New Year’s Eve Ball in Times Square Gets LED Makeover
For its 100th anniversary, the Times Square New Year’s Eve ball, the one we all watch with anticipation and merriment every December 31, will get an LED make-over. This year’s glowing orb will be fitted with 9,576 Philips Luxeon LEDs in red, green, blue and white. The LED bulbs replace nearly 600 incandescent and halogen lamps that previously illuminated the ball.
The new lights, in addition to being more vibrant and various in color, are also expected to last 50,000 hours, compared to the 1000 hours the previous lights lasted. The LED lights will also drastically reduce the power consumption of the previous New Year’s Eve ball – it is expected to take 87% less power to illuminate than in previous years. In fact, lighting this new LED Time Square ball was equated to powering 10 toasters or 3 clothes dryers.
Now that’s some incredible resourcefulness and good old conservation if I ever heard it. It’s nice to see some of these more frivolous things in our culture getting a “green” make-over with LED lights.
Photo: Copyright © 2007 PennWell Corporation
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