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.
Great assumption (Score:5, Funny)
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Aleph-one etc etc
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Or they never work at all.
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Assuming LEDs last 2.5 times as long as LEDs, we conclude that LEDs last infinitely long and there is nothing superior except for LEDs.
The study was commissioned by an LED manufacturer. In order to reach the desired result, they had to redefine 2.5 as the multiplicative identity. At least they're up front about it. ("Up front" being, in fact, quite important-- you don't want to see what they did to the associative property.)
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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:Great assumption (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed. Most street lights are sodium vapor (sometimes mercury) vapor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_vapor_lamp [wikipedia.org]
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We have used a CFL (not the spiral type, but the stright type, philips) for our outdoor light for the last two years. Its still going strong, and we live in unpredictable London (hot-ish in summer, fscking cold in winter)
Re:Great assumption (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Not to burst your bubble, but you know that LEDs are made from silicon and other semiconductors jut like MOSFETS and CPU's, right? They run at _very_ high temperatures - the max junction temperature of many MOSFETS can run as high as 175-200C!
This figure [ledsmagazine.com] shows a Vfwd vs temp graph of an LED junction temp of 120C.
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Re:Great assumption (Score:5, Informative)
[citation needed]
Sorry, it sounds like you're just resistant to change.
On the subject of outdoor lighting, I started using CFLs in outdoor lights 15 years ago, precisely because the incandescent ones lasted so little time (requiring a ladder to replace, and the associated falling-off-a-ladder risk). At that time, it was the only place I was using CFLs. Even then, they lasted several times longer than incandescent bulbs and used a lot less energy - they had no trouble getting their rated lifetime. At that point we lived in a part of a country that regularly falls well below freezing during the winter. Cold was never a problem. The very same heat you say will break the lamp soon gets the tube warm.
LEDs are expected to become more energy efficient than CFL, so the heat "problem" (which I've never observed) would be even less. LEDs would be absolutely perfect in refrigerators - less heat emitted into the refrigerator which means less work to do for the refrigeration machinery. Since I have built my own LED lighting units from components, I can tell you that (a) they don't have many and (b) no electrolytic capacitors either, and (c) the temperature never gets near exceeding the rated maximum on any of the components at least for 3W Lumiled cool white Luxeon Rebels. The circuit consists of a current regulating power supply (purpose made for LED lighting) - basically a small 5 pin IC, some ceramic chip capacitors, a sense resistor, an inductor, and a schottky diode. Electrolytic capacitors are inappropriate for this small switch mode power supply, their ESR is too high. The power supply circuit for two 3W Rebels is about the size of a postage stamp even on a home-etched PCB. With a factory made PCB you could probably make it half the size without much difficulty.
LEDs are very commonly used for bicycle headlamps, they have almost totally displaced filament lights. I have a 3W LED front light for my bike. It is a sealed, self contained unit complete with battery, about 50% larger than a D-cell battery in each dimension, and will last over an hour off a charge at full brightness. No overheating problems.
The dimming of CFLs as they get old and fail is a much more graceful failure mode than sudden complete failure by an incandescent. It gives you more warning the lamp needs replacing, and doesn't leave you grovelling in the dark trying to replace a bulb when it fails just when it's inconvenient.
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As others ha
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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 examp
Re:Great assumption (Score:4, Informative)
Oh please. First off, incandescents come in different color spectrums just like CFLs so just because the bulb is incadescent doesn't mean it's "good" light. Second, most of your time spent indoors is under flourescent light (work, restaurants, movie theaters) ergo shopping for work and night-time clothing is best done under flourescents.
You can get CFLs with a Power Factor of 90% or higher, so I call shenanagins. The capacative load increase of a CFL is completely negligible compared to the reduced active power consumption. I point to the fact my power utility is giving away CFLs by the dozen as evidence that power generation/distribution engineers find CFLs to be effective.
I have many CFLs in outdoor applications. I have a barn with 8 bulbs. The first year I put up 6 incandescents and 2 CFLs. My wife was afraid the CFLs wouldn't start up quickly enough so I put up 2 as a test.
In the first year 5 of the 6 incandescents died between our 100F summers and 20F winters. I replaced those 5 with CFLs that have continued to work for the last 2 years. Once my wife decided the CFLs provided good light in winter, I replaced that last incandescent.
Given that 3 of the bulbs are located 25ft off the ground, I really appreciate not having to change the bulbs annually.
I also replaced our two porch spotlights with outdoor CFLs. Yeah, they don't come up to full power immediately in cold weather but I upsized the bulbs. I went from 75W incandescents (950lumens) to 23W (1300 lumen) CFLs so I still have a hefty power savings and they start out almost as bright as the incandescents.
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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
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Sorry, but precisely the same reason is actually no reason at all. LEDs use a tiny amount of power, ergo there is very little heat produced. Now I will admit that if you put a CFL, an LED and an incandescent bulb in the same sealed and insulated enclosure and turned them all on that the CFL and LED might well fail before the incandescent. That's because the heat from the incandescent will fry the other 2. But what kinda idiot would design an experiment like that?
LEDs produce a lot less heat than incandescent lights for a given brightness, but they're really not efficient in terms of turning electrical energy into light energy. The best figures I can find are around 12% efficient (for as-yet-unreleased LED lighting giving 80 lumens per watt of input energy, and using the best-possible-case conversion of 680 lumens ~= 1 watt of radiant energy.
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To be honest, after having spent more than $400 in LED bulbs (that's not many bulbs trust me), most of them have died after a year or so. I'm talking about the bulbs, not the LEDs of course. I have no doubt they still have 25000 hours in stock, buit without the electronic to light them, it's very little use.
My blog on the subject [palmdrive.net] (in french...)
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Re:Great assumption (Score:4, Funny)
ME TOO!
Re:Great assumption (Score:4, Funny)
That divide by zero could mean undefined and could be infinity. This leads me to the startling conclusion that LEDs don't actually produce light, but actually consume darkness. There is a strange event-horizon inside of LEDs that prevents us from observing what's going on inside. On the inside, I postulate that the mechanism inside of the LEDs let's virtual pairs of "no-tons" and "anti-no-tons" form, orbit, collide, and destroy one another. This releases the occasional photon. There is virtually no heat from this, since no-tons, by nature, are incredibly low energy particles. This must happen at a tremendous rate for the "light output" they give. I am both amazed and slightly afraid of LEDs now that I know how they work. I only hope the manufacturers continue using this awesome ability for good. ...Silly article typos....
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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:4, Informative)
Electric heat? In the US at least, natural gas costs about 1/3 of what electricity does per rendered BTU. Many homes have natural gas heating for this purpose, and deriving heat from electricity could be seen as only contributing 1/3 cost efficiency when considered to be a heat source. Not to mention summer cooling costs; are you suggesting swapping out incandescents for CFLs during the summer months? Interesting theory, I look forward to some math on the subject.
Coefficient of Performance (Score:4, Informative)
Wikipedia says [wikipedia.org]: "When used for heating a building on a mild day, a typical air-source heat pump has a COP of 3 - 4, whereas a typical electric resistance heater has a COP of 1.0."
So, yes, contrary to popular belief, resistive heating is a terrible waste. Burning the coal in a potbelly stove would be a little better then burning it in a power plant to generate electricity to transmit (with losses) over power lines to heat a wire near your ceiling. But using it to drive a refrigeration cycle would be a far better use of the energy.
LED lighting vs. CFL question (Score:2, Interesting)
Does anyone know if LED lighting can save on power over CFL with the same output (lumens)?
I purchased some LED bulbs and they tend to be much more expensive and the savings (watt rating) is very negligible. What makes LED more attractive? Is it just the longer life time?
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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.
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LED technology is still progressing rapidly [wikipedia.org], so hopefully we will see LED bulbs that trounce CFL efficiency pretty soon.
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: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)
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Can we stop with dumbasses giving health advice?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_fluorescent_lamp#Broken_and_discarded_lamps [wikipedia.org]
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First generation CFLs contained a level of mercury that today would be considered excessive (25-50 mg / bulb), and the broken bulbs of early adopters are what spawned the big "EPA cleanup" panic with CFLs a couple of years ago. Since 2007, the mercury level in today's generation of CFLs (3mg) is "mostly harmless", i.e. broom-sweepable.
Individual Fluorescent Bulbs - About 60 percent of all fluorescent lamps sold in the U.S. in 2004 contained 10 mg of mercury or less. The remaining 40 percent contained more than 10 mg and up to 100 mg of mercury. Four-foot linear fluorescent lamps contained an average of 13.3 mg, with a high of 70 mg and a low of 2.5 mg. Compact fluorescents (CFLs) had the least amount of mercury per lamp in 2004; two-thirds of CFLs contained 5 mg of mercury or less, while 96 percent contained 10 mg or less. --Consumer and Commercial Products | Mercury | US EPA [epa.gov]
Oh for fucks sake (Score:3, Informative)
How can these "editors" screw up a single sentence? They're not even janitors.
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I'd say about 10, one to do it the first time and the other 9 for the dupes.
Summary fail (Score:3, Funny)
"LEDs last 2.5 times as long as LEDs"
yeah...
Whats TCO? (Score:2)
I know, I know, buzzword alert.
Whats the TCO?
$X for bulb
$Y per kwh (cite sources, current prices in what locale, projected prices)
Z lifetime
Q consumption rate
Google shows a few results from manufacturers press releases.
Another things to consider (Score:5, Interesting)
Is heat output. More or less, any energy that isn't becoming light is becoming heat. Now in some areas of the world, that matters little to none. However in hot climates, it does. An incandescent produces more heat which gets dumped in to the air in your house. You then have to run your AC more often. So you end up paying double for the power, in terms of using it and then eliminating the excess. That's one reason I rather like CFLs is that they heat up my place less. I live in the desert so that is a non-trivial thing.
Also, they can have a much more natural white point. I like the fact that you can get CFLs with a white around 6000, which is closer to what you get from the sun on a bright day. Just a much nicer quality of light. You do generally need to pay more to get higher quality ones with a better spectrum, but I'd say it is worth it.
Re:Another things to consider (Score:5, Informative)
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The efficiency of CFLs and LEDs is pretty much same, therefore they will put very closely same amount of heat.
CFLs may heat the base more (no experience), but overall there cannot be any difference.
I will eventually (Score:2)
Currently, all the LEDs I've found are too pricey. I have found some cheap ones, but I wasn't satisfied with the light output, or the light quality. I've found ones I liked quite a lot (Color Kinetics makes some fantastic units) but they are too expensive and often not designed for socket replacement.
I think in a few more years it'll probalby be something for me to do, but not just yet. I have to be pleased with the light output and quality, and I'm really not going to pay more than $100 per bulb, and reall
Professional light-bulb changer? (Score:5, Funny)
I am practically a professional light-bulb changer
So, how many of you does it take to... oh, never mind.
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So if you live in a cold climate, where heat and light are required simultaneously, then technically speaking the extra energy put into manufacturing more complex LEDs and CFLs makes them more energy inefficient than long life incandescent light fixtures as you are making use of the heat. Always a tricky question in warm climates, which is more energy efficient trying to cool the additional heat load of natural lighting ie. big windows, or making use of energy efficient LED's and sticking to highly insulat
Re:Another things to consider (Score:5, Funny)
I absolutely agree. In winter, instead of turning on your heat, you should just run your computer doing folding@home or whatever to try to put out enough heat to keep your place at a comfy temp. It's crazy to just put the electricity through a resistor when you could be getting CPU cycles out of it!!!
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Re:Another things to consider (Score:4, Informative)
I doubt they use incandescent bulbs. High-pressure discharge lamps such as mercury vapor or metal halide bulbs perhaps. These are far more efficient that incandescent bulbs, although not as efficient as LEDs. If they have a yellow color, they will be low-pressure sodium or high-pressure sodium.
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Don't forget the other way around: if you have electrical heating, there are little to no savings using compac
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Are you claiming that heat output only matters in warm climates? If you've ever been living in one of the northern countries you know that except for two months or so of the year, any extra heat sources in the home is a _good_ thing. Heat production is not wasted energy.
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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.
Re:No shit, sherlock. (Score:4, Informative)
I bought n-vision CFLs, which scored the highest in an objective, blind test done by popular mechanics a couple years ago. They were about $2 each with shipping, and have a 9 year warranty. So far, they've lived up to their promise : the light is almost EXACTLY like the light from an incandescent - low color temperature, lots of yellow, etc. They start up instantly, and of course use a fraction of the electricity.
Re:No shit, sherlock. (Score:5, Funny)
Personally, I'd never trust a lightbulb test done by the blind.
Re:No shit, sherlock. (Score:5, Informative)
Actually brand-name CFL's delivered to your door [ebay.com] are a little over $1 each.
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If you actually pay to have a single CFL delivered to your door, does that count against your carbon footprint?
Re:No shit, sherlock. (Score:4, Insightful)
Depends on how you were going to get yourself to the store otherwise.
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Hmmm.... Am I too late for the 4:30 autogyro?
Re:No shit, sherlock. (Score:5, Informative)
If you live in the UK don't buy CFLs. Phone your energy supplier and ask them how you can save electric. Mention you like the look of CFLs. They will send you a box for nothing. They will also send you one of these new-fangled LCD energy meters, if you ask. They just sent me enough roof insulation to cover the whole roof space, 270mm thick, for sixteen quid.
They have to do this. It is the law. A certain amount of profit has to be given away for energy saving measures. Everyone qualifies, not just new customers.
Yes, I work in the industry.
Eh (Score:5, Interesting)
Incandescent bulbs :
+ Cheap, we're used to the light
- terrible efficiency, short lifespan, fragile, sensitive to vibration, emit heat
CFLs :
+ much more efficient, very long lifespan
- not very dimmable, contain mercury, fragile, slow to start up in cold environs, reduced lifespan if toggled on and off
LEDs
+ extremely efficient, ridiculous lifespan (60,000 hours), almost bulletproof, can toggle on and off as much as you want, start up instantly in all environs, dimmable, no toxic materials. Basically almost perfect in every way.
- $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$. Current generation light spectra is too high a color temperature to mimic incandescents. Current generation packaging creates a narrow, focused cone of light.
Summary : LED will pwn all once the problems are solved, and the problems appear solvable. Problems with other light technologies are inherent to the technology itself and not solvable. Once LED is perfected, the other two technologies will be useless.
Re:Eh (Score:5, Interesting)
LEDs [...] no toxic materials
Gallium arsenide is a carcinogen, and arsenic is released when the crystal is exposed to water (after the LED light is thrown out and ends up in a landfill.) Manufacturing of semiconductors is producing poisonous waste, and it requires large amounts of energy.
Currently a 1W desk lamp (of which I happen to have two) uses about 30 LEDs. It is cool to the touch, but the light is mostly blue, and the intensity of the light is just enough to use it as a night light. I like these lamps for what I'm using them, but there is no way currently to replace the overhead lights with them, they are 100x too weak and 10x too expensive.
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these days, i wonder whats not a carcinogen...
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these days, i wonder whats not a carcinogen...
Probably not much besides CO2.
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Many LEDs are made out of toxic materials (like gallium aresenide). Neither they nor CFLs (which contain something like 4 mg of elemental mercury) present a significant hazard to the user.
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LEDs - $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.13442
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.24201
Price isn't such a limitation any more. Once we see true mass production it'll be sweet.
Incandescents have awful colour temp anyway.
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Halogens:
+ Cheap, we're used to the warm light, longish lifespan, resistant to power fluctuations, instant on, dimmable, non polluting, non toxic, can be used in recessed and enclosed fixtures.
- Bad efficiency (as opposed to terrible)
Halogens already solve all the main lighting problems except efficiency. But if you're in a cold climate the waste heat offsets the heating bill, raising their effective efficiency. I've never seen this factored into any analysis, but for instance if you compare a 20w CFL to
Re:Eh (Score:5, Interesting)
Read what I wrote : problems with current packaging. The reason they do that NOW is that LEDs are so expensive that it's not possible to put enough of them into a light bulb to match the total lumen output of a conventional bulb. So to make use of the limited light output, they leave the light focused in those narrow cones. Once LEDs get cheaper, they'll come packed with diverging lenses or diffusers to spread the light around.
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LEDs are great if all you need is task lighting. LEDs are highly directional, whereas CFLs and incandescents are not.
As was noted, this is due to the packaging used. It would be fairly trivial to avoid by not building a lens into the package and/or making high-power "bulbs" out of maybe 20 lower-power individual LEDs all arranged facing outwards in different directions. And probably enclosing the whole thing in a frosted plastic envelope, the way some incandescent lights have the envelope frosted.
Re:Eh (Score:4, Insightful)
Bu.. bu.. but... (Score:5, Insightful)
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i think while this report is bullcrap on how much of a saving you get from led's, in general it's right - there really isn't a reason to keep using incandescent bulbs anymore. I plan on building a new house next year and it'll be all led driven from a dedicated 12v circuit in my house that will run outdoor lighting as well as my bar fridge.
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I'm pretty sure 'greenies' refers to a much broader spectrum of people than the (admittedly nutty) people at Greenpeace...
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In this case the drawback is that they produce a light spectrum that makes you want to stab yourself in the eye after prolonged exposure.
I know, it's a small nit-pick. I'm probably just trying to justify my foregone decision to not change my "not stabbing myself in the eye" habit.
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Packaging large amounts of vacuum in incandescent lamps and CRTs increases the concentration of air we've got to breath if we're not living in a lamp or CRT.
Switching to these so-called green technologies could see us run out of air!!!
Easy Bake Ovens (Score:5, Funny)
Doesn't anyone ever think of the children? What about Easy Bake Ovens? Have you ever tried to bake a tiny little cake from the heat emitted by LED bulb? No adult, let alone child, has that sort of patience.
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I once blew up ten old style 20mA LEDs by mis configuring a bench top power supply. I got some heat out of the arrangement but you wouldn't want to eat the cake afterwards, or for that matter breathe the air.
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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.
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How exactly is a report by a semiconductor company, clearly for the purposes of promoting LED lights, the product of "the environmental movement"?
On another note, it's interesting that you manage to turn a single assumption (albeit a significant one) and turn that into "they didn't do any research". This might well be the case if all the information they came back with was the consequences of a the different lifetimes, but that's not the case. The primary product of the study -- which the summary, even, is
I haven't had great luck with CFLs (Score:2)
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I have not been very happy with them either. They do seem to burn out *years* before they should, often in the same timeframe or less then incandescent.
Worse, in small spaces, like a bathroom, two or more tend to get hot and off-gas (polyvinyl chloride base is my guess), and then when they do burn out they often get hotter still and turn brown or buzz.
Do I think the sky is falling? No, but this is not something I have great confidence in for a closed up for the winter household.
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I think I toggle them too often. My CFLs have always burnt out in a year or so, even in two very different houses in different parts of the country.
I've stopped buying them. I've got maybe two or three fixtures in the whole house where they'd make sense, and even those I want to be able to turn on for just a second or two a few times a day without worrying that I'm gonna kill the stupid CFLs.
Re:I haven't had great luck with CFLs (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah it seems like CFLs are a great example of YMMV.
I simultaneously replaced all lights in my home with CFLs three years ago. Good quality ones with a nice spectrum similar to old style incandescents (to my eye, at least).
Since then how many have failed? Only one.
I must say I'm quite impressed. Even the outdoor ones haven't died yet (exposed to a typical yearly temperature range of almost 50C). I wouldn't ever go back to incandescents ... and frankly LEDs look even better (less waste heat, potentially better spectrum and range of colours).
CFL life expectancy (Score:2)
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.
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I use a 4W LED spot as a reading light. I got it for about three bucks from geeks.com, and it is okay. It seems less flickery than CFL. It's not very bright, but it is pretty well-focused for a page. I can't tell you how you'd like it, though.
VU1 no mercury :) (Score:2)
No mercury, highly energy efficient, light quality identical to incandescent, not to expensive.
Why suffer if you break a light for some eco cult?
Wait for better tech and stay away from the lights of brain death.
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:Power factor? (Score:4, Informative)
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Or x is undefined (as in infinity) is also a solution.
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In theory, they last a lot longer. Well-built ones could even last more than the life of the owner.
However, LEDs are really sensitive to heat (even more than CFLs), and fixtures designed for incandescent bulbs often trap heat. A lot of manufacturers also build them fast and cheap, so expected lifetime can sometimes be measured in hours.
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Well-built ones could even last more than the life of the owner.
And what if the owner is Schrodinger's Cat?
fixtures [...] often trap heat.
But LED's don't even make enough heat to melt the snow off the traffic lights without added heating elements. google [google.com]
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You're thinking of the low-power versions. If you look at something higher-powered, such as a Cree XR-E, then yes - you will need decent heatsinking to prevent the LED from frying itself.
Your assumption is like talking about a P4 CPU, and assuming it has the same thermal requirements as a low-end ARM CPU. Without heatsinking, the P4 will melt in short order - but the ARM will be just fine.
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I wonder if that's why my experience with LED bulbs is so varying. Three bulb-style LED lamps we've had to replace effectively every month (and in a 3-lamp fixture, means 3 a
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The study uses the assumption that LEDs last 2.5 times as long as CFLs, and 25 times longer than incandescents.
The summary wording is incorrect on the frontpage of /., but correct on this page... scroll up and look.
Weird.
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Now it's been fixed on the frontpage, too.
Good to see the editors actually do something... :)
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.