CP&D October 10th

Last week I was able to attend a business meeting with my supervisor and representatives of a small company that manufactures extremely efficient LEDs (light emitting diode). I’m sure every linfielder has, at some point, noticed our campus’s acorn shaped lanterns at night - these lanterns are equipped with CFLs, which has become most common, environmentally-conscious’s choice  on the market. However CFLs are not the most efficient lighting method in terms of lifetime and energy. I felt very lucky in that, rather than listening to an astute sales-pitch, I was given a brief yet knowledgeable lecture on the history of America’s lighting market and the technological development of the LED.

After some research to confirm what I was told, it turns out that LEDs use half the amount of kWh that a typical CFL uses during an entire lifetime, and while putting out significantly more lumens! As I have mentioned in my first post, part of my job at CP&D involves balancing Linfield’s utility bills for electricity usage. Although lighting accounts for a relatively small portion of Linfield’s utility bill, the implications for society are enormous! What if we could replace every light bulb with an LED? If one Megawatt powers about 1000 homes for an hour, then how many megawatts could we save in McMinnville by cutting the cost of lighting in half? These were some questions running through my environmental mind after the meeting. However the cold reality of economics seems to be a lesson revisited in my subject quite often – despite the efficiency of the technology the determining factor is if costs fall within the consumer’s advantage. I say ‘advantage’ because for larger organizations a project may fall within the consumer’s budget but not advantage. That is, there must be a payback period small enough to entice an upgrade. 

  Currently campus transition to LED’s does not look promising, however with rising energy demands the proposition could become very popular depending on the market within just a couple years. I will be meeting again with representatives of this company next week to do a physical inventory on campus with my supervisor. I'm very curious to see where it goes from here. 

-kc