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Screw-in LED Floodlights
Posted by
michael
on Sun Nov 21, 2004 01:24 PM
from the light-up-my-life dept.
from the light-up-my-life dept.
Anonymous Coward writes "This company claims to have the first LED flood lights that you simply screw in as a replacement for your old bulb. enluxled.com are also claiming it's cool enough to handle, more damage resistant, longer lasting (50,000 hours) and only uses 22w to produce twice the light of a 100w bulb." And hideously expensive, but you never have to change them.
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How does this compare to... (Score:5, Insightful)
They only compare them against normal bulbs, and not energy bulbs, wonder why, not nearly as much good marketing maybe
Re:How does this compare to... (Score:3, Insightful)
Well 50,000 hours comes to almost 60 years of continuos operation, the usual advertising on an energy saving bulb is "10 years of normal use" so I would say that we could say that these bulbs offer 6 times more life than an energy saving bulb and are comparable on light/energy stats.
Re:How does this compare to... (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Comparison. (Score:5, Informative)
Power usage for a given amount of light is slightly better (22 vs 26 watts for a 100 watt equivalent).
Life is a lot better. (50,000 hours vs. 6,000, or about 8 1/3 compact fluorescents to match rated lives with one LED lamp.)
Parent
Re:Comparison. (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:How does this compare to... (Score:5, Informative)
Lumens/Watt Light Source
100-190 low pressure Sodium (HID)
(150 90W low pressure sodium lamp, clear)
50-150 High pressure Sodium (HID)
(115 1000W dual arc-tube high pressure sodium lamp, clear)
100 Sylvania 18 watt low pressure sodium
84 32W, 48" MOL, T8 OCTRON fluorescent lamp,
60-65 standard F40T12 cool white fluorescent
64 250W mogul based metal halide lamp, clear
60 150W single ended compact metal halide lamp
48-60 compact fluorescents
45-55 Super bright Red/Orange LED
35-45 Super bright Green LED
17.5 Tungsten Halogen Single-End SUPER-Q Frosted Finish D.C. Bay 100Watt
17.5 100W Incandescent A19 Bulb, softwhite
14.5 60W Incandescent A19 Bulb, softwhite (standard bulb)
6 incandescent night light bulb (7w)
6w incandescent flashlight bulbs
For normal home lighting T8 fluorescents are probably your best bet today.
LEDs are good when you're want colored light, when you want a small amount of light, or when the cost/hassle of replacing the bulb is the major factor.
Cree recently announced a 75 lumens per watt white LED, but AFAIK they aren't available in quantity yet.
There's a lot of hope for the future of LEDs, but they're still a few years off.
-- should you believe authority without question?
Parent
Light quality ? (Score:5, Interesting)
- they absolutely are not '5 times brighter than normal bulbs'. The 100W equivalent lits about as much as the old 40W bulb that was there.
- their color sucks, depending on the model (I bought several different), they are either greenish or even more yellow than a tungsten bulb
- They take time to lit to full output.
- They cost a lot.
After a month of trying to get used to them, I threw them away. So I hope LEDs can do better, but since I already have several headlamps with while LEDs, I expect some problems. In particular the headlamps I have (Petzl and Black Diamond) are way too blue, they are blinding.So, technical issues or marketing issues ?
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Re:Turn on Delay and Colour Rendering (Score:4, Informative)
The thyristor control basically chops off part of the AC wave form that arrives at your light bulb - so on dim, you have very very short pulses (so the tungsten filament doesn't get very hot, and therefore not very white) and as you turn the light up, the pulses get wider (until you reach full brightness, which is the normal AC waveform).
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Re:How does this compare to... (Score:5, Funny)
Is that some process where they coat the inside of the bulb with ground wheat?
it's fluorescent.
Parent
it's about time... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:it's about time... (Score:5, Informative)
Traffic lights, for example, are owned by a city. The city keeps accurate budget information about how its money is spent. Incandescent traffice lights are typically changed on a yearly basis and require a substantial workforce with trucks and ladders to reach the bulbs. One can usually make a convincing case to a city that using LED traffice lights will save $x per year, and so the city opts to use LED lights.
I personally do not keep track of my light bulb spending, and I imagine most households also do not. Thus the "it saves money in the long run" is a much more difficult argument to make.
Furthermore, making white LEDs is typically done either with a blue LED surrounded by something that will emit yellow (and transmit some of the blue) when the blue LED is lit, or by using a red, green, and blue LED together.
The first style has makes a white light that isn't "nice", because it's creating "white" by only combining two colors in the spectrum (blue and yellow). I can't explain it more than that, perhaps someone more knowledgeable can? This style is great for outdoor lighting (street lamps) where "niceness" doesn't matter so much; people aren't trying to read a newspaper but are merely identifying oncoming traffic.
The second style is great (well, as good as RGB monitors), except for one problem: the different colored LEDs wear out at different rates. Thus the color of the light will drift slowly over time and obtain a green hue (how much time? I don't know... 2 years? 5 years?). So, the LEDs may last forever, but the "whiteness" may not last much longer than a conventional bulb.
An aside: what is really cool about the tri-color LEDs is that you could potentially have dials to adjust the relative intensity of the colors and thus produce any color of the rainbow (or RGB spectrum at least), leading to many decorative and even utilitarian applications (e.g. a light inside a water faucet that lights the water according to its temperature).
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Re:it's about time... (Score:5, Interesting)
The suggests a potential solution to the color-shift problem: add some circuitry to the light that compensates for the color shift by dimming the other colors as necessary to maintain a balance.
Parent
LED's are definately the future ... (Score:4, Interesting)
How many geeks.... (Score:5, Funny)
yay
Re:How many geeks.... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:How many geeks.... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Amish Lights (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Amish Lights (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Amish Lights (Score:5, Interesting)
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living a simple life (Score:5, Interesting)
A story I once heard on the radio: some Amish people are outside doing their laundry by hand, as a group; laughing, playing, and having a grand old time.
Meanwhile a person living a modern-lifestyle goes miserably jogging by. This person was not enjoying their jog, plus stressed out by a job that is used to buy expensive labor saving machines (washer/dryer) that STILL required time to load and operate.
The Amish doing their laundry by hand were getting exercise and camaraderie, and as a bonus they got their laundry done all at the same time. They were also not involved in an time-consuming job to pay for expensive gadgets.
See how it all works? Over time, the rule utilitarianism builds up to a happy life.
Of all the things modern society has to offer, you might think that wandering a modern store the Amish would be most amused by modern electronic gadgets. This is not the case - the simple pleasures always win out. Check out any Amish people in a modern store and you will certainly find them, especially the children, trying out high sugar snacks and beverages.
Pop - one of the most pleasurable modern amenities
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Re:living a simple life (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Amish Lights (Score:5, Interesting)
IIRC, they have a counsel of sorts to deal with things like this, where something comes along that is so much better and safer, but no more complicated, comes along. Having grown up off-grid, and having plenty of experience with kerosene lamps and candles, I can definately appreciate where these guys are coming from.
Parent
Never have to change them? (Score:5, Insightful)
I realize how stupid this comment is, but just felt like pointing it out since the story did say, "but you never have to change them.".
What a dilema for students (Score:5, Funny)
The Savings (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The Savings (Score:5, Insightful)
LED bulbs are making a bit more business sense in certain commercial installations where you actually have to pay a human being a minimum feee for an hour or so of labor to go replace a few lightbulbs. Especially in situations where the bulbs are so difficult to reach that it takes a few hours to actually change them and causes an inconveneince for other people while they are being changed -- the fee to change a bulb could easily outstretch the cost of LED lighting. Often in situations where 'expensive' bulb changes happen, they will change all the bulbs at the same time even if they don't need it simply because all the rigging and labor will be there and ready to go.
Parent
they are not 200 watt equivalents (Score:4, Informative)
Does NOT generate 100 watts of light with 22 (Score:5, Informative)
The specs for the light are I beleive 300 lumens. This is more like a 45-60 watt bulb.
A 100 watt bulb might generate 1500+ lumens.
It still is significantly more efficient, and with a SIGNIFICANTLY longer life span, but it is not equal to a 100 watt bulb.
When these first came out (won some awards) I checked them out for this very thing.
They also are not an all around type light a la a lightbulb, more of a spotlight (90 degree beam angle?), so better for flooding a wall or artwork with color / light.
Still super cool. Still a bit expensive.
How is 1/5 the lumens equivalent? (Score:4, Informative)
I'm a big fan of LED lighting (having bought three LED flashlights last night as presents), but this is just absurd -- unless there is some kind of misprint or my reading comprehension is not up to par today.
Re:How is 1/5 the lumens equivalent? (Score:4, Insightful)
Which makes sense. A red LED floodlight will be made only with red LEDs, which emit nearly all their light in the red part of the spectrum. a 100w incandescent red floodlight is a regular incandescent with a red filter on the glass, which absorbs most of the light. The implication is that a 100w colored floodlight puts out about 150 lumens. I can believe that.
Parent
Flashing (Score:3, Funny)
Not much better than flourescent... (Score:4, Interesting)
Flourescent lamps work by using a mercury vapour discharge tube to produce ultraviolet light, which excites a phosphor coated on the inside of the tube to produce white light of various colours. They work pretty well; my house pretty much only uses 22W flourescent bulbs, which are roughly equivalent to 100W incandescents. The colour's not bad, but the spectrum is a bit weird, and some things look a little strange. (My parents have a glass vase that shows up purple under sunlight or incandescent light, but green under flourescent light.)
White LEDs can use the same system, with a UV LED that excites phosphor, but these are inefficient and very expensive. (Or at least were, the last time I looked.) A more common way is to use a red, green and blue LED in the same package. These can be cool because you can change the colour by simply changing the relative brightnesses, but they produce a spectrum that makes flourescent tubes look normal. Compared to incandescents, they're very blue, and some things look really strange.
Does anyone actually know what these things are?
Fluorescent bulbs are already annoying enough (Score:4, Informative)
Given that these LED bulbs are dimmer than a normal one too, the savings seem questionable. It's like saying that you can double your gas mileage in a new car assuming you drive it half as much.
NOT the first. (Score:5, Interesting)
This claim is false.
Commercial white LED floods and other replacements for high-voltage incandescent bulbs are available for any standard base in the world, including the funky euro and russian bases. They are available at three colour temperatures and in any other LED colour, including IR and UV.
They have been available for more than two years.
Enlux had no such products available a year ago.
Seems they define "flood" a bit broadly: According to their own data, it illumines a narrow region like a spot would.
50K hours seems a little short-lived.
And white LEDS dim quite noticeably over a very short time. They will most likely be too dim long before 50K hours. Most likely in a bit less than half that time, around 20K hours.
If they are willing to lie about being the first, and deceive about the useful life of their lights, what else will they lie or cheat on?
Wonder if enlux will do for LEDs what Lights of America did for fluoros...
Re:And you (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:And you-Lite-Brite. (Score:3, Interesting)
There should be a law (at least for vehicles driven on public road, do whatever you want in the forest behind your house on your property) as to how high headlights can be above the road surface, and how bright (in lumens) they can be (and I suppose a min brig
Re:And you-Lite-Brite. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:And you (Score:4, Funny)
retrovisor.
-snip-
What an incredibly cool word! And to think that as an American I am stuck looking at my rearview mirror.
Spock, bring up the image in the retrovisor!
Parent
Re:forever (Score:3, Informative)
Assuming that you use it for 5 hours a week (i would like to put this in to replace the floodlights in my backyard which are mounted high on the house and need to be replaced every year or so) it would last for 192 years. That's pretty much forever, at least long enough so my children and their children won't need to replace the bulb.
Re:forever (Score:5, Interesting)
No, but it is 5.7 years ($14/year) of continuous light, or 17 years $4.7/year) of eight-hours-a-day light.
You can buy about 32 regular flood lamps for $80. They will last about 2,000 hours each. That's 64,000 hours total -- an additional $14,000 hours.
So for home use, don't bother. For commercial or industrial settings, though, there can be lots of lights, and here is a labor cost associated with changing them. Some organizations change every light at once, to avoid the higher cost of replacing bulbs individually as they burn out. For those types of applications, the longer-lasting LED lights will lower the cost of changing bulbs.
Parent
Re:forever (Score:5, Insightful)
Over here, the LED bulb (assuming the 20W instead of 100W incandescant) would save 50000*(100-20) Wh = 4000kWh at more than 10c each - that's at least $400 saved over the lifespan of a single bulb.
Parent
Re:forever (Score:5, Informative)
Guess what? Parent is correct.
Radiant (resistive strip) heating is LESS efficient than a heat pump under many circumstances. "What? No, stupid - radiant strips are 100% efficient! All the power is converted directly to heat!" Yes, it is - but I'm not stupid. Heat pumps are more efficient. Typically, with an outdoor temp of 45F an an indoor temp of 72F, the heat pump moves THREE TIMES as much heat into your fine home as it requires electricity to perform the pumping. IOW, 100W of energy into the heat pump results in 300W of heat into the house. That's three times more efficient than strip heating.
This is not as pronounced at greater temp differentials, and in fact many heat pumps employ supplementary strip heating for really large temp extremes. However, the parent poster's point is well-made and accurate - radiant strip heating IS, in general, less efficient than a heat pump.
I live in Florida - north Florida. It's November 21, and my A/C is on. Every watt I save from running fluourescent or LED lighting is effectively 1.3 to 1.5 watts less electricity used and charged on my power bill. A similar argument can be made for a house using a good heat pump - the extra wattage radiated as heat by an incandescent bulb would provide even more heat if it were used to drive a heat pump instead.
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Re:forever (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:flourescent bulbs (Score:3, Interesting)
How long has it been... (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:flourescent bulbs (Score:5, Informative)
1) When a flourescent bulb fails, it stops giving off light completely. Usually and LED light will only have 1 led fail at a time. Given theis, you don't have large areas of darkness and don't have to replace the bulb immediatley when a part fails. LEDs fail gracefully.
2) LEDs are more resistant to damage.
3) The LEDs appear to not need to be replaced as often as Flourescent. The largest "Pain" in lighting is having to replace the bulbs. If these new LEDs last sufficiently longer than Flourescnets, they pay for themselves in labor.
4) I'm not sure about this, but I don't think I've seend flourescent spot lights before. However, the LEDs might be able to put out more light than flourescents.
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Re:flourescent bulbs (Score:4, Funny)
I finally understand the doom 3 lighting scheme...
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Re:flourescent bulbs (Score:3, Informative)
And since we have to walk on a 40' high plaster ceiling that is 40 years old, the lesser trips we make to change house lights, the better it is, no matter what the cost may be.
Re:Sulfur Microwave Lamps (Score:4, Informative)
1) They're big, not designed for desk lamps and such
2) They use a 2.45GHz microwave generator. That number should sound familiar.... yup, they jam 802.11b/g. For that reason alone, many government installations can not use WiFi.
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Re:I hope they are "warmer" than fluorescent lamps (Score:4, Informative)
Compact Fluorescent bulbs come in colour temperatures from 2700-6500K. Higher colour temperatures equal "cooler" light with more blue.
Check these links for an explanation:
* http://www.tvtechnology.com/features/Tech-Corner/
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White [wikipedia.org]
I started using CF bulbs a few years ago simply b/c of the geek factor. I've found that quality varies and few remain bright throughout their entire useful life. Some run hotter than others. Also found that different rooms / applications call for different colours. YMMV.
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