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96 Comments
- inactive, on 01/29/2009, -0/+37Rad. They use a tiny amount of power and last for 10+ years... No other lighting technology stands a chance. This is the kind of breakthrough we need in all areas of energy consumption!
- Emachine, on 01/29/2009, -0/+19I really hope so. I was at Home Depot the other day, and saw LED bulbs for 29.99 EACH.
- Testiculese, on 01/29/2009, -0/+12I can't wait. Fluorescent bulbs kill my eyes.
- inactive, on 01/29/2009, -0/+12If you'd read the article, you'd know that rather than mercury they each contain 1.5 grams of radioactive powder, and will burst if lightly bumped, sending razor sharp metal shards in all directions at high velocity. It is recommended you leave the premises upon such an event, and allow a hazmat team to remove the bodies.
- dcwp, on 01/29/2009, -0/+11I've got a couple of LED bulbs as replacements for mini-halogen spotlights. The light is much more blue than the halos (which I think are a bit too yellow anyway). The quality of light is better than CFL in my opinion, but still more artificial than incandescent.
The biggest drawback I find is that LEDs are very directional and cause more shadows than any of the other common types of bulbs. This is why I'm only using them in place of spotlights for now.
But at 2% energy consumption (1 Watt LED replacing 50W halogen), even the current price of around $13 USD is worth it for me. - twiztidsinz, on 01/29/2009, -0/+10LEDs are technically bulbs already so your complaint is not really valid.
- rizzo2008, on 01/29/2009, -0/+10I want LED headlights for my car too. That would be really nice to take my old halogens out and have a plug and play solution for automobiles as well
- inactive, on 01/29/2009, -1/+10Title should read:
"Light Emitting Diodes That Are Big And Bright Enough To Light A Room In Your House And Which Will Not Cost Too Much And Which Should Not Be Confused With The Smaller Ones You See In Electronic Devices Are Right Around The Corner" - twiztidsinz, on 01/29/2009, -0/+8I hate it when people break into my house and steal only the lightbulbs.....
- Magnj, on 01/29/2009, -1/+8Dugg for "Rad"
- inphu510n, on 01/29/2009, -0/+7I can't deny that LED lights ARE the holy grail right now. I'd really much rather have them in my home than anything else but they're too expensive/large to be practical at the moment.
Also, I think people need to realize that we've been using fluorescent bulbs in our kitchens/workplaces/hospitals/grocery stores etc. for at least 30 years now. The whole "I'm concerned about using them in my home" argument is a moot point. They're already there. The government mandates that they be there. - stonewall123, on 01/29/2009, -0/+7Light quality varies VERY much depending on where you get them and unfortunately how much you've paid. The ones made with CREE parts are generally very good. www.EarthLED.com has some really nice ones that give very nice light ( I have CL-3, CL-5 and the new zetalux ) but you need to specify warm light rather than 'cool' and they aren't cheap. Also, I would be leery about some of the 60W equivalent type claims that many complanies claim because they are often less bright ( and bluish) than they are marketed. When looking for LEDs the package or marketing should specify what temperature ( in Kelvin ) the lights run at. 2700-3000K will be a warm light while higher is cool blue. The new zetalux (CREE engine) are very bright and definitely live up their claims. At the current cost lets just hope they are as durable as they claim to be because in my experience CFLS haven;t lived up to their durability claims. I've heard that many of the cheap chinese made ones crap out pretty early. Lower cost LEDs are just a matter of time and this new discovery would be great if it doesn't reduce light quality or actual real life useage.
- palmer, on 01/29/2009, -0/+7They're not blue. It's just than incandescent light is blue-poor compared to SUNLIGHT. So unless you find sunlight "obnoxious", you shouldn't have a problem with daylight-balanced bulbs.
- recruz, on 01/29/2009, -2/+8Excellent news! Great for the environment! Yay for R&D! yay for Science!
- biotch, on 01/29/2009, -0/+6take a breath ... go find some better CFLs.
Mine dont hum and dont flash ... I cant really tell the difference actually. - AndrewMoyer, on 01/29/2009, -0/+6Please explain "room pollution". Google thinks you made that term up.
(I'm assuming the word "room" was not supposed to be there at all, then it makes more sense.) - AndrewMoyer, on 01/29/2009, -0/+6@cheezintern: How does this noise manifest for you?
I have a decent home music studio full of fairly sensitive equipment and I get no interference from 2x CF bulbs amongst the cables and equipment, plugged into the same circuits. Each bulb is equal to a 150W incandescent light bulb.
If it was audible, surely a microphone would have captured it, and if it was an electromagnetic field of any significant amplitude, it would have inducted onto something.
I'm pretty sure if you're noticing some sort of effect from your bulbs that you probably have poorer quality bulbs in some respect, and it is not to be expected from all units. - addicted68098, on 01/29/2009, -0/+5(inserts stereotypical apple fanboy comment)
- Grazfather, on 01/29/2009, -0/+5Not cheap or practical for conventional use.
- FlippityFlipz, on 01/29/2009, -1/+6Impressive. Now make dimmable ones
- inactive, on 01/29/2009, -0/+5@cheezintern
Holy crap, you hear that too? I can hear this incredibly high-pitched sort of tingling noise when any CFL bulb is turned on, even when I'm sober. Only if there's no other noise interference in the room though.
Anyone also hear pretty much the same thing when they turn on an older, tube-based TV? - matude, on 01/29/2009, -0/+4Yeah, I can hear the TV-s being turned on even from other apartments in the building, when no other noise/sound gets through the walls.
Hardly a helpful superpower. :/ - stonewall123, on 01/29/2009, -0/+4Nice find... I haven't seen those in the Home depot near me... but $29.99 for those bulbs? that's a total rip off especially for a 15Watt equivalent bulb. You can get much better LED bulb (in terms of light quality/color) and brightness for much cheaper than that these days. Its a good start for Home depot though.
- depro9, on 01/29/2009, -1/+5Every city on the planet will glow like Tokyo in 10 years time thanks to LED technology.
- twiztidsinz, on 01/29/2009, -0/+4The cost of incandescent bulbs is ~$0.50/bulb. If the bulb lasts 1 year, then in 10 years you'll spend $5.
One LED bulb, currently, is $30 and lasts ~10 years.
Assuming that it costs $35.48/year for an incandescent (always on). http://people.westminstercollege.edu/departments/s ... and given that LED's actually consume far less (1/8th or less) power than incandescent, the money you save is quite substantial:
35.48 x 10 = $354.80
30 + ((35.48 / 8) x 10) = $74.35
or $280.45 in 10 years (including their cost of a continuous $1.49 per 4 pack of incandescent bulbs). - palmer, on 01/29/2009, -0/+4And your comment should read "LEDs are already cheap..."
apostrophe + S = possessive - inactive, on 01/29/2009, -0/+4How's the light quality? Comparable more to incandescent or florescent?
- jsmithers, on 01/29/2009, -1/+5WHAT IS SHOCKING for any Brits reading this is that this is that rare case of a British invention that UK Gov is actually providing funding for to turn it into commercial reality, rather than the usual situation of Brits inventing something amazing, wonderful, and world changing and having to sell it abroad while UK Gov sits there saying "Duh, whots dat den?" or "If it's not the Arts, you can bugger off, you nerd!"
- KRG12345, on 01/29/2009, -0/+3Or maybe its because he's been drinking liquor all night.
- petebot, on 01/29/2009, -1/+4RTFA: "The researchers now say LED bulbs based on their new process could be commercially available within five years."
- Ramble, on 01/29/2009, -0/+3No, some CFLs do give off the 50/60 Hz noise, this isn't due to the technology but rather poor quality components and transformers.
You don't notice it until you turn it off and it's gotten quieter. - kemp34, on 01/29/2009, -1/+4I just bought some the other day. Still pricey, but I do not like the room pollution associated with compact fluorescent, and I wanted to give this alternative a try.
- biotch, on 01/29/2009, -0/+3"but you only get that super long life if you turn them on and leave them on. "
Many CFLs are now equiped with the ability to fade on over the course of a second or so to counter this problem...
Ive had mine for a few years now through a San Diego incentive program and they still work great.... I havent had to change one of them yet. - Square47, on 01/29/2009, -0/+3http://healthychild.org/blog/comments/is_mercury_f ...
[Note: This example is meant only as a quick and dirty example. It is not intended to represent every case nor every situation.] For example, we could imagine the following scenario:
A CFL containing 5 mg of mercury breaks in your child’s bedroom that has a volume of about 25 m3 (which corresponds to a medium sized bedroom). The entire 5 mg of mercury vaporizes immediately (an unlikely occurrence), resulting in an airborne mercury concentration in this room of 0.2 mg/m3. This concentration will decrease with time, as air in the room leaves and is replaced by air from outside or from a different room. As a result, concentrations of mercury in the room will likely approach zero after about an hour or so.
Under these relatively conservative assumptions, this level and duration of mercury exposure is not likely to be dangerous, as it is lower than the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standard of 0.05 mg/m3 of metallic mercury vapor averaged over eight hours. [To equate these values, we could estimate the average indoor airborne mercury concentration for 8 hours, beginning post-spill at an estimated starting value of 0.2 mg/m3 and decreasing from there. If one assumes the the air exchanges completely in one hour (a fairly standard assumption), then the 8-hour average concentration would be 0.025 mg/m3.]
Even though mercury from the broken CFL is no - Square47, on 01/29/2009, -0/+3@dcwp
Your stats have to be off. I've sold commercial LED downlights that replace 65W BR40 lamps (typical basement downlight) and the LEDs take about 13-16W depending on brand. There is no way you are replacing 50W with 1W and getting comparable light output. - biotch, on 01/29/2009, -0/+3sry dude
"could be commercially available within five years."
In other words.... we have no idea how we're ever going to make it commercially available. - hiPpymIck, on 01/29/2009, -0/+3from the comments which are not a bad read (first page)
"Now I use white LED fairy lights for desk lighting. They were reduced by 75% after xmas, so I bought a couple of sets with 400 LEDs each at ã10 a set and rigged them up over my desk, set to a constant-on mode. The light is a bit harsh compared to the daylight-simulation CFLs, but they're silent and should hopefully last longer than the CFLs."
you could wrap them around an old lamp and
use paper shades to change the color
and super cheap old christmas stock is still probly around
so you could just buy a load of indoor and outdoor sets - and just play around with them - inactive, on 01/29/2009, -0/+2Progressive group hug?
- inactive, on 01/29/2009, -0/+2I wonder if Humphreys did an actual cost/benefit analysis to back up his 20/20 hindsight claim, or if he's just talking from his English bottom.
- cheezintern, on 01/29/2009, -1/+3cfl bulbs give off high frequency electromagnetic noise as well. Most people don't notice it though. I only do when it's 4am and I've been drinking liquor all night.
- jerbaker, on 01/29/2009, -2/+4The article states that LEDs are three times more efficient than fluorescent. That is not correct. Good fluorescents achieve between 80 - 100 lumens per watt. Metal halide can be over 150 lumens per watt. Even if LEDs reached their theoretical maximum efficiency they'd only be about 2.5 times more efficient than fluorescents. That efficiency is a long way off though. LEDs are only about tied with fluorescents and nowhere near metal halide or LPS, HPS, etc.
- AndrewMoyer, on 01/29/2009, -0/+2Most municipal waste companies will also dispose of fluorescent bulbs. I remember seeing this in particular in a Waste Management commercial recently. I guess they give you a special box to put the tube in...
...and then they promptly crush it at your local water supply ;-) /s - guyincognitoo, on 01/29/2009, -0/+2Great 80s movie too.
- bbarker, on 01/31/2009, -0/+2I agree these might be worth it if they actually last 10 years. I notice that even the $50 Zetalux only has a 2 year warranty. Sounds like the company isn't very confident in the claimed life.
- deathcapt, on 01/29/2009, -2/+4Thank God, I HATE CFLs I HATE HATE HATE them, They are sooo ***** I don't understand how ppl are so ready to adopt them. The landlords @ my girlfriends apartment forced them on everyone but they forgot that half the bulbs were on dimmer switches, and they didn't replace the switches!!!! They're also cheap CFLs, and they hum, and start to flash!!! SOOO ***** DUMB!!! And CFLs use mercury which makes them hazardous if they break and difficult to dispose of! CFLs are also known to cause migraines because they really just flash @ 60hz and do not produce that warms constant light of an incandescent. I've always believed that LEDs were a much better alternative than CFLs. They're safer, more environmentally friendly, last longer, soon cheaper, and while less resistant to current/voltage flux, they are certainly more physically robust than CFLs. If we really wanted to save power, we should all just switch to wearing NVGs at night.
- inactive, on 01/30/2009, -0/+2They're not supplying much money for the Arts these days either.
- palmer, on 01/29/2009, -0/+2Given that lamp-bulb-sized housings probably contain arrays of these bad boys, you should be able to get some coarse adjustment by turning off groups of them.
- biotch, on 01/29/2009, -0/+2that doesnt make any sense.... the govt is quite capable of encouraging both the fluoros when they did and the LEDs should they actually be available in 5 years.
- stonewall123, on 01/29/2009, -0/+2True! Although the price tag seems high they easily pay for themselves over their lifetime (provided that they last for 10 years). Saving money on energy is like getting stock dividends. They are guaranteed.
- rif42, on 01/29/2009, -0/+2I bought an Isotronic LED spot bulb 2 years ago. It has 15 bluish-white LEDs inside and uses 1.5W, price was 10 EUR. It has very directional light, so outside a narrow beam it is not strong light. That light bulb is too weak to be a useful replacement for a reading light. However this is early market so new types surely will come.
At IFA 2008 exhibition in Berlin DE Toshiba demonstrated a LED light bulb prototype with omnidirectional light, but with an expected price well above 50 EUR per bulb. Great, but I will not buy that!
I am looking forward to see prices come down and lumen (power of light) go up, in the meantime I think CFLs do pretty well. In lumen per watt expect LED light to be about 2x better than CFL or about 8x better than incandescent light.
I found these LED bulb replacements on the market and likely will buy some to try:
http://www.elv.de/60-LEDs/x.aspx/cid_74/detail_1/d ... -
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