After doing lots of odd search's I ran across this article, about making an incandescent lamp with an efficiency of 6.6% (triple that of a normal incandescent light) and they are close to LEDs today (which are 5% to 15% efficient), and they are predicting it's possible to bring the efficiency up to 40% with more engineering, better then that of the top rated LED's on the market today.. Who would of though a simple mirror with some nano engineering would give an LED a run for it's efficacy (apparently some people at MIT did.)

So we might see the incandescent lamp make a comeback in the future...

Just think 3000°K at a 100 CRI, Thomas Edison will be happy again.

After doing lots of odd search's I ran across this article, about making an incandescent lamp with an efficiency of 6.6% (triple that of a normal incandescent light) and they are close to LEDs today (which are 5% to 15% efficient), and they are predicting it's possible to bring the efficiency up to 40% with more engineering, better then that of the top rated LED's on the market today.. Who would of though a simple mirror with some nano engineering would give an LED a run for it's efficacy (apparently some people at MIT did.)

So we might see the incandescent lamp make a comeback in the future...

Just think 3000°K at a 100 CRI, Thomas Edison will be happy again.

Never wouldof thought the incandescent lamp would ever be considered energy efficient, this is kindof neat that they're improving the incan lamp... however is there any updates beyond 2016?

Never wouldof thought the incandescent lamp would ever be considered energy efficient, this is kindof neat that they're improving the incan lamp... however is there any updates beyond 2016?

Right now it's a proof of concept, but after looking on MIT and the project leads websites they are showing it can actually reach a much higher limit in principle, it can go over 80% under theoretically optimal conditions ( that is like 546 lumens / watt ) and it's not being done to compete with CFL's or LED's it's being done to demonstrate a high degree of recycling the thermal emissions as light. Basically the nano mirror / filters keep reflecting the heat back at the filament until it's emitted as visible light, it's a simple idea with lots of very complex physics behind it..

And going from proof of concept to a mass produced product can take time, and that is assuming the laws banning incandescent lighting don't hamper the development, but the technology can also be used to make solar panels more efficient so we will have to wait and see, but don't think the large LED businesses won't try and fight something like this all the way to the law makers if it works so they don't lose any market share, so it will be interesting to see what comes of this.. 

And they only have a CRI of 93 and color temp of 3100°K but that is still pretty good..

Proof of concep, that had shown what has been already commercially made for years (IR reflection lamps). Otherwise has all attributes of many similar "discoveries": Observe some effect, which helps a little, many times already well known in the industry (but that remains widely ignored by the authors), witha lot of fantasising about what would happen if some part would get miracle properties. Very common on crowfunding sites (self filling bottle, Waterseer, Solar Roadways,...), in many times (my impression is in all times, but I have no proof for that) the flaws are perfectly known to the authors since the start but kept hidden, in order to attract money fromnaive investors. Obviously itnever works (well, the claimedthing never works, getting the money for the authors works way too well).

Andbythe way the LED efficiency today is intherange around 25..30% (120..150lm/W; 100% efficiency of white light is in the range of 300to 400lm/W, depends on exact spectrum), it depends on the amount of color conversion, the bare blue LED is already close to 50%. So with the 15% claims they are referencing way outdated LED technology.

I agree that the LED establishment will not want to lose ground. However, if these are cheaper to make, have similar lifetimes, and stable enough to get good yields from them there may be something to be had here.

And if more expensive to make ? It does not take much to beat LED (any LED) in light quality and photobiological safety. If anyone understands it, they will pay a little more for the better lighting

That is the reason we have lamp bans, to prevent peeps from choosing the lighting they want, even when it costs more in electricity (and they know it does)

Before recent years there were some more common and some less common technologies and they coexisted. It is only now, there is this mindset that something either have to replace everything else, or can't exist at all, nothing inbetween....

well for me LED are getting worse in quality. Most of mine have failed within weeks
For the however Best CRI but 90% Invisible light

I'd have to say incandescent is getting better

Medved, they are not crowdfunding they are funded by the US department of energy, and the US military Nano tech research, both of which have very deep pockets and can afford more then gofundme and kickstarter combined, one side sees the energy savings and the other sees new weapons and power sources for those weapons because this is a spin off from making solar panels more efficient and they are pretty clear in there research papers this is not to compete with current tech like LEDs, they even go as far as to say you should change your older lights to LED or CFL and we can actually get 200 lm/w today in LED but the theoretical max will be some where in the order of 300 lm/w (43.9 %) using phosphors and they can't handle the extra heat so this idea of using a nano mirror to continue heating the device to incandescent temperatures while filtering and passing visible light will not work on an LED, and it's not a new concept I know several lights have used it in the past, and in there full research papers they do talk about this, but those lights are only improving the efficiency by a very small factor and that is where the manufactures research stopped, even LPS use the same basic idea with an ITO coating to reflect the IR back at the arc tube, what they are doing is using fairly new tech to improve very old tech, hot mirrors aren't new and they managed to get a three fold increase on efficiency without a lot of effort so it's a good start, and they even tell you what coatings they use and how many layer and the thickness so others can build this and test there concept to obtain repeatable results and to show there proof of concept works..

So all round it's a neat idea and a good start..

Dont confuse CRI with light quality. Standard Incandescent have 100 CRI, yet quite poor coverage of the Blue/Violet end of the visible spectrum....

With the new Incandescent, if the filament temperature is higher it will cover the Blue/Violet better, but at the same time, it is interesting how much of the visible light in the Red region will be blocked by the filter

They are 3100°K at a 93 CRI so they are filtering some of the red out..

They are using indeed government funding and not crowd funding, but that does not differ that much. Government funding needs politicians support and politicians need support from majority of the voting public. Not that much scientifically literate public... Normally such thing would be quite good junior student excersize example.
The thing is, in the way how that work, by just "swallowing the scientific pride", all participants just win on this:
The organisation shows some sexy "research on global warming", so it becomes easier to get funds for the real serious (but not that sexy) research they are normally doing. Win on the university level.
The students get a record "Participated on efficiency improvement research" in their CV. After few years, whenthey are seeking for some good job, no one would ever ask, howserious that was. Win on student side as well.
It is very sad the reputable organizations are involved in such things, but the way how politicians work, they have just no other choice. This just opens the "money pipes" way more effectively than anyreal serious research. And dont be fooled, this is not the sole occurence of such "research", it is happening all the time on practically all reputable universities and research institutions, across all scientific fields.

And to the LED efficacy: 300lm/W will be actually minimum 55% efficiency, the 55% in case it is the 550nm monochromatic green, the wavelength the eye is the most sensitive, just because this wavelength yields 550lumens per radiated watt.
But here we are talking about white light, where the yield of 4000K CRI80 could yield 330lm per radiated watt, so in order to have 300lm/W such source must have at least 90% energy efficiency. Wrmer light (lowerCCT) yields less lumens, so the efficiency for the 300lm/W would have to be still highet (I have a feeling the 300lm/W actually corresponds to the typical home color of 2700K) So the 41% statement is clear BS with that context.
And yes, LEDs are approaching 200lm/W, but no info about the color quality (it could be the 41% if it is the 550nm line, or 60% for a reasonable quality white light). Or better to say the ones presenting the 200lm/W LEDs may have stated the color there, I just do not remember that part myself.

And if more expensive to make ? It does not take much to beat LED (any LED) in light quality and photobiological safety. If anyone understands it, they will pay a little more for the better lighting

That is the reason we have lamp bans, to prevent peeps from choosing the lighting they want, even when it costs more in electricity (and they know it does)

Before recent years there were some more common and some less common technologies and they coexisted. It is only now, there is this mindset that something either have to replace everything else, or can't exist at all, nothing inbetween....

That is what I call the fallacy of universal supplantation, which is where a new way of doing something must completely and totally supercede everything that used to be used to do that thing.