tl;dr -- anyone have a link to the LED in the picture? it looks cool.
LED Bulbs Save Substantial Energy
11–20 of 49 posts
Re: LED Bulbs Save Substantial Energy
#12I recently replaced a bunch of 50W of Halogen lamps (came with the apartment) with 1W LEDs. It's quite a bit darker, but I got used to having more directed light. My energy bill dropped by about 70% without any other changes. It's interesting how quickly lighting costs can run up.
Re: LED Bulbs Save Substantial Energy
#13We have a kitchen which contains about 7 small spotlights. I thought I'd try out some LED replacements, which each contain like 10 small white LEDs. They were more expensive, but I thought it'd be worth a try. A bit like these http://nextday.diy.com/app/jsp/product/productPage.jsp?produ... The issue is, they look bright when you look at them, but they actually provide absolutely no actual light. Even when we had 7 of…
Even the expensive $200 LED light that would go in my kitchen is only 750 lumens. http://www.bulbs.com/eSpec.aspx?ID=15695&Ref=LED+Bulbs&#...
The halogens are $7 and 1280 lumens. No contest really. Especially when I have 6 of them.
Re: LED Bulbs Save Substantial Energy
#14I recently replaced a bunch of 50W of Halogen lamps (came with the apartment) with 1W LEDs. It's quite a bit darker, but I got used to having more directed light. My energy bill dropped by about 70% without any other changes. It's interesting how quickly lighting costs can run up.
Can I ask what your costs were? How long do you estimate it will take to recoup your capital costs?
Re: LED Bulbs Save Substantial Energy
#15No registration link
Re: LED Bulbs Save Substantial Energy
#16Incandescents approximate sunlight better than LED's and most other light sources.
http://exploration.vanderbilt.edu/images/news/article_main/q...
The health implications should be studied. Subjectively, incandescents are more pleasant than fluorescents and LED's. Our brains might be telling us something.
Re: LED Bulbs Save Substantial Energy
#17We have a kitchen which contains about 7 small spotlights. I thought I'd try out some LED replacements, which each contain like 10 small white LEDs. They were more expensive, but I thought it'd be worth a try. A bit like these http://nextday.diy.com/app/jsp/product/productPage.jsp?produ... The issue is, they look bright when you look at them, but they actually provide absolutely no actual light. Even when we had 7 of…
What I've noticed in looking at LED bulbs is that the packaging never lists an "equivalent wattage", the way CFLs will say something like "13W (equivalent to 60W incandescent)". They also are often labeled "accent bulbs".
Re: LED Bulbs Save Substantial Energy
#18We have a kitchen which contains about 7 small spotlights. I thought I'd try out some LED replacements, which each contain like 10 small white LEDs. They were more expensive, but I thought it'd be worth a try. A bit like these http://nextday.diy.com/app/jsp/product/productPage.jsp?produ... The issue is, they look bright when you look at them, but they actually provide absolutely no actual light. Even when we had 7 of…
I have only been following LED indoor lighting as a non-participant, but from what I've read, you need to stick with name-brand at this point.
Cree has popped up a number of times in technical articles as a leader in white LEDs. Their product focus is on recessed lighting:
http://www.creeledlighting.com/residential.htm
The photo in the NY Times article is of Philips' entry into the L Prize. Time Magazine has a short blurb on the bulb, albeit light on information (pun not intended):
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1...
My best guess is that 2010 will be a good year to start dipping your toes in LED lights for around the house. If I owned my own house, I would probably get the Cree recessed lights today. I enjoy a well lit house, and turning lights on and off to save energy annoys me. I welcome the day that I have my own solar panels, LED lights, and solar tube lighting.
Re: LED Bulbs Save Substantial Energy
#19Now they just need to come down in price and get the spectrum right. While the fluorescent lights are already competitively priced, LED ones are still rather pricey, at about €15-20. The spectrum emitted by the pseudo-white LEDs is also unpleasant (primarily yellow + blue), the RGB ones need to become cheap enough. RGB lamps could also have some interesting extra features, like adjusting hue based on time of day, whi…
Or even RGB LED lighting that can plug into an Arduino, so you could make that yourself. Or, I suppose, in the vein of a plant that twitters about its thirst, a bot that performs sentiment analysis on your tweets and adjusts the light accordingly.
We've done the RGB led --> Arduino --> Internet trick.
This link will let you change the light color in the steering house of a barge in the Copenhagen harbour owned and run by artists and hackers. http://liljedahl.dk/christian/illutron/picker/
And this one lets you see how much power is currently being used on the barge. http://illutron.appspot.com/PowerGauge.html
Were planning on doing more with this. Throw me an e-mail if anybody wants to play :-)
Re: LED Bulbs Save Substantial Energy
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most of the older LED spotlights are highly directional. Like, very highly. I suspect your bulbs did an excellent job of lighting one little spot on the floor beneath (or wall opposite) the light, and almost nothing to illuminate the whole room. Anyway, they've come a long way since then. Probably not long enough to buy them next time you change your bulbs, but they're a lot better than they used to be.
I bought these earlier this year :/ Maybe I'll give them another go in a few years.
Well, nobody was buying the ones from a few years ago, so most of them are still on the market.