$60 Light Bulb Debuts On Earth Day

theodp writes "How much would you pay for an amazing light bulb? On Sunday — Earth Day — Philips' $60 LED light bulb goes on sale at Home Depot and other outlets. The bulb, which lasts 20 years, won a $10 million DOE contest that stipulated the winning bulb should cost consumers $22 in its first year on the market. Ed Crawford, the head of Philips' U.S. lighting division, said it was always part of the plan to have utility rebates bring the price down to the $22 range."

Comments

I have two of them in my garage.

[Anonymous Coward]

Philips AmberLEDs i bought for $20 each from home depot. In some areas they are now $15. Awesome light color and brightness. When they first went on sale they were $50-$60 each. now they are $20. Wait for a year and the pricing of these will also drop to $15-$20 making them affordable.

Re:The light bulb conspiracy.

[Anonymous Coward]

An incandescent light bulb will have a lifespan proportional to the thickness of the filament and a power efficiency inversely proportional to the thickness of the filament. You can have a long-life incandescent bulb, but it will drain even more power from an already inefficient design. The 1000-hour bulb was a reasonably optimal point on the power vs. replacement cost curve.

Re:Eh...

[fnj]

The cheap ones are complete garbage. The Philips are different. I've had several of the previous generation Philips 819933 12.5w 800 lumen "bulbs" running for almost a year, one 24x7 and others piling up a lot of hours. Not the slightest problem from any of them. The quality of the light is just as good as incandescent.

You may not have looked at the price dispassionately and analytically. One of these uses $37.50 in electricity over its 25,000 hr rated life, at 12.5 cents/kWh. You would have to buy twenty-five 60 watt incandescents (total cost $12.50-$25.00?) and run them one at a time to burnout to make the same amount of light for the same period, and these would use $180.00 in electricity.

So total cost is $40 (retail) + $37.50 = $87.50 for the LED, versus $12.50 + $180.00 = $192.50 for the incandescents. That's a saving of $105.00. Actually my electricity rates are closer to 18 cents per kWh, so I save a lot more than that. Not to mention saving yourself 24 bulb changes. Oh, and this previous generation Philips is available for under $20 locally where I live.

Re:There is a bigger question here.

[gmanterry]

When the bulb will last 20 years, quite possibly "more than one", because I'd say the likelihood is fairly high that a renter in 20 years will have never had to change a light bulb?

What?

At $60/pop....I kinda doubt any renters are going to be leaving any of their bulbs behind when they move!!!

Like many places where when you rent, you have to provide your own appliances (used to be very prevalent in New Orleans)...you will likely have to start providing your own $60 lightbulbs too!!

I bought three for my living room today. Here was my reasoning:
They are amazing for LEDs. I have other LED bulbs but the problem has always been that because of the directional nature of LEDs they all act like miniature spot lights. They don't diffuse light like the global shaped incandescent source. These Phillips LEDs do. And they are 17 watts (1100) lumens 75 watt equivalent) but they are so bright it hurts to look directly at them. I replaced three 65 watt bulbs in my living room with them and it is much brighter, less load on my air conditioner (I'm in Phoenix and that's important to me) and only 51 watts total. For me it's a plus, plus and plus. Oh, and with my military discount at Home Depot they cost me $36.00 each.

That's 3 incandescent bulbs x 65 watts per bulb = (195 watts for 8 hours per day/ 1000) * .1114 per kwh = $.17 per day for the incandescents.
That's 3 LED bulbs x 17 watts per bulb = (51 watts for 8 hours per day/ 1000) * .1114 per kwh = $.045 per day for the LEDs.

Incandescents cost me $.17 x 30 days = $5.10 a month x 12 months = $61.20 a year.
LEDs cost me $.045 x 30 days = $1.30 a month x 12 months = $15.60.
The savings on my electric bill is $45.60 a year, not counting the savings by not generating heat that fights the A/C.
Total cost for the three bulbs was $108.00. $108. / $45.60 = 2.3 years to pay for themselves. Their life at 8 hours / day is expected to be 8.5 years. The lifetime savings should be $282.00. And I am not a tree hugger and I don't work for Phillips.