Let there be solar LED light !

ORIGINAL POST DATE : 2007-04-19

Imagine that one of your friends just bought a house in a new residential neighborhood and invited you to come over one evening to see it. Since you’ve never been in that area of town before, you check your route on google map or mapquest and head to your friend’s place. You hop in your car or take the bus and you finally get on your friend’s street. Now it’s time to find the house. But there’s a problem: it’s nighttime! The houses are far from the curb and you can’t see the numbers on most of the houses. This can be a bit frustrating.

I have to admit I am guilty of “causing” the same “problem” to newcomers in our home. Whoever designed our porch light placed it in such a way that it’s impossible to see the house number at night. And although I have been thinking about installing a lighted house number, I just can’t. I find them a bit tacky, maybe a bit too commercial. Beside, I would much rather buy something that doesn’t use any electricity. Well, I found the solution through matterinc‘s latest product: LED solar numbers. They look quite nice and modern. Each number has its own solar panel and LED lights. They cost about $24 CND each and can be mounted on wall as shown below.

I think this is a really great product because it uses solar power (a renewable energy) and LED lights which are much more efficient than incandescent and fluorescent light bulbs. According to a manufacturer, the estimated time to failure (ETTF) for LED lights ranges between 10,000 and 1,000,000 hours compared to 10,000 for fluorescent lights and 1,000 to 2,000 hours for incandescent lights (Wikipedia). LED’s just might surpass fluorescent lights, plus they don’t have issues with mercury content like fluorescent light bulbs do.

There are a lot of great things that can be achieved with this product. It has a lot of potentials for very creative and environmentally friendly concepts. I can see customized panels for commercial buildings such as restaurants or night clubs downtown Montreal. Imagine all the electricity that can be saved using them instead of the standard stuff. Not to mention the diminution in light pollution!

(March 9,2009) These items are now available at Home Depot