Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

60W equivalent LED bulb uses 9.5W and costs $13

designingwithleds.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 189 posts

Re: 60W equivalent LED bulb uses 9.5W and costs $13

#51

Post by TylerE »

ssmoot wrote: post #44
driverdan wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lighting is a small fraction of your overall electricity usage. HVAC alone uses many times as much. While using efficient lighting is a good idea far too many people get hung up on it when there are better places to conserve.

Yes and No? I mean, my bill only goes up $20 in the summer to cool the house, and that's in a 35 year old home in Dallas. That's over 90 straight days of 110F temperatures last year. It's a new, pretty efficient HVAC unit though. Thankfully. First home I've had that didn't struggle to maintain 76F indoors during the hottest part of the day. Still, there's not a ton you can do around the house as cheap as replacing th…

Maintain 76? 76 is borderline torture.

Re: 60W equivalent LED bulb uses 9.5W and costs $13

#52

Post by mikeash »

jcampbell1 wrote: post #39
mikeash wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make sure to state what price you're assuming for electricity when making these claims. The cost of electricity in the US can vary by a factor of 3-4 depending on where you live. I'm sure it's worthwhile for any heavily-used light even in very cheap areas, but the specific breakeven time will vary quite a bit.

You also have to make an assumption about the typical weather. The waste heat offsets heating costs in cold climates, but in hot climates, you must also burn additional electricity to pump the waste heat outside. My estimate is that a 50W bulb efficiency improvement results in a saving between 30W-70W depending on the climate. If you live in Iceland, the payback is probably never. If you live in Singapore, you will r…

That's an interesting point. Reminds me of when a Wisconsin city replaced all of their stoplights with LEDs, then discovered come winter that the new bulbs wouldn't melt snow like the old ones did, requiring a lot of manual cleaning to remain visible.

I'm not sure how much of a difference it's likely to make, though. Houses in cold climates usually use more efficient heating systems, so the heat from a light bulb will be pretty costly by comparison. With a 50W savings, the cost for additional heating to make up for that will probably only be equivalent to about 10W of electricity, or less, depending on your setup.

Air conditioning is usually pretty efficient, with efficiencies better than 10 (10W of heat removed for 1W of electricity used). So that 50W savings will still be 55W or less when taking air conditioning into account.

Re: 60W equivalent LED bulb uses 9.5W and costs $13

#53

Post by mikeash »

TylerE wrote: post #51
ssmoot wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and No? I mean, my bill only goes up $20 in the summer to cool the house, and that's in a 35 year old home in Dallas. That's over 90 straight days of 110F temperatures last year. It's a new, pretty efficient HVAC unit though. Thankfully. First home I've had that didn't struggle to maintain 76F indoors during the hottest part of the day. Still, there's not a ton you can do around the house as cheap as replacing th…

Maintain 76? 76 is borderline torture.

To each his own. I'm comfortable at 76, which is good, because my family will complain about being cold. (They're happy at 70 in the winter, though... go figure.)

Re: 60W equivalent LED bulb uses 9.5W and costs $13

#55

Post by othello »

scurvy wrote: post #49
othello wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is actually a common misconception: in the US (as in most OECD countries), households consume slightly more energy than the industry. As a case in point, in 2009, industry consumed 256 million tons of oil equivalent, versus 262 mtoe for the residential sector (ie households). http://www.iea.org/stats/balancetable.asp?COUNTRY_CODE=US

Most energy consumption in the US goes towards heating and cooling, not illumination. Making your house more energy efficient starts with your windows and doors, not your lightbulbs.

Obviously, that's right. I was just pointing out that in the aggregate, improvements to energy efficiency in the residential sector are not a "tiny, tiny drop" vis-a-vis industry as the GP was implying.

And it's also true that residential lighting is not a big energy consumer, even though it still represents close to 10% of US electricity use (not of overall energy use, of course).

http://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication...

Re: 60W equivalent LED bulb uses 9.5W and costs $13

#56

Post by protomyth »

As a side note, there is an fxguidetv[1] episode[2] where they talk to Dedo Weigert about LEDs. It is a very interesting interview that talks about some LED myths and color temperature.

1) http://www.fxguide.com/fxguidetv

2) http://www.fxguide.com/fxguidetv/fxguidetv-170-dedo-on-dedol...

Re: 60W equivalent LED bulb uses 9.5W and costs $13

#57

Post by qompiler »

ck2 wrote: post #20

We talked about this a month or two ago here. The amazing part of this bulb is not it's watts or it's cost. It's that a manufacturer finally put it's warranty where it's mouth is. With a 10 year warranty I will actually buy it compared to the Phillips. BTW I've yet to have a cheap chinese led 110v bulb last more than 3 years.

Until your LED bulb starts making a strange noise and you discover these things actually have a cooling fan inside of them. This thing WILL fail if kept running for a long time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5avJVvrFedc

Re: 60W equivalent LED bulb uses 9.5W and costs $13

#58

Post by Lagged2Death »

othello wrote: post #34
nakedrobot2 wrote: post #2

This is excellent. However, please do not say "this is enough for me" after you replace all your incandescent light bulbs with these. Household energy consumption is a tiny, tiny drop in the bucket compared to industrical energy consumption and shipping.

This is actually a common misconception: in the US (as in most OECD countries), households consume slightly more energy than the industry. As a case in point, in 2009, industry consumed 256 million tons of oil equivalent, versus 262 mtoe for the residential sector (ie households). http://www.iea.org/stats/balancetable.asp?COUNTRY_CODE=US

That's a difficult chart for an outsider to interpret. How are there electricity exports if there is no electricity production? How do they count "industry" and "residential?"

In any case, I'll note that the "residential" line does indeed read 262 mtoe but the "production" line at the top is 1,686 mtoe, leaving the "residential" category consuming something like 15% of total production.

Most novices and outsiders would probably be content to count non-residential energy use as "industrial," even if that doesn't match the IEA's more detailed classification. Especially energy-intensive commercial activities that I imagine must make up the "transport" category (like aviation, trucking, railroads, and shipping).

Re: 60W equivalent LED bulb uses 9.5W and costs $13

#59

Post by natch »

Surprised that site has not done a teardown of the (more expensive) Phillips bulbs that have similar specs. They've been around longer and are the ugly oddly shaped yellow plastic ones. Mine have a bit of a buzzing sound when dimmed, even though the packaging claims this won't happen... am thinking of moving to Crees but it would be nice to see a comparison of the innards.

Re: 60W equivalent LED bulb uses 9.5W and costs $13

#60

Post by natch »

Nursie wrote: post #33
tocomment wrote: post #25

I'd be pretty happy to get away from compact fluorescencts. They're filled with mercury gas (I think). It's bad news if you break one and inhale it. And I'm not sure what happens to the mercury when you dispose of them either. Edit: For you downvoters out there, it is considered a serious risk. Here's another article about the problems: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7431198

It's no big deal. www.popularmechanics.com/home/reviews/news/4217864 If you make a habit of breaking them open near your face and inhaling the gas, you probably have bigger problems. I've read that the actual average mercury exposure from a broken CFL is less than 10% of the mercury exposure from a serving of tuna.

I had upwards of 20 CFL light bulbs in my house and over time I noticed that they typically were cracking at the base, thereby leaking whatever was in them, after a few years of use. After you replace 20 with 20 more, and repeat a few times, the numbers start to add up. I decided to get rid of them. And I don't eat tuna.
Post reply on HN