Lifecycle Energy Costs of LED, CFL Bulbs Calculated 400
necro81 writes "The NY Times is reporting on a new study from Osram, a German lighting manufacturer, which has calculated the total lifecycle energy costs of three lightbulb technologies and found that both LEDs and CFLs use approximately 20% of the energy of incandescents over their lifetimes. While it is well known that the newer lighting technologies use a fraction of the energy of incandescents to produce the same amount of light, it has not been proven whether higher manufacturing energy costs kept the new lighting from offering a net gain. The study found that the manufacturing and distribution energy costs of all lightbulb technologies are only about 2% of their total lifetime energy cost — a tiny fraction of the energy used to produce light." The study uses the assumption that LEDs last 2.5 times longer than CFLs, and 25 times longer than incandescents.
Re:Zero (Score:1, Insightful)
This is also true for extremely small values of 2.5
No shit, sherlock. (Score:3, Insightful)
While it is well known that the newer lighting technologies use a fraction of the energy of incandescents to produce the same amount of light, it has been unproven whether higher manufacturing energy costs kept the new lighting from offering a net gain. The study found that the manufacturing and distribution energy costs of all lightbulb technologies are only about 2% of their total lifetime energy cost — a tiny fraction of the energy used to produce light.
A CFL costs maybe $5 each (if you buy a pack with more than one), including the retail markup, and saves maybe $40/year in electricity for supposedly 7+ years. I know manufacturers probably get their energy a bit cheaper than home electric rates, but it can't possibly be the 56+ times cheaper that it would take for the $5 to cover more energy than the $40*7 saved does.
Bu.. bu.. but... (Score:5, Insightful)
The study is bullshit (Score:2, Insightful)
"The study uses the assumption that LEDs last 2.5 times longer than CFLs, and 25 times longer than incandescents."
So...
They made it all up.
They /guessed/.
They didn't do any research, and didn't actually study anything, they just invented some numbers, then played with them.
No wonder so many people think so poorly of the environmental movement, if garbage like this gets any sort of positive press at all.
Re:LED lighting vs. CFL question (Score:5, Insightful)
Because with LEDs you only make the part of the spectrum that the tomatoes growing in the closet use.
Seriously it's the longer life.
Especially the increased on/off cycles, which is what kills almost all CFLs before their time.
What did the study say about..... (Score:2, Insightful)
....the fact that you can't freaking READ by the damn lights. CFL == Crappy Fscking Light. I wish it weren't true, but I've tried dozens of brands, and even the ones that make me most happy are only good for general purpose hallway lights and such. I hate putting them in anywhere I have to read. For as bright as they seem to be, they are so narrow in spectrum as to be sort of lacking in their ability to illuminate.
So far, no experience with LED's on this subject.
Re:Zero (Score:1, Insightful)
Infinity isn't a number.
Even as x tends towards infinity, 2.5x=x is false for all values of x but zero.
Re:No shit, sherlock. (Score:4, Insightful)
Depends on how you were going to get yourself to the store otherwise.
Re:LED lighting vs. CFL question (Score:4, Insightful)
1) You won't need a hazmat team to clean up when one breaks
Can we stop with this already? Unless you start licking the floor where you dropped the bulb, it's not a problem. And if you DO start licking the floor when dropping a bulb, you deserve whatever happens to you (which, in all likelihood, is just going to be a lot of glass shards in your tongue)
Re:Legislation (Score:4, Insightful)
Incandescents are already 'banned' in many areas of the world (including where I live). That is to say, stores aren't allowed to sell new ones anymore (existing ones that are still going are OK obviously). The exception to this is weird form-factor lights that they don't mass-produce CFLs for (e.g. those little ones you put into bedside tables). But for standard overhead light fittings, incandescents have already gone the way of the dodo here.
Even factoring in the impact of recycling, their total lifecycle environmental impact is considerably less than incandescents. Many vendors that sell CFLs (e.g. hardware stores) also accept back dead ones. And if not, I just pop the dead ones in a box in the back of the car and take them to the dump next time I'm in that area anyway, so the 'extra' travel is minimal. For me at least, it's worth it. My electricity bills are at least $100/year less after moving to CFLs, and they produce less waste heat (which matters to me as I don't have AC!)
LEDs will be better though of course. They should be trashable just like incandescents were, while retaining the energy savings of CFLs.
Re:Eh (Score:4, Insightful)
Pimping LEDs (Score:5, Insightful)
That study as reported in the details didn't show significant difference between overall LED and CFL efficiencies. But the article consistently pushed LEDs. The headline mentioned only LEDs; LEDs were mentioned every time continuing advances were touted, the mercury in CFLs were pointed out (but not the toxic byproducts unique to LED production). The article's picture shows LEDs, not CFLs.
Yet LEDs don't really compete with CFLs yet. The article does mention that even a 60W incandescent equivalent is just experimental in LEDs, though CFLs have brightnesses at all levels even far past equivalence to 100W incandescents. Meanwhile, LEDs still generally aren't as efficient as their equivalent brightness CFLs. And LEDs' extra inefficiency puts heat into rooms that then require extra cooling, which consumes more energy.
LEDs are probably going to outperform CFLs. Their colors will be better than CFLs, their efficiencies probably better than double CFLs. They're smaller, probably able to be less toxic to produce and discard. Their DC power offers better efficiency direct from solar power (or its battery storage) than AC CFLs can get. But not yet. This article makes LEDs seem better than CFLs, but they're not now. It's marketing disguised as reporting. Probably the lack of numbers in an article about engineering performance should be the tipoff.
Power factor? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Great assumption (Score:1, Insightful)
The problem with all these calculations is that they're crap, and not just because they didn't factor in breakage. That's just the tip of the iceberg.
They forgot to take into account that the lumen is in many ways a subjective measurement when different light types are involved, as any true measurement of brightness perception must necessarily depend not only on the light source, but also on the environment around it. First, different people's eyes may perceive light differently, so there is no one true measure of how bright people perceive a light source when it is at a particular frequency. Second, if I am trying to look at something whose colors happen to fall between the characteristic wavelengths of the phosphors in a fluorescent bulb, it can take several times as many lumens to achieve the same perceived brightness as with a continuous spectrum. This is why I'm always horrified by stores selling clothing under fluorescent light. It's complete fiction in terms of color perception.
They also failed to take into account the fact that CFLs become dramatically dimmer before they fail, unlike modern incandescent blubs. If you care at all about the amount of light, count on having to either swap bulbs out at a faster rate (thus increasing the up-front cost) or turning on more lights than you otherwise would (thus increasing the energy cost). Thus, it is likely that if you look at all the factors involved, CFLs are not significantly more energy efficient than incandescent bulbs, all while producing light that is less pleasing, causing headaches, depression, and other negative health effects, and costing a heck of a lot more. Divide this by the power factor to find out the actual load on the power grid, and you may well find that incandescents are actually more efficient, depending on the circumstances.
But by far, the biggest problem with these studies is that they universally fail to take into account all the places where neither CFL nor LED bulbs can be used at all. Start with outdoor lighting. Outdoor lights, by their very nature, must be sealed. CFLs contain lots of electronic components, including electrolytic capacitors. In a sealed enclosure, these parts can heat up beyond the thermal limits of their components within minutes. Therefore, for outdoor use, you should not use CFLs, period. (Yes, some manufacturers claim that their bulbs can be used outdoors in certain circumstances, but if you install them, be aware that the bulbs will fail much, much sooner than their rated lifespan would suggest, and if it is cold out, you should expect to have no light at all; in short, unless you life in California or Oregon, you shouldn't seriously consider CFLs as a viable outdoor light source.)
LED lamps will almost certainly have the same thermal failure problems for precisely the same reason. Electronic circuits are simply not designed to operate at such high temperatures, and when you try to use them that way, they will fail much, much sooner than they ordinarily would. This use can make incandescent bulbs seem positively cheap by comparison.
Likewise, ovens, refrigerators, etc. cannot use any of these types of lights because fluorescent tubes are highly sensitive to temperature extremes and LEDs are AFAIK always made of plastic and would melt. Perhaps somebody could design one with a solid glass lens, but even still, I doubt they would survive the temperature swings of an oven for very long.
http://sound.westhost.com/articles/incandescent.htm [westhost.com] gives a great explanation of pretty much everything wrong with these sorts of "studies". I'm pretty fed up with the same tired B.S. arguments being trotted out by manufacturers to try to convince people to buy CFLs and LED lights. They look ugly, their light is ugly, and they have a high up-front cost. I'd rather wait for some of these new incandescent bulb technologies to exceed the efficiency targets instead.
Re:Great assumption (Score:5, Insightful)
Start with outdoor lighting. Outdoor lights, by their very nature, must be sealed. CFLs contain lots of electronic components, including electrolytic capacitors. In a sealed enclosure, these parts can heat up beyond the thermal limits of their components within minutes. Therefore, for outdoor use, you should not use CFLs, period.
Don't be ridiculous. Most street lights aren't incandescents. Most streets are outdoor.
I'm pretty fed up with the same tired B.S. arguments being trotted out by manufacturers to try to convince people to buy CFLs and LED lights.
I think it's clear where the B.S. is.
Re:LED lighting vs. CFL question (Score:4, Insightful)
That has been my experience as well.
I will probably buy $100 worth of incandescents and store them in my attic, once they start rattling their sabres about banning them in my state. I don't MIND CFLs, but they aren't yet up to the quality of incandescents... and their other virtues aren't great enough to make up for the lacking quality of light. I sometimes work on art; CFLs just don't cut it. Anything with severe spectrum peaks fouls up colors.
Re:LED lighting vs. CFL question (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:LED lighting vs. CFL question (Score:1, Insightful)
Yeah, my dropped CFL isn't much of a problem with it's ~5mg of mercury. The tens or hundreds of thousands that can be broken in a region releasing kilograms of mercury can be a problem.
The extra trucks on the roads being used to collect the CFL's for recycling consume and pollute too. I wonder if that got figured into this study?
Re:Great assumption (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you aware that heat rises? Do you spend a lot of time sitting on your ceiling?
It's all very well to make heat, but it's pointless to be making it where it's not needed. That's not in any way efficient.
Re:Great assumption (Score:3, Insightful)
I am a lighting engineer...
LED lamps are used all the time in aviation, where they are certified for high humidity, immersion, salt spray, and temperature extremes. It is commonplace to seal them and use conductive heat sinks to dissipate the internal heat. Thermal failure problems are well understood and well mitigated.
CFL fixtures can also be easily protected. It is all about using the right lamp type for the right job, no one is claiming that a CFL is the best for commercial street lighting, for example, where sodium lamps offer superior benefits, and especially not in an oven!
With regards to color vs energy, CFLs and white LEDs use a phoshpor to reradiate a broader color spectrum. The efficacy losses due to light outside of your visual spectrum are a very small fraction of the total output. While your comments with regard to color quality vs aesthetics are important, you assumptions about color vs efficacy are more or less false.
And one more aside, I'm even using standard spiral CFLs in my outdoor porch and carport now exposed to rain and weather, with no problems. They've lasted over 2 years now.
Re:Great assumption (Score:3, Insightful)
What a load of mindless FUD.
Color of light can cause differences in how light is perceived, particularly if you buy old/cheap CFL's. This used to be a major issue to me. Now I use CFL's in most of my house, and in most places there is no perceivable difference; in part because the newer bulbs are more natural, and in part because different is not the same as inferior.
You refer to incandescants as "full-spectrum"; this is misleading, as if there were one magically "correct" color that light should be. In fact, there are many types of incandescant with different light characteristics, just as there are with modern CFL.
I don't know what your comment about buying clothes has to do with anything. Large stores have had consumers shopping under flourescant light for decades. A small shop with incandescant lights is an exception, not the rule. Store light quality is typically at least as poor as even the cheap CFL's, and until recently they had the added "bonus" of perceivable flicker.
You talk about how "likely" you think it is that the dimming of bulbs befoer failure would change the equation, but you offer no numbers at all. None of the CFL's I've used has dimmed yet, and they've already lasted much longer than an incandescant. Long enough to save me money over the bulb's lifetime, and that's a key point. TFA claims it was previously unknown whether CFL's had lower lifecycle energy costs, but that's only true if you either (1) have not compared the lifecycle costs to the consumer, or (2) assume (incorrectly) that someone is subsidizing the up-front energy costs of CFL's.
You meantion negative health effects; citation needed.
You mention power factor, but you're clearly counting on your readers not knowing what that means. It's also clear from how you used it that you don't know what it means. (A power factor of .5 does not mean that the grid delivers twice as much energy, as you imply. If you think it does, please feel free to explain where that extra energy goes. You have heard of thermodynamics, right? That said, there would be a slight loss of system efficiency due to power factor, if not for the fact that power companies can and do balance the power factor out as it otherwise would cost them money.)
As for where you can't use CFL's:
Start with outdoor lights. I use CFL's in several. Some are even in my garage rafters, where they get hotter than if they were truly outside. They've all survived a St. Louis summer; not one has overheated. They've also survivied a St. Louis winter; I still got light out of them.
Even if all of the special-purpose applications where you claim CFL's won't work, were really applications where CFL's won't work, that would accuont for a tiny fraction of the lighting needs of the average consumer; if that's "by far, the biggest problem" you can come up with, then you're basically admitting there's no significant problem to speak of.
Re:Great assumption (Score:3, Insightful)