How about power over Ethernet? I'm only half-joking here.
If Wikipedia is to be believed, you can get 14 watts from some implementations, 25 from others, and supposedly up to 51 from still others. That seems like more than enough for these new bulbs. I think the last CFL I bought from Ikea was in the neighborhood of 15 watts.
The control interface would hopefully evolve naturally from this. :-)
(Also, bonus points for figuring out how to make all of your light bulbs into boosters for your wireless network. They're already in all the places where people go in a house.)
Unfortunately PoE as currently implemented is probably not the solution, as there's a non-negligible amount of power lost along the thin wires in a Cat5e cable and in the power converters at each end.
With PoE you lose the power three times instead of just once. You have an AC-to-DC brick for the PoE injector (or similar inside of a PoE-enabled switch), then resistive loss on the cable (about 2.4W lost for every 12.5W that reaches the device[0]), then another DC-to-DC converter at the device itself.
Now, don't get me wrong. I really like PoE, and would love to have something similar for lighting, but PoE itself can't handle the current required for primary lighting.
How much power is lost with all of those dumb little DC bricks all over the place right now?
According to http://what-if.xkcd.com/35/, as a rule of thumb, any DC transformer that's not warm to the touch is wasting less than a penny of electricity per day, and a cellphone charger, if not warm to the touch, less than a penny per year.
If Wikipedia is to be believed, you can get 14 watts from some implementations, 25 from others, and supposedly up to 51 from still others. That seems like more than enough for these new bulbs. I think the last CFL I bought from Ikea was in the neighborhood of 15 watts.
The control interface would hopefully evolve naturally from this. :-)
(Also, bonus points for figuring out how to make all of your light bulbs into boosters for your wireless network. They're already in all the places where people go in a house.)