Switching to LEDs

Joe42 · 30 Oct 2006 at 18:02

MikeHunt79 said:
Fluorescent tubes are more efficient than HID lights and LEDs right now. This is why they are used so much.

I believe this is because manufacturers refuse to invest properly in led technology. I think if done properly led technology should be better than tubes.

wassap · 30 Oct 2006 at 18:16

Joe42 said:
Not quite sure what you're smoking...
A bulb is a device to produce light. How is a bulb which produces the same amount of light with less heat inferior?
As mentioned, the heat produced by less efficient bulbs is only useful half the time, during summer it just adds to air con bills or is wasted as its unwanted, so you are paying for power to produce heat you don't want.

You try telling business that the cost of buying these efficient bulbs outweights the savings... i've yet to see a business which doesn't use almost exclusively tube lighting.

Tubes are efficient are they? and im the one smoking stuff?

Last time i checked we live in the UK not exactly the warmest of countries, just because we may have 2-3 weeks of sweltering heat doesnt mean we live in a hot country now.

In terms of lighting energy efficent bulbs arent the best, spread of light for one is an issue.Once you weigh all aspects up and cut thro the BS the savings arent all that.

Joe42 · 30 Oct 2006 at 18:38

wohoo said:
Tubes are efficient are they? and im the one smoking stuff?

Last time i checked we live in the UK not exactly the warmest of countries, just because we may have 2-3 weeks of sweltering heat doesnt mean we live in a hot country now.

In terms of lighting energy efficent bulbs arent the best, spread of light for one is an issue.Once you weigh all aspects up and cut thro the BS the savings arent all that.

So every business in the uk, hell the world even, is doing it wrong, and they should all scrap their tubes and install filament bulbs?

Yes tubes are efficient. Far better than the alternatives, cost far less overall thats why all business use them, to lower costs. Do you think they use them for the hell of it?

Wikipedia said:
Approximately 95% of the power consumed by an incandescent light bulb is emitted as heat, rather than as visible light. An incandescent light bulb, with this ~5% efficiency, is about one quarter as efficient as a fluorescent lamp (about 20% efficiency), and produces about six times as much heat with the same amounts of light from both sources. One reason why incandescent lamps are unpopular in commercial spaces is that the heat output results in the need for more air conditioning in the summer. Incandescent lamps can usually be replaced by self-ballasted compact fluorescent light bulbs, which fit directly into standard sockets (but often contain mercury). This lets a 100 W incandescent lamp be replaced by a 23-watt fluorescent bulb, while still producing the same amount of light.

You're saying that we have to heat our homes all year around except for 3 weeks? There are at least 6 months where you don't have to heat your home, and thats when filament bulbs are wasting 3 quarters of their energy.

Edit: Might aswell put this in:

wikipedia said:
LED-based lighting is becoming common, because it offers very high efficiency. A 3 W, 120 VAC LED bulb can replace at least a 15 W incandescent bulb and will last 60 times longer than the incandescent bulb. In the long run, LED bulbs, despite costing more than incandescents, save money, and unlike fluorescent bulbs they contain less in terms of harmful metals such as (in the case of compact fluorescents) mercury. Buyers should beware that at present there are some retail scams, and that a 3 W LED bulb should not cost more than US $30.

Mikeyboy · 30 Oct 2006 at 18:39

I just sit in the dark.

Joe42 · 30 Oct 2006 at 19:03

One thing i have just thought of, we bought a set of led Christmas lights 2 years ago and they have been very good. Brighter, more efficient, better colours, lower heat and they last longer than normal Christmas lights. Probably cheaper to produce too. So there's one success story.

wassap · 30 Oct 2006 at 19:03

Joe42 said:
So every business in the uk, hell the world even, is doing it wrong, and they should all scrap their tubes and install filament bulbs?

Yes tubes are efficient. Far better than the alternatives, cost far less overall thats why all business use them, to lower costs. Do you think they use them for the hell of it?

You're saying that we have to heat our homes all year around except for 3 weeks? There are at least 6 months where you don't have to heat your home, and thats when filament bulbs are wasting 3 quarters of their energy.

Edit: Might aswell put this in:

Every tube installation has 4 even 5 tubes in the place of one filament bulb, so you tell me are they really that much more efficient?

As for heating, i concede we dont have heating on all year round (mines is only really off during summer,cold old house

), but in reality for common joe in the summer the lighting isnt on as much anyway, so i still say the savings that people think they are going to be over a very very long period.

Tube lights are only really used as they are a neat solution and are easier to fit into false roofs, if tube lights were that much better than every new house build would have them installed.Companies dont really have a say in whats installed in the build, hell most companies rent anyway, and the purpose of office block builders is not one of efficency but more of how quickly they can knock a building up, the poor designs of HVAC systems is proof of this.

Joe42 · 30 Oct 2006 at 19:15

So this is completely wrong then?

Wikipedia said:
One reason why incandescent lamps are unpopular in commercial spaces is that the heat output results in the need for more air conditioning in the summer. Incandescent lamps can usually be replaced by self-ballasted compact fluorescent light bulbs, which fit directly into standard sockets (but often contain mercury). This lets a 100 W incandescent lamp be replaced by a 23-watt fluorescent bulb, while still producing the same amount of light.

You don't see tube lights in houses because the light output is higher than is usually needed in a house an they look ugly.

The saving from energy efficient bulbs may be small but certainly not non-existent. And in a commercial situation the savings can be huge.

Bumhucker · 30 Oct 2006 at 19:16

I've always wondered, instead of having lights in every room of the house, why not just attach lights to your body and just have those on all the time?

Aod · 30 Oct 2006 at 19:17

i use Candles

Joe42 · 30 Oct 2006 at 19:19

Bumhucker said:
I've always wondered, instead of having lights in every room of the house, why not just attach lights to your body and just have those on all the time?

Don't fancy walking around with a wire attached to me, or a light bulb for that matter.

Miners helmets are personal lights, but i can't see us all wearing them indoors somehow.

MikeHunt79 · 30 Oct 2006 at 19:21

Joe42 said:
I believe this is because manufacturers refuse to invest properly in led technology. I think if done properly led technology should be better than tubes.

Ahh, I see your point now. Things might have progressed faster, but LED's have come along way since the 70's. That's only around 30 years which is a lot less than the 100+ years the incandescent bulb has had.

I don't think it has been held up, but recently competition has help things along a bit. The CREE LED that has been mentioned is a real breakthrough, and is very close to catching and overtaking fluorescent tubes. We also have Philips (maker of the Luxeon), Nichia, and OSRAM developing ever better LED's, so it anyone's game right now. It's not a 2 horse race like the whole ati/nvidia or amd/intel thing.

Also, even tho tubes are most efficient right now, they do contain mercury vapour, which is very nasty stuff if inhaled. Something to think about especially if they are used in places such as schools and hospitals. Yet another reason to go to LED methinks.

Joe42 said:
Don't fancy walking around with a wire attached to me, or a light bulb for that matter.
Miners helmets are personal lights, but i can't see us all wearing them indoors somehow.

You could use a torch... They do them with LED's also.

wassap · 30 Oct 2006 at 19:22

Joe42 said:
So this is completely wrong then?

You don't see tube lights in houses because the light output is higher than is usually needed in a house an they look ugly.

The saving from energy efficient bulbs may be small but certainly not non-existent. And in a commercial situation the savings can be huge.

Forget about Wiki for a moment and go and survey your office tomorrow, look at the amount of tubes in the egg shell casings, look at the amount of egg shell casings around in any given small area.It aint as black and white as you (or I for that matter) may think.

wassap · 30 Oct 2006 at 19:25

MikeHunt79 said:
Ahh, I see your point now. Things might have progressed faster, but LED's have come along way since the 70's. That's only around 30 years which is a lot less than the 100+ years the incandescent bulb has had. I don't think it has been held up, but recently competition has help things along a bit. The CREE LED that has been mentioned is a real breakthrough, and is very close to catching and overtaking fluorescent tubes. We also have Philips (maker of the Luxeon), Nichia, and OSRAM developing ever better LED's, so it anyone's game right now. It's not a 2 horse race like the whole ati/nvidia or amd/intel thing.

Also, even tho tubes are most efficient right now, they do contain mercury vapour, which is very nasty stuff if inhaled. Something to think about especially if they are used in places such as schools and hospitals. Yet another reason to go to LED methinks.

My company has a vested interest in Osram (well they own them), and they are focusing very little on domestic/commercial applications,portable electronics and automotive is where the bulk of the R&D budgets are heading.

JAMAL · 30 Oct 2006 at 19:30

One of the reasons they are not so widespread at the moment is that the pcb's needed for these hi output luxeon & Cree's need a special pcb made out of a material called T-clad (or alterative), which is an aluminum backed pcb laminate which is needed to draw the heat away from the pcb/led.

The laminate is very expensive to buy and the manufacture of these pcbs is costly due to routing the pcbs being (often) 3mm piece of alu.

For my job i do lots of led lighting pcbs, for some things i cant mention

but also architectual (sp?) lighting etc...

Its a part of the market which we are seeing good growth especialy in the last 12 months.

Rancidelephant · 2 Nov 2006 at 16:08

If you can make a 400 candle power light for a bike I don't see why you can't do it for a house ...

http://www.cateye.com/uk/product_detail/99

Joe42 · 2 Nov 2006 at 16:44

Rancidelephant said:
If you can make a 400 candle power light for a bike I don't see why you can't do it for a house ...

http://www.cateye.com/uk/product_detail/99

Exactly.

wohoo said:
My company has a vested interest in Osram (well they own them), and they are focusing very little on domestic/commercial applications,portable electronics and automotive is where the bulk of the R&D budgets are heading.

I suppose that's because portable and automotive are still using filament bulbs to a large extent, so theres more demand and money to be made, whereas domestic and commercial markets for led lighting are small because they already have low energy bulbs.

Stephen7372 · 25 Nov 2006 at 09:43

New 138 lumens per watt led

http://ledsmagazine.com/articles/news/3/11/22/1

Ultra-high efficacy in small LEDs
Nichia has developed small-size (240 ×420 micron) blue LED chips with quantum efficiency of 63.3% at a forward-bias current of 20 mA.

White LEDs produced with these chips had a luminous flux of 8.6 lm and a luminous efficacy of 138 lm/W. This exceeds the value of 131 lm/W reported by Cree recently for a standard-sized LED, and is 1.5 times greater than that of a tri-phosphor fluorescent lamp (90 lm/W).

The forward-bias voltage was 3.11 V and the wall-plug efficiency (WPE) was 41.7%, respectively. The white LED had a correlated color temperature of 5450 K.

Alasdair · 25 Nov 2006 at 11:13

Stephen7372 said:
New 138 lumens per watt led
http://ledsmagazine.com/articles/news/3/11/22/1

138 per watt is pretty good. I've just bought a set of these and they do combined 300 lumens, this being for two 5W LEDs. They still kick ass though, they're far brighter than the halogens I used to have and a lot lighter. They run colder as well, I remember being able to warm my hands on the housings of my old lights when I was out riding!

Dr.EM · 25 Nov 2006 at 11:37

My electronics supplier now stocks 20W LEDs (competitor though, Edison Opto is the manufacturer). They appear to be 20 1W chips in a small square (awfully similar to what I suggested earlier). Evidently wired partly in series with a VF of 17.8V.

Vulcan · 29 Nov 2006 at 14:08

Anyone know a decent place to get LED light bulbs with the threaded screw end, rather than the 2 prong types?