Is that really the typical CFL number? I ask because I've got one of the new Cree bulbs and I find the quality of light really a lot better than that of the (admittedly cheap) CFLs I've bought at Costco.
So I guess I'm struggling with the significance of CRI.
It depends on which CFL you buy of course. But 90 CRI CFLs are easy to find.
In general "warmer" CFLs have a better CRI.
You can trade off energy efficiency for CRI. This is true for LEDs as well. So if you don't need great color then go for a lower CRI since you'll save energy on the light output.
But because of that, when comparing energy efficiency of LEDs vs CFLs you MUST use a comparable CRI, otherwise it's not a fair comparison.
But I'll save you time: There are no commercially available LEDs that beat CFLs in energy efficiency for the equivalent CRI.
I've found the exact opposite. I've found that there are many more "cooler" (~5600K color) CFLs with a high CRI than warmer (~2700K color) CFLs with a high CRI. The cooler 5600K lights are daylight balanced and used a lot with digital filmmaking and as indoor grow lights, whereas the warmer lights are used in home light fixtures to approximate the color temps of incandescents.
As someone who is enthusiastic about LEDs from a distance (I'm not about to run out and replace all my lights at once) I'm comfortable with the idea that LEDs are still a couple of generations away from replacing existing technology in a satisfactory way. But damn, those generations sure are happening fast.
I became aware of Cree because of flashlight LEDs and what they accomplished in that space over the course of a year or so was pretty amazing. At present I can still take out my little AAA light with the newest Cree LED and say "check this out" and surprise people with its brightness. The early LED flashlights were largely junk, but in contrast, this is a great use of the technology.
Even the top-of-the-line CREE bulbs are only suitable for people who are color blind or habitually not paying attention. I once did an ill-considered change from halogen to LED bulbs in my kitchen, and having done so could no longer see the colors on my dishware. That was ridiculous. I went back to the halogens. My house is in a year-round heating climate anyway so I don't really worry about the waste heat from them.
I wonder if you've actually used one of the newest Cree bulbs? I'm not color blind and I found the color of one of their 2700k bulbs to be better than the CFLs I use in a few places. Come to think of it, they're a fair bit better than the g7power LEDs as well.
This is why I'm wondering if the CRI is really a magical "light goodness" benchmark number or what. Some people certainly seem to be treating it that way.
They were the best ones I could get my hands on. I believe their advertised CRI is 90. If you look at the spectrum though, they are still quite peaky/notchy. Halogens are very close to sunlight. Halogens with clear bulbs have CRI 100 by definition.
Yes, the latest LEDs are far superior to CFL. And oatmeal tastes better than dog shit.
Another thing to consider is that radiation outside of the visible light spectrum may have positive effects. For instance, halogens radiate a lot of infrared radiation, which is used in various therapies and is a big part of why being out in the sun feels so good.
cri doesnt mean too much absolutely, but it's the metric the standards associations chose to compare lights. after working with medical lighting for a while I've found myself paying more attention to the combination of cri and cct and/or cri and luminous flux. what people need to realize is that lots of other factors come into play such as ambient color mismatch and bleeding of adjacent colors. in some conditions even high cri lights don't appear to show color very well.
Chandeliers with prismatic glass are another problem area for LED lighting. My home has two such fixtures, previously populated with nine 40-Watt incandescent lamps each.
That's a lot of power dissipation (360 Watts), particularly since one of the fixtures was on up to 12 hours per day (4KW-h almost daily for that).
So I replaced all nine bulbs with TCP LDCT3WH30KCC 3-Watt (15 W incandescent luminance equivalent) 3000-K 80-CRI bulbs. 27 Watts, down from 360.
Excellent energy savings, excellent dimmability (better than the incandescents), but all those beautiful violet, green, blue, gold and other various facets of color from the prismatic glass were just gone -- collapsed down to a cold white; as if the glass weren't prismatic anymore.
I do not understand why I don't see at least some narrow-band stripes of some few individual colors.
So I put back just two 40-watt incandescent bulbs. That was enough to bring back a nice refractive color spread from the prismatic glass. The dissipation is up to 91 Watts from 27 Watts, but it's beautiful again.
Energy problem resolved satisfaction (75% reduction), while keeping the aesthetics alive too.
That's pretty interesting. I bet it has something to do with the polarization of light. If so a bulb like the Cree (with its glass casing) might help, although it might look goofy in that particular fixture.
I doubt it's the polarization. More likely it's that the incandescents are point, or line sources (non-frosted bulbs), but the LED's are much wider - so you are still getting colors, but since you have multiple color in multiple spots they overlap, mix, and are back to being white again.
Try to get LEDs that have no diffuser lens in front, since the LED itself is a point source.
Yes. And it is the measure that for example interior designers are passionate about. The problem with LEDs has been their poor CRI, but Philips has been able to produce LEDs with CRI above 90.
Until your LED bulb starts making a strange noise and you discover these things actually have a cooling fan inside of them. This thing WILL fail if kept running for a long time.
MR16s (the type of bulb in the parent's video) are tough because of their size and limited surface area relative to their lumen output. Most retrofit lamps such as the A19 (the form-factor that most people think of when they think of a light bulb) have 100% passive thermal management. That said, there are a few really good fully-passive, high-output MR16s on the market.
I believe switching capacitors in the power supply are what limit the lifetime of most LED bulbs - electrolytic caps being one of the worst offenders. Good thermal management helps mitigate these problems, but a lot of failures are chemical in nature - caused by the degradation of the capacitor's electrolyte. This is why we've all seen the capacitor choice in motherboards and PSUs used as a marketing item.
Full disclosure: I used to work for a well-known LED lighting company, but please take the above with a grain of salt as I am not an electrical engineer. [Edit: And of course, these views I've expressed are my own and not representative of my past employer.]
This is excellent. However, please do not say "this is enough for me" after you replace all your incandescent light bulbs with these. Household energy consumption is a tiny, tiny drop in the bucket compared to industrical energy consumption and shipping.
Most energy consumption in the US goes towards heating and cooling, not illumination. Making your house more energy efficient starts with your windows and doors, not your lightbulbs.
Obviously, that's right. I was just pointing out that in the aggregate, improvements to energy efficiency in the residential sector are not a "tiny, tiny drop" vis-a-vis industry as the GP was implying.
And it's also true that residential lighting is not a big energy consumer, even though it still represents close to 10% of US electricity use (not of overall energy use, of course).
That depends -- the energy wasted by illumination needs to be cooled away (if you live in a climate where cooling is necessary, obviously), which not only uses energy but also increases the necessary size of the HVAC unit needed. This can be significant in places with a lot of lights so more applies to offices than residences.
OTOH, if you live in a climate where heating is necessary, and even more if you heat with electric heat, there's obviously little gain to be had by switching to LEDs.
It's a given that most bulbs are located on the ceiling, unless you have a fan to redistribute that heat to the ground you aren't feeling the warmth. Also, when lights are off you still need to heat the house. Unless you're using the bulbs during the day, your HVAC unit will need to be just as big.
That's a difficult chart for an outsider to interpret. How are there electricity exports if there is no electricity production? How do they count "industry" and "residential?"
In any case, I'll note that the "residential" line does indeed read 262 mtoe but the "production" line at the top is 1,686 mtoe, leaving the "residential" category consuming something like 15% of total production.
Most novices and outsiders would probably be content to count non-residential energy use as "industrial," even if that doesn't match the IEA's more detailed classification. Especially energy-intensive commercial activities that I imagine must make up the "transport" category (like aviation, trucking, railroads, and shipping).
Actually, residential energy consumption is expressed in final energy terms. This is the actual consumption by end-users of energy carriers (e.g. electricity, gasoline, diesel, natural gas, etc...). The sum of all these end-use consumption is the Total Final Consumption (or TFC).
This is to be distinguished from primary energy sources (crude oil, coal, natural gas, etc...), which are used to produce the energy carriers that end-users consume (e.g. in a power plant to produce electricity, or in a refinery to produce gasoline). The sum of all primary energy sources consumption is the Total Primary Energy Supply (TPES).
Since residential energy consumption is reported in final terms, the correct denominator to calculate the share you were looking for is TFC. Residential energy consumption thus accounts for 17.9% of TFC, versus 17.7% for industry.
The non-residential sector is denominated in IEA terminology as 'Commercial and Public Services'. This sector encompasses office buildings, hotels & restaurants, education & research, hospital & healthcare, sports facilities and public administrations. In short, buildings that house the tertiary sector. Therefore it can't be identified at all with the industry (btw industrial buildings consumption are accounted for in the 'industry' sector).
In total, residential and non-residential buildings account for 32% of TFC in the US, second only to transport (39.5%).
Disclosure: I've worked as an analyst at the IEA for 4 years.
I'm not quite sure what you're saying... that the LED bulbs have a much higher energy and environmental "cost" in manufacturing, compared to a standard incandescent? That's quite likely true and has to be considered in the big picture (similar issues with electric vehicles, that their proponents like to ignore).
For me the answer is simple: $13 is way too much to pay for a light bulb, I don't care how efficient it is.
> $13 is way too much to pay for a light bulb, I don't care how efficient it is.
You probably should care. It only takes 6 hours per day of usage for your 60W incandecent to suck up $13 of electricity in a year. And you'll have had to change it at least once. The LEDs will last for over a decade.
Yes, if you're only renting a house/apartment for a year then you may not recoup your costs (although it will be close). Similarly if the light is on for less than an hour per day. But if you plan on sticking around awhile it makes complete financial sense. You can literally save $200 per bulb over the lifetime of a bulb used heavily.
Also, the prices will continue to fall.
EDIT: mikeash is right that I should have mentioned the dependancy of efficiency savings on your local electricity prices. I used 10 cents per kilowatt hour, which is a bit under the national average of 12 cents (meaning I was being conservative in potential savings).
Heck the efficiency gains are the maybe the fourth most important reason I switched to LEDs. #3 is bragging rights of course, #2 is the instant-on vs CFLs (barely perceptible 1/10 sec until 100% brightness).
#1 is the annoyance cost of having to replace a lightbulb. Almost all of my lights are either recessed in the ceiling or in annoying-to-access fixtures; not having to find a ladder or chair and balance the replacement in one hand is well worth the ~$10-20 LED bulbs cost. Amortized over their expected lifetime it's minuscule and if I move I'm taking the bulbs with me.
Make sure to state what price you're assuming for electricity when making these claims. The cost of electricity in the US can vary by a factor of 3-4 depending on where you live.
I'm sure it's worthwhile for any heavily-used light even in very cheap areas, but the specific breakeven time will vary quite a bit.
You also have to make an assumption about the typical weather. The waste heat offsets heating costs in cold climates, but in hot climates, you must also burn additional electricity to pump the waste heat outside. My estimate is that a 50W bulb efficiency improvement results in a saving between 30W-70W depending on the climate.
If you live in Iceland, the payback is probably never. If you live in Singapore, you will recoup the cost in months.
I personally use LEDs everwhere except my bathroom during winter, where I use inefficient globe bulbs because it warms the bathroom.
That's an interesting point. Reminds me of when a Wisconsin city replaced all of their stoplights with LEDs, then discovered come winter that the new bulbs wouldn't melt snow like the old ones did, requiring a lot of manual cleaning to remain visible.
I'm not sure how much of a difference it's likely to make, though. Houses in cold climates usually use more efficient heating systems, so the heat from a light bulb will be pretty costly by comparison. With a 50W savings, the cost for additional heating to make up for that will probably only be equivalent to about 10W of electricity, or less, depending on your setup.
Air conditioning is usually pretty efficient, with efficiencies better than 10 (10W of heat removed for 1W of electricity used). So that 50W savings will still be 55W or less when taking air conditioning into account.
On kWh costs, don't forget that when you reduce use, you reduce the last kWh first. Meaning, in a tiered pricing model, you reduce your most expensive electricity first.
So, the price you would use to calculate savings is not your average price / kWh. You should use your max price / kWh.
That's also why if/when you install solar panels on your roof, you recover your investment faster if you don't quite cover your entire electrical needs.
I do. Sample size = maybe 3 (I've moved around a bit). I'm in the US, have lived in Southern California (Edison Electric), Phoenix (SRP?), San Francisco (PG&E), and Boston (NStar pronounced N-Staaahhh by my Mass. friends).
I thought all utilities were on a tiered pricing model. It's actually a technique employed by Arcata, CA to fight pot growing houses [1][2] that use > 600% of the baseline usage.
Also, I have lived places where middle of the day pricing is higher. My utility company just sent me an offer for tiered pricing by time of day. Smart meters help with implementing time of day pricing.
OTOH, my entire house is fluorescent and LED. My monthly electricity bill is $65. For a house! I never have to replace burnt out bulbs. At $13 I'd guess the LED is actually about at break-even over the life of the bulb vs incandescent unless you're buying incandescent in the big packs of 30 bulbs for $10.
The only gas in my house is my central heating, and my old water heater. I plan to replace that with point-of-use electric tankless units. No more waiting 2 minutes for hot water at the kitchen sink! With a $3,000 grid-connected solar kit I'm pretty sure I can get to near $0/month on electricity, even with the electric water heaters and the Nissan Leaf I just bought last night. ;-)
It's the future brother. Stuff lasts longer, provides a better experience and is cheaper. It's win/win/win. The environmental wins might not be all that dramatic with the impact of production factored in, but if you're in it for the long haul I figure you can still feel OK about it if you were up to replace a bulb/water-heater/car/etc anyways when you make the switch.
PS: Have you seen the price on POU tankless water heaters? Once you have the panel/breaker/wiring in place, they're dirt cheap compared to traditional water heaters.
Where do you live, and what's the square footage of the house? My monthly bill is hundreds per month, but the significant majority of that is AC - I live in Arizona, and cooling in the summer here takes a crazy amount of juice.
Lighting is all CFL, though - the bulbs are about $1.40 apiece and consume 13w of juice, which works out to around $11/year to run 24/7. A 60w incandescent would cost around $52/year to run 24/7. We obviously don't run them constantly, but even if the incandescents were free, the CFLs are a better deal over the bulb's lifetime.
Dallas. ~2400sqft maybe? I forget. It's pretty easy to lock in ~9c rates here. I think I actually pay 9.6c per kwh because I chose the "100% Windpower" option.
Wow, that's impressive. How old are your AC units? Newer ones are apparently crazy more efficient - I'm wondering if it might be worth the upgrade cost now.
We just bought the house a year ago, so I have no idea. I know it was on the market for two years and got all new kitchen appliances. The condenser certainly looks new though, and bigger than I'm used to in a single story home, so it's my guess it also saw an upgrade.
> I plan to replace that with point-of-use electric tankless units.
So what is your gas bill right now? It costs around five times as much to heat with electricity.
If you wanted to be smart about it, add an electric heater with a sensor. Best of both worlds that way. Hot water is instant but after two minutes you are using cheap gas-heated water.
Gas is typically more than my electricity bill and I only have the gas water heater and central air. Dryer, cooktop, etc is all electric.
You're right of course, but given my cheap electric rates, the fact that "some day" I could produce electricity on my roof, and I won't be throwing 2 gallons of water down the kitchen sink waiting for it to warm up, that it'll be a win overall.
I'm not going to be drilling for gas in my back yard anytime soon after all. :-)
Plus, I'd find it hard to believe that generally speaking my electricity isn't far better for the environment considering it's 100% wind. It's probably easier to ask what weeks has there not been some mishap in Texas City than not. That's not normally a primary driver for me, but all things being equal it's a plus.
Lighting is a small fraction of your overall electricity usage. HVAC alone uses many times as much. While using efficient lighting is a good idea far too many people get hung up on it when there are better places to conserve.
It depends on how many people are in your family and how frequently they forget to turn off the lights. Plus, having 400W of incandescent bulbs on is 400 more watts that the A/C system has to cool.
Yes and No? I mean, my bill only goes up $20 in the summer to cool the house, and that's in a 35 year old home in Dallas. That's over 90 straight days of 110F temperatures last year.
It's a new, pretty efficient HVAC unit though. Thankfully. First home I've had that didn't struggle to maintain 76F indoors during the hottest part of the day.
Still, there's not a ton you can do around the house as cheap as replacing the bulbs in the high-traffic areas. Anybody can do that. Replacing your HVAC for something more efficient is going to be a challenge for most.
Then there's high-R-value windows to install. Foam insulation on exterior walls (brick, so that's a lot of dry-wall work). Radiant barriers in the attic space. More ceiling insulation. Tankless water heaters.
Outside of maintaining your weather stripping, I can't think of anything that pays off as much, for as little, than replacing your light bulbs. Maybe getting a Nest thermostat? We've got recessed lighting in the Living Room, which had four big 90W halogen bulbs when we moved in, and are almost always on if somebody's home. Replaced 'em with 17W LED bulbs (http://www.usa.philips.com/c/led-light-bulbs/ambientled-17w-...).
That comes out to about $7/month in savings. (360w vs 68w @ $0.0912 per kw/hr). In the year since I installed them they've paid for themselves. They'll last 22 years according to Phillips. The ROI on LED (for your highest-traffic rooms at least) is stupid cool, and I'll effectively never have to bust out the 8' ladder to replace them. I might be off base, but I think I've typically replaced halogens every couple years or so. So even over 5 years the old bulbs probably would've cost me 10X more.
For our situation at least, that's a no brainer. If I can spend $50 today and avoid paying $5/month indefinitely, that's a big win in my book. I may not be able to afford to buy a car cash, and have to pay the financing penalty, but at least I can break out of the "financing" cycle with my home lighting. ;-)
To each his own. I'm comfortable at 76, which is good, because my family will complain about being cold. (They're happy at 70 in the winter, though... go figure.)
I live in a new construction condo in the Pacific Northwest. A couple of times per year I have to turn on a single heater.
My $35 power bill is my desktop computer, refrigerator, hot water heater, and the 7 lights that end up turned on just to light up a 500 or so sqft living space. (Recessed lighting is evil.)
One of the most interesting parts of lighting energy efficiency to me is that once lighting uses so little power, you can use battery backup for power outages.
I'm surprised there isn't a push for low voltage LED lighting. Running low voltage cabling and electrical boxes is a lot easier and the LEDs run off of low voltage anyway. Outside of appliances, who needs 120VAC in most of their rooms?
I was going to do this in the house that I am building, but the building department has very strict codes for how often you need 120VAC outlets (quite often to prevent daisy chained power strips and similar unsafe behavior). The relevant code is from the International Building Code:
"Receptacles shall be installed so that no point measured horizontally along the floor line of any wall space is more than 6 feet (1829 mm), from a receptacle outlet." [1]
Yeah, that is a common building code requirement in most states. It's going to be more annoying when everything starts having USB plug adapters and charges off 5v.
My biggest problem with either fluorescent or LED is that the brightness is not there at the top end, once you get into 150W-equivalent and higher. I'm sure we'll get there though.
Nakedrobot2 is saying that industry in general wastes / uses very much more energy than households do.
While it's a good thing for households to move to energy efficient lighting it's not nearly enough. We need to work out ways for industry to reduce their energy waste / use.
$13 for a lightbulb isn't too bad, if it's a nice light and efficient and lasts a long time.
Businesses pay more than that if they need their light-bulb repair technician to get a ladder.
For me the benefit of all these low energy bulbs is to have lamps everywhere, rather than one or two bright lights. It's a shame that most of them are a harsh blue/white light at the moment.
Cree offers its bulbs in daylight and soft-white variants. I've seen in-between bright-white 60W LED bulbs as well, but usually for about ~$6 more or so from other manufacturers (mostly Philips).
That $13 led lamp will last you 10x as long as an incandescent while saving you all of that electricity. As long as the cri is acceptable there's really no reason not to get it.
Please tell me you're using CFLs as the very least. Yes the upfront price is higher, but these bulbs actually pay for themselves in approximately two years and they start saving you money after that and not to mention time from not having to buy and install new bulbs.
Problem is, the CFLs don't last. They usually don't last even a single year. My story:
I got the faith: I replaced every incandescent in our condominium association with CFL. After one year, most all the CFLs had failed, despite having 3- to 5-year warranties. Also noticed another peculiarity: CFLs are stolen more often! Apparently our condominium parking lot has become a CFL bank for individuals who want to lower their light bills.
So last week I bought a 4-pack of 40W incandescents for $4! That is down from the $12 I would have paid for four CFLs that wouldn't last any longer and that, when broken, are a mess/danger to clean up.
No more CFLs for me, thank you! The whole CFL thing is looking like a scam.
When a company or a government agency gives instructions for clean-up they're going to go 'by the book' as much as possible.
They give these scary sounding instructions because for every 50 people who manage to put a broken CFL into a bin without instructions there's going to be 1 who'll gather a bunch of broken CFLs in a sack and toss it into a lake; or who operates a trash business and who stores kilograms of them in the open leaching stuff into the water table.
See also women being told to avoid '4d scans' (no medical purpose; everything carries some risk even if unknown and unquantifiable; thus avoid this risk because there's no medical benefit) or coffee cups with "This is hot" printed on them.
> Problem is, the CFLs don't last. They usually don't last even a single year. My story:
CFLs are very picky about the quality of the electricity supplied to them, and the cheaper CFLs save money by using a cheap ballast which ends up frying the bulb pretty early in its lifespan.
If you buy a name brand (such as Phillips) you will get a product that lasts 3+ years easily.
Now in theory LEDs can a bit over a decade if not driven really hard, but to get the current brightness you see out of home lighting LEDs the poor things are driven way past the point of living their optimal lifespan / lumen.
It doesn't help that LED bulbs are housed in super hot bulbs with heat sinks desperately working to keep the bulb from frying itself!
We have used every brand available including Phillips. The CFLs don't last; the incandescents work reliably. As for the quality of electrical power - that's in the hands of the power company.
We returned bulbs on warranty but, seriously, if you're spending money/time driving to/from Home Depot to get replacement CFL bulbs on a warranty instead of buying cheap incandescent bulbs that work, you are suboptimizing.
Then go with LEDs then. They still save you money in the long run.
> if you're spending money/time driving to/from Home Depot to get replacement CFL bulbs on a warranty instead of buying cheap incandescent bulbs that work, you are suboptimizing.
How is it sub-optimal? Aren't you driving even more to and from Home Depot buying new incandescent bulbs?
Have you priced LEDs? They'll likely be stolen more frequently than CFLs and at significantly greater cost (they are very distinctive and easily-recognized).
Incandescent bulbs last years; CFLs don't. I save money and time buying incandescents instead of CFLs.
I just replace my CFLs under warranty. As you said,most have 3-5 year warranties, so I just go back to the shop and get a brand new one. I always put the receipt in the box and the box in a safe place so I can always find it.
It's probably a big difference in quality depending on what you get. Most of our CFLs have lasted so long we've physically broken more of them while moving to a new house than have given up in use.
No. Incandecents. I tried CFLs, they didn't last, the lighting was inferior, and disposal involves HAZMAT concerns.
If I were to replace all the bulbs in my house at $13/per I would be looking at about $1,000. And the energy savings would be noise in my budget. I mean it would literally be dwarfed by one extra dinner in a restaurant per month. It's not worth any mental energy at all. I like incandescents, and that's what I use.
Per Ahmdal's law optimizing something like residential light bulb energy use isn't going to have a large impact. So don't do it and say "this is enough for me" because you have made the smallest drop in the smallest bucket.
I am unimpressed by 60 watt equivalent bulbs. A 60 watt equivalent is about enough to be a desk lamp, if I need to provide light for even a small room it is a useless amount unless I get a large number of bulbs together.
Unfortunately 60 watt equivalent has become some sort of benchmark for new light bulb technology. If you really want to replace lighting in some meaningful way, start quoting 100 watt equivalent numbers to me.
If only someone made a "fixture" for lighting with multiple bulb sockets in a convenient, attractive mounting that could be attached to the ceiling of a room.
The 60W incandescent light bulb has been the "standard lightbulb" since before most of us were born. Honestly I don't understand this criticism at all. Certainly LED lighting is available in many form factors other than a 60W bulb...
> If only someone made a "fixture" for lighting with multiple bulb sockets in a convenient, attractive mounting that could be attached to the ceiling of a room.
My condo's living room doesn't have a ceiling mounted light fixture, or a place to install one at. I'm sure the job could be done, but it'd be a major pain.
> The 60W incandescent light bulb has been the "standard lightbulb" since before most of us were born. Honestly I don't understand this criticism at all. Certainly LED lighting is available in many form factors other than a 60W bulb...
Thus I'm stuck using a stupid stand lamp, which right now is only 1 bulb. (My previous 3 bulb stand started smoking when I put in a 150W equivalent CFL, heh)
Sure 60W has been standard, but for what purpose? Just one of them is useless, and heck 3 of them isn't much better. 3 75s is actually useful, and a couple of 100s is preferred.
> It never occurred to you just to buy a second lamp?
I'd love to. 750sqft Condo, I have one outlet that is hooked to a switch, other outlets are either in some horrid location or already used up with a power strip attached.
Not everyone has large open areas that they can just throw stuff in.
What I need to do is get a better quality standing lamp that can take a slew of light bulbs! But even then, I am not going to be going for 60W, why should I when I can go farther with fewer bulbs of a slightly higher wattage? (Or wattage equivalent in the case of LED and CFLs)
I feel your pain. I'm also unable to go the ceiling light route (solid concrete floors and ceilings). The best solution I've found is sticking a wireless switch on the wall next to the regular light switches. There are ones that look like a regular modern style wall switch, just thick because there are AAAs in it. The one I have is just some cheap thing that was on Amazon, but for larger-scale applications Lutron has a whole line of wireless lighting control products (Maestro).
I was surprised how bright the 100W-equivalent LED unit from Philips is. It is rated at 1780 lumens vs 1600 for an incandescent 100W.
You might want to start thinking in terms of lumens and color temperature. So 800 lumens at 2700K. Philips make ones at higher lumens and lower (warmer) color temperatures. I have one for my one and only floor lamp and it fills up the room and still enough for reading.
Granted, I tend to prefer darker rooms anyways and I'm quite happy to have candle light in the evenings (about 100 - 200 lumens).
That's probably true for fluorescent bulbs. It's not true of incandescents where efficiency is a pure function of the filament temperature. For LEDs, it depends. LED efficiency scales down with current, so if your 100w bulb (as seems likely, because space efficiency is a concern with this kind of bulb) is made up of less than 1.66x as many elements as the 60W version being driven at a higher current it will be less efficient.
This is kind of an obsolete way of thinking. Most people think of "X-watt equivalent" as the area illumination caused by an X-watt omnidirectional A19 incandescent. Industry expresses equivalency in terms of lumens, or total light output, but not total illumination of a specified area. This is only apples-to-apples for fully omnidirectional bulbs.
LED lighting is costly and complex enough that directional LED bulbs are more or less at cost parity with omnidirectional LED bulbs. In fact, true omnis are often more expensive just because LEDs are inherently directional. This is the first time in the history of lighting where omni wasn't significantly less expensive than directional.
Truth is, there are very few scenarios where a high-output omnidirectional lamp actually makes sense. We're used to omnis because they were much cheaper to purchase than their more efficient, directional brethren and because it's convenient to just slap a bright bulb in a socket and say "eh - good enough."
Since most people buy LED bulbs for the gains in efficiency, doesn't it make more sense to buy the lower-power directional lamps which are more fit for their application? How many fixtures do you have in your home that require a true omni-directional lamp? How many of those fixtures need a high-output omni? Now, how many fixtures do you have that could make good use of a directional bulb (either narrow or wide-beam)?
tl;dr: Talking about incandescent watt equivalency only benefits marketing people and confuses consumers - take a look at directional lamps and you'll be less disappointed.
> LED lighting is costly and complex enough that directional LED bulbs are more or less at cost parity with omnidirectional LED bulbs. In fact, true omnis are often more expensive just because LEDs are inherently directional. This is the first time in the history of lighting where omni wasn't significantly less expensive than directional.
There was that awesome Kickstarter awhile back for a nice omnidirectional LED bulb, I'm looking forward to its delivery!
> Truth is, there are very few scenarios where a high-output omnidirectional lamp actually makes sense. We're used to omnis because they were much cheaper to purchase than their more efficient, directional brethren and because it's convenient to just slap a bright bulb in a socket and say "eh - good enough."
With this I disagree. Open spaces such as a living room are perfect for omnidirectional lighting.
Indeed when I have lived in places with track lighting the annoying part was always trying to spread the light out enough to make it seem omnidirectional without having a bunch of bright hot spots around the room.
When I am cooking or something, sure, light up my working surfaces, but for general ambiance when I am at home I want the entire bloody room I am in lit up!
Now just do that while saving power. :)
Indeed, if you look at how recessed lighting is installed (and I'll be the first to point out that recessed lighting is generally stupid), there are a ton of cans installed in a grid throughout the ceiling to provide what is essentially uniform brightness in a room.
First I'm not a lighting designer, I just used to work next to a few of them so I'm probably (definitely) overconfident in my opinions in this area. That said, I personally go back and forth on what you're saying.
Let me qualify: when I say "directional," I mean uniform 180° or narrower. The real difference is in the optic: flood vs spot. You can get a surface mount 180° flood fixture (ceiling mount) or a well fit recessed fixture with something like a BR40 (good wide-angle disbursement) to do exactly what you're talking about. If you want wide-area lighting, stay away from PARs, MR16s, GU10s, etc. Are omnis in a stood-off fixture easier? You betcha. Is paying to light your ceiling necessary? Nope.
All of that said, I hope they get dirt cheap but efficient omnis out there too. Forcing the general consumer to think about stuff like this is a barrier to entry, and broad swaths of people being more efficient is a Good Thing indeed.
What I'd really prefer is using LEDs to do novel kinds of lighting fixtures, not just replace edison-screw-base incandescents. I want a glowing uniform ceiling square, wall square, undercounter wide strip, etc.
You wrote under counter but what I was pretty confident that you meant under cabinet. My two big complaints with the current offerings are that they are either too thick so they end up being a little proud of the cabinet face or they are the thin strips that only project the light in a stripe across the counter.
The thing I really want in my next kitchen is an "air wall" and well designed fume food/fire hood, with both big lights and task/spot lights. Right now I have one of the stupid "recirculate the output after running through a tiny filter" nominal hoods over the stove, which is really incompatible with high-heat cast iron or wok cooking. And would terrify me if there were a fire (I have a Halon 1211 and an ABC dry chemical between the stove and the exit, along with a costco bag of baking soda, and plenty of pan lids, but still)
Even if I want more light, one single high-output bulb is a bad way to do it. Spreading the light out over more sources gives a much more even, ambient-like illumination.
Good enough to see, not good enough for fine work.
60W was enough for me a decade ago. Now for fine work I need 100W. I can still see with 60W, but what was enough for fine work a decade ago is not enough now. I understand this will get worse as I get older. I don't have any particular visual conditions; I'm just aging.
This is Spam. There are a few dozen of these with better economics on Amazon. And if you want to light a house on the cheap, the LED "ropes" are more efficient, and will last longer.
Also a CFT would be 12W and cost $2 ($1.25 if you look around). Over 10 years in most markets that would be cheaper.
PS: My Home is almost 100% LED's. I love them. But that doesn't mean they are always the cheapest, the most efficient, or the best for the planet. I just prefer the dimmable nature and the consistent color across the dimming.
I dislike the consistent color across dimming. The whole point of dimming lights is to lower the color temperature. It is impossible to get a candle like ambiance with LEDs. If you want less total light, it is easy to just turn fewer lights on.
> I dislike the consistent color across dimming. The whole point of dimming lights is to lower the color temperature.
To each his own, but it's funny, I _love_ this about the LED lights. It has been a pet peeve of mine pretty much forever that I cannot get the low level of light I want out of dimmed incandescents because the light becomes unbearably orange when turned down that low.
We use CFT in our house for a number of places (kitchen lamp, etc). For other places, we use LED... specifically in places where, when I flip the switch, I want full light output immediately like my office. CFTs are horrible at taking too long to get to a useful state of light output.
If his are like mine it can be more like minutes. You get some immediate light and then over the next minute or two it gets to full brightness. This is probably due to cheap bulbs or what not but it can be annoying.
I even have a problem with CFLs in a different room where on occasion I turn the switch on and the light won't come on at all right away unless the other switch that controls a different set of lights is on already. It's pretty bizarre. It's not a big enough deal to spend the money on finding an electrician for something this small but it is strange.
You may have electrical problems (or any number of other problems) that may effect your judgement of CFLs.
I was just saying: An "instant" on and off light will affect your vision differently than one that (for example) dims slowly for a few seconds after turning it off. If this isn't "by design" and it takes minutes, than that's a serious problem.
Avoid the amalgam CFLs - they get more on/off cycles before they go kaput, but are allowed up to 3 minutes to reach full output and still get an energy star rating. The rest of the energy star rated CFLs are supposed to reach full output within a minute.
Home Depot has CFTs on sale for less than $3 for a pack of 4. A few months ago, they had a sale: 4 bulbs for $1 :D Needless to day, I bought a box full of them.
Prices keep coming down. I was at IKEA last week and they were having a sale on their E26 LED bulb for only 6 bucks. Hadn't tried their LEDs before (have others from Home Depot/Lowes) but it has great light/color. Of course it being IKEA who knows what the actual mileage will be, but they're worth checking out.
The most powerful IKEA led is 600 lumen and uses 10W and costs 14$. The OP bulb is 800 lumen and uses 9.5W.
I read an article about the IKEA bulbs being quite good about 85% colour rendition compared to normal bulbs. If you feel like it you can test it by printing a camera colour test chart and compare how it looks under different lighting.
“it being IKEA who knows what the actual mileage will be”
When I moved into my home 6,5 years a go, I bought compact fluorescent lamps at IKEA (the kind that looks like a regular incandescent light bulb). I have yet to replace one.
On the flip-side, I bought those same ones and haven't had them last a year. Same for the CF from Costco. I'm looking forward to long lasting LEDs. $13 is still a bit too high to replace all my lights, but I'll pick up a couple for the most used ones.
I've owned a bunch of those IKEA CFL bulbs. Some -- like yours -- have lasted years while others have died within a year or two. Despite their unpredictable nature I still prefer them to most big box store CFLs I've tried.
I'd be pretty happy to get away from compact fluorescencts. They're filled with mercury gas (I think). It's bad news if you break one and inhale it. And I'm not sure what happens to the mercury when you dispose of them either.
If you make a habit of breaking them open near your face and inhaling the gas, you probably have bigger problems. I've read that the actual average mercury exposure from a broken CFL is less than 10% of the mercury exposure from a serving of tuna.
I had upwards of 20 CFL light bulbs in my house and over time I noticed that they typically were cracking at the base, thereby leaking whatever was in them, after a few years of use. After you replace 20 with 20 more, and repeat a few times, the numbers start to add up. I decided to get rid of them. And I don't eat tuna.
Yeah they say that, but then in that same article look at the advice for cleaning up a broken CFL. If it's no big deal, why do I need to open the windows, wear gloves, etc?
What is the proper way to handle a broken CFL?
Open the windows and let the room air out for 15 to 30 minutes, then remove as much material as possible without a vacuum cleaner. Using disposable gloves, scoop the glass onto a piece of cardboard and wipe the area with a wet paper towel. For smaller pieces of glass and powder, use duct tape to pull up the fragments and wash your hands after cleaning up the debris.
I like the color temperature of incandescent bulbs. That alone is worth the extra electricity expense.
It's a bit funny how many of us obsess about the calibration of our monitors and tablets, even installing utilities that change the color temperature at different times of day to be easier on our eyes. But we don't seem to care as much about the ambient light that we see everywhere.
Also, many of my fixtures expose the bulbs and look ridiculous without a clear glass incandescent bulb.
I obsess about lighting plenty (more than just color temperature - florescent flicker that most people don't notice irritates me to no end,) but I don't subscribe to the idea that incandescent light sources are automatically better.
I recently acquired a 40W-equivalent version of this bulb, and in A/B testing vs a 57W "efficient" incandescent, I lost track of which bulb was which. The LED bulb actually had a warmer color that the incandescent, plus very similar brightness.
Of course, most of my bulbs are horrible, dim, slow, ugly, toxic, cool white CCFLs, installed by the previous owner (even in fixtures with exposed bulbs,) so pretty much any bulbs constitute a serious improvement.
You can match the color temperature. The problem is the color rendering. With CFLs, 10 different shades of red that you can distinguish under incandescent bulbs all look the same.
The CRI of incandescents is 100, LEDs are around 90, and CFLs are around 70. Under real world tests, the human eye can't distinguish additional colors in LED vs incandescent bulbs.
Efficient lightbulbs come in various color temperatures. You don't need incandescents to get the same color temperature. I don't like the harsher blue ones so I buy the warmer ones for at home.
I still suspect it won't "look right", as there's more to it than just color. The geometric patterns it may cast on the wall, maybe some other "intangible" effects.
I'll have to try one out. It may just be that I'm on the vinyl side in the lighting equivalent of the "vinyl vs CD" debate.
One disadvantage (with flourescents; I'm sure LEDs wouldn't have this issue) I've noticed is that there is a small delay between when you turn on the light switch and the bulb turns on. Also, it doesn't start at full brightness but has to gradually increase to full brightness. Not a huge issue but worth mentioning.
And we haven't even talked about dimming. I have dimmers everywhere. CFLs don't dim at all (unless they're special, and I bet they suck). They have other wonderful quirks like blinking when off, if connected to an illuminated switch.
Rant: when are we going to stop using watts as a unit for lightbulb "brightness?" The actual unit we care about is only implied by saying "60 watt equivalent." :(
Yep. 60W incandescent bulbs do not all have the same lumen output, which leads to LED makers claiming "60W equivalent" when they really mean "equivalent to a lousy 60W bulb".
It's technically questionable, but the alternatives require units with which the public may be unfamiliar. A "better" unit in some cases might be lumens per watt, but this still doesn't help an unsophisticated consumer choose a replacement for a 60W incandescent bulb.
I just bought a 5k and 2.7k versions from Home Depot here in Canada for $15.97 CAD each.
My only gripe is the ~22% markup over the US pricing when the Canadian Dollar is worth ~2% more than the American (and has been for some time now).
I found it funny the way they had their lights laid out in my local store. There has always only ever been one aisle dedicated to twist-in bulbs.
When I entered the store today, and walked straight to that aisle. All I could find were phillips LED bulbs. Rashes of them. Almost every shelf in the aisle featured a Phillips LED bulb of some sort, for twice the price of the Crees. There were even Phillips LED comparison kisosks where consumers could turn on and off all of Phillips' LED bulbs. It was really quite a spectacle.
I broke down and finally asked a sales rep, only to be told the Cree bulbs were in the "fancy/expensive" lighting section of the store. The one where they sell all of the chandeliers and lamps, and you have never been able to find twist-ins for sale.
My gut feeling is that Phillips is scared they're going to lose market share over this, and are using their massive Home Depot contracts to negotiate poor placement for the Crees (and possibly poor pricing?). FYI 90%+ of the bulbs sold in Home Depots are Phillips.
> My gut feeling is that Phillips is scared they're going to lose market share over this, and are using their massive Home Depot contracts to negotiate poor placement for the Crees (and possibly poor pricing?). FYI 90%+ of the bulbs sold in Home Depots are Phillips.
It'd be interesting to know what kind of maneuvering the companies are doing. Here in the US Cree is paying for a single "end cap" (end of the aisle placement in the front of the store) and the bulbs are selling out fast. Home depot is also their main distributor. But the store is littered with other brands, not just Philips.
Because exchange rates and cost of living are two separate things.
The Canadian dollar is worth 2% more, meaning for one Canadian dollar you get USD$1.02. On the other hand, stuff in Canada is more expensive no matter whether you're paying in CAD or USD. Exchange rate is to do with currencies, independent of location; cost-of-living is to do with location [pretty much] independent of currency.
To see a much more drastic difference in cost of living, try going somewhere like Siam^WThailand.
Maybe someone else can fill in the details on the factors that influence exchange rate and cost of living.
So I'm wondering how well this bulb would do in the L-Prize competition[1]. It looks like they have a number of testing requirements, but their primary goal is to have a good lumen output and lumen/watt ratio. It's run by the US Department Of Energy. Consumer Reports[2] started testing the previous winner[3] of the L-Prize competition.
I'm not an expert (just a physics prof), but my understanding is that LEDs always emit one specific color (wavelength) of light rather than white light (which is a mixture of many wavelengths). So if you want to use an LED to produce white light, you set up a material that absorbs light at one wavelength and then re-emits it in a wide variety of wavelengths (that is, the phosphor).
(This is also the way that fluorescent bulbs work: the hot mercury vapor inside produces invisible ultraviolet light, but the phosphorescent coating absorbs that UV and re-emits it in a range of visible wavelengths. And it's no coincidence that they're using a blue LED with a short wavelength: in general, a phosphor can only re-emit at longer wavelengths than it absorbed. That may imply that these bulbs emit little or no violet in their "white" light, since violet has a shorter wavelength than blue.)
If it uses a phosphor coating, isn't it also prone to the same issue of diminishing lumens over time as the CFLs? These bulbs lose up to 30% luminosity in 6 months (the tri-phospor ones, more expensive, can a last a year begore losing 10%/20%).
If they lose power like CFLs, even though the warranty is 10 years, you may be forced to replace it way before that.
I don't think I can comment on that with any authority at all. Is it possible that using a blue light as the source rather than UV reduces the degradation of the phosphorescent coating?
1) put red, green and blue LEDs in the same package and either bring all the connections outside for an external balancing circuit (which also lets you do multicolour effect), or balance the currents internally and just bring out two connections.
2) make a blue LED (with substantial UV output) and use a phosphor coating to re-emit "white" light. This coating appears very yellow when the LED is off, and is similar to the way a conventional fluorescent tube works.
2) is cheaper and more efficient, but only emits "white" light - the trick is getting it to not appear too blue as the phosphor doesn't absorb all the blue light.
EDIT: also, the white light from (1) is not really very white - the spectrum is hard to tailor compared to using a phosphor.
Basically, LEDs are typically mono-chromatic, i.e. they generate light within a pretty tight range of wavelengths (what we perceive as color).
There are two ways to get white light (which is light of "all" visible wavelengths) from a LED: combining a red, a green and a blue LED, or using a coating that when energized by (typically blue) light, in turn reacts and emits white light.
LEDs emit light in a narrow frequency band, i.e. LEDs have intrinsic colors. White is not just one color, so your options to make white light from LEDs are:
1) Use multiple colors of LEDs, which will make the light source look white but objects lit by this source will have off colors.
2) Use a phosphor coating on the LEDs, where the phosphor absorbs (most of) the narrow frequency band output by the LEDs and emits the color(s) that you want.
In this case, they went with option 2 with a phosphor that absorbs blue light and emits broad spectrum white light.
Based on the material used an LED produces a specific colour (wavelength). To create white light you need to emit light at all wavelengths simultaneously.
White LEDs work by emitting blue light but being coated in phosphors that emit the other colours when hit by that blue light.
Often you'll see that white LEDs appear a little "cold" in colour which is caused by the slight excess of blue light compared to the phosphor generated other wavelengths.
White light is the combination of many spectrums of light. On your monitor for example, it is red + green + blue.
LEDs however, only output one narrow spectrum. So, to solve this issue, the "white" LED is really a Blue LED + a material that converts the color blue into white.
Exactly. I have a friend who never turns on his (high) ceiling lights to avoid replacing the bulbs. I suggested LEDs. Funny, for he'd rather the bulbs be functional and never on than non-functional and never on, which is kind of OCD when you think about it.
Something not qualified numerically about LED or CFL lamps, but a moderate consideration for me is analog FM radio interference ("RFI").
In one of the smallest rooms of my house, there are two of the Philips LED bulbs of the "yellow when off" variety. In an adjoining area there is another bulb of the same type.
There is audible RFI with the room's lights on when the battery-powered FM radio (with a rod antenna, about 3 feet from one of the bulbs) is accurately tuned in to a favorite but moderately distant (perhaps 30 miles), moderately powered (6 KW, not a lot) FM station. Moving the rod antenna away can stop the RFI, but then the antenna happens to block a doorway.
Turning off the lighting stops the RFI. The lamp in the adjoining room is apparently distant enough not to interfere with the FM radio.
I wonder if the CREE bulbs are any better in this regard, but not seeing anything in the teardown pictures that looks like shielding or ferrite chokes makes means I'll probably keep the existing bulbs; the RFI isn't bad enough.
As a side note, there is an fxguidetv[1] episode[2] where they talk to Dedo Weigert about LEDs. It is a very interesting interview that talks about some LED myths and color temperature.
Surprised that site has not done a teardown of the (more expensive) Phillips bulbs that have similar specs. They've been around longer and are the ugly oddly shaped yellow plastic ones. Mine have a bit of a buzzing sound when dimmed, even though the packaging claims this won't happen... am thinking of moving to Crees but it would be nice to see a comparison of the innards.
> They've been around longer and are the ugly oddly shaped yellow plastic ones.
They're certainly ugly, but for the record, they aren't yellow when powered. I also learned today that they have a little fan inside -- supposedly silent in most circumstances.
I suspect that ten or twenty years from now we'll look back on these early designs and laugh our heads off. Just as with computers.
Its amazing how small changes like these can cause a seachange in power consumption real difference in our collective future. This change alone could be a serious bear market for power companies! This, mixed with generally growing renewable means a greener planet may be closer than we think... most data assume constant consumption/or growth with population.
I'm not sure how revolutionary this is mainly because I live in a state the subsidizes the cost of energy efficient light bulbs and the IKEAs sell $10 60W equivalents.
The good news is that Home Depot's price for this item is lower than anyone else's. (Amazon.com has the same item for $17.44.) The bad news is they can't actually deliver it.
This is a common practice -- attract shoppers with a killer low price on an item that, for one reason or another, isn't actually available. I'm not saying Home Depot intentionally did this -- maybe they innocently underestimated public interest.
Actually I saw a bunch of these in-store today. The Cree "60W replacement" was ~$10.
FWIW, I picked up 'Philips 9.5-Watt BR30 Indoor Flood Soft White (2700K) LED Light Bulb (4-Pack)' for $60 online from Home Depot, thought it was a pretty decent deal at the time.
> Actually I saw a bunch of these in-store today. The Cree "60W replacement" was ~$10.
Why not say where? I don't think anyone will object that you're flogging a particular source. Your quoted price is lower than anywhere else by a substantial margin.
Yes - the Phillips bulbs are excellent. The yellow "lobes" on the side look a little weird when it's off, but the bulb puts out an BRIGHT warm-white light when turned on. They dim very well, too.
I don't have a 100W-equivalent but if it's anything like Philips's 75W-equivalent, it's pricey but flawless. I haven't found anything in my usage to dislike about it at all.
The amazing part of this bulb is not it's watts or it's cost.
It's that a manufacturer finally put it's warranty where it's mouth is.
With a 10 year warranty I will actually buy it compared to the Phillips.
BTW I've yet to have a cheap chinese led 110v bulb last more than 3 years.