Luxim unveils the svelte streetlight

Someday, downtown streets may be lit with bulbs the size of a Tic Tac.

Luxim, a lighting start-up in Silicon Valley, has released a lamp—the elegantly named LIFI STA-40-01—that delivers as much or more light than a standard street light. The trick is that it consumes less power. The new lamp cranks out 120 lumens per watt. Top-end LEDs provide around 70 lumens per watt. High-intensity discharge (HID) lamps, which you see on light poles today, get about 90 lumens per watt. HIDs are also quite large, which means a heavier street light or spotlight. The bulb at the center of Luxim’s lamps is only a centimeter or so long. It looks like a Christmas tree light. You can pick up the whole lamp with your hand. The company has talked about putting its LiFi lamps inside cathedrals and other public spaces to replace architectural lights.

The lamp also lasts 30,000 hours, longer than HIDs, so the repairmen don’t have to replace them as often.

The company, which has received over $60 million in venture capital from Crosslink Capital and Sequoia Capital among others, initially concentrated on providing lamps for rear-projection TVs. With projection TVs fading away, the company shifted to tackle the larger, and potentially more lucrative, market for commercial lighting.

Although it doesn’t get as much attention as solar or biofuels, lighting is expected to be one of the growth markets for green tech. Approximately 22 percent of the electricity used in the U.S. goes to lighting, according to an oft-quoted statistic from the Department of Energy, and light sources weren’t designed for efficiency. Incandescent bulbs only use around 5 percent of the energy fed into them for light: the rest gets converted into heat. (That’s why Easy Bake ovens work.)

Light-emitting diodes are already replacing neon signs and some public light fixtures. LED maker Cree, for instance, is currently working with several cities to convert garages and municipal buildings to LEDs. Other LED companies to watch include Luminus Devices, a Boston-area company that landed $72 million recently, and the stealthy Kaai.

Like LEDs, Luxim’s lights cost more than incumbent solutions, but the company (like LED makers) says the difference can be made up in lower replacement rates, lower maintenance costs, and lower power bills. Both LEDs and Luxim’s bulbs can also be remotely controlled by sensors to crank the amount of light coming out of them up or down, depending on foot traffic and other factors.

How does Luxim’s bulb work? Energy is pumped from a puck into a small gas-filled chamber. The gas gets heated up, turns into a plasma and emits light. Crazy, eh?

Check out this cinematic masterpiece for more.