LED bulb passes 1 watt/100 lumen milestone

[dbarberic]

Re: LED bulb passes 1 watt/100 lumen milestone

I was at Walmart today looking at a PAR60 GE LED replacement that was about $40. I was very tempted to buy, but disapointed by the only 200 lumens. I need 4x that for general purpose lighting for recessed cans.

[mooncliff]

Re: LED bulb passes 1 watt/100 lumen milestone

Yes, 200 lumens does not sound good, but in recessed cans, I have found that a surprising amount of light is wasted in the can itself. We used to have a 75 watt in the can above the sink, and my mom could not believe it when I replaced that with a compact fluorescent with reflector at 11 watts, and it was much brighter than the 75 watt bulb.

As a bridge, I would suggest something like that. They are quite good and should last a couple of years of heavy use, so the LEDs will then be ready.
http://www.amazon.com/Watt-Reflector...855969&sr=1-13

[mooncliff]

Re: LED bulb passes 1 watt/100 lumen milestone

Oh, wait, this may be more complicated than it first appears.

http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/household/cflbulb.asp

[mooncliff]

Re: LED bulb passes 1 watt/100 lumen milestone

This may be more complicated than it first appears.

http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/household/cflbulb.asp

[pianodoctor]

Re: LED bulb passes 1 watt/100 lumen milestone

Thanks for a useful post, mooncliff. I plan to educate myself more on the subject. I got interested in LEDs through the mini flashlights, headband lamps and camper-type portable battery lamps I can use in my work. For instance my LED Lenser Hokus-Focus. Energy efficiency aside, these products have more than paid for themselves simply because of their usefulness in my work, portability, and how long the batteries last. As often as I need such lights, it saves me much hassle to know that I've got so many hours of light available before I need a new battery. I no longer bother hauling plug-in lamps around. They help my working efficiency to a far greater degree than they save energy. One of my best "tool" investments ever. I look forward to equiping the home when the time seems right.

[flintlock]

Re: LED bulb passes 1 watt/100 lumen milestone

Yep, thats the picture I was sent.

I will say that as an electrician I've seen all sort of electrical items do this sort of thing. Its rare, but in the right circumstances, almost any electrical appliance or product can "burst into flames". I still unplug my toaster.

[zoog]

Re: LED bulb passes 1 watt/100 lumen milestone

Wow, 10 cents a kwh...

In Hawaii, it has been like 25 cents for a long time, spiking to 30 cents or more when we had the oil spike because 70% to 100% of the electricity is from oil, depending on island. When the next oil spike that EJ talks about in his book comes, yikes, 40 or 50 cents.

In a similar vein, when gasoline first went over $1 a gallon on the mainland, everyone screamed... people in Hawaii thought this was kinda funny since we just looked at each other and said "But it has been like that for years".

On an optional time-of-use plan here, it can be as low as 4 cents / kwh for offpeak, and about 12 for on-peak. As ThePythonicCow said, the payback time stretches out when the electricity costs are lower.

I've been using CFL's where I can for the past few years. Once the pricing is down to a level that makes sense, I will gladly shift to LED. The main problem I have with CFL's is disposal... shouldn't just toss them in the landfill because of the mercury. Although I suppose to be a good citizen I will end up recycling the spent LED bulbs as well.

As for the delay between technology products being available in Japan and then coming to the USA, that has been widespread and ongoing for many years. Almost fifteen years ago a friend of mine was stationed on a US military base in Japan, and was always telling me about the cool computers, cameras, tv's, phones, music players, etc. Two to five years later, we started seeing those products available here.

[jr429]

Re: LED bulb passes 1 watt/100 lumen milestone

This isn't really news this happened a few years back. Additionally LEDs are not the most efficient lights out there - metal halide, xenon, high pressure sodium lamps are far more efficiency in terms of lumens per watt.

Finally LEDs have a crap emissions curve, and usually the bluer ones are used for lumens ratings. Thats why LED lightning usually looks too blue, or a bit funny.

[mooncliff]

Re: LED bulb passes 1 watt/100 lumen milestone

Yes, that one that is shown is a daylight bulb. I bought a warm white one which is 410 lumens per 5.5 watts and is indistinguishable from an incandescent.
Sure there have been prototypes for years that could do this, but my point is, at least in Japan, that they are now commercially available, from Toshiba, in all the electronics stores, for $40, that are indistinguishable from an incandescent, and I expect the price to drop to $10 to $20 in a year or two.
Certainly metal halide lights, sodium lamps, etc., do not produce natural looking light, certainly not incadescentlike light, nor are they cheap, nor would you generally screw one into a light fixture in your house.
Unless you have been to Japan in the last month and went to Akihabara or somewhere, it is difficult to envision what I mean.
My cousin from CA who is an engineer and is LED crazy was in a hotel, and I swapped out a 60 watt incandescent and put in an older model LED that was $25, and she could not believe it because the quality of the light, the color, was indistinguishable, and it was equally bright.

[flintlock]

Re: LED bulb passes 1 watt/100 lumen milestone

This isn't really news this happened a few years back. Additionally LEDs are not the most efficient lights out there - metal halide, xenon, high pressure sodium lamps are far more efficiency in terms of lumens per watt.

Finally LEDs have a crap emissions curve, and usually the bluer ones are used for lumens ratings. Thats why LED lightning usually looks too blue, or a bit funny.

yes but HID lighting is not practical for interior home lighting. Show me a MH chandelier and I'll become a believer.

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: LED bulb passes 1 watt/100 lumen milestone

Good old simple incandescent light bulbs can be wired right into the power. Most other lights require some type of ballast to run them, and there are better and worse ballasts. A ballast is a special power supply for the lamp. For anything other than a common old bulb, the "light" is composed of a "lamp" and a 'ballast" acting together. LEDs require some kind of driving circuit as well. Those twisted compact fluorescent replacement bulbs have the ballast built right into the base (it's a cheap one).

A high quality electronic ballast for either a flourescent lamp or a metal-halide lamp really increases overall efficiency, increases lamp life, and improves lamp starting, but they aren't cheap - I've spent $190 for a ballast to run just one $80 metal halide bulb. For LEDs, the power supply circuits were commonly called "drivers" back when LEDs were just low power indicator lights on printed circuit boards. Any comparison of different types of lights has to look at the ballast or driver circuits as well.

At 100 lumens / watt, LEDs get right up there with high output fluorescent lamps and gas discharge lamps like metal halide for efficiency. Of course, LEDs are a new technology still making rapid improvements, while the others are mature and won't likely get much better.

One great source for geeky technical details on lamps and ballasts is the salt water aquarium hobby- they tend to use the best and most expensive lighting available for what they call "reef lighting" and their forums and vendor sites are full of tech info and comparisons.

Although LEDs are making great progress, I expect my reef lights will remain T5 fluorescent and mogul base metal halide for the next few years. But with LEDs achieving 100 lumens / watt, I can see LEDs in my future.

Here's the Wiki comparison table http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminous_efficacy

[Scot]

Re: LED bulb passes 1 watt/100 lumen milestone

Low wattage bulbs, both CFL and LED, have another benefit: fixtures rated to handle only low currents can accept CFLs and LEDs that develop much more light at the maximum allowed current. 60 Watt fixtures are very common, but a 25 W CFL in a 60 W fixture will produce as much light as a 100 W incandescent without burning the house down.

[Starving Steve]

Re: LED bulb passes 1 watt/100 lumen milestone

Yes, that one that is shown is a daylight bulb. I bought a warm white one which is 410 lumens per 5.5 watts and is indistinguishable from an incandescent.
Sure there have been prototypes for years that could do this, but my point is, at least in Japan, that they are now commercially available, from Toshiba, in all the electronics stores, for $40, that are indistinguishable from an incandescent, and I expect the price to drop to $10 to $20 in a year or two.
Certainly metal halide lights, sodium lamps, etc., do not produce natural looking light, certainly not incadescentlike light, nor are they cheap, nor would you generally screw one into a light fixture in your house.
Unless you have been to Japan in the last month and went to Akihabara or somewhere, it is difficult to envision what I mean.
My cousin from CA who is an engineer and is LED crazy was in a hotel, and I swapped out a 60 watt incandescent and put in an older model LED that was $25, and she could not believe it because the quality of the light, the color, was indistinguishable, and it was equally bright.

Twenty-five dollars for one LED light seems like pot-head fuzzy-thinking or Silicon Valley yuppie-economics to me. One incandescent old 60watt bulb costs about 25CENTS, or less.

Yes, when LED bead-lights become really cheap, like 25CENTS each, then everyone would switch to LED lights.... People are not dumb.

I still tell my kids, "Pennies count."

[Starving Steve]

Re: LED bulb passes 1 watt/100 lumen milestone

These latte-drinkers in Silicon Valley don't know what thrift means.They will learn the meaning of thrift during this Great Recession.

My brother drove me through Silicon Valley during the morning rush-hour, and the freeway (Hwy 85) was moving at 65 miles per hour (105 kph), all of the distance between south San Jose (Coyote) to SF Airport. Although there was moderate traffic, the traffic was moving at the speed limit. That was around 8AM during the work-week, and that indicates to me plenty about the real state-of-affairs with the economy there.

And the quiet office buildings at 8AM????? Even in Cupertino, plenty of companies, but where were the workers????? Some cars in parking lots around office buildings, but where were the workers? And why weren't all of the parking lots filled?

LED lights, plus "smart-grid technology", plus "solar tech", plus "solar paint", plus "green tech", plus "super-conductors", plus "electronic money", not to forget toy phones for the rich, all seems like fuzzy-thinking to me. Add to this, "derivatives" in finance, cyber-banks, trust-deed chains on properties, dot.bomb failures, and robotic cars...... well, what can I say?

End the government grants for green tech, and Silicon Valley might take another hit. Plus, China and India will soon compete in high-tech. The high-paid workers in Silicon Valley may soon be redundant.

At SF Airport, before 9AM, we parked in the parking-lot right in front of the main terminal of the airport. It was almost as if the year was 1958, but the year was 2010! And "the tell" was that there were still empty spaces in that parking lot; it wasn't full. <9AM !!!!!!!!!

[ggirod]

Re: LED bulb passes 1 watt/100 lumen milestone

Ebay and other vendors like goldengadgets.com sell various low voltage LED lamps intended to fit in track lighting fixtures from companies such as Ikea. As halogen replacements but with less intensity, they still make excellent reading lights, and, for reading, the bluish cast actually compensates for aging optics in the readers' eyes and produces greater sharpness than the incandescent color temperature. They are "old technology" and they use upwards of 15-30 LEDs to produce the desired light. Newer technologies use 1-4 much brighter LEDs. Unfortunately it is sometimes difficult to determine the color temperature of the cheap LED lamps so I have occasionally ended up with incandescent color temperature when I wanted the bluish. On the other hand, some are clearly marked daylight (4200-6500K) or incandescent (2700/3000K) and can be chosen on that basis.

I am confident that bright LED lamps will become available in the US and ultimately replace the many CFL bulbs I am currently using. I have pretty much replaced all lights with CFL and now that the "infant mortality" problem is past I am quite sanguine. I really like the economy of not using much power for lighting and my energy efficient appliances are also a treat when the monthly electric bill comes. My freezer, for example, uses 15KWH per month, or roughly $3. When my clothesline goes up soon my laundry energy will be just about negligible (5-10KWH per month)

Out in the country, where power is not always reliable, it is nice to have small wall mounted lamps that provide plenty of high quality light on a watt or two of power. It is very nice to lie back on the bed to read the latest page turner by battery light while the line crews fix the problem. Of course, if the power is on, I still use the same lights to read by :-) A simple 12 volt alarm system battery can provide 70 hours of reading light with one or two of those efficient LED lamps. Further, since I maintain a charged 12 volt deep cycle battery for serious outages, it is nice to consider that even with a minimum solar panels I will have light forever should TSHTF.

I have observed that various countries (Japan, SE Asia, maybe others) have adopted separable air conditioning units (outdoor compressors) with moderate capacity but much smaller consumption, and I look forward to those becoming cheap enough to contemplate here.