Torraca, a small village of 1,200 inhabitants in Italy, is the first place in the world to be totally illuminated by LEDs with some 700 streetlights (each containing 54 LEDs) now lining its arteries. And this new source of light has begun to light up the night all around the world from Beijing's Bird's Nest Olympic Stadium to the Raleigh Convention Center's Shimmer Wall in North Carolina.

"There are more than 30 installations like Torraca around the world," says Mark McClear, business development director at Durham, N.C.-based LED-maker Cree, Inc., which made the LEDs in Torraca's streetlamps. "It's growing weekly."

North Carolina State University in Raleigh last year installed 730 Cree LED lights in a dormitory building and has saved 44 percent of the energy consumed by the fluorescent predecessors per day according to the university. Discount chain Wal-Mart has adopted LEDs in its freezer sections in place of fluorescent light fixtures. And the City of Los Angeles plans to install some 140,000 LED fixtures by 2014.