Yam
20:50 – Holon, Haifa, Yokneam

So if you are so inclined, join thousands of others in making a small change with a potentially big impact on Thursday.

According to the Earth Hour website, “Earth Hour aims to educate the global community about the threat of climate change and how easy it is for individuals and businesses to make small changes to the way they live and operate – small changes that will make a big difference.”

:: Earth Hour

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Taiwanese $15 M. Investment Shines Light on Israeli LED Start Up Oree

Matt Khoury — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 09:32:31 +0000

Will Edison’s invention be relegated to ancient history as LED goes mainstream?

Before the light bulb, invented by Thomas Edison in 1879, the nights were saturated in darkness and human activity limited to what could be achieved by candlelight. Now if the lights go out because of a power surge, we’re up in arms, raging at utility companies for their incompetence. And electricity’s environmental toll is immeasurable. Cleaner alternatives, such as LED, have been slow on the uptake, but the recent $15 million investment by the Taiwanese LED chip producer Epistar in the Israeli start up Oree could be a sign that LED technology will secure a place for Edison’s then-revolutionary technology in ancient-history.

“Oree has developed a differentiating technology that brings LED lighting to a new level of efficiency and practicality in terms of energy consumption and cost. Oree’s solid-state light source is thin and flat – about the size and shape of a credit card – and is ideally-suited for general lighting applications, decorative and architectural lighting, as well as backlighting for LCD panels,” according to a statement from the company.

Old Knowledge Modern Trend

While the technology behind the LED has been around since the 1960s, 2010 is expected to be the year that it will become mainstream.

Oree hopes the investment by Epistar, which have been manufacturing chips for Oree since 2007, will help the company penetrate important and growing markets such as the United States, Europe and Asia for both companies.

“By investing in Oree, Epistar has demonstrated confidence in the significant market potential of our technology,” said Eran Fine, founder and CEO of Oree. “This funding will help us meet our high-volume production goals, as well as expand our global reach.”

Small Source Big Light

Oree’s main product is the Oree LightCell that emits uniform color and brightness from its lighting surface making it a very and efficient light source.

The technology developed by Oree combines the light from individual LED cards redirecting their radiation through a flat light guide for an efficient and uniform planar-emitting pattern, which makes the light both energy efficient and easy and inexpensive to install.

According to Oree, there is a range of areas where their technology can be used from general lighting at homes or offices, ambient and mood lightning in homes, shops and wellness environments, TV back lightning, and under cabinet lightning at shops, kitchens and offices.

In addition to the deal with Epistar, Oree has raised $16 million from Genesis Partners and GIMV, as well as obtaining loans from Silicon Valley Bank and Kreos Capital, according to Globes.

Image via rubberdreamfeet and story via Globes

More on energy efficiency:

Solar Power To The People Of Abu Dhabi

SolarEdge Disrupts Solar Tech

Looking to Spintronics to Make Batteries Last Longer

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