An Interview with John Edmond - Luciferous LED Lucubrator

This weeks special guest is John Edmond, the co-founder and Director of Advanced Optoelectronics Technology at Cree, Inc in Durham, NC.

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• John talks about the history of Cree and how they built the company with no venture capital. Awesome!
• Lots of technical LED talk on manufacturing, Stokes loss, Haitz's law and chemistries involved in making LEDs.
• Cree got one of their biggest breaks supplying the blue LEDs in the VW Beetle and Jetta's of the late 90s models.
• How do you measure the light output of a LED? With an integrating sphere!
• One competitive advantage Cree has (over China, for instance) is their Energy Star compliance.
• In China, Cree has gained market share by buying COTCO four years back.
• Cree also makes SiC FETs and Schottky diodes.
• How many LED's can you fit on one wafer? How long does it take you to test them?
• Will the war of the currents finally be won by Edison? Should we have DC power our homes for localized efficiencies?
• Some of the other bulb manufacturers are GE, Osram (Sylvania) & Phillips. Some of the other LED manufacturers are Nichia, Avago and Osram.
• Dave talks about doing the math on LED lighting for the new office and how the payback is 15 years. John claims something closer to 6 years.
• John answers the million dollar question of when and how LED lighting will reach critical mass mainstream.
• Those more interested in winning some of Cree's products (US only, unfortunately) can check out their contest site at Cree LED Revolution.

Many thanks to John for speaking on our show and for Ginny (Cree’s social media personality and the person behind the Cree Twitter account) for helping set it all up! It was a lot of fun!