Boise Keeps Historic Look, Slashes Costs

The City of Boise, Idaho is slashing its energy and maintenance costs by retrofiting over 1,000 high pressure sodium cobra head and post top street lights with energy efficient LED street lights. The new LED lighting is expected to cut the cities energy costs for street lighting in half while it nearly eliminates maintenance costs for the next 17 years. On top of the tremendous energy and maintenance cost savings, the city was able to maintain the historic look of it's antique lighting fixtures with retrofit LED lighting modules from Cooper Lighting of Peachtree City, GA. Many of the streets in Boise are lined with antique cast iron light poles toped with glass fixtures. The city and local residents wanted to keep these fixtures while still gaining the energy savings and long life of LED lights. Cooper was able to meet there wishes to keep the antique poles while upgrading to LED's with there high-performance decorative LED retrofit kit. These kits are helping Boise meet there goals of saving taxpayer dollars while still maintaining the historic charm of the city streets.

Quantum Dots Could Lead To Cheaper LEDs

Researchers at the University of Florida are using quantum dots to develop a new type of LED technology that could be both efficient and inexpensive. These quantum dots are tiny nano-sized crystals that, when excited by electricity, can produce at least ten times more light then fluorescent bulbs. The increased light output means that more light can be achieved from a smaller amount of space. The University of Florida researchers believe that the cost to produce these nanoparticles will drop to the point that they can be used in mass production. This could lead the way to low cost quantum dot based LED's lights that are efficient and inexpensive.

Underwater LED boat lights are an efficient way to light up your boating life. You can finally use your boat at night without worrying about draining your battery.