Toshiba recently announced a new A19 LED lamp that is shaped more like an incandescent than some of the other LED bulbs we’ve seen so far, excluding perhaps Panasonic’s LED with a filament appearance. The new bulb is dimmable, available in 2700K and 4000K colors, outputs 450 lumens, and contains no lead or mercury. The 40-watt replacement uses 8.4 watts and reaches full brightness instantly.
What can you do if you’d like to use an energy efficient light bulb, but you think that they look funky? How about a LED bulb that looks and functions almost exactly like an incandescent filament bulb?
Turns out the new Electron Stimulated Luminescence (ESL) R30 light bulb by Vu1 Corporation, which we first mentioned in January 2011, will be available at Lowes.com in December 2011 and in Lowe’s stores nationwide in February 2012, according to a company statement. The flood light is expected to retail for $14.98.
The average home spends more than $2,200 per year on energy bills and roughly half of this amount goes towards heating and cooling, according to the Department of Energy. When a programmable thermostat is set and used properly, a homeowner can save about $180 annually. But the problem is, virtually everyone with a programmable thermostat doesn’t set or use it properly. Nest Labs, a Palo Alto-based start-up, aims to solve this problem with a new thermostat that’s simple, sleek, intuitive, and smart.
A few months back, the New York Times put a spotlight on the obscene energy use of cable, DVR, and other set-top boxes. There are 160 million set-top boxes in the US, according to the EPA, and these boxes annually consume about $3 billion in electricity. What’s shocking is the fact that about 66% of this electricity is spent when no one is watching and no shows are being recorded. In the home, the DOE estimates that two set-top boxes will use about 500 kWh of energy every year — more energy than it takes to run a new refrigerator!
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