Imagine a light bulb that you install when your first child is born and it continues to operate through grade school, high school and college! That is the future of lighting that Warner Philips of Lemnis Lighting unveiled at West Coast Green 2009.
His company has launched the Pharox, a light bulb designed to replace the pear-shaped incandescent light bulb invented by Thomas Edison. The Pharox is approximately the same size and shape of the incandescent light bulb so it easily installs in your typical lamp or lighting fixture.
And important to those who complain about the harshness of the more energy efficient CFL lights, the Pharox has a soft, warm light that is comparable to our familiar incandescent light bulb. Also there is no “noise” emanating from the Pharox like CFL lighting and it comes on with the flick of the switch just like an incandescent light. The bulb is fully recyclable and does not have a toxic chemical like mercury found in CFL light bulbs.
Most remarkably the Pharox has a projected TWENTY year life (though the manufacturer guarantee is only three years).
So what’s the catch? It now costs $40 per bulb. That can be rationalized since the bulb uses 10% of the electricity of an incandescent light bulb. At $40 per bulb Warner projects that after 3 years of normal use the bulb will pay for itself in energy savings. BUT, $40 per bulb is still a price barrier to mass marketing that Warner recognizes. Lemnis Lighting is currently focused upon the “early adopter” consumer who were also the pioneers in buying roof top solar, instantaneous water heaters and low-flow toilets.
The importance of the Pharox technology is that incandescent lights represent approximately 75% of the lights used by residential America. And lighting consumes about 9% of all the energy in our homes. So do the math, the Pharox using 10% of the energy used by an incandescent light could slash our home energy consumption for lighting to as low as 1%. And because a large percentage of the electricity produced for lighting comes from coal-fired generation the environmental benefits are even greater.
As profiled in The Secret Green Sauce™ (www.earth2017.com), Lemnis Lighting is in the early “beach head” stage of executing a “Crossing the Pricing Chasm™” strategy. They have a compelling product. They are working with early adopters who are willing to take a longer term economic valuation perspective to gain a dramatic conservation result. And they have a manufacturing path to enhanced price competitiveness as they gain economies of scale. Remember the Pharox. It may someday be lighting all our homes.
