Is This the Light Bulb of the Future?

"In several states, such as California, profits are 'decoupled' from consumption."<p>Hmmm, I wonder why CA has such unreliable, expensive power?

"Today’s LED-based lamps cost up to $100 each ... Over the long term, we can absolutely get the cost down to the $20-25 range"<p>While they do sound better than the abysm that is the compact flourescent bulb, at that price they're a no-go compared to incandescents that are $0.20 - $0.25 or less at retail.

Good to see gov agencies mimicing NetFlix type contests to speed up innovation and adoption.

<i>Once a winner is chosen, the utilities will help promote and possibly subsidize the cost of the lamp.</i><p>What is the incentive for utility companies to subsidize products that use less of their product?

I'm not surprised at the cost.<p>The biggest problem with LEDs has been that efficiency drops as the LED is scaled up in brightness.<p>Most likely they solved that by placing a very large number of smaller LEDs together in one bulb.<p>But it's not going to be easy to reduce the cost when you go that route.<p>The basic research of making a bright LED efficient has not been solved yet.

Like platinum catalysts in cars' catalytic convertors, these things will probably suffer an intial period of widespread theft.

I had this funny feeling while reading this, like reading a story about Edison on Wikipedia. I know it's corny, but the high price tag only seems to reinforce the similarities in trajectory to early incandescent bulbs, which probably were just as expensive then.

I can think of a few more tests they need to do, like turn it on and off 365x10 times in a row and see if it can handle it (most of my LED 110VAC have not survived more than a year).<p>Also dimmer capable electronics.<p>But mass-made mercury-free option would be very nice, I don't use CFLs for that very reason.<p>Next they need to do this kind of prize for LiFePo4 batteries, and start using the huge lithium deposits that are in the USA (owned by Canadian mining corporations that refuse to mine them until the price is lithium is double what it is today).