LED City

Chances are that you have neither heard about the Holborn Viaduct nor about Torraca.

The first is the street in London where the electric streetlights were deployed in 1878 – a first in the world.

The second is a small city in southern Italy which can be termed as the world's first LED city, because all its streetlights now utilise LEDs, rather than the customary sodium vapour lamps. In Torraca, the orange twilight of sodium vapour lights has now been replaced with the bright white of LEDs.

In fact, unnoticed by most, LEDs are slowly taking lighting beyond incandescent bulbs and neon tubes. The reason is not difficult to understand - LEDs use only one-eighth of the power, stay cool and last for ten years or so.

A number of cars today use LEDs in the taillights, and soon maybe be used in headlights as their power increases, and so it is not a surprise that Torraca's lights were installed by Gelbison, a company that manufactures car components.

LEDs are also being increasingly used in portable lighting such as torches and lanterns, and the light they produce far surpasses that of traditional bulb powered torches. I had picked up one out of curiosity from Dubai recently. Though they very small, and running on just four cells, the amount of light this lantern produces is good enough for us to finish our dinner during a power cut.

Another advantage of LED lights, apart from their low power consumption and high intensity is that they can be implanted in to furniture and walls, and can also change colour, enabling lighting to be integrated into interior design. This is expected to give new ways of lighting our homes, making light bulbs and tube lights as obsolete as gramophone records.

For more information check out http://ledcity.org/ or the Phillips LED site http://www.lumileds.com/