New LED Bulbs Look Weirder, Save More Energy

The New York Times:

Within the next several months, several of the world's biggest lighting companies, including Osram Sylvania and Philips, will introduce LED replacement bulbs to various world markets, including the United States.

While the bulbs will be praised for their energy-saving characteristics and long lives, most consumers will immediately think, "These things look weird."

Read the whole story: The New York Times

Comments

[alvdh1]

I have two posts under this article. For all of the naysayers regarding LED light, I suggest that you go to your Google browser and type in LED Magazine. You can register for a free online subsrciption. It is the best resource for LED lighting and you can learn about all of the current manufactures and applications. Don't let anyone ever tell you again that this technology is years away and is too expensive. The industry is undergoing a major expansion led by Osram/Sylvania, Phillips, GE Lighting and Cree, Inc. There are thousands of other players who have developed products for the residential, commercial, street lighting and computer back panel industries.

[RationalDubSteppa]

Looks pretty darn cool to me!

[Hopalongpoppyseed]

Here is an idea: make better light bulbs that are as inexpensive as possible.

[Badbone]

The biggest problem with LEDs is that they are a point source of light. My last company had them, and it was amazing how dim everything was, even with all the lights on. Our receptionist actually purchased an old bulb type lamp, thus negating any energy savings.

[Tom95134]

The BIGGEST problem with LED based bulbs is that thy are cost prohibitive. They might be okay in a commercial application where the cost of the bulb is a business expense but in the home the owner has to eat their high cost and there is little expectation that one can recover the high initial costs.

I'll pay for a CFL (even a $$6.00 CFL) but I'll be damned if I'll pay $35.00+ for a LED based light bulb.

[alvdh1]

I have replaced 15 downlights in my house with Cree's warm white LR6 fixture. They replaced 75 watt incandescent lights and use 12 watts of power. My daughter lives in the basement of our home and when she turns the lights on, she turns all of them on. 15 X 75 = 1,125 watts vs. 15 X 12 = 180 watts. My first full month year over year electric bill went from 898 kwh to 545kwh. My electric utility charges 9 cents/kwh X 353 kwh in kwh savings equals $31.77 in cost savings. The fixtures cost $93 with tax x 15 = $1,395 divided by 31.77 = 43.9 month payback.

These lights last 50,000 hours divided by 1,500 hour life expectancy of an incandescent bulb = 33.3 bulbs X 15 = 499.9 incandescent replacement bulbs that I will have to purchase X $2/bulb = $999.99. I haven't replaced the other bulbs in my house with LED's, but the rest are CFL's for now.
If I were to consider solar PV panels for my house, I would have eliminated (2) 180 watt panels costing $800 per panel excluding installation costs. There are numerous LED lights available now that cost $50 - $70 with the same output as the LR6 fixture. I think all of you naysayers didn't really do the math when you posted your comments. If you live in areas where the kwh cost is 12 - 15 cents, then the payback is faster.

[alvdh1]

None of the above calculations take into account rising utility costs, the externalized environmental social costs of burning coal or splitting atoms for electrical power generation which do not show up in your utility bill. The incandescent light bulb produces 5% light and 95% heat. It is a technology that will beging to be removed from our lives in mass beginning in 2012 via the 2007 energy bill. LED lighting is subject to Moore's Law and will get cheaper in the same fashion computers got cheaper and simultaneously increase in output efficiency.

People purchased expensive computers and they are purchasing LED's in ever increasing quantities. The government needs to begin purchasing them in commercial quantities for existing and new facilities to help, as the defense department did with computer chips in the 70's and 80's, drive the price lower. We as citizens need to recognize that preventing climate change is not going to be cheap, but doing nothing is going to be even more expensive.

[wm1066]

I bet they really attract the dust, have fun cleaning these puppies every so often.

[Exusian]

Go to the on-line store and check out the price: $80 to $145 per bulb.

[KillTheMessenger]

It's probably not worth it at that price. Four to six bulbs will buy one solar panel... and the savings compared to a CFL are marginal. Well, actually, there probably are no savings to begin with.

[KillTheMessenger]

Now that is one cool looking thermal solution. Sadly, it also tells a grim tale of still limited energy efficiency. If you need to cool it, it can't be very efficient.

:-(

But we'll get there. Ten, fifteen more years of R&D and LEDs will be almost ideal emitters.

[Sumocat]

I'm under the impression it's more a matter of heat distribution than the amount of waste energy generated. CFLs radiate light and waste heat through out the coil, while LEDs emit light and waste heat from a central point. Less total waste but it's concentrated around one spot. Still, I agree it's not ready for prime time yet.

[KillTheMessenger]

LEDs and CFLs right now are neck to neck in terms of efficiency. But while I believe that the CFL has pretty much reached its physical limits of the current technology (internally they first generate UV in the gas discharge which gets then converted into visible light at a great loss with a phosphor), LEDs have the potential to become much more efficient, still. I believe that theoretically a suitable semiconductor can come very close to the thermodynamic limits of efficiency which are very close to 100% in this case (there is a little loss because the crystal lattice is not at absolute zero). So LEDs eventually will be much better than CFLs. But I don't think that has been quite achieved with the current generation of LEDs, yet.