[ale] More on LEDs...

[Ron Frazier (ALE)]

Hi all,

I find this whole topic very interesting.  I wish I could figure out a way to participate in the led market but the big box stores and online retailers eliminate most of the possibilities for little guys.  Anyway, I still find it very interesting as a consumer.  I spent a few of my after supper hours today roaming around looking at led bulbs just to get a better feel for what's out there.  I'm specifically interested in omnidirectional dimmable bulbs equivalent to standard sizes of incandescents.  I've got a few observations to add to the discussion in no particular order.

* Many bulbs have heat sink structures which would cast shadows.  Some have huge heat sinks blocking the line of site extending directly out from the bulb socket.  I personally would not buy these.  In my ceiling fan, much of the light I'm getting from my CFL's is directly out from the socket through the end of the bulb's coil.  Some bulbs have heat sink material blocking the area from the socket up to, say, the widest part of the bulb.  I would be reluctant to buy these as well.  If they were, say, facing upwards in a table lamp, they would tend to cast lots of horizontal and some upward light and not much down to the table.

* Batteries + is now Batteries + Light Bulbs.  They have a few led's in stock and presumably they will be getting more.  They're limited by their store space though.  They have the Switch bulb, which I think Mike W mentioned previously.  It's very technologically advanced.  According to the rep at B+L, it's filled with mineral oil to help with cooling.  The package raves that you can use their bulb any time, any where, any fixture, any orientation.  Very impressive, but the price is around $ 50.  Ouch.  If you break it with that oil in it, I expect you'd have quite a mess.  Also, the bulb is very heavy.  This might be a problem with some fixtures depending on how the socket is mounted.

* B+L has some other brands as well.  As someone mentioned previously, many bulbs, including some I looked at, are not rated for enclosed fixtures.  You have to read the fine print.

* I personally don't like to see the individual leds in the bulb.  I know a diffuser reduces the light output somewhat, but I like the appearance of the old frosted incandescent.  I prefer that over CFL's too.  The Cree's I mentioned previously do a very good job with this.  The only way you can really evaluate this is to look at the bulb in action.

* Home depot was probably the best source I found locally, and they're the only ones with the Cree's.  Lowes has a lesser selection.  Walmart had none.  I didn't make it over to Target, Ace Hardware, or any of the super markets.  Northern Tool & Harbor Freight might be options.

* Lowes is the only place I found a 100 W equivalent (~ 1700 lumen) bulb.  It's the Sylvania Ultra.  But, they want $ 40 for it.  Ouch again.  This bulb is big and heavy.

* There's lots of what I would call fraud regarding W equivalent ratings, particularly in the 40 W equivalent bulbs, for whatever reason.  According to the [  very handy 8-)  ]  chart I made, a 40 W incandescent bulb should produce 500 lumens.  I saw some claiming to be 40 W replacements that produced only 280 lumens.  I don't think so.

* Many, sometimes physically large, bulbs are not true lighting class bulbs.  They may be called deco bulbs, etc.  A physically large bulb may only produce 80 lumens, etc.  This is 1/10 of what a 60 W equivalent bulb should produce.  So, it's at the level of a night light.  If you can see through the bulb's shell and you see something like 30 individual led bulbs with their own lenses, like the kind you might put in a home made project, it's highly likely that the bulb has more bark than bite and doesn't produce lots of light.

So, given all that, let the buyer be ware.

* A floor rep at Home Depot said they will recycle small quantities of traditional FL tubes for consumers.  He said they cannot take large quantities for businesses.  Not sure about Lowes.

* I had this interesting thought.  Suppose you have a small table lamp or fixture which has a socket that's rated only for, say, 40 W.  But let's say you want more light.  Well, you could put one of those 100 W equivalent led bulbs in it, assuming it would fit, and still stay within the socket's rating.  That's pretty cool.  CFL would do that too.

* For value for the money, I'm currently most impressed with the Cree's I mentioned before from Home Depot.  I've had them running in my porch lights for a few weeks.  By appearance, they're almost indistinguishable from incandescents.

Notable features are: $ 13 cost, 60 W equivalent, 9.5 W actual (pretty good), 84 W / lumen, 800 lumens, 2700 K color temp, omnidirectional with no shadows, pretty good light out the end, no exclusion for enclosures, 25,000 hr longevity, AND 10 yr - 6 hr / day warranty (which adds up to 21,900 hr as it turns out), safety coated rubberized glass, dimmable.  Overall, I'm very impressed.  We'll see about the 10 year part.  This seems to be one of the most efficient bulbs.

* Believe it or not, I have found very tiny .5 W (actual) led night light bulbs to be very handy.  I have one, always on, over a basement door.  I have another, on in the evening near my bed until I go to bed.  The first lets me find the door knob in an otherwise dark corner.  The second gives just enough light to find the cradle to put up the cordless phone.

See a few more comments inline below.

Sincerely,

Ron



"Michael H. Warfield" <mhw at WittsEnd.com> wrote:

>On Mon, 2013-08-12 at 08:05 -0400, Jim Kinney wrote:
>> If it says X watts and Y lumens, it's a safe bet that the average
>> production run will hit those specs. What's harder to gauge is how
>> many lumens is needed for a task. For that, I would take various
>bulbs
>> on hand and test. 

My chart can help with that if you know what you'd need in terms of incandescents.  For example, 75 W incandescents should produce around 1200 lumens.  If you need 4 of those for a ceiling fan, you'd need about 4800 lumens at the same color temperature as the incandescents.

>
>If it says "X" watts, I would take that as the power it is expected to
>consume and less is better, all other things being held equal.  I'm
>going to give very little credence to "equivalent to ZZ watt bulb"
>claims, as that can be much much too subjective.  The hard numbers are
>power consumed, lumens produced, color temperature and life expectancy.
>The efficiency is rated in lumens per watt.  The life expectancy is
>rated in the age at which it retains 70% of it's output.  Life
>expectancy (for {C}FL's and LED's) is typically derated for a duty
>cycle
>of 3 hours use per day (Kitchens?  Seriously - get real - more like 12.
>Bedrooms will probably never burn out.  My office - 16 hours per day
>min.).  If the packaging doesn't have the "hard numbers" on it, then
>it's "no sale" for my cart.
>

You can multiply the hours * days for projected lifetime.  That's not necessarily the same as the warranty.  Many packages say life will be shorter if you let it get hot.  That may affect the warranty too.  Judging from some of the huge heat sinks on these things, that must be a problem.  The higher the lumens / W rating, the more efficient it is and the less of a heat problem you'll have for a given lumen output.

>The things I pay most attention to are lumens out and color
>temperature.
>A given number of lumens at one color temperature are NOT going to look
>(subjectively) the same brightness as the same number of lumens at
>another color temperature.  The "cool white" (which is, ironically, a
>higher color temperature than a "warm white") is going to look brighter
>due to the sensitivity of the eye to greens and blues in the higher
>temperature color.
>
>Cool white is also often referred to as "bright white" while warm white
>is often referred to as "soft white".  Grow bulbs and plant bulbs are
>often in the middle and rich in the greens and blues.  According to the
>Philips tube jacket from my "Natural Sunlight" 4' FL plant bulbs, they
>consider "Natural" (plant / grow) to be 5000K and "Daylight" to be
>6500K
>while they rate "soft white" to be 3000K.  DON'T go by color names.  Go
>by color temperature (K / Kelvin), which is better defined as it's the
>"black body radiation" color spectrum curve of a given temperature. 
>The
>cooler color temps (4000-5000K) seem to relate to slightly higher
>lumens
>per watt, probably due to less need for color shape filtering to
>produce
>the warmer white tones.
>

2700 K most closely approximates the old style incandescent that most people are used to.

Photography buffs, if you're taking pictures indoors, be sure to set your camera's controls to the proper lighting setting or your people will look weird.  The setting for a 2700 K bulb is probably labeled as tungsten or incandescent.  PS, I know just enough about photography to be really dangerous.

You may wish to also consider the color rendering index or CRI.  Some packages state this, some don't.  This relates to the accuracy of the color spectrum compared to that of a blackbody radiator which gets a perfect score of 100.  The packages that mention this at all generally rave on about being 80 or more.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_rendering_index

>I'm now starting to look over the cost of replacement 4' tubes for the
>4' FL fixtures.  Looks like they're in the $30-$40 range per tube with
>slightly lower lumens (but some of those lost lumens from the FL tubes
>are IR and UV range).  Most of the long-tube LED FL replacements are
>chiming in at 80-100 lumens per watt at 18W - 23W per tube for a
>4' (40W) FL replacement.  We're getting there.  We're getting there
>real
>quick.  "Shop light" FL tubes are typically 4000K-5000K color temp.
>Living space, most people seem to like 2700K - 3000K warm whites like
>the old incandescents and lamps of yore...  I like my office at 5000K.
>
>> Wife groused about the bedside lamp being too dim. I vacuumed the cat
>> fur off the shade and got a noticeable difference. Seems the black
>> cats have been polishing the shade on the inside :-)
>
>Yeah there's always that.  I always have to be careful, too, when
>putting new bulbs in fixture sets because the older bulbs (particularly
>CFLs) are going to look dimmer because they are dimmer as they age.
>CFL's and FL's age and dim much faster than LEDs.
>
>Just showed off something to June earlier today.  When she got back
>home, the kitchen can lights were off.  I looked at her and said "and
>this is the REAL REASON I like LED's" as I flipped the cluster on at
>low
>dim.  The CFL's in the 3 cans were this dim angry orange glow as they
>struggled to warm up.  The LED in the 4th can was immediately on the
>job
>and bright at its low level.  Cranked the dimmer up and the CFL's where
>STILL struggling to catch up (but doing much better).  In 5 minutes or
>so (depending on dimmer setting) they'll catch up.  But LED's will even
>beat incandescents in coming up to full output and dimmer slope is very
>smooth.
>
>I'm going to work up a minimum inventory now of new "spare bulbs" that
>are all LED and begin rotating them in.  I still have some (too many)
>PAR 30s CFLs for our smaller can lights and accent lights.  Our outdoor
>floods are all CFLs and that will be pricey to replace at current
>prices
>but they're all relatively new and I can put them off a year or two as
>well.  As they get cheaper, they get cheaper, but I'm never in a rush
>to
>run out and buy and I can rotate them into service as I need them.  I
>don't HAVE TO replace everything all in one rush.  We've still got some
>incandescent bulbs till burning bright.  When they go, they go.
>
>I feel we're now at the saddle point in the curve, the break-even point
>where, even if it's more expensive up-front, the longer term return on
>investment in LED's makes them more than worth while.  If you can
>afford
>to take the up front hit or can stretch it out while you rotate them
>in,
>it's now worth the effort.  Up till now, these have been "experiments"
>for me.  Now, I'm convinced and a believer.  I've convinced myself that
>this is the way to go.
>
>My last challenge (and this is a killer) is that bloody 500W Quartz
>Halogen Flood in the back.  We're NOT there YET.  Not residential, net
>quite yet.

Not being entirely serious here, but, get 8 ea 60 W equivalent spot / flood bulbs and gang them together on a board.  And, possibly point that from off to the side at a 2' aluminum parabolic reflector.  Again, not being totally serious but it would be a cool experiment.  On a more practical note, get one of the off the shelf reflector fixtures from the hardware store which already has a semiparabolic reflector and put that Sylvania 100 W replacement in it and see what happens.  You can get CFL coil bulbs that are the equivalent of 150 - 300 W incandescents.  Two of those in reflector fixtures might be enough.

I understand they're already making street lights using leds.  Those would have to have the equivalent light of at least a 250 W mercury vapor bulb or something, I would think.  I wonder what those cost.

Googling 500 W equivalent led flood - yields some interesting results.

This item looks cool:

http://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.bordenagencies.com/pdf/lind/Flood%2520Lights,%2520Docklights,%2520String%2520Lights/Floodlights/BEACON%2520LIGHT/Lind%2520Equipment%2520-%2520Beacon%2520Light%2520Dual%2520Head.pdf&sa=U&ei=M6IJUveoBIWyygHJyoCoDw&ved=0CEQQFjAEOB4&usg=AFQjCNFakD65lDUQaEptpUnCL9JMpUKYfA

It's a 100 W (actual) two lamp fixture that claims to put out 10,000 lumens for 50,000 hours.

>> On Aug 11, 2013 5:21 PM, "Ron Frazier (ALE)"
>> <atllinuxenthinfo at techstarship.com> wrote:

-snip-

>>         
>>         Incandescent Bulb Output Chart
>>         
>>         Power (W) ----- Output (lm) ----- Acceptable +/- 10%
>>         5         -----   25        -----   23 -   28
>>         15        -----  110        -----   99 -  121
>>         25        -----  200        -----  180 -  220
>>         40        -----  500        -----  450 -  550
>>         60        -----  850        -----  765 -  935
>>         75        ----- 1200        ----- 1080 - 1320
>>         100       ----- 1700        ----- 1530 - 1870
>>         150       ----- 2850        ----- 2565 - 3135

-snip-



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Ron Frazier
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