When I was in Chicago, I rented a bike for the week (fabulous lakeside path). At night, I used my new LED lighting system with a Dinotte tail light. This tiny LED light is just blinding (do NOT use in a paceline), even though it is only a few watts.
Back home in Virginia, I have been using the headlight version for a flashlight. What it would be like to bring lighting down to a personal level? Not “task lighting”, where the light is fixed at a station, but light that follows you around. Even with our use of efficient, compact fluorescents in my house, we probably have 500 watts of lighting on all the time. Now, I look even more like a dork wearing a headlight, but 3 watts is way less than 500-1000 watts. OK, 12 watts since there are 4 of us.
Yes, it is unrealistic to try to convince my family (let alone yours) to use headlights, plus there is glare. Still, maybe we can come up with better controls on the light, and de-dorkify [sic] it. This made me think about electric sweaters versus home heating systems. If it is 30F outside, and I turn the stat to 50F instead of 70F, I just chopped 50% off the heating bill (roughly). I know that there are some vendors of heated (motorcycle) clothing, but I have never tried any. Yet.
3 responses so far ↓
Alison H // December 23, 2007 at 4:29 pm
Yeah, I should think the glare when you are having a face-to-face would be something! But what about a whole bunch of motion sensors, that would turn the lights on briefly as you move around? Or a proximity-activated switch, and you wear a tag on your wrist?
But I guess that really only helps if you forget to turn off lights when you leave the room (those teenagers?)
Matt Dwyer // December 27, 2007 at 7:23 am
Not quite sure how to “fix” the idea, but I do like thinking about drastic change, since incremental change has such limited impact.
Mike // March 1, 2009 at 1:46 am
Just passing by.Btw, you website have great content!
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