Slashdot Mirror
Panasonic's New LED Bulbs Shine For 19 Years
Mike writes "As lighting manufacturers phase out the incandescent bulb, and CFLs look set to define the future of lighting, Panasonic recently unveiled a remarkable 60-watt household LED bulb that they claim can last up to 19 years (if used 5-1/2 hours a day). With a lifespan 40 times longer than their incandescent counterparts, Panasonic's new EverLed bulbs are the most efficient LEDs ever to be produced. They are set to debut in Japan on October 21st. Let's hope that as the technology is refined their significant cost barrier will drop — $40 still seems pretty pricey for a light bulb, even one that promises to save $23 a year in energy costs."
$40 still seems pretty pricey for a light bulb,
one that saves 23$ a year, which lasts a whopping 19 years ? yup, some people are stupid.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
That's 38,143 hours. Not great for LEDs, actually. Most newer white LEDs are rated for 50k to 100k hours.
I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
I hope they put a capacitor in there with a bridge rectifier instead of just ignoring half of the 50/60 Hz cycle.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
The LED lights I've seen are too directed. They don't light up a room all that well. Whatever spot the LEDs are aimed at is more illuminated, and everywhere else less illuminated than with CFLs or incandescents.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
till you break them and contaminate the room in mercury. Professional remediation is about $3000.
You forgot to finish your thought with "if you compeletely and unjustifiably overreact.
Panasonic recently unveiled a remarkable 60-watt household LED bulb that they claim can last up to 19 years
TFA
The bulbs use only an eighth the power of incandescents. That means a 60-watt-equivalent LED bulb would cost only 300 yen (about $3) a year instead of 2,380 yen ($25.80)--a significant savings over a lifetime.
The box pictured on the right has "6.9w", which if as good as a 60 watt incandescent, is probably only a watt or two better than the equivalent CFL.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of cats. MEOW!!
My main problem with LEDs that I have seen is that their light is to cold and white. It hurts my eyes and causes migraines. I didn't see a temperature quoted in the article.
$3000 se ms a lit le high to me too. I pai ted a gar ge once and fou d some merc ry rol ing arou d on the floor as I was pres ure wash ng. I just sco ped it up with a du tpan and put it in a jar. I'm perf ctly fine, it's not like I'm dead or hand ca ped or anyth ng now.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
$40 still seems pretty pricey for a light bulb, even one that promises to save $23 a year in energy costs
You must be an accountant living on the outdated system of monthly and quarterly figures.
To have an amortisation within 2 years and outright profit for 17 years afterwards sounds like a pretty damn good investment.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
So incandescent bulbs are a bad thing in most of the world for about a third of the year (summer) and in some of the world most of the year. If you happen to be running air-conditioning at the same time as an incandescent bulb, you're just pumping money out of the window.
Not to mention the fact that having a heat source 6 inches from your ceiling is generally not the most efficient way to heat a room. It makes far more sense to save the energy wasted from the bulb, and spend it in an efficient central heating system instead, where strategically placed radiators and vents can put the heat where it's actually needed.
I was talking to the facilities manager at the local University... about cost to replace bulbs in some of his buildings.. In some cases it is literally in the many tens of thousands of dollars range. They have to bring scaffolding in with a small crew to erect and move around. (Doors too small for a lift.)
He would be more than happy to pay $42/bulb IFF it meant he didn't have to go back in for two decades.
The problem is the weight. They're made of led.
The mercury release caused by burning coal (burning coal releases quite a bit of mercury into the air) to produce the extra energy to run an incandescent for a year is more than the mercury contained in one CF.
Should CFs be disposed of properly? Yes.
Is one broken CF a hazmat issue? No.
Because in 18 years a bunch of heavy-set guys in Panasonic overalls will come around and make sure your Philips bulb has a little "accident".
Blank until
But how dim they get over time? It's pretty pointless to have a LED light that lasts 19 years, if the light gets so dim after few years that it is practically unusable.
"Mercury concentration in the study room air often exceeds the Maine Ambient Air Guideline (MAAG) of 300 nanograms per cubic meter (ng/m3) for some period of time, with short excursions over 25,000 ng/m3, sometimes over 50,000 ng/m3, and possibly over 100,000 ng/m3 from the breakage of a single compact fluorescent lamp. "
study
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
The main issues to look for with LEDs is some of the cheaper ones give out a horrible ghostly white light. The box should say what colour temperature they output, and the best ones output 3200K warm white light similar to traditional incandescents. You wouldn't even know its an LED unless you stared at it. The other issue is only some bulbs work with dimmer switches, but there are models which do that too.
The case for LEDs in other kinds of fixtures is probably less clear cut. LEDs are fairly directional so they probably require some refractive covering to be useful in hang down bulbs. But in the meantime there are plenty of CFL solutions which again save a lot more than traditional incandescents. I really don't see why anyone would bother with incandescent bulbs unless they are ignorant of how much money they're losing or they have have highly specific needs that other kinds of bulbs do not provide.
Nope, in the mythbusters test the only bulb that lasted a month was the LED (see 14:00 here).
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Canceled out? Please review how subtraction works. You mean reduced, not cancelled.
If you replace your incandescents by CFL's or LED's you'll produce less heat from your lighting, so in winter you'll need to run the heater more. However the total electricity use will be the same.
In summer (summer being defined as the months, weeks or days the heating is not being run) the heat from the incandescent will be wasted, and if you have air conditioning will make your air conditioning run harder.
Things will get better if you dump your electric heaters. They are expensive and there are shitloads of better systems available.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
I live in a high energy efficiency property in the UK as well, we moved to energy efficient bulbs around 18 months ago and have noticed a sufficient decrease in energy use to believe it was worthwhile.
Obviously I don't know nearly enough about your situation to advise you, but I am not persuaded that heat produced due to inefficiency of lightbulbs or other devices is an economical source of heating.
The things contain a switch mode power supply, like just about every small mains powered device nowadays. The SMPS converts input to a current output for LEDs, which is what they need for best efficiency. It does this on both halves of the AC cycle. This added complexity contributes to the cost, but not as much as you might think.
Early LED bulbs that ran off cheap transformers used for SELV lighting used series resistors, but the current is very variable and they are, basically, crap. They got away with it because big arrays of cheap LEDs were used. A long term solution really needs not more than two or three high power LEDs in an envelope, because this helps to drive down cost. But this requires an advanced power supply.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Agreed, also why that whole led zeppelin idea never took off.
Your gas central heating is a much cheaper way to heat your house compared to incandescent bulbs.
Electricity is about 10-14p/kWh, and gas about 3p/kWh. Even with old heating it's still cheaper; my new condensing boiler is 85% efficient and was probably quite cheap (I rent, and everything else in the flat looks cheap), yours may well be even better.
I agree extra insulation is much more useful though. I'd like to see the government take the Green Party's economy-stimulation suggestion up: subsidise adding insulation to houses. Some incentive for landlords to add insulation would be good too, but I think this might happen with the home rating thing.
Wah? You're losing me here.
Using silly made up numbers, assuming conservation of energy and double entry book-keeping:
With incandescents in winter:
In winter your heating bill is, say, $100.
Your lighting bill is, say, $100. $90 of that is heat, $10 is light.
So your electricity bill is $200, $190 for heat and $10 for light.
With CFL or LED or whatever in winter:
Your heating bill is now $190 ('cos the CFL/LED is not giving you the heat it used to)
Your lighting bill is now $10.
So your electricity bill is $200, $190 for heat and $10 for light.
In summer, with incandescents, your lighting bill is $100 and your air conditioning bill is $190.
In summer with CFL/LED's your lighting bill is $10 and your air conditioning bill is $100.
Like I said, silly made up numbers, and you can possibly correctly claim:
But that has nothing to do with your initial claim that the heating effect of incandescent bulbs in winter canceled out their electricity savings all year round.
Wah? You said you had electric heat! Is electricity cheaper than fuel oil in New England?
But it's so easy to get a low rate loan to buy, and property is such a great investment!
Watch this Heartland Institute video
You forgot to finish your thought with "if you compeletely and unjustifiably overreact.
That's pretty much what businesses and schools do in our litigious age. A local school in my area was recently closed for two days over an old barometer that got dropped in one of the science classrooms. They brought in a professional cleanup crew and spent $80,000 to have the mercury spill cleaned up.
Now I can understand closing off the classroom where the spill happened but closing the whole school seems rather excessive to me. $80,000 for cleanup seems really excessive. But that's what they have to do in this day and age. Otherwise some parent would freak out ("OMG, you mean my kid was within a quarter mile of spilled mercury?! I read someone that stuff is as dangerous as Dihydrogen Monoxide!") and they'd be writing that $80,000 check to a law firm instead of a cleanup crew.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Except that if you're using a heat pump vs resistance heating, the unit's SEER value comes into play. My units are SEER 13, so every unit of energy it takes to run the beast pumps 13 units of heat around.
So using incandescent lights for heat actually wastes money - that Watt going into the bulb could be used to provide 13 Watts of heat instead of just 1 (0.9, actually).
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
This assumes that you are using a resistance heater. If you use a heat pump (usually a COP of around 3-4) then you are still using extra power. (Every extra watt that you use with an incandescent could have done the same as between 1/3 to 1/4 of a watt with a heat pump).
If you are using AC, you are wasting money at TWICE the rate.
Note to self: never post AC. Too expensive.
My webcomic
Me too. I've been using CFL's for almost twenty years, and I've come to the conclusion that they are a worse idea that using Edison's incandescent lighting. Here's why:
- CFLs have a power factor of around 0.5, which means they use twice as much power as rated. For example a 15 watt CFL uses 15 watts in your home, but then it uses another 15 watts at the central power plant due to the need to "rebalance" the power and restore the PF to 1.0. TOTAL == 30 volt-amps burned
- New technologies have allowed folks like GE to build 60 watt incandescants that only use 30 watts while still providing the same brightness. So the net usage is the same as the CFL. No need to abandon the old bulbs.
- CFLs *hate* heat. CFLs hate cold. CFLs hate humidity. CFLs hate dimmers. In practical terms this means CFLs can not be used in 80-90% of present fixtures. I used them in my upside-down ktichen lights - they died 2 months later. I used them outside in my porch light - it worked fine until the temperature dropped below zero, and then refused to light. I used them in my bathroom, and after a shower the humidity killed half of them. I bought a so-called "dimmable CFL" which died 5 minutes after I installed it in my living room dimmer switch. Instead of saving money, I'm wasting it on tons of dead CFLs.
- CFLs hate being turned on and off. Rapid cycling makes them die as quick as an incandescent bulb. So you've spent 5 times as much for a bulb than doesn't last any longer.
- CFLs have a warm-up time. Turn it on to read your paper, and you have to wait 5 minutes before you can see the writing. Turn it on to go down the basement stairs - and you can't see the steps because it's still too dim (a safety hazard).
I have about 20 CFLs in my home.
But I'm gradually phasing them out and
replacing them with 25 or 40 watt incandescents.
I tried to do my part to be green over the last two decades, but it's just not working. The CFLs are not the solution to reduced lighting expenses. Perhaps these new half-power incandescents from GE will provide an answer, or the new LED lights, but CFLs are not it.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
- CFLs have a power factor of around 0.5, which means they use twice as much power as rated. For example a 15 watt CFL uses 15 watts in your home, but then it uses another 15 watts at the central power plant due to the need to "rebalance" the power and restore the PF to 1.0. TOTAL == 30 volt-amps burned
Except that the power company puts PF correction in far sooner than the power plant, and while it doubles the amps for wire resistance calculations(until it hits the power company's correction equipment), it actually doesn't double the wattage used. More like 5-10%. They build PFC in pretty much as standard on high quality high efficiency computer power supplies, why would you think the power company couldn't do the same? And there are better bulbs out there with active PFC.
- New technologies have allowed folks like GE to build 60 watt incandescants that only use 30 watts while still providing the same brightness. So the net usage is the same as the CFL. No need to abandon the old bulbs.
Neat tech, but like I said, a 15 watt bulb with a PF of .5 doesn't mean it's using 30 watts. So the CFL still has a leg up of aobut 50% more light per watt than the new higher efficiency bulbs.
- CFLs *hate* heat. CFLs hate cold. CFLs hate humidity. CFLs hate dimmers.
I have CFLS in my unheated north dakota garage. the 12 watters start a little slower in the winter, but are still going strong. I have a 23 watt(100watt equiv) in my bathroom. It's been there for over a year, hasn't quit yet. Not instant full brightness - but I like that for those midnight trips. I don't have a dimmer in my house, but it's a five minute job to swap the dimmer out with a CFL compatible one(remember to get a dimmable CFL).
It sounds like you're buying cheap bulbs, and your dimmer is probably the old resistance type, not the newer electronic pulse type.
- CFLs hate being turned on and off. Rapid cycling makes them die as quick as an incandescent bulb. So you've spent 5 times as much for a bulb than doesn't last any longer.
In 6 years the only CFL to die on me was from being dropped.
- CFLs have a warm-up time. Turn it on to read your paper, and you have to wait 5 minutes before you can see the writing. Turn it on to go down the basement stairs - and you can't see the steps because it's still too dim (a safety hazard).
For me it takes longer for my eyes to adjust to the new light level, open the book/paper, whatever. The 100 watt equivalent in the bathroom has the longest start-up time, and even it is pretty much instant on, just at ~40-60 watt equivalnet for the first 10 seconds.
If the stairs are too dim, put in a brighter bulb. Heck, I wonder where people like you are getting your slow starting CFLs from, because none of mine take that long. I have two incandescent bulbs left in closets, and the only reason they aren't CFLs yet is because they haven't died, and I use them too little to bother.
I use a mix of GE and Sylvania bulbs, what are yours?
I don't read AC A human right
You had 38 CFL bulbs that all died in less than a year. Meanwhile other people (myself included) are seeing multiple years of life out of ours. As you note, it's can't possibly be something unusual in your case; you have electricl voodoo, and have a line conditioner. That's interesting.
For no particular reason, I'm reminded of the guy I know who complains that every single romantic relationship he's in ends messily. He's wisely concluded that it's impossible for any man to have a healthy, long-term relationship with with women. I'm sure there is some valuable lesson there.
Search 2010 Gen Con events