Light The Halls With LEDs

My wife and I have quite a few CFLs, but their color temperature characteristics are not always satisfactory. The "helical" ones with overall envelope like incandescents seem too "yellow," while the parallel-tube ones seem too "white."

Multiple LEDs might give some better selections by putting in a few red/blue/green ones among mostly white ones, thereby customizing the overall effect. That might take lots of experimentation, which we haven't tried yet. There are now quite a few vehicle lights with multiple LEDs. With their long life, the odd burnout makes almost no difference in the total array.

Bring on the LEDs.......at a reasonable cost, please. As we all become more light bulb savvy, we will learn that all light bulbs (including LED) are available in various colors. And that includes fluorescent lamps of all types. But quality control is not something that the Chinese CFL manufacturers are terribly concerned about with more than 4000 light bulb manufacturers in China alone.

As to being twice as efficient, that is only possible if the CFL's you are comparing to LED's are cheap junky products. And the term we should be using is efficacy, not efficiency. Efficacy is the number of lumens per watt. That is how you measure the amount of light (bang) for your buck. High quality CFL's and LED's both rate about 94 LPW unless there has been a huge break-thru in LED technology that I missed.

But my point is, that if you ignore quality you will never be able to get decent color rendering, so pay close attention because there really is a lot of junk on the market.

Is it possible that this (junk on the market, poor quality control) might be because the government has mandated their use (or at least the removal of the competition) and put their nose in where it does not belong before the technology got to that place????

I have already put the dollars down to try out an LED "bulb" supposedly designed as a replacement of the other types for household use. The result was very disappointing - the light produced by this 'bulb' does not compare to a conventional or CFL bulb... mood lighting at best, and the mood is dim.

I'm looking forward to seeing some better products, and I'm glad to hear they are working on production methods to get the price down.

I have had good luck with leds in my house

im now out fiting my sailboat with them and with solor cells so will not need to go back to shore just to charge my battarys I mave LED spotlights in the hall and one over the sink they work much better then the lights that were in there

LEDs are almost a silent revolution.

Can you recommend a reasonably bright LED bulb/brand? Otherwise... I'm in the dark.

Not yet. I have been shopping on eBay for what I have. The best deal I got was 5 bulbs that were about 30 Watts equivalent for something like $50, but they are a cool white light.

I'm not sure why that was quoted as a good answer. Here are some counterarguments:

1) CFL's are not too warm, as well. And they are much cheaper.

2) As if you start working as soon as you turn the light on... and it doesn't matter they are not bright enough anyway.

3) CFL's last for few years. You're describing the situation as if bulbs burn out every other day.

4) How much you said you paid for the LED's upfront?

5) That makes some sense. But, why do you have lights hanging on your garage door, I wonder?

6) Yes! That needs a GA. Exactly right! LEDs are perfect for flashlight because they produce directional light! That's it! The rest is a hype - maybe be good for disco bars, and classical applications like scoreboards and such. However, I am glad Anonymous Hero doesn't mind paying for them. That's going to increase his overhead, but that means more money back in the economy...

Titi-the-rabbit

1) CFLs will not produce meaningful light if their ambient temperature is too cool.

2) When I flip the switch I need the light now. I have a special needs dog that has seizures. When I enter the room I need the light at that moment to attend to the dog and I want to be able to see what I am stepping on before I enter the room. I will try to put this gently - Just in case you didn't know, epilepsy tends to relax sphincter muscles. Fluids are not easily visible under dim lighting.

When the room is cool (62° - 65°) it can take several minutes for the lamp to reach normal brightness.

3. CFLs have not been living up to their claimed lifespan. Ask people that use them, check on the internet. Most are built in China and probably lack the quality control and manufacturing consistency from lot to lot and batch to batch.

4. LEDs are not cheap! However, neither are the issues I find with CFLs. I still use incandescents and I have a few CFLs, but due to the cleanup hazard I tend to use them in the garage.

5. The lamp is inside the garage door opener. Vibration from the motor destroys the filament at a faster rate than a normal bulb in a desk lamp.

Right now LEDs are not a panacea to replace all forms of lighting. They are expensive. However, my whole point was that there are other forms of costs beyond the price sticker on the box of bulbs of CFLs, halogens, and incandescent bulbs. In some applications the extra expense of LEDs trumps the alternatives.

I have had CFWs installed in my house for a couple years. My initial impression is that their life expectancy is the same (or less) as the incandescent bulbs. I have already replaced about half of the CFWs.

Most of the CFLs I have though out my house are about 8-10 years old we have about 100 through out the house and most are used multiple times daily. Before I put them in I went thought ~ 1 incandescent bulbs every two years per light. I live in the NE PA average temp is 28 F in the winter never had any problems with the flood lights that are outside it usually only takes about 10-15 sec to become really bright. Inside the average temp is around 67 F no problems there. LED I've notices aren't have as bright as the CFLs even with multiple bulbs.

As far as the .01mg of Hg found in CFLs there would have to be about 100 CFLs broken and then all the powder directly breathed in before it would even start to have any affect on a child let alone an adult. The Hg and clean-up has been total blown out of proposition.

LED I've notices aren't have as bright as the CFLs even with multiple bulbs.

28 F in the winter never had any problems with the flood lights that are outside it usually only takes about 10-15 sec to become really bright.

And there we have the problem - yours take 10-15 seconds. The CFLs in my bedroom and landing (usually well above 28F!) takes 5 minutes to warm up. I have a different design in a bedside lamp holder that takes less time to warm up, but is off too low a light level to light the room.

Result: when I come back upstairs to shower and get dressed, I turn the light on in the bedroom before I shower, so that it's light enough in there to dress. If I forget, then the lamp is only just reaching full brightness by the time I'm dressed and leaving the room.

This is a problem as low light levels tend to induce me to go back to sleep...and yes I often do this standing/sitting up.

When I first turn then on during the winter, these are lights that are two stories up I can see clearly about 40 yards. After the 10-15 secs its out to about 120 yards.I also have LEDs out side if I just use them, they turn their brightest right away. But only out about 20 feet.

I'll stick to my CFLs any day. Half the cost, same life span, and much brighter. I switch all my lights in my house to CFL 10 years ago I have a total of 198 lights in my house. I've only replaced 3 CFLs so far for "burning" out. Last year I replaced 25% of them with LEDs cost me about $1200. I started out replacing the most used one first, but because of the low quality of the light being produced I started switching then to less used lights or areas where I don't need a whole lot of light. Unless they can fix this I will only use them purposes where the brightness isn't that important or start switch back the CFLs.

A lot of LEDs are not as "bright" as the fixture they are replacing. This is a common problem. Manufacturers could add more LEDs in the luminaire and increase the level of output, but they want to be able to claim 40% savings. If they added the bulbs required to equal the output, they may only be able to claim 30% or 25 % savings. This would prevent them from claiming the payback periods they do. It sounds a lot worse to say payback in 10 years instead of 5 years. There is not really a lot of truth in advertising when it comes to LEDs.

You are correct to some degree, there are so many types of LEDs out there that just aren't up to the task at any payback period. But there are LED globes that illuminate very well and use only 10% of what a comparable quartz halogen requires. Cree has come out with a new generation of LEDs in 2009 that are quite simply amazing in power, coverage and color temperature. They provide more than enough light for a given area and the look is consistent and beautiful. It is wise to educate yourself on these lights before attempting to kit out your home, boat or even a Boeing aircraft. I'm certain they did their homework before fitting out the Dreamliner with LEDs and it's paid off. That is one of the few parts on that aircraft that won't need replacement for many years to come.

Thank you for bringing up Maintenance. Whatever gain one hopes to achieve by using fluorescent lighting - whatever the form - will almost certainly be swallowed up in Maintenance costs. As any electrician can attest fluorescent lighting is very good for business considering how often lamps and ballasts have to be replaced in commercially used fluorescent lights.

Whatever "green initiative" one thinks they are getting from using fluorescent lights is easily destroyed by the toxic substances that are in the bulbs that usually do not get disposed of properly. Even if they were, then the energy to re-process these chemicals makes a significant mess.

And if - heavens forbid - you break a CFL, the EPA recommends following this cleanup procedure. It's a good thing we live in a perfect world where lightbulbs never break.

Yeah, even GE's website has a cleanup procedure that is essentially the same.

How many did you break so far? Come on...

Titi-the-rabbit.

It's pretty much like cleaning up any other blub out there.

I get the kids and pets out of the way. I pick up the glass then on the hardwood floor wipe it down with a damp cloth picks up the tiny pieces of glass better. Rugs I vacumn. Everything goes in plastic bags and in the garbage.

Nothing really different.

An interesting consequence of LED traffic lights.. http://www.impactlab.com/2009/12/17/led-traffic-lights-causing-more-accidents/ Apparently heat from the conventional lights also helped melt the ice when it snowed. With LED's, the ice froze around the lights causing accidents. Thats beside the point.. Couldn't the directionality of LEDs can be addressed easily by creating a fly's eye like scattering beads in a housing? --Iyer

Hi,

my UK car has 3 brake lights, two are conventional and on the rear wings, the third is a central high up cluster of LEDS. Inrterestingly at the last service the Garage advised that 7 out of ? had already gone after some 3 -4 years.

I will get the cluster replaced befor ethe next service.

Sleepy

Many manufacturers make street lights with LEDs. The practice of using prismatic lenses does enable the fixture to direct light in specific patterns. They don't have to be omnidirectional.

Yes, the technical term is to use an optical diffuser.

I doubt very much that the heat from a 69W incandescent bulb would clear the blockage pictured in your link. The snow is adhered to a vertical, bare aluminum sign, indicating a strong wind and moist precipitation. I would, however, point out that the sun shades on the traffic lights are part of the problem. When we retrofitted our signals 4 years ago, all shades had to cover a maximum of 200°. The 320° shades in the picture provide a ledge for the snow to bridge across, making the buildup easier.

Our analysis revealed multiple benefits:

• Savings of 90% of the energy used by incandescent bulbs.
• Savings of 85% of the annual labor cost for bulb replacement.
• Improved safety for our personnel. Traffic disruptions for bulb replacement are also down 55%, meaning our people are not in hazardous locations nearly as often.
• Improved safety for the driving public. Intersection accidents in our town are down ~30% since the LED's went in. There are fewer lane closures for bulb replacement. Unexpected traffic pattern changes are a common cause of intersection collisions.

There's never a universal solution for any problem, and it may be that in some specific locales, LED's are not the right choice. In our specific case, the only real downside we've found was the initial capital cost, which was paid back in less than 3 years.

I just built a new house and seriously considered using all LED lighting. It just got too expensive so I went more traditional. There are LED lights that can be used to retrofit existing outlets but cannot be easily dimmed except by stepping down (turning off)the number of LEDs on the LED bulb cluster.

I do predict LEDs will be cost effective within a few years. The lighting as we now know it will change more dramatically than imagined. We will be using sheets or tiles of interlocking lights that will tie into a computer and create an unlimited mood and scene selection in any room of the house. Imagine walking into a room with waves from a beach or with alpine peaks. Who will need getaway holidays? Every wall could be a flat screen TV as we know it. Are not some of these screens LED now.

We can see some of these LED structures in most sports arenas today. The first mood LED walls will likely happen in a commercial restaurant but eventually homeowners will also be able to have it. And it will be as hot in demand as flat screen TV or any of the latest electronic fads. Any venture investors out there know of a good stock?

Boeing Dreamliner uses LEDs in the passenger cabin and uses them for mood lighting. I worked for the company that designed and sold them to Boeing and Boeing wanted a pretty elaborate system.

Also, exterior lights on aircraft have been using LED technology for years now. Even those high brightness strobe wing lights are LED. We pioneered methods to get amazing brightness from LEDs. LEDs are finding their way into radio towers and obstruction lighting.

Also, the replacement cost for traditional lamps on aircraft was the primary reason for the industry to switch to LEDs. Using less power was just a bonus.

Thanks for the info Anonymous Hero. I will look forward to a flight on the Dreamliner someday. I Googled Boeing Dreamliner and found this site showing the new lighting system:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDFoOhkprM0&feature=fvw

WOW what a difference lighting can make. Hope we can do it in our homes soon and at a reasonable cost. It does illustrate that we are still being archaic in advancements to residential lighting systems. Once LED takes off, the skies will be the limit in design. Thanks.

I've been replacing all my 12V bulbs with LED lights. I've put them in my RV and my riding mower. I really like them in high vibration environments where filament bulbs are prone to failure.

The red LED's look totally cool as head lamps on my mower

Troy

We have replaced nearly all our halogen downlights with LEDs. We have alternated the bright cool white 3W with the warm light 5W which has given and attractive overall light, where we needed a brighter light we installed a 30W efficient halogens in the circuit. The effect is similar to halogens but dimmed to about 80%. The main issue we had was getting the transformers right. Just replacing the MR16 bulbs and keeping the 20-50W 12V transformers resulted in instability in the LEDs. We reduced the number of transformers on each circuit but found that we needed to have more than one even if only one was enough to run all the LEDs. Having low wattage transformers would have solved the problem but would have added to the cost as they are generally much more expensive than the standard halogen transformer. We had much less success with the 240V LEDs (we are in Australia) which may have just been a bad batch but have blown, strobed and generally been a bad move. Luckily we only bought a handful of those, but as an alternative to low voltage halogens LEDs have come of age in my opinion especially as a replacement for the 12V halogen downlights.

Chris LS

Hi from Sleepy,

My issue with LEDs is that they should be current driven - they are diodes after all.

Dimming without a control circuit will not be possible as the LEDs will switch off at some quite high voltage from the dimmer panel - you will need a circuit that transfers this voltage to a current drive.

The current will need to be settable for each diode to match the brilliance and possibly colour with other bulbs in the set and the bulb temperature carefully controlled for long life. There was some correspondence here within the last two weeks on these factors.

Maybe these factors have been adequately addressed, Donald do you hear me?, but Phillips, I believe have an R&D program with the USA government, again reported here.

I get the impression that we need a volunteer, NOT me, who will pull all the back correspondence together and highlight future trends, we might then all have a better idea of where this is going.

Oh and regards the LEds in businesses, my local Italian cafe/retaurant started up a few years ago with multicoloured LEDs all around the walls - just not whole walls!

Have fun

Sleepy

In answer to your last question.

Good luck on selling most businesses on a 10 year payback, if you can get it to 5 years or less you might stand a chance. That is if you have a proven reliability record of say 5 - 10 years.

You would think that, but in many industrial and commercial situations the operating cost also includes cost of replacement. Think of it as the Las Vegas Syndrome where you have whole businesses that do nothing but replace failed lamps for businesses.

A good example is the obstruction lighting in towers. You don't just grab a step ladder and unscrew the bulb. You have to call a certified climber to service the lamp.

Some businesses use hundreds or even thousands of lamps. Hotels find it very inconvenient to raise ladders in the lobby when clients are coming in and out. Those lamps are on continuously and conventional bulbs quickly die.

Aircraft find a real savings using LEDs for exterior and interior lighting.

So it is already happening under our noses.

I have a mixture of LED and CFLs through out my house. The biggest problem with LED is that they are not very bright. I put a 11 watt CFL bulb in I have plenty of light last about 10 years. I but in a 1.4 watt LED light in the same fixture I end up having to get out a flashlight to see whats going on. I have also been have problems with fixtures that have multiple lights. If I put in 11 Watt CFLs no problems, I put in 1.4 Watt LEDs turn off the light the bulbs remain the slight current that still runs through the line keeps it running. Things I like about them last forever unless you damage them yourself, prices are going down, and no heat no more burnt fingers. Between the CFLs and the LEDs in my house I've reduce my bill by 32%. Almost made up for PPL's increase in fees this year.

"You think that breaking fluorescent bulbs is what creates environmental problems?"

Not the sole source, but it adds another problem to our landfills that is being legislatively driven with no regard to the consequences.

However, that's another political argument and tossing in the red herring about SUVs drives the argument off the proverbial cliff, in my opinion.

A motion sensor light switch in your shop might do wonders to your power bill.

LED flashlights rock.

I have a fantastic little LED emergency light I got at the dollar store, that you can clip on your clothes. When the lights are flickering and the wind is howling, there's nothing like having it on you. Forget about looking for candles in the dark.

The LED emergency push lights are great as well. LED's and batteries are a match made in heaven.

I have LED christmas lights, and solar LED xmas lights on a tree outdoors... it's a little sad, they don't really get enough light on the shortest day of the year.

If your scared of CFLs and mercury I'm sure I can come up with a list of household products that are even worst. Take gasoline 1 oz on your skin will go directly to your liver and do as much damage as drinking a full half gallon of hard liquor. The fumes known to cause lung cancer, and that not not forget the flammability of it. You have ammonia, chlorine, insecticides, pesticides, de-greaser, all a lot more dangerous to your health, but for some reason everyone seems to for get about them.

So, your argument is that since there are other harmful chemicals in our houses there is no need to be concerned about adding more and/or new ones?

No my statement is that such a small amount of mercury in CFLs that people, government in general blow it way out of proportion. Yet nobody is complaining about simple everyday common day items we use all the time that will kill you on the spot. Example gasoline, pesticides, de-greasers, cleaners, medicines, etc. You don't see anyone going crazy over them. EPA setting up a special web site on how to clean it up if you spill it. Nope people go crazy because the hear mercury. Once again the small amount in one bulb will not hurt you. When the ones in my house eventually die, I'm sure some will in the next 5-15 years, I'll take them like I take all the rest of my universal waste to the recycle center down the street from me and let them handle it.

I can't find a link now, but I recall hearing about a research project a few years ago that has managed to develop LED (not "LEAD") based paint. I'm hoping it wasn't that gimmicky "spray paint" from a French artist. Alternatively, LED displays are getting real skinny: (http://www.samsung.com/us/news/newsRead.do?news_seq=12251), though 16.5mm is still a bit too think.

Combine that with another contemporary research effort, paint-on photovoltaics, and we've got some real lighting possibilities. (Though combining a power source requiring light to power a light might create a singularity that devours the universe.)

Just a word of caution - we experimented with compact fluorescent lights in our house and found that they burned out quicker than incandescent lights. When we look into it we were told that power in a rural setting (where we live) tends to be "dirty" with peaks and valleys. The fluorescent bulbs cannot handle this variation, hence their short life. Is it possible that the same problem will be encountered with LED lights?

I think the issue is the lack of quality control in the manufacturing process in general.

I am sure that problem is not limited to CFLs and will follow LEDs and any other product from China where customers demand low price first over quality.

I wonder how difficult it would be to make an incandescent bulb which lasted for thousands of hours. Maybe someone could try a UK bulb in US mains: I know it would be less than ¼ as bright, but, would it last a lot more than 4 times as long. A UK 100 Watt bulb in a US cupboard might be a sensible investment.

GE introduces LED light bulb