新的光的革命

當今世界，是由消費科技統治的21世紀-高速的，無處不在的網絡，IPad，WiFi。我們沉浸在此中，忘記了一個發展中的世界仍有大片空白之地，尚待科技創新來改造，我們所經歷的這種改變要比100年前的革新更令人震撼，這即是：電子照明技術的出現。最近在照明領域的創新即能給我們帶來這種改變，其不僅能使西方架構良好的電網更有效率，更能為所有的人們提供更好質量的生活

    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.

照明領域的第一次革命以可燃氣體作為燃料。隨著煤油燈在18世紀全面取代蠟燭作為照明，在英國，人工制作的燈具數量每年上升了100倍。1879年，當托馬斯愛迪生用碳化的竹纖維絲作為燈絲，點亮了其位于門羅帕克市的辦公室，第二次照明革命由此開始。1881年，一群南曼哈頓人用電能來照明，西方世界在照明這條路上從未走回頭路。

    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.

在過去的100年里，燈泡領域的創新可謂數目繁多--這其中有鎢絲燈，金屬鹵化燈，鈉燈和緊湊型熒光燈。歸功于生產和設計方面的改進，一盞電燈現在耗費的電能要比100年前的千分之一還少。

    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，現今廣泛使用的燈泡，約有120億只，大部分，構造仍如愛迪生的燈泡一樣，使用燈絲。雖經幾個世紀的改進，這樣的燈泡在發光方面仍然不是很有效率。經過燈絲產生可見光的能量只占總能量的2%，余下的大部分以熱能的形式丟失。燈泡的這種無效率，是為美國在電能燈泡方面排放的二氧化碳相當于其車船排放量一半的最大原因。世界各國政府為此積極尋找更為有效率的照明燈具，白熾燈即為其中之一。

    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.

在這里輸入譯文但是緊湊型白熾燈已是昨日黃花。能催生第三次照明革命的新的技術領先者是發光二極管技術（LED）。經LED轉化為照明光的能量已經達到總能量14%或15%。這個轉化效率與1968年相比提升了1000倍，和今日的緊湊型燈泡相比亦有極大提高。并且這一效率有望在2020年提高兩倍。二極管發光有許多的優點：其使用壽命是緊湊型熒光燈的5倍多（愛迪生燈泡的50倍多），二極管燈具形更小，且更堅固，不需要惰性氣體。這些優點使二極管等在制造，儲藏，運輸和報廢處理上花費更少。如想終結我們隊燈絲的依賴，二極管為一可行的，較為簡便的方法。

    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.

不管它對發達國家會有多大的影響，然而，真正的LED革命會發生在發展中國家，在發展中國家仍有數億記的人在沒有電網的環境中生活。拿非洲為例，在這一地區，有大約一億一千萬的家庭沒有介入電網，與之形成對比的是只有兩千萬家庭接入電網。對于沒有接入電網的人們而言，燃燒照明是其取光的常用方式。大約有一半的家庭靠煤油燈做照明，而剩下大部分家庭用蠟燭做照明工具。超過十分之一的人以燃燒木材或動物糞便以獲得更多照明。換句話說，將近一半的非洲家庭使用的照明方式為美國在內戰前即已拋棄的方法，而余下的大部分家庭是使用第一次世界大戰以來的照明技術。

    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.

與燃燒取光相比，愛迪生燈泡看起來是種有效地照明方法。蠟燭燃燒取光中，只有一個焦耳的能量轉為可見光，而有2500焦耳的能量是被浪費掉的。這就使傳統的照明方式昂貴而且對環境有害。在肯尼亞和加納，沒有連入電網的家庭在燃料照明上的花費大約是每年80美元，且其中大部分花在燃料的購買上。許多家庭在燈具和燃料上的支出占到其收入的30%之多，而這些只為了再每晚能夠有兩到三個小時的亮光。世界范圍內，煤油是一個有380億美元的產業，煤油燈釋放出來的二氧化碳相當于1500萬輛汽車排放的尾氣。

    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.

無效意味著人們只能得到更少的有用光，一支蠟燭或一盞普通的煤油燈只產生了一直只1W LED燈發出的百分之一的三分之一。燃料燈使用起來非常危險，在印度，250萬人在煤油燈傾倒引起的火災中嚴重燒傷。傳統的燃料燃燒會釋放有害的氣體和煙塵。在煤油燈下工作的人們吸入的有害物質相當于一天抽了兩包煙。

    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.

在這里輸入譯文但是，直到最近，不需要電網的更為有效率的照明工具，在發展中國家并沒有可操作性。裝有電池的，有太陽能驅動的緊湊型熒光，貌似可行，但價格太貴。如果不用煤油燈，節省下來的燈油錢，要三年才抵得上購買一個緊湊型燈的花費。對于在發展中國家的貧困家庭而言，為這個來做長期的投資，顯然難以承受。。即使是現在，也只有將近1%的家庭使用太陽能照明或家庭太陽能系統。

    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，這一切即將改變。更少能耗，過大光效，意味著只需要更小容量的電池來驅動，如此，只需要一個小小的太陽能電板來給電池充電，即可使用數個小時用來照明成為可能。同時，二極管也很難打碎，這對于要在非洲坑洼的馬路上經受顛簸的運輸者而言，是一個真正的優點。這使得制造和運輸成本更低，也同樣降低了產品的價格：新的LED燈定價大概在20美元左右，這一價格要比熒光燈低得多。預計2010年到2015年，這一價格還會降低40%，尤其是，受益于新的制造技術，LED的價格會降低四分之三。到2015年，買一只簡單的太陽能燈相對于一盞煤油燈的回收率，將由現在的7個月減少到2個月。不斷發展的二極管技術，對于即使是最貧窮的人群，在財務上，也會產生巨大的沖擊。

    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.

有了像樣的，合適的照明工具，人們可以工作，購物，甚至娛樂到深夜。在印度，人們發現使用更好的照明工具，學生在家里花費在學習上的時間增加了一個小時，這對學生的學習成績極有幫助。未來，考慮到非洲未接入電網的人們在手機充電上一年花費即達155美元之多，使用壽命更長，使用時更安全健康，對環境危害少的太陽能燈將逐漸攜帶手機充電功能。最終，LED將把愛迪生的光革命帶到全世界每一個地方。