Oct 4 2010
A laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is improving the quality of LEDs to illuminate houses for saving energy costs. Wendy Davis, an NIST scientist, along with Yoshi Ohno, and a group of physicists has developed the NIST Spectrally Tunable Lighting Facility (STLF) to enhance the quality of light produced by LEDs.
Lightings consume nearly 12% of electricity in the United States. By utilizing LEDs instead of the conventional lighting sources, the consumption of energy would be halved. The STLF focuses on the association between human and color perception of color and light.
The scientists in the laboratory experiment, by integrating LEDs of varied hues to generate pleasing light colors. The scientists are currently developing Color Quality Scale, a color measurement tool to help manufacturers create LEDs for general lighting purposes.
Davis stated that the LED lightings last for a longer time, are small in size, and are energy-efficient, when compared to light bulbs. Although LED lightings provide numerous advantages over fluorescent and incandescent lightings, they do not emit the desired lighting for houses and public places. The method of measuring color quantity in LEDs is not ideal because the light emitted by the LED lightings vary from other lighting technologies, Davis added.