新的光的革命

当今世界，是由消费科技统治的21世纪-高速的，无处不在的网络，IPad，WiFi。我们沉浸在此中，忘记了一个发展中的世界仍有大片空白之地，尚待科技创新来改造，我们所经历的这种改变要比100年前的革新更令人震撼，这即是：电子照明技术的出现。最近在照明领域的创新即能给我们带来这种改变，其不仅能使西方架构良好的电网更有效率，更能为所有的人们提供更好质量的生活

    The first lighting revolution was powered by gas. As gaslight replaced candles over the course of the 18th century, the amount of artificial illumination produced in Britain each year shot up more than 100-fold. In 1879, Thomas Edison began the second lighting revolution when he strung his Menlo Park headquarters with electric lamps using carbonized bamboo filaments. By 1881, a few blocks of southern Manhattan were illuminated by electricity, and the West has never looked back.

照明领域的第一次革命以可燃气体作为燃料。随着煤油灯在18世纪全面取代蜡烛作为照明，在英国，人工制作的灯具数量每年上升了100倍。1879年，当托马斯爱迪生用碳化的竹纤维丝作为灯丝，点亮了其位于门罗帕克市的办公室，第二次照明革命由此开始。1881年，一群南曼哈顿人用电能来照明，西方世界在照明这条路上从未走回头路。

    Over the past 100 years, there have been many bulb innovations -- including tungsten halogen, metal halide, sodium, and compact fluorescent. And thanks to improved manufacturing and design, it costs 1,000 times less to light a room today than it did 100 years ago.

在过去的100年里，灯泡领域的创新可谓数目繁多--这其中有钨丝灯，金属卤化灯，钠灯和紧凑型荧光灯。归功于生产和设计方面的改进，一盏电灯现在耗费的电能要比100年前的千分之一还少。

    Still, the vast majority of light bulbs worldwide today --12 billion of them -- use a filament system similar to Edison's. And for all the progress over the last century, these bulbs remain very inefficient. The amount of energy pushed through a filament that actually emerges as visible light is around 2 percent -- most of the rest is lost as heat. This inefficiency is the big reason why in the United States, the power used to light Edison bulbs produces half as much carbon dioxide as the country's car fleet. And it is why governments around the world are so keen for consumers to switch to more efficient bulbs like compact fluorescents.

然而，现今广泛使用的灯泡，约有120亿只，大部分，构造仍如爱迪生的灯泡一样，使用灯丝。虽经几个世纪的改进，这样的灯泡在发光方面仍然不是很有效率。经过灯丝产生可见光的能量只占总能量的2%，余下的大部分以热能的形式丢失。灯泡的这种无效率，是为美国在电能灯泡方面排放的二氧化碳相当于其车船排放量一半的最大原因。世界各国政府为此积极寻找更为有效率的照明灯具，白炽灯即为其中之一。

    But the compact fluorescent is yesterday's news. The new technology leader that will spark the third lighting revolution is the light-emitting diode, or LED. The amount of energy converted to visible light by an LED already climbs as high as 14 or 15 percent. That's a thousand times higher than diodes managed in 1968, and considerably better than today's compact fluorescent bulbs. And efficiency is expected to double again by 2020. Diodes have an array of other advantages: they last five times longer than compact fluorescents (50 times longer than the Edison bulb), they are smaller, less fragile, and inert. That all adds up to a lot less expense in manufacture, storage, shipping, and disposal. And it's likely to mean a considerably easier task for those trying to end our addiction to the filament in the rich world.

在这里输入译文但是紧凑型白炽灯已是昨日黄花。能催生第三次照明革命的新的技术领先者是发光二极管技术（LED）。经LED转化为照明光的能量已经达到总能量14%或15%。这个转化效率与1968年相比提升了1000倍，和今日的紧凑型灯泡相比亦有极大提高。并且这一效率有望在2020年提高两倍。二极管发光有许多的优点：其使用寿命是紧凑型荧光灯的5倍多（爱迪生灯泡的50倍多），二极管灯具形更小，且更坚固，不需要惰性气体。这些优点使二极管等在制造，储藏，运输和报废处理上花费更少。如想终结我们队灯丝的依赖，二极管为一可行的，较为简便的方法。

    Whatever its impact on developed countries, however, the real LED revolution will be in the developing world, where billions of people still live without access to networked electricity. Take Africa -- there are about 110 million households in the region without access to the grid, compared with only 20 million who are connected. The most common way for people offline to get light is to burn something. About half of those homes use kerosene lamps for illumination, while most of the rest still use candles. More than one in ten just pile extra wood or dung on the fire if they need more light. In other words, nearly half of African households are stuck using technologies that were largely abandoned in the United States before the Civil War, and most of the rest use a technology that had passed its prime before World War I.

不管它对发达国家会有多大的影响，然而，真正的LED革命会发生在发展中国家，在发展中国家仍有数亿记的人在没有电网的环境中生活。拿非洲为例，在这一地区，有大约一亿一千万的家庭没有介入电网，与之形成对比的是只有两千万家庭接入电网。对于没有接入电网的人们而言，燃烧照明是其取光的常用方式。大约有一半的家庭靠煤油灯做照明，而剩下大部分家庭用蜡烛做照明工具。超过十分之一的人以燃烧木材或动物粪便以获得更多照明。换句话说，将近一半的非洲家庭使用的照明方式为美国在内战前即已抛弃的方法，而余下的大部分家庭是使用第一次世界大战以来的照明技术。

    The technologies of burning stuff to produce light make the Edison bulb seem a model of efficiency. For each joule of energy a candle turns into visible light, 2,500 joules are wasted. That makes traditional lighting expensive and environmentally hazardous. Off-grid households in Kenya and Ghana spend about $80 a year on fuel-based lighting -- and the great majority of that is on the fuel itself. Some households spend as much as 30 percent of their income on lamps and fuel -- this for two or three hours of poor quality light at night. Worldwide, kerosene is a $38 billion industry, and kerosene lamps emit the same carbon dioxide each year as 15 million cars.

与燃烧取光相比，爱迪生灯泡看起来是种有效地照明方法。蜡烛燃烧取光中，只有一个焦耳的能量转为可见光，而有2500焦耳的能量是被浪费掉的。这就使传统的照明方式昂贵而且对环境有害。在肯尼亚和加纳，没有连入电网的家庭在燃料照明上的花费大约是每年80美元，且其中大部分花在燃料的购买上。许多家庭在灯具和燃料上的支出占到其收入的30%之多，而这些只为了再每晚能够有两到三个小时的亮光。世界范围内，煤油是一个有380亿美元的产业，煤油灯释放出来的二氧化碳相当于1500万辆汽车排放的尾气。

    Inefficiency also means people have less light to use -- a candle or basic kerosene lamp produces less than one third of a percent of the illumination of a single-watt LED. Fuel lamps are also dangerous -- in India, 2.5 million people are severely burned by overturned kerosene lamps each year. And traditional sources emit harmful fumes and soot. Working under kerosene light exposes people to the toxic equivalent of two packs of cigarettes a day.

无效意味着人们只能得到更少的有用光，一支蜡烛或一盏普通的煤油灯只产生了一直只1W LED灯发出的百分之一的三分之一。燃料灯使用起来非常危险，在印度，250万人在煤油灯倾倒引起的火灾中严重烧伤。传统的燃料燃烧会释放有害的气体和烟尘。在煤油灯下工作的人们吸入的有害物质相当于一天抽了两包烟。

    But, until recently, more efficient lighting that didn't require networked electricity just wasn't practical in developing countries. Lamps that use compact fluorescent bulbs and run off a battery charged by solar power during the day are available, but they're very expensive. Even though you save on kerosene, it takes more than three years after purchase for the total cost of running a compact fluorescent lamp to drop below that of a kerosene lamp and fuel. Poor people in developing countries often can't afford to make such long-term investments. Today, only around 1 percent of houses use solar lamps or solar household systems as a result.

在这里输入译文但是，直到最近，不需要电网的更为有效率的照明工具，在发展中国家并没有可操作性。装有电池的，有太阳能驱动的紧凑型荧光，貌似可行，但价格太贵。如果不用煤油灯，节省下来的灯油钱，要三年才抵得上购买一个紧凑型灯的花费。对于在发展中国家的贫困家庭而言，为这个来做长期的投资，显然难以承受。。即使是现在，也只有将近1%的家庭使用太阳能照明或家庭太阳能系统。

    That is about to change, thanks to the LED. The lesser power demands of these more efficient lights mean that you need smaller batteries to run them -- which means that it is possible to charge a battery long enough to provide hours of light using a smaller solar panel. Diodes are also harder to break -- a real advantage for a technology that must endure a bumpy truck ride over the rutted roads of Africa. That means lower manufacturing and distribution costs, which means cheaper products: The new lamps are already priced at around $20, considerably less than the fluorescent version. And between 2010 and 2015, the price is predicted to fall by another 40 percent -- not least because LED prices will fall by three quarters thanks to new manufacturing techniques. The payback period for buying a basic solar lantern over a kerosene lantern will fall from seven months today to below two months in 2015. Going diode will make overwhelming financial sense even for the poorest people.

得益于LED，这一切即将改变。更少能耗，过大光效，意味着只需要更小容量的电池来驱动，如此，只需要一个小小的太阳能电板来给电池充电，即可使用数个小时用来照明成为可能。同时，二极管也很难打碎，这对于要在非洲坑洼的马路上经受颠簸的运输者而言，是一个真正的优点。这使得制造和运输成本更低，也同样降低了产品的价格：新的LED灯定价大概在20美元左右，这一价格要比荧光灯低得多。预计2010年到2015年，这一价格还会降低40%，尤其是，受益于新的制造技术，LED的价格会降低四分之三。到2015年，买一只简单的太阳能灯相对于一盏煤油灯的回收率，将由现在的7个月减少到2个月。不断发展的二极管技术，对于即使是最贫穷的人群，在财务上，也会产生巨大的冲击。

    With decent and affordable lighting, people can work -- or shop, or relax -- further into the evening. In India, the introduction of better lighting was found to increase the amount of time students spent studying at home by over an hour, with a significant impact on test scores. And added to the advantages of a longer day, greater health, improved security, and a lower environmental impact, solar lamps increasingly come with mobile phone chargers -- an important benefit considering off-grid users in Africa spend as much as $155 million annually charging their phones. At long last, the LED will take Edison's revolution global.

有了像样的，合适的照明工具，人们可以工作，购物，甚至娱乐到深夜。在印度，人们发现使用更好的照明工具，学生在家里花费在学习上的时间增加了一个小时，这对学生的学习成绩极有帮助。未来，考虑到非洲未接入电网的人们在手机充电上一年花费即达155美元之多，使用寿命更长，使用时更安全健康，对环境危害少的太阳能灯将逐渐携带手机充电功能。最终，LED将把爱迪生的光革命带到全世界每一个地方。