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Philips Releases 100W-Equivalent LED Bulb, Runs On Just 23 Watts

MrSeb writes "The Light Fair convention kicks off in Las Vegas this week, so there will be any number of related announcements coming soon. Lighting giant Philips is starting things off early with the announcement of their 100W-equivalent LED bulb, the AmbientLED 23W. The model produces 1700 lumens, putting it at a very respectable 73.9 lm/W. The unveiling comes shortly after Philips' L Prize bulb was made available to consumers. That bulb currently sells for about $60 and is a more efficient light source, capable of 94 lm/W. The two use similar designs; for example, both take advantage of remote phosphor, but the AmbientLED 23W (it will be called the EnduraLED in non-consumer applications) is brighter and lacking in some of the performance characteristics of the L Prize winner, including luminous efficiency and color accuracy. Philips' 100W-equivalent bulb will be available some time in the fourth quarter. Pricing has yet to be announced, but it will likely be well over $30."

529 comments

  1. Warranty? by crazyjj · · Score: 4, Insightful

    At those prices, I expect it to come with a warranty that backs up their "Lasts X years" claim. If you say it lasts 10 years, and you can't even offer a 5-year warranty, I'll keep my $60, thanks. I've seen too many of these bulb manufacturers make promises they knew they couldn't keep. CFL's in particular seem very sensitive to electricity fluctuations and brownouts. I've got a couple of fixtures in my house that burn through them like crazy, even after replacing the switches (finally just put a incandescent back in them and they do fine).

    No way I'm slapping down that kind of money for a bulb unless I can be sure the thing is really going to last, and that the company has enough faith in it to put their money where their mouth is. I'd hate to buy a bunch of those only to have some local brownouts blow them in their first year (and find out the company won't back their product up with a replacement or refund).

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    1. Re:Warranty? by lymond01 · · Score: 2

      My thoughts exactly. My first CFL back in the 90s was rated for 7 years. I think it lasted 3 months. As with the poster above, I'm not paying significantly more for a CFL, unless it's going to make Saturday appearances at the office and get its damned cover sheets on its damned TPS reports!

    2. Re:Warranty? by vlm · · Score: 3, Funny

      Are there any bulb rental services? I want to buy the same make and model of bulbs that bulb rental services buy.

      --
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    3. Re:Warranty? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You also really don't want to put CFLs in any socket with a dimmer.

    4. Re:Warranty? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "Pay us what you think you'd pay the power company to operate an incandescent or CFL bulb for the same number of hours".
      "Oh, and please take our word for the fact that it will last as many hours as we claim."
      "We wouldn't lie to you."
      "Honestly!"

    5. Re:Warranty? by swx2 · · Score: 1

      Well... if you've got some fixtures that seems to burn through light bulbs faster than normal, then maybe it's not the light bulb's fault? And if that is any indication of an average household's (electrical) current stability, maybe the lack of a 5 year warranty is somewhat justified. Seriously, you can't fault the manufacturer of the product if you're providing bad running conditions.

    6. Re:Warranty? by Hatta · · Score: 2

      If it was working yesterday, and I replace it with your "equivalent" replacement, it's your fault if it stops working.

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    7. Re:Warranty? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I agree.

      To make things worse, cheap CFL units do not "burn" completely. They stop working because of some 5-10 cents economical decision about component selection. The phospor tube is intact, as most components. And because of a single 4 cent diode, the lamp is worthless.

      As it is not viable to repair CFL bulbs (not worth the manpower), we trash hundreds of thousands of perfectly good units every year.

    8. Re:Warranty? by cpu6502 · · Score: 1, Troll

      >>>I've got a couple of fixtures in my house that burn through them like crazy, even after replacing the switches (finally just put a incandescent back in them and they do fine).

      Exactly.
      CFLs are the biggest scam the megacorps ever came-up with, and they used the power of Congress or the Parliament to force us into it. (By gradually outlawing incandescents.) I know I've saved NO money using CFLs because they burn-out just as fast as incandescents..... and they certainly aren't reducing pollution when they have to be shipped-in from China and then shipped-back for recycling (where the mercury is released).

      I've never seen a study but I suspect if one was performed, we'd discover Incandescent bulbs are actually more "green" than CFLs. In the same fashion that AEEE.org discovered a Honda Insight at 70mpg, or Lupo at 88mpg, are actually cleaner than the pure electric Volt and EV1 cars (scored the same as a Prius).

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    9. Re:Warranty? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 1

      I don't think that rental services exist; but there are about a zillion commercial/office/industrial properties whose facilities guys have to keep a whole lot of lights, some badly inaccessible from ground level or in crowded public areas, going. Whatever they use is probably the equivalent(and mostly seems to be really boring hot-cathode fluorescent tubes, except in places where they can't get away with that for aesthetic reasons)...

    10. Re:Warranty? by m0n5t3r · · Score: 2

      of my first 2 CFLs (23W Philips, incidentally) one still works after ~ 6 years; I've moved 4 times since I bought those (yeah, I actually took my light bulbs with me, they were worth about 10 beers each); one of them died due to being used in the bathroom (went through a lot of power cycles)

      Right now, I have the remaining one in a rather low usage area (kitchen, rarely used at night), and for the room I spend most of the time in I have some no-name Chinese thing I bought 2 years ago from Mega Image; it eats 13 W, was 1/4 of the price of my older Philips bulbs and takes about 10 minutes to reach full brightness, but it emits about the same amount of light when it does. It was ~2.2 USD.

      When LED lights can beat that price, I'll be interested. Right now, both commercial offerings and DIY are too damn expensive for my taste.

    11. Re:Warranty? by cpu6502 · · Score: 1

      Oh and yes the price it outrageous. I have a 60 watt LED "bulb" in my amazon cart that only costs $15. Buy two and you have your 100+ equivalent for half the price.

      AND it uses less power (7 watts not 23). Philips really laid an egg with their new bulb. WORSE: They were paid millions of dollars in OUR money to produce this rotten egg.

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    12. Re:Warranty? by MozeeToby · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I hear this a lot, but I also know of people, myself included, who do get the advertised life (moved into my house 4 years ago and started swapping in CFLs as the existing bulbs burnt out and have only had to replace one of them so far). My best guesses as to why some people have better luck than others:

      Bulb quality: I bought relatively expensive bulbs because they were the only ones at the time that didn't put out awful blue/white light.
      Temperature range: The only bulb I had to replace was in the garage, which swings from 100+F to -10F depending on the season.
      Power quality: Spikes/brownouts/etc.

    13. Re:Warranty? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Edison's original incandescent bulb retailed for about a dollar when it was first introduced, I read somewhere. That has to be the rough equivalent of 60 bucks in today's money, and there is no doubt that this LED bulb will last a lot longer. I'd be willing to spring for the $60 right now.

    14. Re:Warranty? by cpu6502 · · Score: 1

      >>> takes about 10 minutes to reach full brightness

      Ditto.
      And it's a Philips!
      Why are we "upgrading" to bulbs that are actually inferior to the incandescents we used before? They take too long long to light, don't live any longer in real world use, can't be used in enclosed or upside down fixtures (trapped heat kills CFL electronics), and have to be shipped across ~20,000 miles from China (and back) whereas the incandescents were built right here.

      For me my experience with CFLs is as bad as my experience with Vista. I downgraded to incandescents and XP. Sometimes the older tech really is the better one.

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    15. Re:Warranty? by serialband · · Score: 1

      You should blame the local utility for the brownouts. The local brownouts are likely due to the inadequate line transformers that were rated for homes that didn't use quite so much electricity decades ago. Americans are quite spoiled with all the electronic gadgets and AC units in the home these days.

      When the electric company replaced the inadequate line transformer, that failed catastrophically, on my block, I stopped getting brownouts whenever the neighbors' AC units turned on. It was down for 18 hours. Since that time, I haven't lost many fluorescents. I don't see any visible dimming of the lights either. Before then, I was losing 2-3 a year. If they weren't subsidized to $1 each, I would never have gotten them.

      LEDs, in general, are also much sturdier than CFLs ore incandescents. They should last for 5 years without a hitch. The 20 years claim is likely valid.

    16. Re:Warranty? by pla · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Well... if you've got some fixtures that seems to burn through light bulbs faster than normal, then maybe it's not the light bulb's fault?

      While I agree with you to the extent that the GP might want to have that fixture rewired (or at least checked out) by a real electrician, I can't agree that something pushed as a long-lasting drop-in replacement for an X-Watt incandescent light-bulb would have a shorter lifespan than that same incandescent, regardless of faulty wiring.

      I fully appreciate that incandescents count as just about the lowest-tech electricity-using device you can own; But CFL/LED manufacturers need to take into consideration the fact that people don't generally run their room lighting on a line-interactive UPS.

    17. Re:Warranty? by swx2 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Equivalent in terms of light output, not current tolerance. if you used a product outside of its design specs, and complained when it failed, no one would listen to you.

      But then again, I guess the American legal system has seen sillier things...

    18. Re:Warranty? by Mister+Whirly · · Score: 4, Informative

      Stop buying the cheapest CFL that are made in China. They burn out as quick/faster than incandescents. Buy a slightly higher quality bulb and you will notice a difference. I thought exactly the same way you did until I stopped buying the bargain CFLs. I found a brand a few years back (can't recall the name at work though) of a CFL bulb that was actually made in the USA. It has been going for about 4 years now. It was only about 25-30% more expensive than the other cheap bulbs.

      --
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    19. Re:Warranty? by Surt · · Score: 1

      A lot of these bulbs do come with multiyear warranties. Phillips has a 6 year warranty on these bulbs according to home depot:
      http://www.homedepot.com/buy/electrical-light-bulbs-led/philips-12-watt-60w-equivalent-a19-ambient-led-soft-white-light-bulb-dimmable-117236.html

      And the good news is ... they seem to last longer than the CFLs. I was an early adopter (curiosity mostly), and in my home that was a torture test for CFLs (I have only a few CFLs that have made it over two years so far), I have several LED bulbs and zero burnouts so far.

      --
      "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
    20. Re:Warranty? by Surt · · Score: 2

      I buy the quality CFLs too. I'm pretty sure the power quality kills them because my temperature range is pretty mild and I still have them dying pretty quickly (inside the warranty, but I'm replacing them with LEDs as they go).

      --
      "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
    21. Re:Warranty? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't think that rental services exist; but there are about a zillion commercial/office/industrial properties whose facilities guys have to keep a whole lot of lights, some badly inaccessible from ground level or in crowded public areas, going. Whatever they use is probably the equivalent(and mostly seems to be really boring hot-cathode fluorescent tubes, except in places where they can't get away with that for aesthetic reasons)...

      They probably use pressured sodium or metal halide bulbs for those. Not anything you will find in the average home.

    22. Re:Warranty? by dgatwood · · Score: 2

      By contrast, I recently replaced the incandescent bulbs in my bathrooms when I replaced the fixtures. Out of the twelve bulbs (three fixtures), all were original bulbs, about a decade old. The only places I've ever blown bulbs are the ceiling fan in my room and the three-way bulb in the table lamp in my TV room, both of which have blown about two bulbs in eleven years.

      Incandescent bulbs (good ones) last a long time. For CFLs to make sense at the current price, they would need a hundred year guarantee.

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    23. Re:Warranty? by cpu6502 · · Score: 1

      >>>Stop buying the cheapest CFL that are made in China.

      There's no such thing as a non-China or non-India CFL. And besides I bought a Philips..... it's supposed to be high-quality German engineered product, but alas that turned out not to be the case.

      >>>made in the USA

      Lights of America?
      Those are trash too.
      Same flaws (slow warmup time, don't live any longer than the old incandescents)

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    24. Re:Warranty? by Surt · · Score: 2

      Chances are good that the light quality from your $15 60 watt bulb is not competitive with phillips.

      --
      "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
    25. Re:Warranty? by garyebickford · · Score: 2

      I used to live way out in the boonies. After my house there was one more house about 1/4 mile away, then a run of about 1 mile, and a couple of farms. One of the farms apparently ran some kind of equipment that thrashed the power factor in random patterns, and my UPS would take over for a minute or so, then would switch back to line mode - every couple of minutes for an hour at a time. As a result, it could never get fully charged, and after a day or so would whimper and shut down completely.

      The power company (a rural co-op) didn't think there was a problem.

      The vendor replaced it, but the new one did the same. Finally I just got a cheaper less sensitive UPS that didn't pay (much?) attention to the power factor.

      So sometimes the power coming in is just bad, and there's not much one can do about it.

      --
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    26. Re:Warranty? by EvanED · · Score: 1

      If those design specs are regularly violated in practice, sure.

      Would you say that you have no right to complain if I sold you a lightbulb that only worked correctly if you sacrificed your first-born son at the alter in front of it? Or would you say "working as designed"?

    27. Re:Warranty? by bura · · Score: 1

      I've had pretty good luck with CFLs so far. Replace all the bulbs with CFLs about 5 years ago and only had to replace about 3.

    28. Re:Warranty? by PRMan · · Score: 2

      This is simply not true across the board. I bought CFLs when they first came out. I spent $150 on them for all the bulbs in my house, so they were pricey. But I saved $30 PER MONTH in electricity costs (granted, I am in SoCal, where electricity is pretty high), giving me an ROI of 5 months. So even though the first set may have died in a year or two, I already made back my money many times over.

      The next set I bought has not burned out at all for about 8 years. Finally, one bulb died and my kids (12 and 14) were literally like that commercial. They were like, "The lamp's broken." I said, "Did you replace the bulb?" They stared at me like they had no idea what I meant. Then they said, "Oh, yeah, we didn't think of that." Why? Because they have never seen someone replace a light bulb in their entire lives.

      --
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    29. Re:Warranty? by popeye44 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Chances are you don't live in a newer house or maybe not in California. California building code requires dimmable switches to be built in as the first switch in most rooms. CFL's are horribly unreliable "even if you spend $12.00 for the good dimmable bulbs" at working with dimmable switches.

        In the areas where I have on/off type switches they seem to work fairly well "not sure if equal to most incandescent or not but at least on par" I have multiple lights in my house that bleed through electricity if I am using fluorescent lights. You turn them off.. and the light either flickers or you can see a dim glow. This does not happen with incandescent. So California in it's ever so insane stance to control anything they can fucks me from using cheaper "power wise" bulbs in every fixture. I end up running about half and half between the two.

      Soon I won't even be able to buy incandescent lights and will probably be unable to find a simple on/off switch do to some other policy they'll enact to save beavers.

      --
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    30. Re:Warranty? by dwywit · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I've got a sine-wave inverter powering my house - and if it overloads, it just shuts down. Otherwise, It's a stable 245 VAC day and night - no dips or spikes. I've had Osram, Phillips, and GE CFLs - and the Osrams have typically lasted about half their claimed lifespan.

      --
      They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
    31. Re:Warranty? by garyebickford · · Score: 1

      Actually Philips complained publicly about the whimsical nature of US politics. When the law outlawing incandescents (for 'normal' use - i.e. not most specialty bulbs) looked likely to pass, Philips began building out manufacturing to support LEDs. Then it passed, and Philips was on the way to making some dough on LED bulbs, going for the whole 'volume reduces unit cost' thing. Then the US politics began to look like the law might be repealed. If that happened, Philips multimillion dollar investment was going to look like a bad guess.

      Philips makes all kinds of bulbs (a physicist friend of mine used to work at Philips in West Virginia in their fluorescent tube division), doesn't really care (from the economic point of view) which kind we buy. So they weren't lobbying significantly about the LED bulb law to my knowledge. But they do care, mightily, about making a $100 million investment based on laws that appear and disappear. Big companies that make things want a stable economic environment above all else. I know they went very public about this when the proposal to repeal the law became public - there were a number of news articles. So they probably did lobby to not repeal the law.

      I recently bought two LED 60-watt equivalent bulbs, and two LED floodlghts, at a local grocery store for $10 each. I think they were subsidized by the local electric utility. They work fine (nice warm lamplight!), and I'd like to get more but I don't recall which store I got them at! :(

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    32. Re:Warranty? by rubycodez · · Score: 1

      I do, there are CFL specifically made for dimmers. they don't have the range of halogen or incandescent bulb, but are still cheaper to run

    33. Re:Warranty? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Its interesting to see everyone's discomfort in the manufacture's claim.

      With Philips you are really are getting a product and technology that they stand behind. Philips also owns Color Kinetics, who have been providing the entertainment industry with LED lighting solutions for about 10 years. The Color Kinetics color blast led lights are the industry standard for entertainment and architectural LED lighting. These Color Kinetics lights are TANKS that are designed survive under the most abusive touring conditions.

      I can only believe that some lessons they have learned over the last 10 years of entertainment lighting has found its way into the consumer products. I have owned a couple thousand dollars worth of Color Kinetics lights in the past, and I currently own a few Phillips LED light bulbs for my residence and would recommend them to anyone. I have some friends who have bought off-brand LED lights that are rubbish and will probably break in a year or 2... you get what you pay for.

    34. Re:Warranty? by Hatta · · Score: 3, Insightful

      There is an implied warranty of fitness for a specific purpose. If you're selling a device that serves the same purpose as an incandescent, fits into the same receptacle as an incandescent, and is found on the same shelves as incandescents, and you fail to disclaim the warranty of fitness, I'm pretty sure you're legally and ethically in the wrong.

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    35. Re:Warranty? by Svartalf · · Score: 1

      Considering that NOTHING has a warranty that matches up with your demand, I would hope you bought NOTHING.

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    36. Re:Warranty? by tlhIngan · · Score: 1

      LEDs, in general, are also much sturdier than CFLs ore incandescents. They should last for 5 years without a hitch. The 20 years claim is likely valid.

      Depends on the LED.

      The cluster ones like Lights of America are horrible - likely done usually the cheapest LEDs they could get so they burn.

      The Philips one are a lot better - they use better drive circuits (the LoA clusters are basically a christmas tree string in a bulb formfactor - granted they use a full wave bridge and caps to make them NOT flicker, but still little regulation) and fewer LEDs, so the drive circuits can be adapted to each LED individually.

      Those LEDs tend to be quite sturdy - when driven properly (within voltage and current spec, and overcurrent protected) they last forever - the only reason you swap 'em out is because LEDs dim with age (their lifespan is 50% brightness). But without regulated drive circuits, LED bulbs can go very quickly.

    37. Re:Warranty? by ZorinLynx · · Score: 4, Informative

      I also get the advertised life. I sometimes wonder why some people have such bad luck with CFLs. Power quality is the most likely cause, I think; as we have excellent power quality here and I have friends whose power is constantly having little issues. At one particular friend's place, the UPS beeps around once every visit.

      Also, when CFLs end up lasting far longer than their advertised life, they need to be replaced for another reason: They start getting dim. I replaced about three bulbs that get a lot of use and were over six years old when I noticed a brand new bulb of the same wattage was twice as bright. If you're getting really long life out of your CFLs you might want to check this, as you don't notice them getting dimmer since it happens so gradually.

    38. Re:Warranty? by ZorinLynx · · Score: 2

      >California building code requires dimmable switches to be built in as the first switch in most rooms.

      Are you serious? What in the hell led to such a stupid requirement? Especially since dimmed incandescent bulbs use far more watts per lumen than bulbs of a lower wattage?

      To hell with the building code, I'd be swapping those out for regular switches once I move in if I don't want dimmers in those rooms. The dimmers are easily kept in a drawer to put back in before move-out day.

    39. Re:Warranty? by vadim_t · · Score: 2

      Maybe it's the voltage? They might last longer on 220 or 230V.

    40. Re:Warranty? by ColdWetDog · · Score: 4, Funny

      Well no wonder they blow out - you're running them at twice the rated voltage!

      --
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    41. Re:Warranty? by es330td · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Thank you for reminding me again how happy I am to not live in the nanny state that is California. It is a beautiful state, with dynamic people and wonderful climate, but the amount of regulation its citizens to which the citizens subject themselves is unreal.

    42. Re:Warranty? by realityimpaired · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That wasn't my first thought... though in response to your question, LED lights usually last a long time, because they're composed of hundreds of LED's, and an individual diode can burn out without drastically affecting the usability of the bulb itself.

      That being said... my first thought was of the CFL in a lamp sitting next to my computer. 8 years old, and it cost about $15. It's a full-spectrum 100W equivalent bulb that I call my "artificial sun" (and there have been many late-night gaming sessions which turned into early morning sessions with its help), and it draws 27W equivalent. Costs of CFLs have gone down significantly in the last 8 years... is a $30 LED bulb that would save 4W (which is less than some DVD players draw at idle) really enough of an upgrade to be worth the cost?

    43. Re:Warranty? by simcop2387 · · Score: 1

      The problem isn't necessarily the LEDs themselves but how they're hooked up. I'd be surprised if they aren't hooked up with a full wave rectifier or some other support circuitry to get them to output a more stable light, otherwise it'd be like cheap LED christmas lights all over your house.

    44. Re:Warranty? by horza · · Score: 1

      Philips produces their bulbs in Germany? Why would they shift their factories from Holland to another EU company rather than outsourcing to the Middle-East?

      Phillip.

    45. Re:Warranty? by Changa_MC · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You don't have to put the dimmers back in - you just can't build a new house without them. It was a decent idea when incandescent bulbs were all you could buy since it prevented the power-on spike that kills those. Now it's a law that should go away, but it's maybe $100 expense on a house costing $200,000+, so no-one cares.

      --
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    46. Re:Warranty? by Khyber · · Score: 1

      "Considering that NOTHING has a warranty that matches up with your demand"

      So you think. I can offer upwards of a 25 year warranty, pal. I do, in some of my LED-based crop production systems.

      What were you saying?

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    47. Re:Warranty? by DavidTC · · Score: 3, Insightful

      In case you haven't noticed, heat getting trapped in light fixtures are why all bulbs burn out. It's what deforms the filament in incandescent bulbs, which then cools and either snaps then, or snaps when they next have current run through them. In fact, the entire question of 'What is a good filament in a light bulb?' is answered by 'Whatever metal expands less when heated.'

      Which is the reason that all non-stupid light fixture have holes in them to let the heat out, because otherwise the incandescent bulbs that existed when they were designed burn out rapidly.

      And of course, CFLs run a lot cooler, so are generally safer to use in such fixtures for each lum of light. The idea that CFLs are more susceptible to heat is somewhat idiotic. Yes, they have more complicated circuitry that is technically more susceptible to heat (Which is why CFLs will never be used inside a stove.), but they also are generating only a third the heat, so there's a lot less damn heat to start with!

      Of course, the real solution is to stop buying stupid light fixtures that trap heat. Which, in addition to rapidly eating through a supply of any sort of light bulbs, are a fire (If made of something combustible or touching something combustible) and/or scalding (If not combustible but they just sit there and absorb heat, resulting the entire thing getting hotter and hotter, eventually including parts that people are supposed to touch.) hazard.

      (And, incidentally, current CFLs have no startup time, at least not one that humans can notice. Complaining that you were sold something that is shitty that is supposed to last for five years is reasonable, but it's not a reason to not buy new ones, which do not have that problem.)

      --
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    48. Re:Warranty? by RenderSeven · · Score: 1

      Whats driving the inverter? I assume you're off-grid more or less, and I'm always interested in success stories.

    49. Re:Warranty? by dwywit · · Score: 2

      Could be - but I'd have thought they could handle 10% over-voltage (although the peak of the sine wave could be significantly higher than the design can cope with). The thing is, I don't get brownouts, and it's the only the one brand/model that's been a problem. They were *just* out of warranty, so I sent a polite email expressing my disappointment that my bulbs lasted such a short time. The reply explained that warranties are calculated on how long HALF a sample of bulbs last under testing conditions - obviously my batch came from the shorter-lived "half". There was a happy ending - even though the warranty had expired, they sent me four bulbs as a gesture of goodwill. It pays to be polite.

      --
      They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
    50. Re:Warranty? by jps25 · · Score: 1

      Philips is Dutch.
      If you want a German one, then buy Osram.
      All my CFLs are Osram with 5 year warranty. So far 3 out of about 20 have failed after 3-4 years.

    51. Re:Warranty? by cpu6502 · · Score: 0

      >>>the real solution is to stop buying stupid light fixtures that trap heat.

      Yeah I'm really going to spend $1000 in new fixtures and $3000 in labor for an electrician to come-in, rip out my ceiling, and install new fixtures. Not! (No wonder mot environmenaists are working at walmart. They are fucking idiots with no sense in their brains Fuck you and fuck yoru damn CFLs aup the sjhithole. Duickeer.)

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    52. Re:Warranty? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      ..., LED lights usually last a long time, because they're composed of hundreds of LED's, and an individual diode can burn out without drastically affecting the usability of the bulb itself.

      Not correct....these days an LED bulb generally uses only a handful of high-power LEDs, such as Cree's XPE or XPG high-efficiency white. Also they are connected generally in series, so if one LED were to 'burn out' it would affect all the diodes in that chain. The failure modes for a LED bulb are almost 100% related to the power converter components (capacitors, etc). As the bulb ages (over several years), the LEDs will get dimmer and perhaps change color.

    53. Re:Warranty? by spitzak · · Score: 1

      Actually I installed a number of cheap ones and they have kept working for years so far, have not replaced a single one.

      One appeared to fail because it was installed in a facing-down socket, but putting it in a sideways fixture revealed the bulb still worked in that orientation.

    54. Re:Warranty? by RenderSeven · · Score: 1

      Ive had maybe a dozen fail in the last 5 years. I'd say that most of them were 100W-equivalent lamps in open sockets or ceiling flood fixtures, both places where heat shouldnt be a problem (both heat buildup and ambient temperature). The failed ones all seem to have been subjected to high heat with lots of discoloration around where the glass bonded to the shell. I always assumed, correctly or not, that the internal switching supplies just turned to junk after a few years of use due to cheap components. Other bulbs on the same circuits in similar fixtures havent died, so while it could still be dirty power that wouldnt be my first guess. Occam's Razor says cheap components and cheap manufacturing processes... wouldnt be the first time cheap solder flux absorbed water or corroded a connection, or that a manufacturer skipped a PCB wash step knowing a failure was at least two years out.

    55. Re:Warranty? by cnettel · · Score: 1

      I think you are seriously over-estimating the transport cost. Figure how many CFLs fit in a transport container. Figure how many containers fit on a freighter ship. For electric vehicles, the most important aspect in the comparison is the source of the electricity. With current battery longevity, production of a car once again takes a minor part in the total energy consumed, just like the case is for an incandescent light and most CFLs. Consumer electronics, on the other hand, can be quite a different story. Apple's life-cycle analysis for the iPad put quite a lot of the energy use during production. Again, transport was a minor part. Transport and distribution costs really ony start to matter for stuff which is cheap per kg (foodstuff) or where air freight starts to matter. Air transport might be used to deliver individual pieces ordered from China directly, but not imports for general distribution of anything but specialty articles.

    56. Re:Warranty? by shibashaba · · Score: 1

      There are numerous studies about the longevity of different bulb types under different conditions(number of times turned on/off, temperature, etc). Start looking in electrical trade magazines.

      Really though, there are usually ways to change the bulbs out easily. Most places have their own maintenance staff take care of it, who come up with shortcuts for their building when they need to.

      --
      ---------- Open Source is capitalism applied to IP.
    57. Re:Warranty? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Meh, I bought a pack of 10 bargain CFLs. They might last as long as the incandescents, but use less wattage, so less energy cost. They were also much cheaper than the next-level up CFL (1/3 the cost) and cheaper than incandescents, so I'll stick with that.
      Same thing with batteries. I've tried buying good ones, but they last marginally longer than the bargain ones but cost an order of magnitude more.

      So I get what I pay for, but other people are getting ripped off buying the expensive stuff. Either the quality needs to go up, warranties offered, or price goes down before I make that investment.

      I do feel bad for all the environmental waste though (CFLs containing mercury, etc).

    58. Re:Warranty? by gmack · · Score: 1

      No way I'm slapping down that kind of money for a bulb unless I can be sure the thing is really going to last, and that the company has enough faith in it to put their money where their mouth is. I'd hate to buy a bunch of those only to have some local brownouts blow them in their first year (and find out the company won't back their product up with a replacement or refund).

      That's actually the best part about the change to LED bulbs. I have found that they are much more tolerant when dealing with power browns and being flipped on and off a lot. I have been swapping my bulbs for LED and so far the only one to break in 2 years was the one I dropped.

    59. Re:Warranty? by swalve · · Score: 3, Informative

      Newly installed lighting in bedrooms, family room, living rooms, hallways, dining rooms, etc. shall be high efficiency fixtures (e.g. fluorescent), or all switches shall be dimmer switches, or be controlled with an occupant sensor with controls that do not allow the fixtures to be automatically turned on or allow the fixture to be always on. (2008 CA Title 24 Section 150)

    60. Re:Warranty? by Gonoff · · Score: 1

      I have a light fitting above my head. It is designed for 5 small screw in incandescents. It used to burn out about one a week. Last year - about September, I replaced the lot with CFLs and they have been working since. The light is slightly different but it is now there.

      I am not only using less power but the bulbs are lasting a lot longer on my doubtless dodgy home wiring and saving me money that way.

      --
      I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
    61. Re:Warranty? by gelfling · · Score: 1

      Yes precisely that. And when I sell my house, the bulbs come with me - it's in the contract because I'm not underwriting the buyer's lightbulbs to the tune of several hundred or thousands of dollars either. This is insane. 23w vs 100w what's the breakeven point? 5 years? 6? It damn well better work at least that long.

    62. Re:Warranty? by swalve · · Score: 1

      I have never had a CFL not turn on instantly.

    63. Re:Warranty? by cheater512 · · Score: 3, Informative

      245 V is the Root Mean Square voltage. That number is approx 70% of the peak voltage. Your 10% over is even higher peak.

      Mind you Australia runs at 240v not 230v so 2% higher than that shouldn't be bad.

    64. Re:Warranty? by Changa_MC · · Score: 1

      That dim glow when you turn off fluorescent lamps is just what phosphor does for a while after you hit it with UV - it's not proof of continued electrical usage.

      --
      Changa hates change.
    65. Re:Warranty? by dwywit · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Yes, off-grid since 1996. The house had 600W of PV on the roof and 580 amphours of batteries when we moved in, with a modified square-wave inverter. Immediately upgraded to a sine-wave inverter (1500W continuous, 3000W surge), and a new washing machine (Fisher & Paykel smartdrive). Circa 2000, and we replaced batteries with 1100ah, and an additional 900W of PV. In 2008, we replaced the batteries again (had 2 children by this time), and added another kilowatt of PV to the roof. We could always do with more PV, but in sunny weather we can run three or four 240 volt appliances at once without overloading the inverter or needing to top up the batteries with the backup generator, e.g. 4 computers, or 2 computers and the washing machine, etc. The house is dual-wired - 240 volt power and the lighting circuit is 24 volt and uses incandescant and halogen bi-pin bulbs, but I'm going to cut those circuits over to 240 volts to take advantage of CFL and LED lamps - 24-volt bulbs are expensive, and the inverter inefficiency will be more than offset by the reduced energy consumption of CFL/LED lamps. I've already tried CFLs in some lamps running off the 240 volt power circuit, and difference in energy consumption is amazing. I've got a 240 volt fridge, and a 24 volt freezer.
       
      I've never had a blackout that lasted more than 2 minutes (deliberately overloaded the lighting circuit to test the safety breakers). The downside is having to run the backup generator during rainy weather.
       
      How can I afford all this? Well, the most recent upgrade cost ~AUD$23K, and was subsidised 50%, so we only paid about AUD$11K. That's NOT free or even cheap power, but it would cost us over AUD$40K to have the mains extended to our house, so it's a no-brainer, financially speaking.

      --
      They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
    66. Re:Warranty? by Metabolife · · Score: 1

      While we're playing the ignorance game.. Phillips is Bolivian.

    67. Re:Warranty? by Electricity+Likes+Me · · Score: 1

      Longer lasting incandescent bulbs also burn more power.

      You don't just price it by replacement cost - you price it by lifetime power usage.

    68. Re:Warranty? by Jafafa+Hots · · Score: 1

      It's also important where you put them. CFLs cannot take a lot of on/off cycles.

      Even on the packages they tell you they aren't appropriate for use in places where you only turn the light on for a moment or two. Bathrooms, closets, garages, etc.

      They just can't take so many short cycles.

      --
      This space available.
    69. Re:Warranty? by DavidTC · · Score: 0

      As I pointed out, if you think that your CFLs are failing to work because of heat, you are an idiot. The slight increase in heat susceptible is more than made up by the fact that they only generate a third the heat to start with.

      Yammering about how 'heat hurts them' is like yammering how motorcycles have greater wind resistance, and thus how they must have horrible gas mileage, ignoring the fact they weight a tenth of what cars do.

      CFLs are inherently better at dealing with their own heat because they don't fucking produce anywhere near as much of it, you idjit.

      I know you think your CFLs went out because of heat trapped in the socket, but as that is clearly nonsensical and only a complete idiot would come to that conclusion, what I think what is more likely is you have shitty power, or alternately you have installed in them in your stove or clothes dryer without noticing. Or possibly in your own ass.

      --
      If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
    70. Re:Warranty? by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

      The high quality ones are just as bad. I've found that unless you have the light exposed and well ventalated, they'll not out live incandescents. I've never had a single CFL outlast a single incandescent, ever. I've replaced 10 CFLs (with varying brands of varying cost) trying to find something that would work, while the other incandescent in the identical fixture was never replaced.

    71. Re:Warranty? by Mashiki · · Score: 1

      Stop buying the cheapest CFL that are made in China.

      Ignorant poster is ignorant. Here's a list of CFL's before I gave up using them as their migraine inducing goodness was too good to pass up:

      1yr period
      Oscram: 3/15 - warranty replaced all good.
      Phillips: 10/10 - complained got a case of 20 for nothing
      GE: 3/15 - sent replacement bulbs plus two extra

      I'm happy to use regular incandescent bulb though, at least I can go a few hours without a migraine setting in this way. People say you can't see the flicker, they're insane.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    72. Re:Warranty? by ArchieBunker · · Score: 1

      For something as simple and ubiquitous as a light bulb I should not have to consult internet reviews and keep receipt records in case one dies an early death.

      --
      Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
    73. Re:Warranty? by shibashaba · · Score: 1

      Five year warranties are pretty common, even in power tools and other things with moving parts and high duty cycles. And yes, there are companies that honor their warranties too.

      --
      ---------- Open Source is capitalism applied to IP.
    74. Re:Warranty? by Firehed · · Score: 1

      $200,000? In California? Try $2,000,000.

      But yes, point taken.

      --
      How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
    75. Re:Warranty? by mattack2 · · Score: 1

      It is a beautiful state, with dynamic people and wonderful climate, but the amount of regulation its citizens to which the citizens subject themselves is unreal.

      The former good things are the reasons we put up with the latter things with which we disagree. (Yes, I'm leaving wiggle room, since I think things like the lighting efficiency laws make sense.)

    76. Re:Warranty? by dr2chase · · Score: 1

      CFLs may produce less heat, but they may also tolerate less heat. I have one in my basement that, while still running, has managed to leak some weird wax out of its electronics, presumably because it got hot enough to melt the wax. Incandescent bulbs, of course, can run hot enough (at the glass bulb) to set things on fire.

    77. Re:Warranty? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      .... I downgraded to incandescents and XP. Sometimes the older tech really is the better one.

      One of my incandescent bulbs is already going on 4 years (since I bought the house). It's in the attic where I go maybe once or twice a year to inspect something. It might be more likely to die from corrosion of the base, than the filament burning out. Not much point in spending more on first cost, I'll be really pissed if sometime in the future I have to buy some expensive CFL or LED for that location.

    78. Re:Warranty? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "I bought a Philips..... it's supposed to be high-quality German engineered product, but alas that turned out not to be the case."

      Not the case indeed, for Wikipedia says Philips is a *Dutch* company.

      "Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. (Royal Philips Electronics, commonly known as Philips) (Euronext: PHIA, NYSE: PHG) is a Dutch multinational electronics company headquartered in Amsterdam."

    79. Re:Warranty? by dr2chase · · Score: 1

      I assume you are looking at "EarthLED ZetaLux 2 Pro 7-Watt Warm White LED Light Bulb".
      In the specs, I read "Luminous flux: 400". A 60 watt bulb is supposed to put out 850 lumens.
      Caveat emptor.

      There may be a reason you report such disappointment with your previous purchases.

    80. Re:Warranty? by mattack2 · · Score: 1

      (By gradually outlawing incandescents.)

      Nobody outlawed incandescents. Laws were made for lighting to meet certain energy usage requirements (with exceptions for certain types of bulbs).

      If you can make an incandescent that meets those requirements... go ahead.. You'll probably get rich.

    81. Re:Warranty? by hairyfeet · · Score: 1

      Exactly. With 12 foot ceilings in my apt it is a royal PITA to change bulbs and i've gone through so many of the CFLs I'm now using two instead of one in the living room fixture (even though it makes it a little over bright) just so i can buy a little more time between changings while in the easy to reach fixtures like the kitchen and bathroom I've gone back to incandescent because in these old buildings little sags and brown outs are common and the CFLs blow like mad. All their claims of "last X number of years" have at least to me proven to be horseshit in my case.

      So if they don't back up their claims by a solid EASY TO CLAIM warranty then they can keep the thing, I learned my lesson with the CFLs. After all any of us who have had to jump through flaming hoops because of a warranty claim know that if it isn't easy to claim it might as well not be offered.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    82. Re:Warranty? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have a set of these from Home Depot. The warranty is a real PITA to comply with because you have to show a receipt (original or copy). The problem is that Home Depot uses thermal paper for their receipts. The thermal paper will lose its legibility very likely before the six years are up, especially if you store the receipts anywhere that is warmer than room temperature. So you have to make a scan or xerographic copy of the receipts, then file them somewhere you will remember 1-6 years from now (which is why I prefer scans). The fine print in the warranty also says that they assume you don't use the bulb for more than three hours per day. How anyone can determine compliance with that term I have no clue. I wonder if they have an inexpensive circuit on that PCB that logs the running time of each bulb, as a teardown reveals a Cypress Semiconductor CY8CLED04 microprocessor with more than enough muscle to keep a running meter, provided some non-volatile memory.

    83. Re:Warranty? by cynyr · · Score: 1

      if they are tanks, they could afford to toss on a 2 year warranty or something....

      --
      All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
    84. Re:Warranty? by Weatherlawyer · · Score: 1

      I've seen too many of these bulb manufacturers make promises they knew they couldn't keep. CFL's in particular seem very sensitive to electricity fluctuations and brownouts.

      I'd hate to buy a bunch of those only to have some local brownouts blow them in their first year (and find out the company won't back their product up with a replacement or refund).

      I think I know how conventional incandescents work. Before they invented tungsten they made hair thin filaments of bamboo charcoal. Very clever stuff in its day. And some still going so I hear.

      So what happened after tungsten?

      I am not really sure how fluorescent works, some sort of powder gets white hot in a counter current or something?

      These new tubes with tubes in defeat the internets out of me.

    85. Re:Warranty? by russotto · · Score: 1

      And of course, CFLs run a lot cooler, so are generally safer to use in such fixtures for each lum of light. The idea that CFLs are more susceptible to heat is somewhat idiotic. Yes, they have more complicated circuitry that is technically more susceptible to heat (Which is why CFLs will never be used inside a stove.), but they also are generating only a third the heat, so there's a lot less damn heat to start with!

      Perfectly logical, but unfortunately wrong. CFLs require more ventilation, lumen for lumen, than incandescents.

    86. Re:Warranty? by willy_me · · Score: 1

      And of course, CFLs run a lot cooler, so are generally safer to use in such fixtures for each lum of light. The idea that CFLs are more susceptible to heat is somewhat idiotic. Yes, they have more complicated circuitry that is technically more susceptible to heat (Which is why CFLs will never be used inside a stove.), but they also are generating only a third the heat, so there's a lot less damn heat to start with!

      Sure CFLs produce far less heat but that are also far more susceptible to damage from heat. Put a CFL in an enclosed fixture and it will burn out fast - possibly even faster then an incandescent. My local electrical code doesn't even allow CFLs in enclosed fixtures. The local HomeDepo got in trouble because they were displaying enclosed fixtures with CFLs inside.

      When you look at an incandescent bulb it is easy to see why it can survive high temperatures. Glass and metal - relatively resilient. Compare that to a CFL where you have electronics.

      One thing I've also seen is people that insist of putting CFLs on dimmers and then complain that they don't last. I've shown people the warnings on the CFL box and they still don't get it. Truly amazing...

    87. Re:Warranty? by pcgc1xn · · Score: 1

      I agree with the sentiment, but if you write the install date on the bulb, that will go a long way to solving the problem without much effoer. The question really comes down to do you want simple and inefficient or complex and efficient. Pay now or pay later, your call.

    88. Re:Warranty? by pcgc1xn · · Score: 1

      The price of the bulb is a pretty small part of the price of the lighting. The savings in power costs add up pretty fast - cut the power consumption by 70W and you hit $1 per month in power cost for a single bulb used 2 hours a day.

    89. Re:Warranty? by zippthorne · · Score: 1

      I still have my first set of CFL bulbs purchased in 1998....

      --
      Can you be Even More Awesome?!
    90. Re:Warranty? by dbIII · · Score: 1

      Isn't that the same place where rooms have no fixed lighting at all and people have to rely on floor lamps?
      Don't blame the bulbs for insane rules. If it pisses you enough to write about it on an international forum where we can laugh at you then it's probably worth writing to your political representative (since it's so silly it would have to be at the city level - or is your state that insane?). It's easier to remove silly items from building codes than to add them.

    91. Re:Warranty? by cynyr · · Score: 2

      Care to tell me what I can do about my power conditions in my apartment? Ohh right, nothing because I own none of it. So I need the bulbs to do the power conditioning or tolerate just about anything that could show up on the line, so basically anything within the power company specs. If that means more hardware on their end, well too bad for them.

      --
      All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
    92. Re:Warranty? by dbIII · · Score: 1

      People say you can't see the flicker, they're insane.

      Or on 240 Volts. I've only seen the flicker with a very cheap and nasty bulb in a room that was around 10 Celcius at startup. After it had warmed up it didn't flicker.
      As for colour - that's always going to vary depending on what paint is on the walls of the rooms the bulbs are in more than anything else. With yellowish white walls just about anything is going to look more like sunshine than the best bulb in a dark walled room.

    93. Re:Warranty? by zippthorne · · Score: 2

      You should only replace bulbs that are too dim when you notice they are dim. If you don't notice, it's not actually a problem....

      --
      Can you be Even More Awesome?!
    94. Re:Warranty? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You should blame the local utility for the brownouts. The local brownouts are likely due to the inadequate line transformers that were rated for homes that didn't use quite so much electricity decades ago

      But.. when we put in the cfl's, shouldn't we be using less electricity than we used decades ago?

      Also..

      My parents used a refrigerator for 30 years that averaged 350 watts (measured with a kill-a-watt over one month). They replaced it with one that averages 50W, but in that same year replaced a TV that used 20 W with one that draws 220W, but is much bigger.

      Given that they do not run the TV all the time anyway, and they have changed little else, I think that they are using less electricity than they used to, and their situation is probably not unique.

    95. Re:Warranty? by AngryDeuce · · Score: 1

      But they do care, mightily, about making a $100 million investment based on laws that appear and disappear.

      As opposed to the $100 million investment they make in order to get their own laws passed, just like every other major corporation with a presence in the U.S.?

      Forgive me if I'm less than sympathetic that the laws weren't made solely to ensure their profitability in providing a product to a "free" market.

    96. Re:Warranty? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      the lighting circuit is 24 volt and uses incandescant and halogen bi-pin bulbs, but I'm going to cut those circuits over to 240 volts to take advantage of CFL and LED lamps

      Isn't anyone selling LED lamps that accept DC input?

    97. Re:Warranty? by smellotron · · Score: 1

      Nobody outlawed incandescents. Laws were made for lighting to meet certain energy usage requirements.

      Needlessly pedantic. If laws are passed that make it impossible for incandescent lights to meet energy-efficiency standards, then incandescent light bulbs have been de facto outlawed.

    98. Re:Warranty? by Ungrounded+Lightning · · Score: 1

      The idea that CFLs are more susceptible to heat is somewhat idiotic.

      Not really.

      Incandescent bulbs work by being hot enough to glow white-ish and are made of materials (tungsten, glass, metal) that can stand the associated heat. Eventually enough metal evaporates that mechanical or electromagnetic stresses break the filament, or the higer voltage drop over the thinner parts causes higher dissipation there, starting a positive-feedback loop that melts the thin spot. (Switching them on stresses them substantially because their resistance is lower when cold, leading to higher current and an exacerbation of the energy-focussed-on-the-thin-spot as the thin spot heats faster than the rest.) Yes, letting the bulb overheat speeds the metal evaporation and failure.

      But compact fluorescents use semiconductors. Heat them substantially above the boiling point of water and they fail. Compare this to an incandescent which operates by heating a filament to several thousand degrees (K, C, or F just give different numbers of thousands) and even their glass envelopes run at a temperature that would destroy semiconductors. And the waste heat of a CFL is more than half that of an equivalent incandescent, so it needs more cooling for a given amount of light to stay functional for its rated lifetime - or at all.

      So, yes, CFLs ARE more susceptible to heat.

      --
      Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
    99. Re:Warranty? by smellotron · · Score: 1

      And, incidentally, current CFLs have no startup time, at least not one that humans can notice.

      My Westinghouse PAR38s* all take about a second to start up. It's not continuous, they hit some darker pinkish color in one step and then their final color in the next step. The startup time appears to decrease as the bulbs "break in" as well, but they're never "instant-on" the way that most other lights appear to be (CFL or not).

      *bought new a year ago, which qualifies for most definition of "current"**

      ** except for the definition I = dQ/dt, yuk yuk

    100. Re:Warranty? by mattack2 · · Score: 1

      You call it pedantic, I call it factual.

    101. Re:Warranty? by Megane · · Score: 1

      Yes, but living in the state of California causes cancer, right?

      --
      #naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
    102. Re:Warranty? by Megane · · Score: 1

      because they're composed of hundreds of LED's

      More like 10-20. But the "lifetime" of an LED isn't a measurement of them failing completely, it's based on how long it takes the light output to decrease to a certain percentage of the original. LEDs continuously fade with use, but it's slow enough to take years. The only ones that I've seen fail outright are the ones in traffic signals, but those are exposed to the weather.

      --
      #naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
    103. Re:Warranty? by flyingfsck · · Score: 2

      The problem is that the claimed lifetime is something like 7 years with 10 minutes of continuous use per day. The lifetime is not for 24/7/365 usage, or for being turned on/off 10,000 times per day.

      --
      Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
    104. Re:Warranty? by flyingfsck · · Score: 2

      No, 200,000 is what the house actually costs. 2 million is what you pay for it...

      --
      Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
    105. Re:Warranty? by flyingfsck · · Score: 1

      For me, the El'Cheapo Wal-Mart made in China ones lasted the longest.

      --
      Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
    106. Re:Warranty? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And besides I bought a Philips..... it's supposed to be high-quality German engineered product

      I'm not sure why you thought that, given that Philips is Dutch.

    107. Re:Warranty? by dgatwood · · Score: 1

      They weren't long-lasting bulbs. They were just seldom used. During the day, both of my bathrooms are bright enough from sunlight to not require any additional illumination.

      --

      Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

    108. Re:Warranty? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Technically Australia runs at 230V, but +10% and -6% are within spec.

      245V is within that range, maybe harmonics are having an effect.

    109. Re:Warranty? by Znork · · Score: 1

      Arent 24 volt LED bulbs available and reasonably cheap?

      But yes, CFL's are very nice for low energy consumption with LED's just catching up. For those with dark winters there are 60W CFL's available that will really brighten your day.

    110. Re:Warranty? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >California building code requires dimmable switches to be built in as the first switch in most rooms.
      But, fortunately, the law also prohibits shooting whales from a moving car.
      Man, oh man, such good shit you must be smoking over there.

    111. Re:Warranty? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ...on my doubtless dodgy home wiring and saving me money that way.

      If your home wiring is really bad enough to be burning out incandescent bulbs weekly, then the money you save on CFLs will probably be quickly nullified when the god damn house catches fire. Maybe you should invest in an electrician instead of bulbs that hide the symptoms of a much bigger problem?

    112. Re:Warranty? by Mattsson · · Score: 1

      I've got a certain lamp that burn through bulbs, no matter what kind, at about three - six per year. It is of the bathroom-mounted kind with a built in transformer for a lower-voltage shaver-outlet.
      My guess is that the built in transformer gives some kind of power spike back to the bulbs either at power on or power off...
      Really annoying.

      --
      /.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)
    113. Re:Warranty? by dunkelfalke · · Score: 1

      CFLs normally use electronic ballasts, this means they flicker with a frequency of 20kHz. Humans cannot see that. Probably no living being can.

      --
      "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
    114. Re:Warranty? by dunkelfalke · · Score: 1

      Well, bugger me sideways. I use three CFLs (and a LED, otherwise the CFLs wouldn't even start up) in an enclosed fixture in a bathroom, on a dimmer. Five years so far, no losses yet. The fixtures do get very hot, though and I do expect the CFLs to die eventually, but they have already paid for themselves (I used only around 2550 kWh last year).

      --
      "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
    115. Re:Warranty? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So how's your new job at Philips going?

    116. Re:Warranty? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually, Philips is a dutch company, so it would be Dutch engineerd.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philips

    117. Re:Warranty? by Neil+Boekend · · Score: 2

      My full colour Led strips work at 12V dc.
      I have them as ambient lighting behind a 5cm (2 inch) height wooden panel in the corner of the ceiling and the wall, over a long part of the wall. They provide a smooth glow over the wall, in whatever coulor I like that day.

      --
      Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
    118. Re:Warranty? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Philips is both Dutch and well-known for its inferior quality products. If you want a decent German CFL, buy an Osram. Most of them are still made in Germany and all of them are engineered there. Ther are quite expensive, however.

    119. Re:Warranty? by Neil+Boekend · · Score: 1

      Phillips may be Bolivian, but Philips is definately from The Netherlands, Eindhoven. They are the ones that design lights.
      Having said that: they probably have Asian companies produce most the lights to their spec, with some quite heavy sample based checking on the things. They tend to use high grade components, wich makes them more expensive.

      --
      Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
    120. Re:Warranty? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have a CFL that is over 5 years old. I bought it cheaply at a marketplace in a small town in northern China. One would expect it to burn out quickly, especially since China has 220V mains and I am operating it at European 230V. It still works.

    121. Re:Warranty? by Neil+Boekend · · Score: 1

      So if you use CFLS or leds instead of incandescents you can have an awesomely big TV without using more power overall? Sounds like a relatively good idea to me, since the most likely alternative would be an awesomely big TV AND incandescents.

      --
      Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
    122. Re:Warranty? by rjstanford · · Score: 1

      And its struggling with the fact that there are too many people there for the power it has to deliver. This is one way to mitigate that, at least a little bit. Its called compromise, and while unpleasant it usually beats the alternatives.

      --
      You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
    123. Re:Warranty? by rjstanford · · Score: 1

      We have relatively cheap IKEA CFLs in all of our bathrooms, mainly because our house has decorative fixtures with 6 bulbs in them, and even smaller incandescents add annoying warmth in a climate like Texas'. We put them in 5 or 6 years ago, no problems yet with any of them. I know that the plural of anecdote isn't data, but in many cases they're just not that bad (and very reasonably priced).

      --
      You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
    124. Re:Warranty? by mcvos · · Score: 2

      In ideal circumstances, CFLs can last a very long time. But they also seem to be a lot more sensitive to power fluctuations, bad wiring, temperature, being turned on and off a lot, etc. I still remember that the first CFLs were specifically for locations where they wouldn't be turned off and on a lot. Best for rooms that are lit constantly. Not so good for toilets and garages, for example.

      I also have one fixture in my house where CFLs don't work at all, for some mysterious reason. Incandescents and LEDs work fine, though.

      My layman's impression of LEDs is that they are every bit as tolerant of various fluctuations and being turned on and off a lot as incandescents are. LEDs were originally used for blinkenlights in modems and other places where they blink rapidly, so that certainly can't be an issue. The fact that they work fine in my one weird fixture is also a good sign.

      I have a lot more faith in LEDs than in CFLs. CFLs seem to be just transitionary tech, because for a long time LEDs were nowhere near ready, while incandescents really are too wasteful for many applications (like rooms where the lights are constantly on). But in the future, everything will be LED.

    125. Re:Warranty? by rjstanford · · Score: 2

      Of course, it could also inspire companies to make more efficient standard socket incandescents too - http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/29/idUS273367407320110429 is but one example of many.

      --
      You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
    126. Re:Warranty? by mcvos · · Score: 1

      The have been effectively outlawed in many places, and in my opinion, this was very premature. Mind you, I'm big on environmentalism, I was an early adopter with both CFLs and LEDs. I'd love to get rid of incandescents. But there simply are situations where incandescents are the better choice. CFLs aren't suitable for lights that get turned on and off a lot, and they're quite sensitive to many other things. I suppose to more efficient halogens (which are only slightly more efficient than common incandescents) could fit the bill, but they're more expensive, not much more efficient, and halogens seem to burn out even faster than everything else. So it's better to keep incandescents available until LEDs are finally ready to take over.

    127. Re:Warranty? by mea_culpa · · Score: 1

      Two main reasons for shorter than advertised CFL life:

      1. Build quality.
      The first bulbs to the mass market were larger, slow starting low frequency bulbs. I still have two of these on my garage door opener since 1999. Despite the GDO vibrating them 4 times a day or more and AZ summer heat they still work.
      The capacitor plague infected CFLs badly throughout the 2000s. This combined with higher frequency quick starting bulbs made many do live a shorter life than incandescents.

      2. Non-optimal usage.
      CFL life is significantly shortened when not cooled down for at least 15 minutes prior to restart. Using CFLs in high traffic areas such as hallways, kitchens, etc will see shortest life. Consider using LED lighting in these areas.

    128. Re:Warranty? by mcvos · · Score: 1

      But you also need two fixtures for your two bulbs.

      However it can be even cheaper. At the HEMA (a big Dutch chain of shops), I bought some 40W equivalent LEDs for €3 each. That's an awfully competitive price, and the light is good enough. (I've got two of these in a three-socket fixture together with a 60W equivalent CFL. The combination of LED and CFL light gives a perfect light mixture, in my opinion.)

    129. Re:Warranty? by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      California building code requires dimmable switches to be built in as the first switch in most rooms

      Are you sure that's a California code? I'm aware of codes requiring that you have an outlet every six feet on a wall longer than six feet, but nothing about a dimmable switch.

      Too bad they hold the law hostage and you have to pay to see it, or we could settle this right now.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    130. Re:Warranty? by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      That wasn't my first thought... though in response to your question, LED lights usually last a long time, because they're composed of hundreds of LED's, and an individual diode can burn out without drastically affecting the usability of the bulb itself.

      No, it can't. At least, not in typical LED lamps; the LEDs are usually wired series-parallel. When one fails, a whole bunch fail.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    131. Re:Warranty? by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Yammering about how 'heat hurts them' is like yammering how motorcycles have greater wind resistance, and thus how they must have horrible gas mileage, ignoring the fact they weight a tenth of what cars do.

      Motorcycles DO have horrible gas mileage. Most motorcycles actually get the same kind of mileage as cars if you drive them like most people actually drive most motorcycles, which is not particularly frugally. As it turns out, the larger you make an ICE, the more efficiency you can get out of it, and the issue of wind resistance is actually a serious one. As well, motorcycles almost universally have shitty emissions, because so far emissions equipment has not been required, and motorcycles do not get tailpipe tests.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    132. Re:Warranty? by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      The vendor replaced it, but the new one did the same. Finally I just got a cheaper less sensitive UPS that didn't pay (much?) attention to the power factor.

      When the first sine-wave inverters were being designed for home use they asked the power companies what the power was supposed to look like and designed for that. The systems were universally rejecting the power coming in from the mains because it was out of spec, too noisy, too many brownouts, too many surges, too far off-frequency, etc etc.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    133. Re:Warranty? by sFurbo · · Score: 2

      I think that indicates overvoltage. The lifetime of incandescents is proportional to V^-16 (no, this is not a typo), so a 20% overvoltage will reduce there lifetime by a factor of 20. In CFLs, you can correct for this in the electronic circuit.

    134. Re:Warranty? by sFurbo · · Score: 1

      Why are we "upgrading" to bulbs that are actually inferior to the incandescents we used before?

      They are inferior in some senses, and superior in other. They use a lot less energy, which is clearly a plus.

      They take too long long to light

      That really depends on the bulb. You can buy bulbs marked as "quick-on", which are typically at 60% in 15 seconds. While you notice the difference between 100% and 60%, the logarithmic response of our eyes make it less than you would think. It isn't instant, but I can't think of many applications that would need it faster.

      don't live any longer in real world use

      Mine does. And this is why anecdotal evidence is close to useless.

      and have to be shipped across ~20,000 miles from China (and back) whereas the incandescents were built right here.

      Shipping is cheap. Shipping a product from China to Europe costs less than the last 100 km by truck.

    135. Re:Warranty? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's building codes, not citizen control, durrr! CA is smog-nasty, they're doing their bit to help reduce pollution and subsequent medical problems down the road.

    136. Re:Warranty? by sFurbo · · Score: 1
      To substantiate, from WP:

      Light output is approximately proportional to V^3.4
      Power consumption is approximately proportional to V^1.6
      Lifetime is approximately proportional to V^-16

      Long living incandescents are "undervoltaged". As light/power is proportional to V^1.8, undervoltaged bulbs have lower light/power (are less efficient).

    137. Re:Warranty? by multipartmixed · · Score: 1

      > I have multiple lights in my house that bleed through electricity if I
      > am using fluorescent lights. You turn them off.. and the light either
      > flickers or you can see a dim glow.

      There is no way your bulbs are using power once the power has been cut at the wall switch.

      You are probably seeing the powdery stuff on the inside of the glass still fluorescing because it takes a bit of time for it to return to an unexcited state.

      --

      Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
    138. Re:Warranty? by Gr8Apes · · Score: 1

      I don't know - 1 kW of PV and 1100ah of batteries cost you $11K 4 years ago for a cost of $230/month. Based on your previous lifespan, you're about halfway through the expected life, meaning that you'll be down to $115/month. That's darn cheap if you ask me. Granted, you have generator maintenance which isn't included, but heck, I'd love to be anywhere near that cost/month. Granted, you already had 1500W of PV which would add significantly to the initial cost, but certainly worth it over the long haul.

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
    139. Re:Warranty? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > Philips..... it's supposed to be high-quality German engineered product
      Nope, sorry - Dutch.

    140. Re:Warranty? by MrFlibbs · · Score: 1

      (And, incidentally, current CFLs have no startup time, at least not one that humans can notice. Complaining that you were sold something that is shitty that is supposed to last for five years is reasonable, but it's not a reason to not buy new ones, which do not have that problem.)

      And, incidentally, you are quite wrong. There is a difference between the CFLs with the exposed "twisty" tube and those that are enclosed. I have some mini-floodlights in my kitchen that are of the enclosed type, and it takes them at least two full minutes to achieve maximum brightness. These are GE bulbs that are only a few years old. For the first thirty seconds or so, their brightness level is about that of a night light. Quite annoying. Oh, and I went through several bulbs that burnt out within a few months before finding a set that now seems reliable.

      I do have other, exposed tubes that turn on quickly. But saying all CLFs have no startup time is just plain wrong.

    141. Re:Warranty? by Phreakiture · · Score: 1

      I still have my second CFL, bought for $20 in 1994, and it still works and is still in regular use. The first one would still work had it not suffered a percussive failure (i.e. the floor lamp it was in fell over and it smashed on the floor). It has graced five different addresses.

      I will grant, however, that toward the end of the 90's and the start of the 00's, that the bulb manufacturers got a little lazy, especially the big names. Oddly, the ones I have had the best luck with have been store brands that sell for < $2 each.

      CFLs used to sell at $20/each without too much trouble, because the savings were there and there wasn't a suitable competing technology. LEDs are going to have a little bit of a harder time, because, for the moment, CFLs are in the same league savings-wise and much, much cheaper.

      Where I see LEDs serving in the short-term is in fixtures with dimmers (dimmable CFLs are more expensive than non-dimmable ones and aren't that good), and in other fixtures where a CFL is a bad fit, either functionally or physically.

      One last note: While Philips is making $60 LED bulbs that produce 800 lumens (~60W incandescent equivalent), I saw a store-brand LED bulb in Lowe's just two days ago that was 800 lumens, 12W and $20. You can do better on price.

      --
      www.wavefront-av.com
    142. Re:Warranty? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      HV halogen bulbs meet the standard. Last time I checked, halogens *are* incandescent lights.

    143. Re:Warranty? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's a LED bulb, not a CFL. LEDs are a completely different technology. Give it a shot ... I already did recently with their 60W equivalents, and I'm pleased so far ... they require an open fixture, though, to enable free air flow (LEDs die more quickly if they're not cooled, that's why the bulb has a huge heat sink). For the 60W model, the packaging says the projected lifetime is for 4 hours per day operation and operation in an open fixture. Power fluctuations and brownouts shouldn't affect LED bulbs at all. I have lots of barely noticeable vibrations in my apartment from metro trains and cars, so CFLs died on me pretty quickly as well. I'd say give LED a chance! ;)

    144. Re:Warranty? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I have a CFL made in France that lasted for 10 years and is still working, although I use it every day. The solution: The CFL tubes must not be curved but straight or U-shaped (sans the curvature). I found this lifetime information on CFL manufacturer's websites, they know exactly that the curved ones don't last as long.

    145. Re:Warranty? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah I'm really going to spend $1000 in new fixtures and $3000 in labor for an electrician to come-in, rip out my ceiling, and install new fixtures.

      You're doing it wrong. If you are replacing existing fixtures, you don't need to tear out any drywall. And if it would really cost you $4000 total to replace all the fixtures in your house, then you live in a McMansion and $4000 is a drop in your bucket. Nevermind the fact that such a change would be easy as shit to perform yourself, and at a fraction of the cost.

    146. Re:Warranty? by mlong · · Score: 1

      I looked at one of the LED bulbs in Home Depot. The store claimed 40 years on their little shelf promo. The box said something like 20 years. And the fine print warranty said 3 years. So the manufacturer only has enough faith in their product to warrant it for 3 years and they want me to spend $40 on it. I don't think so

      --
      //m
    147. Re:Warranty? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Interesting thoughts. As an electrical engineer that could and does design these things I whole heartedly agree with you. I don't understand the path LED lighting is taking. Why doesn't some giant company build the electronics into the fixtures, change the bases so LED lights aren't compatable with incandescents so they're not interchangeable and sell fixtures. The bulbs would be nothing but LEDs and could be somewhat competitive with what we're used to. I suppose some bozo has a patent on that scenario and wants a few billion bucks for its' use. I tried the LED thing. I bought a 4" spot for around $36.00 to replace a bulb that was particularly difficult to replace and it lasted about a month. I replaced the LED bulb with an incandescent.

    148. Re:Warranty? by Golddess · · Score: 1

      Was wondering if you could clarify what you mean by "equivalent incandescent". Equivalent in wattage, or light output? Because all of my 13W CFLs (which are equivalent to a 60W incandescent in terms of light output) I can touch with my bare hand, while if I'd tried that with a 60W incandescent, it'd melt my skin.

      Though I suppose I might have just not had the CFLs on for long enough.

      --
      "I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
    149. Re:Warranty? by lymond01 · · Score: 1

      The lifetime is not for 24/7/365 usage, or for being turned on/off 10,000 times per day.

      I'm behind my light-flipping quota merely by answering your post. I was going to say...oh...never mind, I have to get back to the switch.

    150. Re:Warranty? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Actually, Australia used to run at 240volts, it has officially switched to 230volts. It is possible 240 is still being supplied by some networks.

      Lighting is very sensitive to voltage. A higher voltage can greatly reduce the lifespan of a light. If you are receiving 245 volts in your house and your bulb is really designed with a stable 230volts in mind then its lifespan will be reduced.

    151. Re:Warranty? by cpu6502 · · Score: 1

      Well after I read an article about CFLs dying from heat, I started cracking open some dead bulbs. Sure enough, there was heat damage..... mostly in the caps which swelled-up and spilled their electrolyte.

      I've also seen examples of CFLs literally catching fire from excess heat on the electronics. If a part is only designed for 50C and the enclosed/upside-down fixtures rise above that level, you're going to see failures..... or in my case, shortened life that is no longer than an incandescent.

      >>>Yammering

      F.U. I'm an electrical engineer sharing the data I have uncovered about this technology. That is not yammering..... it is doing what I am good at doing. You should go do your own research.

      --
      My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
    152. Re:Warranty? by DavidTC · · Score: 1

      Oh yeah! Well, I bought a CFL to replace an incandescents bulb, and it wouldn't even fit in the socket! And after I jammed it in to installed it, my car's other headlight stopped working also.

      Um, yes, if you buy some sort of weird specialty floodlight CFL designed to operate outside (And hence needs to slowly warm up to protect itself from freezing temps), it, may, indeed, not be ideal to have in some place other than where it's supposed to be.

      But I don't run around when people are talking about 'standard-size incandescents' and claiming 'Actually, some incandescents don't fit in all fixtures, and even are designed to run on 12 volts.'.

      We are having a discussion about standard CFLs bulbs, sold in stores to replace standard incandescents bulbs, not whatever light you've bought that technically happen to be a CFL also.

      I always end up in this sort of discussions. Someone says 'Here's a made up list of reasons that CFLs suck that are old reasons from 1999 or just urban legends', I refute the points, and someone who apparently was not listening runs in to list places where CFLs should not be used. At no point have I ever said 'CFLs floodlights are a good idea'.

      In fact, they are a fucking stupid idea, for several reasons. All non-standard lighting should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Floodlights, depending on what they are trying to do, should be either halogen, or incandescent. (Or, now, possibly LED.)

      This has nothing to do with the fact that unlike what the post I replied to claimed, there is actually no 'turn on' delay if you replace standard incandescent bulbs with CFL ones.

      --
      If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
    153. Re:Warranty? by DavidTC · · Score: 1

      Heat them substantially above the boiling point of water and they fail.

      Uh, yes, but as they don't get that hot, I don't quite see what you're saying.

      And the waste heat of a CFL is more than half that of an equivalent incandescent, so it needs more cooling for a given amount of light to stay functional for its rated lifetime - or at all.

      The waste heat of an incandescent is 100%, in that all electricity it uses is turned into heat. (After which point, some of that heat turns into light.)

      I have no idea how CFLs could conceivable use more.

      --
      If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
    154. Re:Warranty? by fnj · · Score: 1

      Well, if you actually lived in a new house in California (the rules only apply to new houses), after buying the house and moving in you could rip the nanny state switches the hell out and replace them with normal switches. The day is not YET here when they can control your personal life to that extent. Heck, you could even put 250 watt incandescents in every fixture. You can still buy 'em; they just cost a lot more now.

    155. Re:Warranty? by DavidTC · · Score: 1

      Most motorcycles actually get the same kind of mileage as cars if you drive them like most people actually drive most motorcycles, which is not particularly frugally.

      Uh, while I'm sure that many motorcycles owners drive their motorcycle in a stupid manner, I'm fairly certain that even crappily driven motorcycles, with huge engines, end up getting basically the same gas mileage as the absolute best cars.

      The absolute shittiest gas mileage any (non-broken) motorcycle gets is like 40 mpg. Which means that every single motorcycle beats, for example, my car.

      Newer smaller bikes have EPA measured mileage of like 80-100mpg, and while I suspect people don't actually get that, the crappiest driving can't reduce mileage by more than 1/4th. I mean, what's the theory here, that motorcycle drivers spend 90% of their time on the road stopped at a traffic light revving the engine?

      --
      If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
    156. Re:Warranty? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      F.U. I'm pretending to be an electrical engineer sharing the lies I have fabricated about this technology.

      FTFY.

    157. Re:Warranty? by cpu6502 · · Score: 1

      >>>on a dimmer

      That's probably why they still work. They're not running at full blast like mine which get so hot, I can't touch the fixture without burning myself.

      BTW I tried one of those so-called "dimmable" CFLs. It lasted about 5 minutes. Good thing Sears has a good return policy; I've never tried it again.

      --
      My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
    158. Re:Warranty? by dunkelfalke · · Score: 1

      They are running on full blast, these are non-dimmable CFLs. That's why they need either a LED or a lightbulb to start up at all when hanging on a dimmer.

      --
      "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
    159. Re:Warranty? by MrFlibbs · · Score: 1

      Contrary to your assumptions, mini-floodlights are in fact commonly used indoors. A quick check at the websites for Lowes or Home Depot demonstrates this clearly. In fact, the fixtures into which I placed CFL mini-flood lights were explicitly designed for indoor mini-floods and held incandescent mini-floods at the time. Your assertion that the lights are used incorrectly is, quite simply, wrong. Perhaps you should tell GE and Phillips (among others) that their CFL mini-floodlights are a "f-ing stupid idea" -- they seem to have no qualms about making and selling them.

      A casual perusal of a pro-CFL site makes the following statement with regards to CFL statup times:

          "Only the flood light styles start at noticeably less than full illumination, but within 20 to 30 seconds they are at over 80% illumination."

      My experience is that this is an understatement -- it takes mine at least a full minute to reach 80% illumination and they don't hit 100% until about two minutes. I've read from other sources that the start up times tend to deteriorate over time, so perhaps that accounts for the difference. But the simple fact remains your assertion that all modern CFLs start up instantly is wrong. Even pro-CFL sites admit as much.

      Maybe the fact that you "always end up in this sort of discussions" is due to your refusal to accept the facts of the situation?

    160. Re:Warranty? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      BTW I tried one of those so-called "dimmable" CFLs. It lasted about 5 minutes.

      If you read the box (gee, where have I heard that before...), you'd notice that you can't use the same dimmer switch as with incandescents. Probably why you ended up frying your dimmable CFLs.

      I've never tried it again.

      So one self-inflicted bad experience means you'll never try something again? Wow, if I acted like that (for example, if I'd given up programming after my first ever compile produced a bug), I can't imagine how fucked up my life would be. You must be either Mary fuckin' Poppins (practically perfect in every way), or had already decided that you would hate dimmable CFLs before you even tried them.

    161. Re:Warranty? by CrimsonAvenger · · Score: 1

      How can I afford all this? Well, the most recent upgrade cost ~AUD$23K, and was subsidised 50%, so we only paid about AUD$11K.

      So, basically you can afford it by getting your neighbors to pay for half of it?

      The only problem with subsidies is that they only work if only a few people take advantage of them. If everyone decides it's a great idea, then they pay for half of your system, and you pay for half of their system, and you all end up paying full price.

      Note, by the way, that I don't disapprove of you taking advantage of the subsidy - you should take EVERY benefit available to you, as long as you're paying taxes to the government.

      That said, I do think that subsidies are designed primarily to siphon money from the taxpayers to unprofitable businesses, and are really a bad idea.

      --

      "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
    162. Re:Warranty? by Mashiki · · Score: 1

      Those of us who are chronic migraine(with 4-8 per week) sufferers with photophobia as a trigger can see CFL flicker. Feel free to use your favorite search engine to look up the studies on it, I'd suggest Journal of Neurology, or Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    163. Re:Warranty? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I hear ya. If they say it will last 20 years then I want a warranty replacement IN TOWN for 10 years or you get dinged for the shipping costs.

      Of all the CFLs I've owned the only one that truly lived up to expectations is the GE Circlelight. First one lasted 12 years at 1-2 hours a day so it made it to the 5000-8000 hours. The next one I got is still going after 10 years. Yes I started trying these things out in the late 80s.

      The big problems with CFLs are that they have to be left on for 4+ minutes. If you turn on get what you need and turn off they burn out in a year or two. So forget the pantry, closets and washrooms. They also don't work well in cold so forget outside if you live in areas with winter.

      I've always kept the receipts and most of the manufacturers, to their credit, didn't make me ship it back. At least Philips and Sylvania didn't. FAX or email them the receipt and they send you a coupon. Nice thing is that in the year or two that the original bulbs lasted the price was cut in half. So instead of $10 per bulb the coupon for $10 bought 2 bulbs. I got my monies worth but I'm sure most people don't bother. The manufacturers count on that.

    164. Re:Warranty? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Australia has been 230 Volts for over 10 years. History means that it's still normally referred to as "240 volts", but it's actually 230.

    165. Re:Warranty? by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      The absolute shittiest gas mileage any (non-broken) motorcycle gets is like 40 mpg. Which means that every single motorcycle beats, for example, my car.

      Bahaha. Sorry, but no. Maybe scooters. Many motorcycles out there aren't actually even clearing 20 mpg. I know too many motorcyclists to buy any 40+ mpg nonsense. Most of them even have fuel injected bikes.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    166. Re:Warranty? by Summitlake · · Score: 1

      Ditto. QC on CFL's is slipshod. Some seem to last forever; some last a few days. Who's making them really, the coal industry?

    167. Re:Warranty? by Summitlake · · Score: 1

      And ... does anyone know if $30 to $60 per LED is priced against actual manufacturing costs, or what they think we should be willing to pay based on their performance claims? Even if $60 is cost-effective in the long run, I'm not paying that.

    168. Re:Warranty? by SockPuppetOfTheWeek · · Score: 1

      He did only replace them when he noticed they were dim.

    169. Re:Warranty? by juancn · · Score: 1

      I'm from a 220V country, they last only if you don't turn them on/off often. For example, the ones in the bathroom burn out every 3 to 6 months (I tried Philips, GE and Osram). What usually breaks is the power source/starter.

    170. Re:Warranty? by dwywit · · Score: 1

      Yes - http://www.sinfin.com.au/products.php?filter=Bulbs+12v+-+24v
        but when I went to see their showroom, they didn't have one - it's just an office, so I wasn't impressed.

      --
      They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
    171. Re:Warranty? by dwywit · · Score: 1

      This particular subsidy program was specifically targeted at off-grid non-commercial users, ie.domestic households. It was also subject to a comparison test for getting the mains put in. You either had to be more than 1 kilometre from the grid, or submit a grid connection quote if under 1KM. My quote exceeded the amount necessary to qualify for the subsidy (although it DIDN'T include tree-clearing costs to put in power poles, and can you imagine what my neighbours would say if I had half the trees in the street removed?). The program was originally aimed at remote communities that rely on stonking big diesel generators to power their small towns - the govt got tired of subsidising their diesel, and decided to subsidise solar PV instead.
       
      And yes, I pay my share of taxes - I've only been unemployed for about 3 months in my whole working life - I'll take everything I'm entitled to, and give credit to the government initiatives that try to do something positive with tax $$$. Would you believe it was a conservative, right-wing government that allocated something like AUD$134 milllion for this program (spread over about 3 years), and a left-leaning labour govt that took away what was left to give to grid-connect subsidies?

      --
      They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
    172. Re:Warranty? by dwywit · · Score: 1

      That's the theory - in fact, line voltages are all over the place. When I first moved here, I was renting for 8 months until I found my current home. The rented place had a standard connection to the grid - my wife worked from home and complained about brown-outs during the day - they were sufficient to cause her computer to reboot - not fun while editing a newsletter. Also, there'd be a transient dip at 10pm every night - I eventually figured out it must have been everyone's off-peak hot water systems coming online - so it's a nice theory that we get 230VAC, but it doesn't happen in practice, and lampmakers should take that into account.

      --
      They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
    173. Re:Warranty? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Back home (Montreal) we will stick to incandescents for some obvious reasons. CFL's produce the light the claim, as long as temperatures are above freezing. And the other problem is the poor quality. The filaments burn out after the bulbs are used in a room where they are turned on and off twice a day (bedroom or kitchen or bathroom). These bulbs contribute too much mercury polution.

      The incandescent bulbs are hardly if ever turned on during the extended summer hours and in winter, they supplant the heat supplied by the furnace. Oh yes, in Montreal, 80% of homes are 100% electrically heated. 10% with Natural Gaz, and the balance with oil. So, there is no waste in using clean incandescent bulbs, with filaments that can last up to 5 years or more, at 75 cents per bulb. And there is no mercury polution.
       

    174. Re:Warranty? by zippthorne · · Score: 1

      But he also advocated going out of your way to "check."

      --
      Can you be Even More Awesome?!
    175. Re:Warranty? by Crosshair84 · · Score: 0

      Ditto, though I don't have 12 foot ceilings. I too bought into the CFL craze when they first came out, but I have always found their life claims to be disappointing. Have you ever had one catch fire? I had one get actual flames, thankfully went out when I turned the power off.

      LED tech will eventually solve the issue and CFLs can go in the trash bin of history, They've already largely replaced incandescent flashlights and Christmas tree lights. Only a matter of time until they get the cost for larger LEDs down. Still' I've stocked up on incandescent bulbs in case it takes 10 years to get things worked out.

    176. Re:Warranty? by gmanterry · · Score: 1

      TFA says they're dimable. Therefore I wouldn't expect them to have any problems with brown outs.

      --
      Since when is "public safety" the root password to the Constitution?
    177. Re:Warranty? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not if he was replacing a bulb that had burned out when he noticed.

    178. Re:Warranty? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hi - I work for Philips and wanted to point out that the L Prize will be elligible for rebates that will drop the bulb's price by as much as $30 and most of our LED retrofit bulbs come with 3-6 warranties. The consumer warranties are generally 5-6 years, depending on how many hours you use the bulb.

      Best,
      Silvie

    179. Re:Warranty? by hairyfeet · · Score: 1

      Nope never had one burn yet thank goodness. BTW you don't have to stock up, both Fred's and Family dollar carry incandescent bulbs (made in china of course) and they are actually pretty good, last longer than the last couple of gens of Made in USA bulbs I had and they are 4 for a buck. At that price I keep a couple of extra boxes but just in case i have a bulb blow at 3AM or a neighbor comes knocking asking for a bulb.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
  2. This is why they passed the law by Attila+Dimedici · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And now we are discovering why they passed the law requiring all light bulbs to be higher efficiency than standard incandescents, so that Philips can sell light bulbs for $30-60.

    --
    The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
    1. Re:This is why they passed the law by toetagger · · Score: 1

      Feel free to make & sell your own designs for $29 a piece - I would be one of your customers, unless someone else is cheaper than you.

    2. Re:This is why they passed the law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      A 100W light bulb consumes 100kWh over its rated lifetime, which is 1000 hours. Depending on the price of electricity in your part of the world, that's probably between $8 and $30. Assuming a dismal lifetime of just 5000 hours for the LED bulb, you'd need five $1 incandescent bulbs for a total cost of ownership between $5+5*$8=$45 and $4+5*$30=$154. The LED bulb (let's say $35) consumes electricity for $9 to $35, for a total cost of ownership between $35+$9=$44 and $35+$35=$70. So unless the LED doesn't last 5000 hours or your electricity costs less than $0.08, the LED bulb is cheaper, and you don't need to change the bulb as often. The law exists because most people couldn't do a simple calculation if their life depended on it.

    3. Re:This is why they passed the law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm pretty sure they're just banning interstate trade. No one can stop you from starting a manufacturing plant in your state to sell in-state...

    4. Re:This is why they passed the law by OpieTaylor · · Score: 2

      Attila: you tell 'em! It's damned gobmint conspiracy! Next thing you know they'll make us have gay marriages!

      --
      Thanks a lot, big brain. (K. Vonnegut, "Galapagos")
    5. Re:This is why they passed the law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      It's so that LIEBERALS can use LED lights to lighten up their ABORTION HOUSES and FORCED STERILIZATION CAMPS where they will destroy white people.

    6. Re:This is why they passed the law by cpu6502 · · Score: 1, Informative

      Now here's some REAL math based upon real world experience (almost 20 years of CFL usage).

      CFLs and LEDs don't live any longer than incandescents because of many factors. Simply put: The electronics are sensitive to heat, electric spikes, or frequent on/off cycles by the users. These factors lead to early death. In my experience CFLs don't live any longer than incandescents... and in some annoying cases, actually die sooner (within days). Therefore assuming equal lifespans across all these bulbs:

      incandescent == $10 at 10 cents/KWh + 50 cents initial purchase.

      LED == 1000 hours times 20 w == 20 kWh or $2 plus $60 initial cost == very very costly

      CFL == pretty much the same: $2 electricity + $4 initial cost

      BUT the math is not done yet. Next you need to add in the cost of transport. Incandescents are built right here, and they can be thrown into any trashbag or landfill, so transportation costs are neglibile. BUT CFLs and LEDs are only built in China, and only recycled in China, so you need to add ~20,000 miles of fuel usage. (And also consider that in China, they just dump the mercury-laden bulbs on the ground. They don't care about the environment.) Plus the extra expense of driving the dead CFL to the landfill because you can't just throw it away & the garbage truck refuses to take them. Bottom Line:

      I'm sticking with incandescents, until
      the U.S. or EU outlaw them (2014?).

      --
      My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
    7. Re:This is why they passed the law by schwit1 · · Score: 2

      Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111 (1942), was a United States Supreme Court decision that recognized the power of the federal government to regulate economic activity.

      A farmer, Roscoe Filburn, was growing wheat for on-farm consumption. The U.S. government had established limits on wheat production based on acreage owned by a farmer, in order to drive up wheat prices during the Great Depression, and Filburn was growing more than the limits permitted. Filburn was ordered to destroy his crops and pay a fine, even though he was producing the excess wheat for his own use and had no intention of selling it.

      The Supreme Court interpreted the United States Constitution's Commerce Clause under Article 1 Section 8, which permits the United States Congress "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes". The Court decided that Filburn's wheat growing activities reduced the amount of wheat he would buy for chicken feed on the open market, and because wheat was traded nationally, Filburn's production of more wheat than he was allotted was affecting interstate commerce. Thus, Filburn's production could be regulated by the federal government.

      As the Court explained in Gonzales v. Raich (2005):

              "Wickard thus establishes that Congress can regulate purely intrastate activity that is not itself 'commercial', in that it is not produced for sale, if it concludes that failure to regulate that class of activity would undercut the regulation of the interstate market in that commodity."

    8. Re:This is why they passed the law by DickBreath · · Score: 1

      Don't focus on the $30 to $60 cost. Look on the bright side. This bulb will pay for itself in energy savings. Faster than you think. In less time than it takes until your grandchildren graduate college!

      --

      I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
    9. Re:This is why they passed the law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You are too kind. The energy efficiency law exists because few Americans have the civic or patriotic sense to conserve resources, even with war on two different fronts.

      Bring back the draft and start roughing up people who waste, like they did in WW2, and people will care..

    10. Re:This is why they passed the law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hooray, it's anecdote day!

    11. Re:This is why they passed the law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The particular CFL which shines its light on me right now has been doing so for at least 10000 hours, and this is in a house that doesn't have particularly clean electricity. All lights dim when some machinery comes on and flicker when it stops. I don't know why you seem to be having problems with CFLs, but in my experience they outlast incandescents many times. I did pay much more than $4 per CFL though.

    12. Re:This is why they passed the law by PRMan · · Score: 1, Informative

      Nonsense. I used to change light bulbs every 2-3 years. I haven't changed my current set of CFLs in over 8 years. The first one finally died the other day. The other 30 are going strong.

      --
      Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
    13. Re:This is why they passed the law by Obfuscant · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Feel free to make & sell your own designs for $29 a piece -

      He isn't free to make and sell his own design. If he was, he'd be making incandescant lamps for a buck each and you'd be saving $29 per bulb by buying from him. It takes a LONG time to get to $29 in electricity from a light bulb.

      Light bulbs are no longer a free market item. Once the govmint got involved in banning certain kinds, the freedom kinda went POOF!

    14. Re:This is why they passed the law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm sure you'll get a "CFL works for me" reply at +5 Informative, but I wanted to 2nd what you wrote. Sometimes, in some fixtures, you get a CFL that lasts for years. Other times in other fixtures you get one that burns out in days. I had one even try to catch fire in less than a week in a normal non-enclosed fixture (the plastic turned yellow and was smoldering).

      Which brings up another point. Worse than the mercury which might escape are the fire-retardant chemicals, which are potent carcinogens. The chemicals are very toxic and especially since the plastic is warm I wouldn't be surprised if a lot leaches out even in normal use... definitely when the bulb tries to burn itself up. Nobody ever talks about the real chemical threat from CFLs.

      So LEDs are better than CFLs, but they also have problems like the chemicals, and also another problem that they react so quickly that you can see everything that happens in the power grid. Like when the refrigerator or furnace kicks on the lights dim or flicker ever so much (maybe most people won't be able to notice it, but if you can then it's annoying).

      You can't go wrong with halogens though. They work with the the worst fixtures and wiring, and even have a slow off so it isn't instant darkness.

    15. Re:This is why they passed the law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >The law exists because most people couldn't do a simple calculation if their life depended on it.

      Is that the same law that mandated compact flouros knowing they were significantly more harmful for the environment than the standard incandescent bulbs? Even factoring in the "supposed 10 year life", they were many, many times more harmful for the environment.

      My experience shows that CFLs last 2-3 times longer than an incandescent, making the relative polution levels even worse.

    16. Re:This is why they passed the law by Freedom+Bug · · Score: 4, Informative

      Why would you think that LEDs are bad because you have a poor experience with CFLs?

      You're right, many CFLs do have the issues you describe. That makes it a great argument FOR the LED bulbs, which don't have most of the issues you describe. One of the worst characteristics of CFLs is that their lifetime is hit hard by frequent on/off cycles. LED bulbs care about frequent on/off cycles even less than incandescent bulbs.

    17. Re:This is why they passed the law by DragonWriter · · Score: 1

      Now here's some REAL math based upon real world experience (almost 20 years of CFL usage).

      CFLs and LEDs don't live any longer than incandescents because of many factors.

      If we're talking about experience, then, IME, CFLs -- haven't used LEDs -- last many times longer than halogens, which last considerably longer than regular incandescents.

      But personal experience is often uncontrolled and unreliable as a basis for generalization, which is why the whole controlled study idea was created -- and the data surely supports the ideas that CFLs last far longer the incandescents.

    18. Re:This is why they passed the law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      why is this jackass upvoted informative? he is trolling.

      by fixing the lifespans to be equal, the lowest cost replacement will obviously win out. all of his data is anecdotal as well. the lifespan difference is the major advantage of CFL/LED...

    19. Re:This is why they passed the law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Mostly correct.

      If politicians really cared about the environment, they would not have killed the incandescent. Instead, they would have put an excise tax on the incandescent to make them less appetizing to buy. For example, $5 incandescent bulb vs. $4 CFL. Then customers can choose what they want for the applications they want it for.

      This "ban" is the most stupid thing I've ever heard of. Bulbs are not intrinsically causing pollution. This is like banning electric heaters because they are only 100% efficient and mandating everyone must buy heat pumps instead.

      There are applications where incandescent bulbs are preferred. There are applications where LED are far superior or where CFLs are most appropriate given current costs of production.

    20. Re:This is why they passed the law by rolfwind · · Score: 2

      CFLs and LEDs don't live any longer than incandescents because of many factors. Simply put: The electronics are sensitive to heat, electric spikes, or frequent on/off cycles by the users. These factors lead to early death. In my experience CFLs don't live any longer than incandescents... and in some annoying cases, actually die sooner (within days). Therefore assuming equal lifespans across all these bulbs

      I run a business. For whatever reasons, 2 of our big connected buildings don't have fluorescent lights but regular bulb fixtures (the building is from the 1890s). When CFLs came out, I jumped at them. I have over 150 CFL in regular use, about 12 outdoors and the rest indoors. All see regular use and on and off. I estimate I change about 5-8 bulbs a year. The outdoor bulbs contribute probably about 3-4 of that - they enclosed but some run dusk to dawn. We have had bad runs by some manufactures, where that number spiked in the past, but so far Feit Electric and Sylvania Micro Minis perform admirably.

      I do have some Fluorescent tubes in another seperate building and had ballasts (t8 and t12 iirc, in any case, digital and magnetic go bad, in one case all 12 units within a year within 3 years of installation).

      What I'm saying is that I do believe your data fits you, but there is variability, probably due to the quality of the grid you happen to be connected to- fluctuations, brown outs, and what not.

      My best performing CFLs are 3 hall lights that get turned off and on constantly and never stay on for long. Haven't changed them out since 2002. OTOH, I had par bulb CFLs die within days although that was early in the manufacturer's run/offering of them.

      In my experience, I change bulbs far less often than with regular incandescents.

    21. Re:This is why they passed the law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Citation required, you lying dipshit.

    22. Re:This is why they passed the law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The idea of an LED lasting 1000 hours is total intellectual dishonesty.

      The financial math works out in favor of the LED even at $60, the light quality from the LED is better than CFLs, and both LEDs and CFLs are objectively better for the environment than burning the coal to run the incandescent, and the LED sure does beat out the CFL there (lasts much, much longer and doesn't have to contain any mercury or any other bad thing. Probably throw it out in the trash - which is where millions of CFLs end up anyway.)

      You must have really shitty power if CFLs die as fast as incandescents.

    23. Re:This is why they passed the law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      $30 in electricity for 100W bulb is about 3000h, assuming the bulb is on,

      6h per day that's 500 days. Since it almost not on during the summer, that will be closer to 4-5 years.

      If the bulb is in the stairwell or bathroom and is on only about 30 minutes a day, well, then it will take 6000 days or close to 20 YEARS to get your money back. If you put that money into a 5% bond instead of buying the light bulb.

      I use CFLs in places that make sense. In places that are on longer than 1h a day. But in other places, they make NO SENSE what so ever! If I want a light bulb working in -40C, I would not go with a CFL.

      And which LED or CFL can I use inside an oven?? Or fridge??

    24. Re:This is why they passed the law by Attila+Dimedici · · Score: 1

      There is a significant risk that I would be violating a patent held by one of the companies that got this law passed if I tried that. This law was passed because Philips and GE (and a couple other companies) could not sell enough of their newer, patented energy efficient light bulbs for as much as they wanted to while they had to compete with light bulbs that had completely expired patents. So, they got together with the ant-industrial "environmentalists"* to get a law passed to eliminate some of their competition.

      *not all environmentalists are anti-industrial, and the anti-industrial "environmentalists" are more anti-industrial than they are environmentalist.

      --
      The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
    25. Re:This is why they passed the law by dgatwood · · Score: 1

      A 100W light bulb consumes 100kWh over its rated lifetime, which is 1000 hours. Depending on the price of electricity in your part of the world, that's probably between $8 and $30. Assuming a dismal lifetime of just 5000 hours for the LED bulb, you'd need five $1 incandescent bulbs for a total cost of ownership between $5+5*$8=$45 and $4+5*$30=$154. The LED bulb (let's say $35) consumes electricity for $9 to $35, for a total cost of ownership between $35+$9=$44 and $35+$35=$70. So unless the LED doesn't last 5000 hours or your electricity costs less than $0.08, the LED bulb is cheaper, and you don't need to change the bulb as often.

      First, you're making the dubious assumption that the electronics will last for 5,000 hours. If that 5,000 hours involved continuous burning (half a year), it probably would. Unfortunately, those electronic voltage converter stages use electrolytic capacitors that degrade over time, particularly in the presence of heat (such as from having a bunch of hot LEDs right above them). So the longer a period of time you spread the usage over, the fewer hours you'll actually get out of them.

      Second, even if you are correct, you are guilty of a broken window fallacy. Money that is spent up front on that bulb is money that is no longer earning interest. In a home environment, an average incandescent bulb lasts for anywhere from five to twenty years, depending on usage. Therefore, in the case of the incandescent bulb, assuming your numbers are correct, you spend maybe fifty cents in the initial investment, pus an additional $154 spread over up to two decades, or 32 cents per month. If the LED bulb costs $35, assuming you have a bank account that pays about 4% interest as mine does, then compounded annually, that LED bulb costs a whopping $76.69 over those twenty years before you factor in the cost of electricity. By comparison, the fifty cent incandescent bulb costs $1.10 over the life of the bulb in that same period of time. Add in the cost of power, and the LED bulb costs $85.69 - $111.69, whereas the incandescent costs $46.10 - $155.10. So depending on your power cost, the LED might be cheaper or significantly more expensive.

      Even amortized over a hundred year lifespan (unlikely), five incandescents cost you $45.53 plus $2,896-9,911 (the 100 year amortization of $225-770), where the single LED costs you $1,767.67 plus $579-2,252 (the 100-year amortization of $45-175). In other words, spending 70x as much for a light bulb is probably not going to save you money in the long run.

      The law exists because most people couldn't do a simple calculation if their life depended on it.

      The law exists because the lighting industry makes more money per unit off of CFLs and wanted to get rid of the competition from older technology. Nothing more.

      --

      Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

    26. Re:This is why they passed the law by Attila+Dimedici · · Score: 1

      It is not a conspiracy. They did it right out in the open. BTW, they can't make us have homosexual marriages because that isn't what a marriage is. Having a homosexual marriage is like having dry water.

      --
      The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
    27. Re:This is why they passed the law by Khyber · · Score: 1

      You say 20 years of CFL usage then try to equate that with LED.

      What the fuck?

      4+ years LED going here, still strong, still looking at power bills under $60 every month, IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, and loving it.

      And the lights only cost me $5 a piece, plus a little bit of shipping.

      --
      Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
    28. Re:This is why they passed the law by chihowa · · Score: 2

      Why would you think that LEDs are bad because you have a poor experience with CFLs?

      You're right, many CFLs do have the issues you describe. That makes it a great argument FOR the LED bulbs, which don't have most of the issues you describe. One of the worst characteristics of CFLs is that their lifetime is hit hard by frequent on/off cycles. LED bulbs care about frequent on/off cycles even less than incandescent bulbs.

      I think that it's a fair assumption that LED bulbs will be as unreliable as CFLs. The reason why CFLs die from heat and brownouts and mild spikes is because they rely on electronics that are made as shittily as possible to save on the overall cost of the bulb. There's very little to skimp on in incandescent bulbs, so it's harder to deliberately make the bulb cheaper yet still survive the first use.

      The actual CFL element, just like LEDs, will easily last thousands of hours before failing or dimming significantly. It's never that part of CFLs that fail. It's also easy enough to make electronics that can survive heat, brownouts and mild voltage spikes, too. Somehow, every other electronic device in the house survives a brownout. Just like CFLs, they'll decrease the cost of manufacture of LED bulbs as low as they can, cutting corners all the way. You'll end up with a junky $60 LED bulb that costs $25 to manufacture instead of a well made $60 LED bulb that costs $26 to manufacture.

      --
      If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
    29. Re:This is why they passed the law by cpu6502 · · Score: 0

      >>>LED bulbs, which don't have most of the issues [of CFLs]

      Incorrect. LEDs share exactly the same problems, because like CFLs they are dependent upon electronics that are damaged by heat (enclosed or upside-down fixtures), frequent on/off cycles, and power spikes.

      --
      My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
    30. Re:This is why they passed the law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Dry water.

      Yeah, I was as shocked as you probably are right now.

    31. Re:This is why they passed the law by olau · · Score: 1

      And which LED or CFL can I use inside an oven?

      Until a heat pump efficient enough to heat your oven is invented, I don't think it makes terribly much sense to try to find a design for an oven lamp that's more efficient at emitting lightt.

    32. Re:This is why they passed the law by cpu6502 · · Score: 1

      $5 for an LED bulb? Please show me where to buy one of those.

      Those of ye who have long-lasting CFLs or LEDs probably don't have "bad" fixtures that trap heat. It's the heat that kills most of my bulbs.

      --
      My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
    33. Re:This is why they passed the law by horza · · Score: 1

      "CFLs and LEDs don't live any longer than incandescents because of many factors"

      When your first statement is nonsense, we can hardly take the rest of the post seriously.

      "The electronics are sensitive to heat, electric spikes, or frequent on/off cycles by the users"

      LEDs are tough, and the last one made me laugh. The word "blinking" is almost attached to the word "LED".

      "BUT CFLs and LEDs are only built in China, and only recycled in China, so you need to add ~20,000 miles of fuel usage"

      The UK has over 800 free recycling points for CFL and will do free pickup for businesses recycling LEDs.

      "Bottom Line: I'm sticking with incandescents, until the U.S. or EU outlaw them (2014?)."

      Bottom line is that ignorant people like yourself are a major part of the problem, especially when they spread misinformation. If you want to be selfish then just do it quietly.

      Phillip.

    34. Re:This is why they passed the law by thrich81 · · Score: 2

      The US law didn't ban incandescents -- it set minimum efficiency standards for them which good halogen incandescents meet. I kind of disapprove -- a person should be allowed to buy whatever piece of shit bulb they want as long as they pay the electric bill without griping. HOWEVER as long as the emissions of the coal burning plants are allowed to foul the air upwind of me for the electricity used to power those POS's then I am partly paying for them, too -- that's not right either.

    35. Re:This is why they passed the law by olau · · Score: 2

      assuming you have a bank account that pays about 4% interest as mine does

      Where do you live? Where I live, they give around 0.1% annual interest at the moment. If you're lucky. That amounts to somewhere between -2 to -4% if you adjust for inflation. I would really like to hear where a simple bank account can give you a 4% annual income after inflation.

      In your careful analysis, you also seem to have forgotten that prices of electricity are going up (well, at least they are in my part of the world).

      But none of this matters because at the moment LED bulbs are expensive because they are new - and also silly if you think about it. They are a replacement for yesterdays tech. The lamps of tomorrow don't need a bulky bulb, instead they'll have the lighting integrated. You can already buy some funny designs. This will also help with the heat issue.

    36. Re:This is why they passed the law by swalve · · Score: 1

      There was never a law that mandated CFLs. It just banned the least efficient incandescents. There were still plenty of incandescents that met the criteria. (It was something like a lumens per watt limit).

    37. Re:This is why they passed the law by Jeremi · · Score: 1

      BTW, they can't make us have homosexual marriages because that isn't what a marriage is. Having a homosexual marriage is like having dry water.

      ... and it wasn't so long ago that having an inter-racial marriage was "like having dry water" as well. That was changed, and the world is better for it.

      Societal conventions change over time. Our society has realized (or is in the process of realizing, depending on where you live) that the arbitrary denial of marriage rights to homosexuals is hurtful and unnecessary.

      --


      I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
    38. Re:This is why they passed the law by Jeremi · · Score: 1

      So, they got together with the ant-industrial "environmentalists"* to get a law passed to eliminate some of their competition.

      So the anti-industrialists were promoting their cause by collaborating with the industrialists? Sneaky!

      --


      I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
    39. Re:This is why they passed the law by Obfuscant · · Score: 1

      The US law didn't ban incandescents -- it set minimum efficiency standards for them which good halogen incandescents meet.

      Which had the effect of banning the good old incandescant light bulb that most people use. Yes, in some applications the large amount of heat that a halogen bulb puts out is acceptable, but I have only one place in my house where they are used.

      The points stands, proven by your comment, that the market is not free. When there are efficiency standards, the freedom of the market has gone POOF.

      HOWEVER as long as the emissions of the coal burning plants are allowed to foul the air upwind of me for the electricity used to power those POS's then I am partly paying for them, too -- that's not right either.

      At some point, most people recognize that this kind of argument is more hyperbole than valuable. After all, your existance creates CO2 that is polluting the air I breathe, and that's not right either. Your use of electricity is causing those coal plants to make even more CO2. Would you accept limits on how often you can exhale and a ban on your use of electricity based on this argument? I think not.

    40. Re:This is why they passed the law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      1000h over 5 years is 33 minutes/day. 1000h over 20 years is 8 minutes per day. If your average light bulb is used that little, your house is too big. The rule of thumb is 1000 "on" hours per year for bulbs in typical usages, extreme outliers notwithstanding. Due to your unrealistic assumptions about usage, the timelines for the rest of your calculations are way off. (You can extend the lifetime of incandescent bulbs significantly by slightly dimming them, but that costs even more due to the much lower efficiency when dimmed. If your incandescents never seem to fail, check the line voltage: You're wasting even more electricity and money than at the nominal voltage.)

      Anyway, putting $35 in the bank fetches $1.40 in interest per year at 4%. No compound interest, because you'll burn through that money with your electricity bill. That's enough to pay for 37 minutes per day of 100W instead of 23W, but only if your electricity costs just 8ct/kWh, and only if you get 4% above inflation (because the price of the bulb is fixed at the time of purchase but the electricity price goes up with inflation). And only if the bulbs are free. Most people do not get 4% above inflation and most people pay much more than 8ct/kWh and light bulbs are cheap but not free. At 1% above inflation and with electricity costing 16ct/kWh, you can light your 100W incandescent for a whopping four and a half minutes per day before it costs more than a $35 LED bulb. At that rate I'll accept the free incandescent bulb fiction because one 1$ bulb every 36 years might as well be free. Buy an incandescent now and see what's available in a couple of decades when it burns out.

      I would consider an LED bulb with a 5000h lifespan a miserable failure. I intentionally lowballed that estimate so that I don't get "12000 hours is unrealistic" (and then I get a +5 response claiming 1000h lifetimes for CFLs. Go figure.) I buy long life CFLs with "unlimited" switching tolerance and they do last 12000 (on-)hours and more. I expect quality LEDs to last at least as long. None have failed me so far, but I don't have them for long enough to draw conclusions. They are rated for 25000 hours. Somebody mentioned a joke about which of his kids will inherit the bulbs. We've made the same joke around here.

    41. Re:This is why they passed the law by Azghoul · · Score: 1

      ...And it's one of the worst rulings the SC ever spewed. Aren't we lucky? Now even not participating in the market is participating in the market!

    42. Re:This is why they passed the law by Dodgy+G33za · · Score: 1

      Philips can sell bulbs at whatever price the market is prepared to buy them at. Nothing is forcing you to do so though as there are MUCH cheaper alternatives out there.

      What I don't understand is your apparent unhappiness about a law designed to reduce energy consumption. Are you equally unhappy about laws to protect the environment from pollution or wanton destruction? Or laws which require cars to be sold with seat belts?

    43. Re:This is why they passed the law by Dodgy+G33za · · Score: 1

      Come now, the alternative to an 100W incandescent lamp costing a dollar is NOT a bulb costing $29. It is a CFL costing around $8.

    44. Re:This is why they passed the law by Dodgy+G33za · · Score: 1

      But they are more efficient at producing light from power and so generate less heat, and therefore less damage.

    45. Re:This is why they passed the law by Obfuscant · · Score: 1

      Come now, the alternative to an 100W incandescent lamp costing a dollar is NOT a bulb costing $29. It is a CFL costing around $8.

      Context is everything, now isn't it? He wasn't talking about an alternative to an incandescant bulb, he was talking about an alternative to a $30 LED "bulb". His comment was that the poster was free to come up with a $29 dollar alternative. I pointed out that a buck incandescant is the alternative to the $29 LED, in a free market.

      "A is a cheaper alternative to B" doesn't mean "B is a cheaper alternative to A". Quite the opposite, it would appear.

    46. Re:This is why they passed the law by russotto · · Score: 1

      The US law didn't ban incandescents -- it set minimum efficiency standards for them which good halogen incandescents meet.

      Halogen bulbs can just barely meet the interim standards. They cannot meet the 42 lumens/watt standard scheduled for phase-in.

    47. Re:This is why they passed the law by willy_me · · Score: 1

      The reason why CFLs die from heat and brownouts and mild spikes is because they rely on electronics that are made as shittily as possible to save on the overall cost of the bulb.

      Why do you assume the electronics will be the same? Powering an LED should be much easier as you don't have have to boost the voltage or supply a weird waveform to the bulb. I'm not sure what they use but I imagine it's a current limiting switching circuit. So long as they avoid electrolytic capacitors they should be fine. Transistors, resistors, inductors, and ceramic capacitors can all handle heat without any problems.

    48. Re:This is why they passed the law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      LED bulbs care about frequent on/off cycles even less than incandescent bulbs.

      MUCH MUCH less as in recommended way to dim LED lights is to turn them on and off several thousand times per second (that way LED diodes last longer than when partial voltage is applied)

    49. Re:This is why they passed the law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Instead, they would have put an excise tax on the incandescent to make them less appetizing to buy. For example, $5 incandescent bulb vs. $4 CFL.

      I totally agree because as you said for some uses incandescent is better, for some uses CFL is better, and for some uses LED is better

      BUT it would not be $5 incandescent VS $4 CFL, it would be $61 incandescent VS $60 LED

      and i think people would complain even more if they had to buy $61 incandescent it is probably psychologically even worse than banning incandescent altogether

    50. Re:This is why they passed the law by Khyber · · Score: 1

      Take your sweet time and browse alibaba.com. Look at everything.

      --
      Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
    51. Re:This is why they passed the law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I do not think you understand the point, "Having a homosexual marriage is like having dry water"
      as in ONLY reason to get married is to get a child, i mean you can have sex outside of marriage too, and chance of wife running away with half of your money is much lower when your not married

      so i do not understand really a reason for having a gay marriage (or any other kind of marriage without kids)

    52. Re:This is why they passed the law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've got my whole house and a couple rental properties equipped with CFLs and can only think of one I've ever changed in the last six years (one that came out of an Ikea 3-pack.). I see posts like this all the time whenever a thread about light bulbs comes up. What's up with your local electric or whatever that destroys your CFLs?

    53. Re:This is why they passed the law by dbIII · · Score: 1

      So you've been using CFL's for twenty years while sticking to incandescents and we are supposed to trust your contradictory "experience"? You've also played the mercury card and topped it up with the patriotisim card?
      Could we please hear from somebody that isn't just playing a stupid game with nothing to do with the subject matter?

    54. Re:This is why they passed the law by MobyDisk · · Score: 1

      Now here's some REAL math based upon real world experience (almost 20 years of CFL usage). CFLs and LEDs don't live any longer than incandescents...

      Did you just claim that your own personal experience is somehow better than someone else's? Your experience does not trump others. And it doesn't trump the studies either. CFL lifespan with 3 citations.

      The only CFL bulb I've ever seen go bad was the one I broke myself. LED's routinely last decades in alarm clocks, computers, and industrial machinery.

    55. Re:This is why they passed the law by Jeremi · · Score: 3, Insightful

      as in ONLY reason to get married is to get a child

      Absolutely incorrect.

      Lots of people get married without any intention (or even any ability) to have a child.

      Lots of people have children without getting married.

      so i do not understand really a reason for having a gay marriage (or any other kind of marriage without kids)

      That's okay, you don't have to understand the reason. What's important is that you don't get to deny marriage to people simply because you don't understand their reasons.

      --


      I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
    56. Re:This is why they passed the law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Once the govmint got involved in banning certain kinds, the freedom kinda went POOF!

      Except they didn't. They ban inefficient lights of any kind.

      Feel free to design a $0.50 incandescent that meets the standard. Or a $50.00 incandescent that makes the standard, or a $500.00 incandescent that meets the standard. (Last I heard, GE actually was working on an incandescent that would meet the standard.)

    57. Re:This is why they passed the law by canadian_right · · Score: 2

      My anecdote next!

      I switched to CFL's over 15 years ago, and except for the kitchen all of them lasted at least 8 years. And, half them were replaced because they were just getting too dim, but still working.

      --
      Anarchists never rule
    58. Re:This is why they passed the law by dgatwood · · Score: 1

      Here are two banks that are paying around 4%. You have to have a debit card, and you have to use it for a certain number of transactions per month, you have to have at least one direct deposit per month, and there's a dollar cap per account (above which they pay a lower percentage).

      --

      Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

    59. Re:This is why they passed the law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's so that LIEBERALS can use LED lights to lighten up their ABORTION HOUSES and FORCED STERILIZATION CAMPS where they will destroy black people.

      FTFY
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Sanger#Eugenics

    60. Re:This is why they passed the law by dgatwood · · Score: 1

      1000h over 20 years is 8 minutes per day. If your average light bulb is used that little, your house is too big.

      No, my house has good natural lighting and multiple backup lights per room. For example, my bedroom has a light on each night stand, plus an overhead light fixture that's part of the fan, plus a couple of decorative lamps on the dresser. Those decorative lamps never get used, nor does the night stand light on the other side of the bed. The overhead lights get used when I'm walking into the room so I don't trip over something while I walk across the room to turn on the bedside table lamp on the side of the bed that I primarily use, after which I turn them back off. So in that one room alone, there are nine incandescent bulbs, only one of which is used for more than a few minutes per day most days, and only six of which are regularly used at all.

      Here's a complete breakdown:

      • The bulbs in certain rooms get used a lot more than eight minutes per week because I regularly turn them on after dark. This includes the TV room, bedroom, and bathroom. I also regularly use the light in the kitchen, but that's a standard long-tube fluorescent fixture; I almost never turn on the incandescent in the breakfast nook because it provides little benefit over just using the kitchen light.
      • The overhead light in my bedroom gets turned on sometimes when I first walk into the room, but most of the time, I use the bedside table lamp because I can turn it on and off without walking across the room.
      • When I walk from by bedroom to the kitchen, however, I can see well enough that I don't bother to turn on the light in the hallway or the overhead lights in the living room (and it isn't practical to do so because of where the switches are located).
      • When I play piano after dark, I turn on the light by the piano, not the overhead light in the living room.
      • The front and back porch lights almost never get turned on.
      • The table lamp in my living room almost never gets turned on.
      • Three of the four table lamps in my bedroom are largely decorative and never get turned on.
      • One of the table lamps in m TV room is purely decorative and never gets turned on. The second one only gets turned on when I need a lot of light (read "when I'm soldering in the middle of the floor").
      • The lights in my closet almost never get turned on.
      • Being a typical guy, the vanity lights in my bathroom never get turned on (except in the one bathroom that has only vanity lights).
      • The chandelier in my dining room almost never gets used because my dining room is actually storage for my Christmas tree, plus my printers, audio gear, etc. I don't own a dining room table, and it's a good thing because I don't have room for one. Because my printers aren't afraid of the dark, I don't regularly need lighting in there.

      In short, there are three incandescent bulbs that get tons of use, five more that get moderate use, five more that get brief use daily (under five minutes), and some twenty-six bulbs that get used at most once per year, not because I do not use any of the rooms in my house, but because I do not need to turn on those particular lights most of the time when I use the room. So on average, I'm using one bulb out of thirty-nine except when I'm in the small bathroom, so for a quick ballpark, divide an average of four hours per night by roughly thirty-nine, and that comes to 6.15 minutes per day. In other words, that 8 minutes per day isn't nearly as outrageous a figure as you might think, and might actually be an overestimate for a single-person home.

      And no, it's not too big a house; I'm actually desperate for more space, though I'll readily admit I could live with a smaller kitchen and master bath. The disadvantage to being a musician is that a studio grand and a drum kit can fill most of a living room.

      --

      Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

    61. Re:This is why they passed the law by j.+andrew+rogers · · Score: 1

      My electricity costs $0.0476 (I have the bill in front of me) and I live in a major urban area. So a lot less than $0.08.

      Not to take away from the basic argument but the assumed cost of electricity is considerably higher than actual for parts of the country.

    62. Re:This is why they passed the law by Neil+Boekend · · Score: 1

      It isn't the leds that can't handle the on/off switches, it's the electronics.
      Having said that: leds have far simpler electronics (as opposed to CFLs). They could probably be made quite cheap and extremely reliable. PWM powersupplies aren't expensive in low wattage ranges.

      --
      Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
    63. Re:This is why they passed the law by blind+biker · · Score: 1

      It's so that LIEBERALS can use LED lights to lighten up their ABORTION HOUSES and FORCED STERILIZATION CAMPS where they will destroy white people.

      How could you miss the obvious ILLEGAL MARIJUANA PLANTATIONS?

      smh...

      --
      "The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
    64. Re:This is why they passed the law by mcvos · · Score: 1

      I think that it's a fair assumption that LED bulbs will be as unreliable as CFLs. The reason why CFLs die from heat and brownouts and mild spikes is because they rely on electronics that are made as shittily as possible to save on the overall cost of the bulb. There's very little to skimp on in incandescent bulbs, so it's harder to deliberately make the bulb cheaper yet still survive the first use.

      The actual CFL element, just like LEDs, will easily last thousands of hours before failing or dimming significantly. It's never that part of CFLs that fail.

      For me it is always that part that fails. I've got 10 year old CFLs that are taking noticeably more time to power up, or are simply dimmer than they used to be. If you're frying the electronics that quickly, you might want to take a look at how you're doing that.

      I do agree that CFLs are more sensitive than incandescents, but from all I've seen so far, LEDs are quite robust.

      You'll end up with a junky $60 LED bulb that costs $25 to manufacture instead of a well made $60 LED bulb that costs $26 to manufacture.

      I've got LED bulbs that cost €3. I've only had them for a year, so it's impossible to say whether they'll last as long as a more expensive one, but for now they're working fine.

    65. Re:This is why they passed the law by Attila+Dimedici · · Score: 1

      No, interracial marriage was never like having dry water. Marriage is a bond between a man and a woman. When inter-racial marriage was considered wrong it was considered "polluting the blood" or some such, no one argued that it was a contradiction in terms. Homosexuals have always had the same marriage rights as anyone else, they just were not interested in exercising them. Creating "homosexual marriages" makes the word marriage have no meaning.

      --
      The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
    66. Re:This is why they passed the law by Attila+Dimedici · · Score: 1

      So, they got together with the ant-industrial "environmentalists"* to get a law passed to eliminate some of their competition.

      So the anti-industrialists were promoting their cause by collaborating with the industrialists? Sneaky!

      Yes

      --
      The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
    67. Re:This is why they passed the law by mcvos · · Score: 1

      I've got some 40W equivalent LEDs for €3 each from HEMA (a big, common Dutch chain with everything from clothes to food). 60-100W LEDs are apparently a lot harder to make, but lower powered ones can be incredibly cheap.

    68. Re:This is why they passed the law by EnglishDude · · Score: 1

      My 6 month old A++ rated fridge has LED bulbs and they work fantastic, the interior of the fridge is much more brighter, and as the company put in 6 LED bulbs widely spaced out so the fridge is much better lit - if this makes sense - so one little box doesn't block out the light to the rest of the items inside. I suspect they *had* to use LED bulbs to get the A++ rating as a CFL wouldn't work and incandescents use too much electricity? This is my guess though, this could very well be a gimmick from the company.

    69. Re:This is why they passed the law by Attila+Dimedici · · Score: 1

      A couple of points. First, you are correct that Philips can sell bulbs at whatever price the market is prepared to buy them at. However, by eliminating the types of bulbs that can be the most cheaply manufactured, the law raised the lowest price that people can sell bulbs for. Thus giving the market a choice of either not buying bulbs or paying more for them. Second, the law was not "designed to reduce energy consumption", that is merely the argument they made to sell a law designed to increase the price of light bulbs. Even if it was designed to reduce energy consumption, it will not accomplish this task as studies have shown that as devices become more energy efficient, people use them more.
      Finally, you would have to list a specific law designed to "protect the environment from pollution" in order for me to say whether or not I am unhappy about it. I am unhappy about seat belt laws as it is none of the government's business whether or not I choose to buy a car with seat belts or not (let alone whether or not I wear them). It should be up to me as to whether the added safety of seat belts is worth the added cost.

      --
      The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
    70. Re:This is why they passed the law by Attila+Dimedici · · Score: 1

      My objection is to the fact that they took away a perfectly valid choice so that Philips and other manufacturers could get a higher profit on their new light bulbs. I have no problem whatsoever with Philips selling these light bulbs (well, except for the $60 one that they got several million government dollars to develop...with the condition being that it retail for less than $20). I have a problem with Congress passing a law making it illegal for someone to sell a dirt cheap light bulb that they can still make a profit on.

      --
      The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
    71. Re:This is why they passed the law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      May I ask where you live? I'm always looking for places worth moving to.

    72. Re:This is why they passed the law by argStyopa · · Score: 1

      Might want to check your own numbers.

      You just stated the TCO is
      Incandescent $45-$154
      LED $70

      That alone would suggest that it's not quite the slam-dunk you suggest.

      Then, of course, you omitted the ambient "bullshit factor", which is a value that differs from person to person based on the number of times that they've been burned on the over-optimistic (at best) or downright dishonest projections of the capabilities/life/performance of "this next new technology", PARTICULARLY when we haven't actually gone through a single full life-cycle of real-world demonstrated usage.

      The law doesn't exist because "people are stupid".
      The law exists because an elite political class believes it knows better than everyone else, and rather than letting people draw their own conclusions and letting the market decide (which may take a decade), it has decided to enforce its beliefs at the barrel of a gun. One may see a sort of benevolent but patronizing impatience behind that, or one may see just another flavor of corporate greed (after all, there are massive subsidies involved, not to mention the fiat-annihilation of one industry in favor of another, call it the eco-industrial complex).

      Either way, I tend to be suspicious of anything forced down our throats by Congress, an unchallenged collection of the 535 most egotistical and self-absorbed people in our entire country.

      --
      -Styopa
    73. Re:This is why they passed the law by BVis · · Score: 1

      Shut up, Glenn.

      --
      Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
    74. Re:This is why they passed the law by Attila+Dimedici · · Score: 1

      Who?

      --
      The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
    75. Re:This is why they passed the law by OpieTaylor · · Score: 1

      "Having a homosexual marriage is like having dry water."

      Cool, I had no idea that human relations were like physical properties. What happens if two men try to marry--do they fly apart like magnets? Dissolve into thin air? Have any pictures of this?

      --
      Thanks a lot, big brain. (K. Vonnegut, "Galapagos")
    76. Re:This is why they passed the law by fnj · · Score: 1

      The US hasn't even "banned" ANY kind or rating of incandescents. They are ruling on what you manufacture, and perhaps what you can sell. And there are lots of loopholes even in manufacturing/selling. And anything you already own you can use. Anything you can figure out how to import you can use.

    77. Re:This is why they passed the law by cpu6502 · · Score: 1

      Here's thousands of documents about CFLs and their failure modes (including premature heat death, and bursting into flame or smoking)

      http://www.bing.com/search?q=CFL+failures

      --
      My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
    78. Re:This is why they passed the law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, I stated that the TCO is
      Incandescent $45-$154
      LED $44-$70
      i.e. the TCO of the LED is lower from $0.08/kWh up, even if the LED only lasts 5000 hours, which is a very pessimistic estimate.

      The law exists because people are stupid. If there were only people who can think for themselves, incandescent bulbs wouldn't sell and merchants would remove them from the shelves without a legal requirement to do so. I understand that there are applications where an incandescent bulb is the better choice. These applications are rare, and an accurate fit-for-purpose evaluation is never the argument why people buy incandescents. All the arguments about the mercury in the homes and the landfills and whatnot are just excuses. The actual argument why people keep buying incandescents is always "they're cheaper". They are not. When people tell you something that is wrong over and over again, they are clearly not fit to make the decision.

    79. Re:This is why they passed the law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You realize that posting a link to a set of search results doesn't prove anything, right? Because otherwise...

      I've just proved that the earth is only 6000 years old.

      Now I've proved that we never went to the moon.

      And just to godwin this conversation, here's proof that the holocaust was a lie.

    80. Re:This is why they passed the law by Attila+Dimedici · · Score: 1

      What happens if two men try to marry...?

      What happens when a human tries to be a tomato? Your question makes just as much sense.

      --
      The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
    81. Re:This is why they passed the law by DigiTechGuy · · Score: 1

      Your calculations don't factor inflation, either proclaimed by the cronies at 3% or real inflation at over double that rate. Better spend your money now while it's can buy more. Just a point to consider, I didn't run the numbers.

    82. Re:This is why they passed the law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No one disagreed with your failure modes. Just your statement that CFLs and LEDs last no longer than incandescents. That's just silly.

    83. Re:This is why they passed the law by argStyopa · · Score: 1

      You apparently missed my point about the bullshit factor.

      You're using KNOWN facts (incandescent) to argue with SPECULATED figures (LED).

      You may wish to entirely, gullibly, believe everything about a new technology. That's your privilege as a consumer. But the moment that you try to enforce your personal gullibility into law? You've crossed a line.

      As much as alarmists would have us believe otherwise, the world simply will not end if we wait 2, 5, even 10 years to see if LEDs deliver on their promise.

      I'll give you a tangible fit for purpose demonstration.
      When CFLs first came out, we bought 4 as a tech demo in our house. We have lots of lights. The CFLs not only faded to dim quite quickly, they burned out roughly as fast or (in one of four) QUICKER than incandescents installed at the same time. (After talking with a friend who is an EE, he reasoned that our 1907 house and geographic location results in fairly 'dirty' power, and the repeated voltage spikes and brownouts are particularly bad for CFLs.)
      Right now I have 2 newer-model CFLs and 2 LEDs burning in our house as well, recently installed as a re-test based on (hopefully) newer, better tech.

      I hope they succeed. I think LED is ultimately where we need to be.

      I however don't look to LEGISLATORS to make that choice for me, thanks. And I'm not so elitist that I assume I have some sort of monopoly on truth that nobody else is smart enough to understand.

      FYI to claim anyone who disagrees with you is "stupid" marks you as a zealot, not a rationalist.

      --
      -Styopa
  3. 1000lm ~ 100W incandescent by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    A compact fluorescent 23W lamp typically produces about 1000lm and is equivalent to a 100W (non-halogen) incandescent, so either this LED lamp is equivalent to a 170W incandescent lamp or it doesn't produce 1700lm. What is it?

    1. Re:1000lm ~ 100W incandescent by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      or the light has a poor spectral distribution and and though you're getting the lumens, it's only as "bright" as a 100W bulb. What I really want to see is that they flicker less than CFLs.

    2. Re:1000lm ~ 100W incandescent by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sylvania & Philips 100 Watt incandescents are typically 1500-1700 lumens (at 1000 life-hours).
      The longer-life (5000 life-hours) versions are the ones that are around 1000 lumens.
      See: http://www.1000bulbs.com/category/100-watt-standard-shape-light-bulbs/

    3. Re:1000lm ~ 100W incandescent by h4rr4r · · Score: 1

      You cannot see the flicker of CFLs, they flicker at 40,000 cycles per second. It is not possible for a human to see that. You are a liar and a bad person.

    4. Re:1000lm ~ 100W incandescent by garyebickford · · Score: 1

      I haven't tested CFLs, but some time ago for an imaging project that needed very steady lighting we tested a variety of methods including high frequency solid-state ballasts with long-persistence phosphors. All of them still had a 60Hz cycle dimming overlaid on the high frequency output. So no matter what we did, we still had at least a 5% 60Hz (really 120Hz) flicker, albeit not the same as a normal fluorescent tube. At the time we found it hard to even get a UPS or power supply that didn't have at least some 120Hz flicker on a DC voltage. Of course things have changed a lot since then.

      --
      It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
    5. Re:1000lm ~ 100W incandescent by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm really curious about this because I too get physically irritated when using a computer in a room lit by fluorescent bulbs. (Not just CFLs, the big ones, too.) I get a headache and my eyes hurt after being in that situation for very long. But with incandescent or sunlight, it doesn't happen. I can usually tell by sight within a couple minutes of using the computer that I'm in that situation. For me, the screen seems "flickery," in a vague sort of way. I don't physically see it blinking on and off, but it doesn't look right and looking at it for long periods of time causes me issues. So what's going on in that case?

    6. Re:1000lm ~ 100W incandescent by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Umm, a 60w incandescent produces around 900lm iirc.
      A 100w incandescent produces around 1700lm. (I looked it up)
      If your "100w equivalent" CFL is producing 1000lm, it's closer to "60w equivalent" than it is to "100w equivalent."

      That's just a case of the CFL manufacturers cheating you. Another reason why the LED is a much better value in the end.

    7. Re:1000lm ~ 100W incandescent by Yvan256 · · Score: 1

      Maybe something about the refresh rate of the light vs the refresh rate of the display?

    8. Re:1000lm ~ 100W incandescent by DavidTC · · Score: 2

      You're in a room with an incredibly old fluorescent light that uses the 'built-in' line frequency of 60 hz, instead of upping the frequency.

      Or, sometimes, it tries to up the frequency, but the original frequency still makes it in. For example, it might provide a nice high frequency, except in that split second as the voltage reverses itself. (Which it does 60 times a second in our alternating current systems.)

      Incidentally, these problems are provided by the 'ballast', not the 'light bulbs' tubes. It's that box at the end of the fluorescent light, and they rarely are replaced.

      Fluorescent lights are basically a tube filled with gas that lights up when and only when, a current is run through them, instantly cutting the light off when the current drops below a certain level. Alternating current cuts off and reverses direction 60 times a second. Do the math yourself as to what happens when you hook those things together without thinking about this problem, which was the way they originally built fluorescents.

      To be fair, fluorescent bulbs have a phosperous coating that is supposed to absorb and keep emitting light for a split second during all this...but that's just enough to keep the room from visibly falling into darkness, not to stop the flickering.

      Modern fluorescent ballasts, including ones built into the base of CFLs, deal with this much better.

      Incandescents, OTOH, produce light because they heat a filament up, and that filament stays heated up for a second or two no matter what the power is doing.

      --
      If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
    9. Re:1000lm ~ 100W incandescent by thrich81 · · Score: 1

      I don't know what the amplitude is but incandescents on a 60 Hz circuit do have a 120 Hz ripple. We are doing some lab work with infrared sensors and we can see the ripple when we point at incandescent lights; I can't tell what the percentage of the ripple is over the DC component since our amplifiers block DC. Doesn't work on fluorescents -- not enough IR output in the range we observe.

  4. 24W for equivalent of 100W light? by Gary+Franczyk · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I have fluorescent lights that use pretty much exactly the same amount of power to output 100W equivalent of light. And those bulbs cost not much more than a buck a piece. What exactly does these provide to me for $30?

    1. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Debt. After you've paid $30 you still owe substantially more. Remember, the header said "well over $30".

    2. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ^ I echo the above.

      100W output using only 23W is exactly what most CFL bulbs produce.

      Sure, LED has the advantage of being Mercury-free and having an arguably longer lifetime, but with such an exuberant price difference, I'd expect the LED variant to have the same light output while utilizing a decent amount less electricity for it to be worthwhile.

    3. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by Albanach · · Score: 4, Informative

      I think the primay advantages are supposed to be color temperature (2700K so very similar to the light from an incandescent) and lifespan. It's also dimmable which is still quite a big issue with CFL bulbs.

      All in all, it's fairly expensive but does address what are probably the three biggest complaints about CFLs for use in the home.

    4. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by ThePeices · · Score: 5, Informative

      "Philips Releases 100W-Equivalent LED Bulb, Runs On Just 23 Watts"

      They last longer than a fluro tube, they have no mercury in them, they are way smaller, they are more robust and dont break as easily.

    5. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >What exactly does these provide to me for $30?

      A color spectrum that isn't the horrible blue white glare that comes from flourescent lights. Like, duh.

    6. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What exactly does these provide to me for $30?

      99.96% less mercury per light. And what little mercury remains is in amalgemized form, rather than freeflowing.

      I have LED bulbs that are less than 100W equivalent, but also still more than plenty to illuminate the rooms I have them in. They were something like $10 for a pair a year ago. This100W equivalent is the current stage of "high end proof," it will all get cheaper as the manufacturing gets more refined.

    7. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 3, Funny

      And they don't go "Buzzzzzzzzzzz..."

    8. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by jones_supa · · Score: 1

      I also recently installed a bunch of 9W Philips LEDs (E27 socket) and by eye I would estimate each one to produce at least as much of light than a 60W incandescent.

      Although a 100W incandescent is in reality something like 1000..1200lm, not 1700lm like the article says. So the LED should be quite efficient after all. It looks funky, too.

    9. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by OhPlz · · Score: 2

      The LEDs do go to full brightness even if the ambient room temperature is low. Probably not a huge issue for most people, but I don't crank the heat in the winter and even the latest and greatest CFLs still take a while to get to full brightness. They switch on and off so fast it's trippy.

    10. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by pscottdv · · Score: 2, Informative

      I think the primay advantages are supposed to be color temperature (2700K so very similar to the light from an incandescent) and lifespan. It's also dimmable which is still quite a big issue with CFL bulbs.

      All in all, it's fairly expensive but does address what are probably the three biggest complaints about CFLs for use in the home.

      Please... $16.99 buys you three, dimmable, 2700k, 24W, 100W equivalent CFL bulbs. So I'm going to spend an extra $30 per bulb to save one watt?

      http://menards.com/main/lighting-fans/light-bulbs/fluorescent/24-watt-dimmable-2700k-spiral-bulb-multi-pak-3-bulb-box/p-1738410-c-6337.htm

      --

      this signature has been removed due to a DMCA takedown notice

    11. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by serialband · · Score: 1

      Then, it's not for you. It's for the early adopters that like the coolness factor, or for those people that don't want to get their 20 foot ladder or scissor lift to reach the light up in the cathedral ceiling. There are places where the $60 is worthwhile when you consider the cost of paying for maintenance. They'll help pay their early premium which helps the company recoup some of the costs while they find ways to make it cheaper.

      Fluorescent lights last maybe 2 years, if left continuously on, while these last 20 with some reduced lumens later in life. Brownouts and voltage spikes also kill fluorescents quite quickly. I used to lose fluorescents more frequently until they finally replaced the line transformer, when it failed catastrophically, to handle the extra load of my neighbors' air conditioner units.

    12. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 1

      Given that both the CFL and the white LED are pumping a phosphor glob, it probably isn't an accident that their efficiency(and range of available color temperatures) is somewhat similar.

    13. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Dimming with CFL's is still a problem, even with "dimmable" ones; they don't dim much, the one's I've tried go to about 60% or so and then completely off. Dimmable LED's I've tried are much, much better and can dim to a much lower level. Not to mention LED's come on at full brightness; modern CFL's aren't bad at all, but there is still a slight delay to get full brightness. I also find LED colors much more pleasing.

    14. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by h4rr4r · · Score: 1

      So that horrible yellowish color?
      Who the hell wants that? Daylight color or GTFO.

    15. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by Darth+Snowshoe · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The price of the bulb is, unsurprisingly, like just about everything else, related to the number of bulbs produced and sold. If you bought a one-off handmade automobile, it would cost a lot more, even if it performed exactly the same as a stock car that rolled off a manufacturing line.

      Over time, as more of these bulbs are produced, the price per item is going to come down. Phillips doesn't want to subsidize the price of the early bulbs (to take the risk that they'll never sell enough of them to back out the cost of the subsidy), so they're pricing them to cost, apparently. I'm sure its dawned on Phillips that a $30 light bulb is not going to be an easy sell. I'd bet that the pricing also indicates that they don't expect a consumer with a house full of these would need to replace them very often.

      It's not some kind of socialist plot. It's business.

    16. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by AnotherBlackHat · · Score: 1

      Sylvania claims their 100 watt Incandescent A19 Bulb, softwhite, is 1750 Lumens, and frankly, they should know.

    17. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by NatasRevol · · Score: 1

      Think not what these lights can provide to you.
      Think what you can provide to Phillips.

      --
      There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
    18. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have fluorescent lights that use pretty much exactly the same amount of power to output 100W equivalent of light. And those bulbs cost not much more than a buck a piece. What exactly does these provide to me for $30?

      Prove what you have said.

      Didn't think so.

    19. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by CubicleZombie · · Score: 1

      If I'm going in and out of my basement laundry/utility room, I just leave the lights on all the time because I'm sick of waiting for the CFL's to warm enough that I can see. So they end up on for whole weekends at a time. Sometimes convenience is more important than efficiency.

      It would be great if somebody could invent an inexpensive light bulb that went to full brightness instantly, even if it used more electricity during the short time it was in use. Maybe something with a heated incandescent filament instead of a fluorescing gas. I would buy something like that if it was available.

      --
      :wq
    20. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by Albanach · · Score: 1

      Thanks - I forgot to mention the instant on factor.

      Try using a CFL as a porch light in winter. It's okay, it'll reach full brightness by March.

    21. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by serialband · · Score: 1

      CFLs don't dim as much as an incandescent. I left a single incandescent along with 3 fluorescents in a chandelier and the fluorescents stay quite bright at the lowest dimmable setting.

      It's good to have early adopters. When prices come down on the LEDs, everyone will be using them and CFLs and incandescents will no longer be relevant. I can imagine LEDs surpassing the current lumens/watt in the future, but can't see incandescents or fluorescents catching up. Fluorescents have had the same basic lumens/watt for decades, but LEDs have already caught up.

    22. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by silverhalide · · Score: 1

      The lifetime is the primary benefit for now - Fluorescent tubes last 7000-10000 hours. These guys are rated at 30,000+ hours.

      For commercial users, this is huge. The largest cost is usually not the bulb itself, but the labor in changing the bulb, especially if the bulb is in a hard-to-reach area.. In the case of CFLs, properl bulb disposal is a problem for environmentally-conscious companies.

      The other benefit is that fluorescent tube fixtures (ignoring CFLs for a second) tend to be more expensive up front because of the ballasts. LED bulbs provide some advantages there. You also get some more lighting options as LEDs are closer to point sources than fluorescent tubes which gives you some interesting options in how you direct the light. So, you can use these in ways that you wouldn't be able to use fluorescent tubes.

      There may also be a better color rendering advantage on these latest LEDs over fluorescent, but not sure on that one. Physical hardiness is another benefit - these will be far more effective in cold environments and will tolerate shock/vibration much better than fluorescents do.

      But yeah, if you're just lighting the garage, might want to stick with your tubes for the short term.

    23. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by afidel · · Score: 1

      No more so that a modern fluorescent with electronic balast (ie a T5 bulb or pretty much any namebrand CFL).

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
    24. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by WindBourne · · Score: 1

      most LEDs last longer than CFLs. Unless you buy rather expensive CFLs, they will last ~1 years if they are left on 24x7. Sadly, the cheap LEDs cost about $4-5 and last 1-2 years. To be fair, if you are going to buy cheap junk, then at this time, skip all of the LED and stick with CFLs.

      Now, if you are looking to save money over a 10-30 year period, then go with a DECENT LED bulb. Few of the bulbs that you buy are decent. Buy a phillips (made with phillips LEDs), or better yet, buy a switch (which has solved the heat issue).

      --
      I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
    25. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Some (dimmable) LED bulbs buzz when on a dimmer.

    26. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by Brad1138 · · Score: 1

      You get sick of waiting a couple seconds? I don't know about you but I can walk around my house with my eye's closed, in the few seconds it takes for a CFL to fully light up I am half way to the washer/dryer. There is light immediately, just not full. Seems to me you are looking for something to complain about.

      --
      If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
    27. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by jones_supa · · Score: 1

      Probably my guess for 100W was a bit low, but it's probably lower than 1750lm too. I found a list of efficacies of various light sources in Wikipedia and there it seems to be about 1400lm. But yeah.

    28. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by Rhys · · Score: 1

      The "doesn't break into tiny glass shards" and "doesn't contain vaporized poisons" got much higher on my list now that I have a toddler. They're actually really cheap piece of mind -- mostly the "doesn't break into a bajillion sharp bits" aspect. The mercury is unlikely to make him cry.

      --
      Slashdot Patriotism: We Support our Dupes!
    29. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by rolfwind · · Score: 1

      I have fluorescent lights that use pretty much exactly the same amount of power to output 100W equivalent of light. And those bulbs cost not much more than a buck a piece. What exactly does these provide to me for $30?

      Instant on. Some CFLs (especially the par bulbs I buy) take forever to turn on. When that's the case, people tend not to turn off the lights negating the savings benefits.

      Still, I will wait some time for the price to go down.

    30. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by CubicleZombie · · Score: 1

      When I walk into my storage room, I want full brightness right-fucking-now. The technology to do that has been around for 133 years, so I'm not asking for something unreasonable. Yeah, you can get full brightness in a couple of seconds in your living room. An unconditioned basement takes a lot longer. A sub-freezing garage takes several minutes. In the dead of winter, outside CFL's run about 1/2 brightness all the time.

      Anyways, I was trying to be funny. If I want to complain about something, it'll be about the government telling me what kind of light bulb I'm allowed to use. Or mandating gas cans that leak everywhere. Or toilets that won't flush.

      --
      :wq
    31. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      People who don't want their living room to feel like it's outside in the middle of summer right before they're ready to go to bed. And "that horrible yellowish color" is kind of what we evolved with at night. They used to call it something different - fire light.

    32. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by atisss · · Score: 1

      I've got LG 12W LED that's rated for 3600K, but it's so freaking green and cold.

      So, apparently there is still a problem with making LEDs to produce right colour.

    33. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by atisss · · Score: 1

      It depends on CFL - I've seen some year-old CFLs that have been used in sub-zero temperatures ad now take more than 3 minutes to get to full brightness.

      Incandescent bulbs have nice extra feature - they add up to heating in room :)

    34. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >Try using a CFL as a porch light in winter. It's okay, it'll reach full brightness by March.

      Horse shit. I have them in sheds and even at 30 below they're bright enough for anything I want to do in a shed in under a minute. If I was such a priss that I needed full brightness instantly, I'd put an incandescent in.

    35. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You get sick of waiting a couple seconds? I don't know about you but I can walk around my house with my eye's closed, in the few seconds it takes for a CFL to fully light up I am half way to the washer/dryer. There is light immediately, just not full. Seems to me you are looking for something to complain about.

      And it seems to everyone else that you're a self-righteous asshole. The world doesn't revolve around YOU, dickcheese.

    36. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by nullchar · · Score: 1

      My 40,000 years of human ancestry from sitting around the fire like the 2700K warm & "yellow" light!

    37. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It would be great if somebody could invent an inexpensive light bulb that went to full brightness instantly, even if it used more electricity during the short time it was in use. Maybe something with a heated incandescent filament instead of a fluorescing gas. I would buy something like that if it was available.

      So why not buy it instead of bitching on /.? Halogens are available; they only banned the sucktastic vacuum/inert bulbs that nobody sane would buy anyway. Or buy LED bulbs, which actually do start instantly instead of waiting for a filament to heat.

    38. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by swalve · · Score: 1

      If you want nice color, get full spectrum. The GE Reveal series is great.

    39. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by swalve · · Score: 1

      You are being ridiculous.

    40. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Buzzzzzzzzzzz..."

      That's a bug, not a feature :P

    41. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But I like the humm! It reminds me of being back with GlaDOS in the lab. Oh the fun we had... except when she tried to murder me...

    42. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by Mashiki · · Score: 1

      You should know then that most people like close-to-white, or blue-white for lighting. One of those funky things about the brain, and it being stimulating to it.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    43. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by Jeremi · · Score: 1

      My 40,000 years of human ancestry from sitting around the fire like the 2700K warm & "yellow" light!

      My 27+ years of disco clubbing demands electric red and blue light! Preferably reflected by rotating, faceted spheres.

      --


      I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
    44. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by MHolmesIV · · Score: 1

      20 years of rated life, and a complete lack of mercury in the landfill.

    45. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by OhPlz · · Score: 1

      Ahh yes, heat generating lights. The city I live in burnt some stimulus money on replacing traffic signal lights with LEDs. Then winter came and we all realized that they don't generate heat, meaning if they're windblown with snow and ice.. you can't tell which one is lit up. But hey, at least we're green. Or red, or yellow.. shit, lookout!

    46. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by zippthorne · · Score: 1

      If my traffic lights are any indication, they star to go "Buzzzzzzzz" shortly after the first spot of bad weather.....

      --
      Can you be Even More Awesome?!
    47. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think the primay advantages are supposed to be color temperature (2700K so very similar to the light from an incandescent)

      That horrid yellow light cast is supposed to be an advantage?

      I spent a coupld of hundred dollars to fit my house with daylight-frequency CFLs and I thoroughly recommend it. Not only are they a pleasure to read under, since our eyes are most sensitive in that band, but everything just looks right

    48. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by mwissel · · Score: 1

      They don't contain mercury and therefor will not make you ill if a buld breaks. I recently saw a TV report on this. A whole family sick because one CFL bulb dropped in the basement, the child losing its hair, having memory issues and high risk of getting cancer.

      Not wanting to be alarmist here, but it might be worth the extra bucks for the LED.

    49. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by mcvos · · Score: 1

      I like white-blue only when it's indirect light. For direct light, I prefer something more yellow, for some mysterious reason.

    50. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by mcvos · · Score: 1

      I have fluorescent lights that use pretty much exactly the same amount of power to output 100W equivalent of light. And those bulbs cost not much more than a buck a piece. What exactly does these provide to me for $30?

      More flexibility and robustness. CFLs are sensitive to a wide variety of factors than LEDs couldn't care less about. Lots of power cycles, for example.

      Granted, $30 is a lot. But that price will drop eventually.

    51. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thank you!

      I was vaguely wondering why a few of my CFLs were buzzing ever so slightly... not enough to look it up so far though, I had put it down to the light fixture as I was still in the mindset of 'any bulb is a commodity, doesnt make a difference which one you get'. I will be sure to pay attention next time and not just buy the cheapest ones out there.

    52. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You should know then that most people like close-to-white, or blue-white for lighting. One of those funky things about the brain, and it being stimulating to it.

      Do you have any source for that? I thought getting away from the blue-white color temperature was a goal for LEDs and other light sources and why many prefer the light from incandescents over CFL and LED, as they have warmer color temperature (around 2700K)

    53. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by MyLongNickName · · Score: 1

      How many bulbs do you break? I remember breaking one in the ten years I've used CFC's (when installing one), so I wouldn't use that as my purchasing criteria.

      --
      See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
    54. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by fnj · · Score: 1

      Bingo.

    55. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by fnj · · Score: 1

      You're dreaming. Even a 60W incandescent is 800. A 100W is 1600 or better.

    56. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by fnj · · Score: 1

      I'm a total LED fanboi, but even I have to admit the LED probably doesn't have that much advantage in lifetime in my own use pattern. I have several CFLs that undergo 1-2 power cycles per day, running maybe 6-16 hr per day. I've had CFLs (rated at 6-8000 hr life) running so for at least 5 years, which means they've been running 20,000 - 30,000 hr. CFLs love this usage pattern. They HATE being turned on and off many times a day. OTOH,LEDs don't care in the slightest if you switch them on and off one a second for their entire life, but they won't last any longer in continuous use than in intermittent use.

    57. Re:24W for equivalent of 100W light? by SockPuppetOfTheWeek · · Score: 1

      LOL. Do you actually believe that horseshit?

      The amount of mercury in a single CFL wouldn't make you ill. Mostly because you won't absorb it. Mostly because it's only in vapor form when current hits the bulb. Meaning it condenses into liquid form the instant power is removed, such as if the glass envelope breaks. You're not going to breathe it, and skin contact with liquid mercury is not a big deal - you absorb very minute fractions of it. For comparison, I've held a gram or so of mercury in my hand before and it was no big deal.

  5. Cfls are just as good by noh8rz3 · · Score: 1

    Cfls already get 50-70 lumens per watt, so I don't see why I should get out of my seat for a $60 led at does the same. Kind of a straw man to compare them to incandescents, when obviously the most relevant comparison is against fluorescents. IMHO, the best use of LEDs is as a built in light source for particular uses. If you're putting a bulb in a socket anyways, then there's no benefit over cfls.

    1. Re:Cfls are just as good by Dixie_Flatline · · Score: 1

      Well, for one thing, LEDs are more robust. From the point of view of fragility, I think that's pretty obvious.

      I believe that LED bulbs are okay in dimmer switch controlled sockets. I have an LED bulb, and I use it in a socket that seems to react very strongly to power fluctuations in my apartment. The CFL bulbs I've used in there make a terrible noise and really don't seem happy with it.

      I don't know if the quality of light is any different, but that's not really technology dependent, per se.

  6. not for the average consumer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    The ROI on these for average residential use is just way too high. Many people just do not use enough energy to make those worth the cost.

    1. Re:not for the average consumer by bored_engineer · · Score: 1

      If the ROI is too high, you can always just burn the extra green.

  7. Free Headache Included! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    As much fun as flicker-vision is I'll keep buying cheap glowing wires...

    1. Re:Free Headache Included! by rubycodez · · Score: 1

      hypocrite, you stare at a flickering monitor all day

    2. Re:Free Headache Included! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Which is exactly why I don't need to see it when I'm reading a book...

    3. Re:Free Headache Included! by Khyber · · Score: 1

      Don't buy shit LEDs using Pulse Width Modulation, and maybe actually do some research on LEDs before saying such stupid things.

      --
      Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
    4. Re:Free Headache Included! by ArchieBunker · · Score: 1

      Have a better way of dimming LEDs other than using PWM?

      --
      Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
    5. Re:Free Headache Included! by Khyber · · Score: 1

      Yea, limit the current. Works just fine. You only need place the potentiometer AFTER the rectifier.

      --
      Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
  8. Like to see them in smaller sizes by Latent+Heat · · Score: 2
    I would like to see something that gets 50+ lumens per watt in a smaller size -- there are all kinds of applications, track lighting, accent lights, night lights where one could use a high-energy efficiency in a lower wattage lower lumens bulb.

    The LEDs I have seen in the small sizes are just pi$$ weak. Compact fluorescents get less energy efficient in the smaller sizes, but I am thinking that since the big light bulbs have multiple LEDs, that you could get high efficiency at the low wattage end?

    LEDs seem to have a directivity to them where they are more efficient as a spotlamp where a compact fluorescent has losses to the reflector whereas an LED seems to be less efficient as an area light, since it seems to want to throw its light in a cone anyway. One should play to the advantages of the particular tech.

    1. Re:Like to see them in smaller sizes by CastrTroy · · Score: 1

      Makes me wonder why Cree hasn't released a light bulb yet. According to wikipedia, they can do 208 lumens per watt. I've seen some flashlights that use them, and they are blindingly bright. Even a couple AA batteries are enough to give more light than a car headlamp. Quite amazing if you've ever seen them.

      --

      Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
    2. Re:Like to see them in smaller sizes by afidel · · Score: 1

      The problem is that raw bulb efficiency is only a small percentage of the overall efficiency when you're talking about a bulb that has to run in an Edison socket at 120-240VAC. Making a high efficiency, low cost, and small balast which has low harmonic and EMI emissions is not really a solved problem at this point.

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
    3. Re:Like to see them in smaller sizes by AnotherBlackHat · · Score: 1

      Makes me wonder why Cree hasn't released a light bulb yet.

      They have http://www.cree.com/lighting/products/

    4. Re:Like to see them in smaller sizes by garyebickford · · Score: 1

      I think they are supplying the LEDs for many of the lighting manufacturers. Which is a good plan. While one manufacturer may do well, another poorly, if both are buying from Cree then Cree makes out either way. And they can stick to what they do best.

      --
      It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
    5. Re:Like to see them in smaller sizes by Khyber · · Score: 1

      Uh, yes, it is a solved problem. The problem is, that most companies don't want to move away from a voltage clamp + PWM and go constant current.

      --
      Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
    6. Re:Like to see them in smaller sizes by ChumpusRex2003 · · Score: 1

      The type of lamp you want exists, and is very widely used commercially for shop lighting. It's called ceramic metal halide. A 20W lamp produces about 2200 lumens from a very compact (3-4mm) point source. When used with a reflector, they make excellent accent lighting, and there are plenty of commercial products that install them on tracks, etc. They have excellent color rendering (far better than the best LEDs and fluorescent) and are available in a variety of color temperatures. The lifetime is also long - typically 15,000-20,000 hours. They are even dimmable, although the dimming range is limited (and while the lamps will dim, and there are color shifts).

      The efficiency of ceramic metal halide is unmatched by any other commercially available technology (except for sodium lighting).

      The problem is the price - which is enormous (partly as these are targeted at commercial use, where replacement labor cost and energy costs/cooling costs dominate; but also because it is inherently an expensive technology), not just in terms of the bulb cost, but the ballast to power it. There are other problems too, such as a long warm up time (60 seconds) the first 15-20 seconds of which result in virtually no light output; and a very long cool down time (5-10 minutes) during which time the lamp cannot be restarted.

      Nevertheless, CMH is pretty much the leading lighting technology in high-end retail, for the above reasons. I picked up an old shop CMH unit off ebay, and have it at home - and it is stunning. Brilliant brightness, tightly focused beam, very high color quality, flicker-free. Thankfully, replacement bulbs are available very cheap off ebay - there's no way I'd pay the $50+ retail for the bulbs.

    7. Re:Like to see them in smaller sizes by dr2chase · · Score: 1

      I think that 208/watt is in the lab. What I see for sale is about 139 lumens for 3V and 350mA. That LED will handle a full amp, but the efficiency declines somewhat.

      And the LED bulb that I bought has CREE elements, though it is not a CREE bulb.

    8. Re:Like to see them in smaller sizes by dr2chase · · Score: 1

      The supplies I've seen are not that bad; 11W at the socket for over 9W of LEDs.
      Power factor is kinda meh (60), but no line harmonics that I could notice.

    9. Re:Like to see them in smaller sizes by beanpoppa · · Score: 2

      And that's a good point. We really should be rethinking our lighting methodology. Light 'bulbs' work great for an incandescent light, and in our office spaces, we very efficiently light large areas with fluorescent tubes. In our homes, we should be designing in large area 'fixtures' that many LED's over a large area, and power them by a single transformer. That would be the most efficient and pleasant way to light an area. But we focus so much on cramming fluorescent and LED technology into a screw-in bulb format, which is expensive, inefficient, and not the best way to light most spaces.

    10. Re:Like to see them in smaller sizes by fnj · · Score: 1

      Cree makes the LEDs people like Philips put INTO their "bulbs". They know their business and are doing VERY well. Also, 208 lumens per watt is the current experimental bleeding edge. Production is at more like 100-120. These figures are at 25 C junction temperature. The junctions in a LED "bulb" run at maybe 70-100C. By the time you figure the further losses in the driver circuit and elevated junction temperatures, 70-80 lumens per watt is doing well.

  9. Color temperature by Aqualung812 · · Score: 2

    The spectrum from a LED bulb is better than florescent. Many people don't like florescents simple because the color temperature isn't as close to incandescent.

    From what I've heard, LED can come in several ranges.

    Better explanations: http://www.agreensupply.com/what-is-warm-white-and-natural-daylight-cool-white-color-for-led-light-bulbs/

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Temperature#Lighting

    All that said, that is worth maybe $5 to me, but not $30.

    --
    Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
    1. Re:Color temperature by marcosdumay · · Score: 2

      The spectrum from a LED bulb is better than florescent.

      That is not a certainty. Some LEDs have a better spectrum than some fluorescents, with other models, it's the other way around.

      The spectrum depends basicaly on the selection of phosphour on both lamps. Fluorescent are better tested, thus the cheaper ones are usualy better than the cheaper LEDs. When you get into the expensive ones, only God knows.

    2. Re:Color temperature by afidel · · Score: 1

      Then get a CFL with a CRI greater than 85, they cost about $5 instead of $.85-$1.50 for the cheap ones but they produce a more daylight like color spectrum. I've got a bunch of them over my cube at work to help fight seasonal affective disorder and my only problem was they were a bit blue so I left one traditional fluorescent in to add a bit more yellow to the overall mix.

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
    3. Re:Color temperature by Khyber · · Score: 1

      Spectrum for LED depends more than just phosphor. This also depends on whether or not ceramic recombination packaging is used (converts some light into more wavelengths, giving much superior CRI) or whether or not filters are applied to the plastic coating lens.

      --
      Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
    4. Re:Color temperature by dfghjk · · Score: 1

      These bulbs, though, don't use white LEDs and their CRI is 80 which isn't very good.

    5. Re:Color temperature by quenda · · Score: 1

      . Many people don't like florescents simple because the color temperature isn't as close to incandescent

      That is like complaining that CDs lack the hiss or distortion of tape or LPs. Why is yellow light a good thing, just because 100-year-old technology makes for yellow lamps?
      And fluorescent lamps do come in a choice of colour temperatures, not just natural daylight.

    6. Re:Color temperature by smellotron · · Score: 1

      Many people don't like florescents simple because the color temperature isn't as close to incandescent

      That is like complaining that CDs lack the hiss or distortion of tape or LPs. Why is yellow light a good thing, just because 100-year-old technology makes for yellow lamps?

      In the context of the GP's incorrect statement, your response makes sense. However, the problem that people find with fluorescent lighting is typically not the color temperature but the spectrum (measured as CRI, where 80 is most cheap CFL bulbs and 100 is the sun). There are many ways to produce light that looks "white" to our eyes, but light with an uneven spectrum will look weird when it reflects off of any surface that is not also white. Think about shining a red light on green plant leaves: the plants look black, because the spectrum of the light multiplied by the reflectance of the leaf (think SIMD or vector math) is very dark (close to a 0-vector).

      So in actuality, it's not people complaining because they want their warm (red/yellow) color and tape hiss back; it's because fluorescence produces very weird colors in real-world settings which appear very unnatural in comparison with the sun.

    7. Re:Color temperature by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So buy a $5 >90CRI flouro instead of a $2 60CRI.

  10. What about the cheaper LEDs already out? by jdbannon · · Score: 1

    I don't understand this hype. I can /almost/ see how you'd want this in a few situations over CFL, but how can it possibly compete with the competing bulbs from LG and GE that are in the $10~20 range with pretty equivalent specs?

    1. Re:What about the cheaper LEDs already out? by WindBourne · · Score: 1

      LG and GE are pure junk. They are made with poor quality material and do not put out the lumens that they claim. GE actually does not make bulbs. They are paid for their labels. A number of chinese manufacturers are producing these and paying x amount of money to GE to put their label on them. In fact, you can get 2 boxes of bulbs with same outer package and the bulbs are PHYSICALLY different.

      --
      I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
  11. I avoided all this... by Xandrax · · Score: 2

    ..by stockpiling 300 100w incandescent light bulbs. By the time I run out of those, a suitable, and cheaper, replacement for 100W incandescent bulbs should be available.

    1. Re:I avoided all this... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Meanwhile you are helping to destroy the Earth. But you saved a few bucks I guess. Maybe you can use that money to fill up your SUV.

    2. Re:I avoided all this... by ericloewe · · Score: 1

      comedy aside, 300 bulbs would last you pretty much a lifetime...

    3. Re:I avoided all this... by Xandrax · · Score: 3, Insightful

      On the flip side, I don't have to worry about having a substance in my house that has cleanup recommendations that involve a hazmat suit. How much mercury do you think has been tossed into landfills by now? I'll give you a hint:

      "According to www.lightbulbrecycling.com, each year an estimated 600 million fluorescent lamps are disposed of in U.S. landfills, amounting to 30,000 pounds of mercury waste. Astonishingly, that's almost half the amount of mercury emitted into the atmosphere by coal-fired power plants each year. It only takes 4mg of mercury to contaminate up to 7,000 gallons of freshwater, meaning that the 30,000 pounds of mercury thrown away in compact fluorescent light bulbs each year is enough to pollute nearly every lake, pond, river and stream in North America (not to mention the oceans)."

      You can Google many more articles questioning the environmental wisdom of using CFL's.

      If your concern is the environment, you should be a lot less fanatical against incandescent light bulbs for that reason, not to mention the fact that the manufacturing of CFL's has a much bigger environmental footprint, as well.

    4. Re:I avoided all this... by joggle · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Using those 300 bulbs isn't free, unless for some reason you don't have to pay the power bill.

      At .12 cents per kWh and a lifetime of 750 hours per bulb, it would cost you about $2,700 to use them. Tack on a cost of $1 per bulb, and you pay a total of about $3,000.

      To get 750 * 300 hours of 100 W equivalent, you would only need about 12 of the LED bulbs. The cost of running them for that many hours would be $621. The article doesn't say how much the bulbs will cost, just more than $30. Let's double it to $60, then the cost of those 12 bulbs would be $720. You would end up paying a total of $1,321 for what would have cost $3,000 with incandescents, a savings of almost $1,700.

      So it's your choice, either pay nothing down while paying more in the future, or pay more now but more than make up for it eventually.

    5. Re:I avoided all this... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      CFL? This is LED we are talking about, not CFL. No google required. I'm glad you sunk $300 into stockpiling lightbulbs. That makes a lot of sense.

    6. Re:I avoided all this... by Xandrax · · Score: 2

      LED's would be a good replacement if the longevity of the lights is accurate as claimed. The incandescents would never be a waste, though, since I'd switch out the bulbs in winter. One big drawback to incandescents is the heat they emit. Using incandescents in lamps with a lampshade/reflector to trap and radiate the heat has been shown to be a very good source of localized heat.

    7. Re:I avoided all this... by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      According to www.lightbulbrecycling.com, each year an estimated 600 million fluorescent lamps are disposed of in U.S. landfills, amounting to 30,000 pounds of mercury waste.

      I may be dumb, but I still recognize passive voice when I see it. If the CFLs don't throw themselves into those landfills, doesn't that imply that it's not the CFLs but the people who are the idiots here?

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    8. Re:I avoided all this... by Xandrax · · Score: 1

      Absolutely, but good luck coming up with a plan that requires people not to take the easy road (like throwing bulbs in the trash when they shouldn't) and having that plan work. If people, as a whole, were capable of that, we could implement true Communism on a global scale and we'd all live happily every after in a world where we all get along, there are no Joneses to keep up with because no one desires to be a Jones, and everything we need is provided to us, heh.

    9. Re:I avoided all this... by Obfuscant · · Score: 1

      If the CFLs don't throw themselves into those landfills, doesn't that imply that it's not the CFLs but the people who are the idiots here?

      Yes. The people who are claiming to be environmentalists and leading the charge to use CFLs but who ignore the two facts that 1) they contain hazardous materials and 2) people who use them aren't all going to be as rabidly environmentalist as they themselves are and are more likely to just throw a burned out CFL into the same trash they used to throw their other "light bulbs" into.

      If you ignore human nature and rely on universal altruism and environmental activism for a policy intended to save the planet but which requires special actions on the part of everyone involved not to wind up destroying the environment, then yes, you are an idiot.

    10. Re:I avoided all this... by Wrath0fb0b · · Score: 2

      "According to www.lightbulbrecycling.com, each year an estimated 600 million fluorescent lamps are disposed of in U.S. landfills, amounting to 30,000 pounds of mercury waste. Astonishingly, that's almost half the amount of mercury emitted into the atmosphere by coal-fired power plants each year. It only takes 4mg of mercury to contaminate up to 7,000 gallons of freshwater, meaning that the 30,000 pounds of mercury thrown away in compact fluorescent light bulbs each year is enough to pollute nearly every lake, pond, river and stream in North America (not to mention the oceans)."

      1mg of mercury vaporized into the air is not the equivalent of 1mg mercury dumped in a landfill. Distribution counts just as much as quantity when it comes to bioavailability.

      Heck, it doesn't take much lead or uranium (or any other heavy metal) to poison a body of water, but so long as you have it in metal form and contained behind layers of isolation, it's not a problem. That's kind of the point of landfills -- to hold garbage away from becoming mixed in with everything else. If you believe that the landfills in your State aren't accomplishing that, you should lobby for stricter standards on them because there's a whole host of nasty shit in there that's just as bad as the mercury in the CFLs. Heck, I'll probably support you in such a quest. Just don't equivocate between throwing something into a hole in the ground and vaporizing it into the air -- they aren't at all similar.

    11. Re:I avoided all this... by joggle · · Score: 1

      Central heating with a modern furnace is much more efficient. I can't imagine how one would ever need 300 100-W light bulbs. I posted below an estimate showing that the same amount of work of those 300 bulbs could be done with 12 LED bulbs, using significantly less power (about 1/4th). Over the lifetime of the bulbs, you would easily save over $1000 using LED bulbs even if your electricity rate is as cheap as 0.12 cents per kWh.

    12. Re:I avoided all this... by swalve · · Score: 1

      CFLs do not contain that much mercury. 30,000 pounds of mercury is 13607 kg. Which is 13 607 000 000 mg. Which is 22mg per lamp. In reality land, they actually have a fraction of one mg of mercury in them. And no matter how you slice it, running an incandescent bulb puts more mercury into the atmosphere than a CFL ever will.

    13. Re:I avoided all this... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It only takes 4mg of mercury to contaminate up to 7,000 gallons of freshwater...

      That's 0.00015 ppm. The FDA and EPA both allow 0.002 ppm in drinking water, which is 13.3 times as high.

      ...meaning that the 30,000 pounds of mercury thrown away in compact fluorescent light bulbs each year is enough to pollute nearly every lake, pond, river and stream in North America (not to mention the oceans)."

      The USA has 3069 km^3/year of freshwater resources. At 1 trillion liters per cubic kilometer, at 0.002 ppm (0.002 mg/L), it would take 6.138 million kg of mercury to pollute that much water. That's 13.5 million pounds.

    14. Re:I avoided all this... by medcalf · · Score: 1

      Pretty much the entire premise of the Left, going back to Rousseau, is that human nature is a social construct. Why would they blink at lightbulb use when there are so much bigger things to do to mold people to the service of the State?

      --
      -- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
    15. Re:I avoided all this... by dr2chase · · Score: 1

      Heating with incandescent light bulbs is an appalling waste of energy; better to use a heat pump, or a furnace.
      And the energy costs of running those incandescent bulbs is substantial (compared to LEDs) unless you use them hardly at all.

      I am also pretty sure that LED longevity is as good as claimed; there are some in my kitchen that already have over 10,000 hours on them (they're on most of the time, and I installed them back in 2010). I also use LEDs in homemade bicycle lights, and they have survived both several years of Boston weather (and winter road slime) and thousands of miles of vibration.

    16. Re:I avoided all this... by rjstanford · · Score: 1

      Don't forget that, if your house is powered by coal (as many in the US are), you're still better off with CFLs for mercury reasons. Figure .2mg of mercury from each lightbulb if you just break it (and don't do that, mmmkay). Coal power releases .022mg per kwh (0.012 mg per kwh is the US-wide average). Getting cheat math from http://www.ecmag.com/?articleID=10261&fa=article (easier than going to the EPA sources, but feel free, they're listed):

      A 75W incandescent operating over a period of 10,000 hours—the rated life of a competitive 18W CFL—will, therefore, generate an average 9.2 mg of atmospheric mercury emissions nationally, while the 18W CFL will generate 2.2 mg (plus possibly up to another 0.27 mg if the lamp is broken).

      --
      You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
    17. Re:I avoided all this... by MyLongNickName · · Score: 1

      I can amplify your statement.

      People throw out 12 cents (not .12 cents :)) a kWh, but when I look at my bill I see surcharges and other fees that are based on usage. My last bill was truly more like 20 cents a kWh once I factored these items in. Based on that, replacing many of the bulbs in the house I just bought made a lot of sense.

      The basement kids' play area had ten 60 watt bulbs that I replaced with 23 watt bulbs. Even if I take replacement costs to be equal between the two bulbs, the energy savings is enormous. The CFCs save me 370 watts per hour used over then ten bulbs and are a bit brighter. At 20 cents per kWh, I save 6 cents per hour used. My kids are pretty good about turning these lights off when not in use, so at 15 hours a week, I am saving 45 or so dollars per year. I imagine this will be even higher in the winter when they can't go outside to play as much.

      And the CFCs themselves came from my old house, some of which were bought almost ten years ago. Back then they cost me $5/bulb. I have found that the ones I put in the bathroom and kitchen didn't last any longer than incandescent, but all of the other rooms lasted a long time.

      --
      See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
    18. Re:I avoided all this... by fnj · · Score: 1

      Well, my state requires CFLs to be recycled at a drop-off facility and forbids them to be dropped in landfill trash. Maybe they know something?

  12. light switches by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Make sure you don't have those switches with a little light inside them. Those are good with incandescents but for some reason wear down fluorescents much faster. They run a small current through the circuit even when the switch is off which probably keeps the CFL circuitry powered on. Some fluorescents have a continuous slight glow in the dark even when turned off, long after their remanent glow should have vanished.

    1. Re:light switches by crow · · Score: 2

      Interesting. I had a problem with LED holiday lights. I used an X10 appliance module so that I could turn them off by remote control. Unfortunately, when I switched to LED lights, I found that the X10 module leaked just enough current to keep the lights going, only slightly dimmer. Not very useful.

    2. Re:light switches by dgatwood · · Score: 1

      That's odd. AFAIK, X10 modules generally use a relay for power switching, so there should be no leakage whatsoever. Maybe it has a bad relay.

      --

      Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

    3. Re:light switches by Obfuscant · · Score: 2

      That's odd. AFAIK, X10 modules generally use a relay for power switching, so there should be no leakage whatsoever. Maybe it has a bad relay.

      X10 modules have a local-on feature so that you don't need to use a controller to turn the device on. If you have a lamp connected to one, then turning the lamp off and then back on will trigger the X10 module to power on. It's a safety feature so a lost controller won't result in not being able to turn something on, like a light you need in the middle of the night.

      That feature requires a continuous low level current through the controlled device to detect the actual switching at the device. This current is sufficient to keep a CFL blinking even after you turn the X10 power module (with the relay) off. Eventually the CFL cools down and the current isn't enough to flash the lamp and it stops. I'd guess it is also enough to keep an LED lit partially.

    4. Re:light switches by Obfuscant · · Score: 2

      X10 modules generally use a relay for power switching,...

      I forgot to add, the POWER modules use a relay. There are also LAMP modules that have TRIACs just like wall dimmer switches use. Unless you have a dimmable CFL, your LAMP module isn't going to dim your CFL. And both modules have the local-on feature so they both leak current to the controlled device.

    5. Re:light switches by dgatwood · · Score: 1

      Ugh. Well, apparently it is fairly straightforward to disable the local control feature.

      --

      Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

  13. An optical question... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Interesting

    All these relatively small LED lights are using a phosphor layer, pumped by either a blue or UV diode or diodes, to generate something resembling reasonably white light. The phosphor step gives them much lousier efficiency compared to their monochromatic counterparts, which don't have that additional step eating photons.

    I am assuming that they do this, rather than using arrays of multiple colored LEDs matched to add up to 'white', because of the difficulty of getting suitably even mixing, weird color fringes, and the like. Does anybody know what would be needed(either advances in LED fabrication, or minimum size/complexity requirements for a light fixture) to make the multiple-colors-mixed approach viable?

    1. Re:An optical question... by marcosdumay · · Score: 1

      You'd need to mix near a hundred different types of LEDs, with different currents going into each of them. Also, some of those LEDs you must mix aren't currently made by anybody.

    2. Re:An optical question... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      LEDs without phosphor are monochromatic, as in "one wavelength". That's really useful if you need a backlight for a screen, but in a room light you want a mixture of all visible wavelengths, ideally resembling a "black body" spectrum at a given temperature (2700K for lightbulb-yellowish light). If you mix just three wavelengths instead, you can get perfectly white looking light, but only if you look directly into the light or if the light is reflected by a surface that happens to reflect these three wavelengths evenly. Many colors will look "off" under RGB lighting. That's because the perceived color is three integrals over the product of the emitted light, the reflectivity and the sensitivity at each frequency. If you multiply most reflectivity by zero, because your RGB light emits only a few wavelengths, you don't see the right color.

    3. Re:An optical question... by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 1

      Multi color mixing generally makes for very poor lighting. Looking at the light source itself you will see "white", but refracted light off any surface will make the colors seem completely out of whack.

      --
      If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
    4. Re:An optical question... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      One problem is that LEDs are directional. They make good spot lights but are not so good in lamps where the bulb is pointing up. It lights up the ceiling much more than lamp shade or the table. Exciting the phosphor produces a more spherical light like a regular bulb. Even aquarium fixtures where the light is pointing down use diffuser lenses to spread the light out.

    5. Re:An optical question... by Njovich · · Score: 1

      Well, that would be great, and it might work for some time, but as you may know, LEDs become more dim after burning some time. This is typically not really a problem, unless you use them for an extreme amount of time or under poor conditions. However, different LEDs have different timespans over which they lose intensity. When one color LED loses intensity faster than another, the light gets unbalanced. This is why lights on the higher end are single LED - which is actually more difficult to produce, but have this kind of advantage.

      What you would need? Some new LEDs that don't reduce intensity (or at least do so very predictably), or some smart way of compensating for this.

      (ok, I just made this up on the spot, but you have to admit it sounds plausible).

    6. Re:An optical question... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The multiple colors approach will never be comparable, because standalone LEDs produce extremely narrowband red, green, etc light. So the things in your environment that you perceive by their reflecting various amounts of light at various wavelengths, will be very dark, because no such wavelengths exist in an environment illuminated by monochrome LEDs.

      White fluorescent material - in dual-stage LEDs, CFLs, tubes - and very hot filaments, and glowing plasma, all emit broad spectrum light that can be tuned in various ways... materials, energy applied, etc. So those are practical, and individual LEDs, aren't, won't be, can't be. As "white"-ish area lighting.

      It's not the same as a "screen" made up of RGB LEDs, such as an advertising sign. In that case, the colors are emitted, not reflected, and so the addition is done in your eye... and so you can get a wide range of colors. Reflectivity is a whole nuther bag of trouble.

    7. Re:An optical question... by hbar+squared · · Score: 1

      The mixed-color approach works with displays because the light is transmitted directly to the eye (or in the case of projectors, reflected once off a white screen). For ambient lighting, you need a continuum of light because the reflectivity of objects varies wildly by color. If you emit only in three sharp peaks, the reflection from any non-white surface will destroy your white balance. The CRI (Color Rendering Index) of a light source is a measurement of how well it illuminates differently-colored surfaces. A 'white' light with three narrow peaks might look great in an all-white room, but it would fail miserably at rendering anything of color.

    8. Re:An optical question... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 1

      From the other responses it sounds like reflection problems in common environments, of which I was previously unaware, would doom the idea; but degradation might actually be solvable...

      If the color channels are driven individually, their output could be controlled by changing the drive current. If given access to colorimeter data for a short time, the driver module could change output on each channel to compensate for uneven wear. Best case, you might be able to cram a small solid-state colorimeter into the fixture. If that isn't practical, is too expensive, or can't get a good view of the output, you could have the fixture perform a recalibration every x hundred hours or so by having a little IR chat with a portable colorimeter unit(in the style of the equipment used for monitor calibration; with IR tranciever for talking to the driver circuit).

      Given the reflection trouble, though, it sounds like it wouldn't be worth the trouble.

    9. Re:An optical question... by Khyber · · Score: 1

      Today we use ceramic recombination and phosphors to achieve near-blackbody radiation output from an LED. CRI past 90, all day.

      I'm using them for my main computer station.

      --
      Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
    10. Re:An optical question... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You'd need to mix near a hundred different types of LEDs, with different currents going into each of them. Also, some of those LEDs you must mix aren't currently made by anybody.

      And yet, back in the pre-LED days, you could take a red spotlight, a blue spotlight and a green spotlight and aim them all at the same spot and get white light. If your tv can do it with just three colors, then why can't a light bulb?

    11. Re:An optical question... by marcosdumay · · Score: 1

      There is a huge difference from creating a light beam that appears to be white and a beam that illuminates objects the same way white light does.

    12. Re:An optical question... by swalve · · Score: 1

      You could, but it would look ugly.

    13. Re:An optical question... by bwalzer · · Score: 1
      RGB LED lighting is made. Colour matching is a bother but getting the right balance with the phosphor is hard as well. One problem is that RGB LED lights can not pass the Colour Rendering Index (CRI) test at all. It turns out that there is a colour used in the test that just won't work with the wavelengths used in such lamps (it is apparently just a bunch of colour blobs printed on paper). The RGB lighting people feel that the test is not useful for comparing phosphor and RGB lights.

      Some supporters of RGB LEDs managed to get a group of people to prefer the RGB based lights in a test so all hope is not lost...

    14. Re:An optical question... by dr2chase · · Score: 1

      Not true (as in, completely wrong). I have seen it with my own eyes using a diffraction grating comparing LED and fluorescent. Phosphors are wavelength multipliers, and CFLs start with a small collection of single frequencies, and the phosphors make more single frequencies. LEDs start with a (tight) continuous range of frequencies centered around a frequency, and the phosphor makes copies of the range, which overlap.

    15. Re:An optical question... by dillee1 · · Score: 1

      Reason that white LED is not made with 3 primary colour LEDs is that as LED age, they dims, and different colour dims at different rates. A new tricolour LED migh looks white, but when it ages it might glows greenish for example.

    16. Re:An optical question... by sFurbo · · Score: 1

      The spectrum of an incandescent bulb and a CFL is shown on wikipedia. For the CFL, the spikes are mercury emissions, the broad background is the phosphor. Phosphors emit a certain spectrum if they are irradiated within their absorption band, regardless of the incoming lights spectrum. If you are making a crude spectrum, as in your blog post, you might not see the light from the phosphor, as the spikes overwealm the detector.

    17. Re:An optical question... by dr2chase · · Score: 1

      The actual, real-live employed-as-a-physicist who explained this to me said that the phosphors were wavelength multipliers, not spike emitters. Ionized gasses are spike emitters. LEDs are not spike emitters either; most "white" LEDs on the market are blue or UV (not single wavelength, but spread tightly around a center wavelength) fed to a phosphor.

      The pictures in the post show (1) diffracted incandescent smears, (2) single displaced mono-frequency images of a CFL light and (3) diffracted LED smears. The raw LED (no phosphor) would only show blue; if the phosphors made spikes, you would see them in all the other colors, because there is no source of non-blue other than the phosphor. You can also see this looking at the spectra from the LED manufacturers; "white" LEDs typically include a spike for the raw emitter.

      The wikipedia you cite contains no information about LED spectra.

    18. Re:An optical question... by sFurbo · · Score: 1

      I am not sure I understand you. Let me explain the understanding I have of the process, and then you can tell me where we diverge:
      CFLs: Mercury emits a series of wavelengths in quite narrow spikes, most of them in the UV. The phosphor takes these and produces continuous spectra. The resulting light is what is shown in the picture I linked to. The phosphor doesn't produce spikes.
      LED lights: LED produce a rather narrow range of wavelenghts (monochrome light, at least ot the human eye). For lights, this is normally in the blue or UV area. This light excites the phosphor, which produces a continuous spectrum. The resulting light would have one spike (possibly in the UV, so it would be invisible to the human eye), the rest would be continuous.

      Phosphors are not wavelength multipliers, they emit the same spectrum regardless of the incomming spectrum (as long as some of the light is in their absorption area). The data analysis done here would not work if this was not the case (for fluorescence, at least).

    19. Re:An optical question... by dr2chase · · Score: 1

      The physicist who explained this to me said that phosphors were wavelength multipliers, and that is what the CFL image looks like to me, since the raw output of the tube is something ugly-looking like ionized mercury or sodium.

      Furthermore, if the phosphors in white LEDs were NOT wavelength multipliers and instead emitted discrete frequencies, the diffraction grating would show a blue blob (the range centered around blue) plus a sequence of dots (the discrete frequencies that you say are emitted by the phosphor). Since I don't see that, I assume that they must be wavelength multipliers, especially since that is what the expert told me. The non-dotting effect is evident even in the higher-order diffracted images in that photo -- just as skinny, but spread further, and no openings in the spectrum.

      However, looking further, I don't see specific mention of "wavelength multiplier", but I do see terms like "broad yellow phosphor".
      Apparently, shifted, not multiplied. But shift of a smear, results in a smear, and shift of a point results in a point.

    20. Re:An optical question... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Every time you excite the phosphor, it emits light of a random frequency, even if it is excited by monochromatic light. The combined result of many many emissions is a broad spectrum of light. The spectrum of a cheap white LED therefore often has a sharp blue peak (the actual LED light) and a broad hump in the yellow range (the light emitted by the phosphor). Better quality fluorescent lights use a mixture of multiple phosphors to create a more even spectrum. The spectrum of an RGB light has nothing but three very narrow red, green and blue peaks.

    21. Re:An optical question... by sFurbo · · Score: 1

      The emission wavelength of the phosphor does not depend on the excitation wavelength. In the image on the page you linked to, you would see the green spectrum regardless of whether you excited it with the entire spectrum or a single wavelength, as long as there is some overlap with the absorption spectrum. It would be a "smear" no matter what the exciting light looked like.

    22. Re:An optical question... by dr2chase · · Score: 1

      Then why don't I see a smear when I look at the diffracted output of a CFL? I see crisp copies of the bulb, in different colors.

    23. Re:An optical question... by sFurbo · · Score: 1

      I think what you see is the spikes. They are (locally) stronger then the smear, so they blot out the smear so you don't see it, but it is there. This is what you can see in the spectrum I linked to earlier. If we look at a pure mercury spectrum, the first for copies in your image could correspond to four of the peaks (blue at 405 nm, cyan at 436 nm, green at 546 nm and yellow at 579 nm, the yellow is less defined, which could be because of its lower intensity). I don't know where the red copy (or copies, there seem to be at least two overlapping) comes from.

    24. Re:An optical question... by dr2chase · · Score: 1

      I'm not sure this is all consistent. I agree that it's possible, but I know what a mercury arc (old street lamps) looks like, and it's pretty cruddy. If all I see are the spikes because they are so bright, doesn't that imply that they should also dominate in the un-diffracted appearance of the CFL (and thus it would look more like a mercury arc than it does?) And how does the LED manage to not blot out its spectrum with its relatively powerful blue light?

    25. Re:An optical question... by sFurbo · · Score: 1

      A standard camera (which I suppose you have used to make the pictures) have a pretty lousy dynamic range, so it is conceivable that even with a sizeable contribution from the phosphor smear, the camera would not pick it up in the presence of spikes. Add to this that it is not a point source and that the diffraction grating have some diffuse scattering, and the smear might not be visible at all on the picture. It should be clearer to the naked eye, but it might be missed if you don't specifically look for it. The colours seem to be consistent with the wavelengths of mercury, but I would need to do proper measurements of distances and calculations to be sure.

      As for the LED, if you look at the picture, it does seem that there is a bright spot on the far blue area, than an area with less intensity, and then a broad peak with an intensity maximum in the green and yellow. Perhaps the phosphor can be more effective at removing the exciting light when there is only one wavelength? Alternatively, it might be a LED with a UV excitation?

      All of this is probably over-analysing pictures that are non-ideal (camera with low dynamic range, not a point source for the CFL, not a black background/diffuse scattering from the grating). It would be nice to have a spectrum done with a spectrometer of each of the light sources.

    26. Re:An optical question... by badkarmadayaccount · · Score: 1

      My dad buys shit LED lamps (4 BGN for 5W, 80W equiv, minimal wage is ~500 BGN). Burn out electronically within a year or two, usually. The ones that last have aging phosphors, that start to look reddish instead of the nice cold white I like, and slightly dimmer. Multi-chip tri-color LEDs might have the same issues, but LEDs age slower than phosphors. A lot slower. Trying to find some nice and cheap ones.

      --
      I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.
    27. Re:An optical question... by dr2chase · · Score: 1

      Sigh. I'm not going to pony up for expensive equipment, so I think the best I could do (next time I'm in the mood to play with diffraction gratings) is to try a black background. What the camera shows is also what my eyes saw; not sure what the dynamic range on eyes in a single image is.

    28. Re:An optical question... by SockPuppetOfTheWeek · · Score: 1

      The pigments used in most printing processes are CMYK, so I would expect there might be some issues with using RGB lighting while reading anything printed in color... unless the individual pigments reflect the RGB wavelengths adequately, it's not going to look right.

    29. Re:An optical question... by sFurbo · · Score: 1

      I understand, I wasn't trying to get you to spend a lot of money, just wondering how we could tell whether there was a smear or nor. More of a mental exercise than anything else.

      In my highschool, we had some small "spectrometers" (basically just a black plastic box with a slit, a grating and a peep-hole), they can't be that expensive. Ah, yes, these*. They have teh spectrum of a fluorescent light, there is a smear, but it seems to be smaller than for the high pressure mercury light. And it doesn't seem to be mercury-based. Hmmm, wierd. Oh, well, I am going to see if I can buy one. I wouldn't have gotten that thought if not for this dialogue, thank you :-)

      uk.com? Really, slashdot? That is what you think the domain is? Wow.

  14. Kewl factor by Latent+Heat · · Score: 1

    Early adopter.

  15. Energy usage matches CFL... but other properties? by stomv · · Score: 1

    So why not just get a CFL? In general, it's probably not worth it. But if:

    1. there's a high cost to change the bulb [ladder, scaffolding, or left required], additional lifetime is extremely valuable;
    2. the color is different and that matters to you;
    3. the warm-up time and process is different and that matters to you; and/or
    4. the fragility or hazardous materials in a CFL is a concern,

    then LED might be the way to go. I don't think that Philips nor other manufacturers are expecting a large-scale consumer switch from CFL to LED at these prices, but for the prices to get lower than these prices they need more research and more manufacturing experience, so they might as well bring 'em to market now and get the process started.

  16. led vs cfl by scharkalvin · · Score: 2

    For me the problem is using the bulbs with a dimmer. CFL's DO NOT DIM. Period! Even the so called dimable ones simply drop in output maybe 30-40% then flicker and go out. If you have a multi bulb fixture the CFL's don't dim together and usually go out at different settings. In the rooms of my house that require dimable fixtures I have to use incandecents. If the LED bulbs will dim with standard dimmers (I use X10 switches than can be remote controlled) I would consider switching to them. At some point I will try the 75watt LED bulbs in the bedroom or maybe the 60w ones in the family room and see if they work with dimmers. (If they don't they will go back to HomeDepot for a refund!). The LED bulbs should also be more vibration proof than CFL's so they can be used in ceiling fan fixtures.

    1. Re:led vs cfl by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      dimmable CFL's also seem to be much more sensitive to power fluctuations (i.e. they flicker) especially when they are dimmed a little in as you say groups on one light fitting.

    2. Re:led vs cfl by pz · · Score: 1

      CFL's DO NOT DIM. Period! Even the so called dimable ones simply drop in output maybe 30-40% then flicker and go out.

      I'd wager you're generalizing from limited experience with low-quality bulbs, or bulbs with the wrong kind of dimmer. I have dimmable CFL bulbs in my kitchen and livingroom that dim perfectly all the way down to off. I also bought the manufacturer-recommended kind of dimmer for them. Before getting the right kind of dimmer, they behaved as you described.

      When I've put LED bulbs into a dimmer circuit, they have not fared as well, although I haven't tried different dimmers yet.

      The real issue for LEDs for me is that all of the ones I've tried thus far flicker at either 60 or 120 Hz, and flicker quite strongly. Does anyone know if that problem has been solved in the newest generation?

      --

      Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
    3. Re:led vs cfl by PRMan · · Score: 1

      I changed my chandelier to dimmable LEDs and they work great. When I told my kids that they were rated to last 47 years, they asked who was getting them in my will.

      --
      Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
    4. Re:led vs cfl by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Make sure that the dimmer is rated for the low wattage. If you put a 60W equivalent CFL on a 60-300W dimmer, it will behave like you describe, because it actually uses much less than the minimum 60W that the dimmer needs to operate correctly. You can see if this is the problem by putting an incandescent bulb in parallel to the CFL: If the CFL dims correctly then, you are exceeding the specification of the dimmer (at the low end, where nobody pays attention).

      The Philips LED bulbs dim all the way to off, btw. I have a couple dozen 40W equivalents. But the dimmer needs to be rated for the low wattage, otherwise they stay on and turn off hard at some point.

    5. Re:led vs cfl by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ahhh, kids. Already have their eyes on the prize.

    6. Re:led vs cfl by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      When I've put LED bulbs into a dimmer circuit, they have not fared as well, although I haven't tried different dimmers yet.

      in other words you made SAME mistake with LEDs that you warned other guy to not do with CFLs

      LED (if it is plain and does not have some special "dimmer compatibility" electronics) requires to be dimmed by switching it off and on several thousand times per seconds from zero voltage to 100% voltage as in 0% than 100% than 0% than 100% ... (depending how dimmed you want light to be you increase or decrease ratio of 0% and 100%) and efficiency stays the same whole this time (23W used per 100W of light)

      CFLs and normal lights expect voltage to be at constant 40% or 10% or 20% or 90% depending how dimmed you want it but the further away it is from 100%, even worse efficiency in your incandescent bulb dimmed at 50% it will actually glow only 40% as much and still use 50% of electricity that it usually would ( 50W used per 40W of light, or 125W used per 100W of light)

    7. Re:led vs cfl by mcvos · · Score: 1

      I've got a dimmer over my dining table. The dimmable bulb cost about twice what a regular CFL costs, and while it dims more than 40% (I'd say about 60%), it definitely doesn't go all the way to off. Maybe it was a bit better when it was new, but in the end we just decided we didn't really need it to be dimmable.

  17. Philips 17-watt (75 w, incandescent lumen equiv.) by twocentplain · · Score: 1

    I bought a Philips AmbientLED 17-Watt (75W) A21 Light Bulb over a year ago for $39 at Home Depot. The 17-watt puts out 1100 lm,, which is 64.7 lumens/watt, so the new bulb is more efficien at 73.0 lm/w. That good.

    Still, it's too expensive to replace all the bulbs in my house. I used this on a hard to reach, heavily used tracklight fixture where the cost is appropriate given the pain of using a 20-ft ladder to replace the bulb every six months.

  18. Uhhh... at WHAT price that is? by Razgorov+Prikazka · · Score: 0

    I could buy a normal light-bulb for about $0,20 in the local supermarket... I just can not imagine that this is a good deal... ...Even if it does mean that the Arctic will lose an ice cube or two less...

    --
    rm -rf --no-preserve-root / ...and let /dev/null sort them out...
    1. Re:Uhhh... at WHAT price that is? by ShadowRangerRIT · · Score: 4, Informative

      As others have noted, you're forgetting the cost to power the bulb. Standard incandescent lasts 1000 hours, the LEDs should last 10K (some claim 20K, but we'll go with the lower figure). So for a 100W equivalent, you buy 10 incandescents for 20 cents a piece, or $2. Let's say the LED costs $60.

      Next up is the cost of power. Over 10K hours, the incandescents consume 100W * 10K hrs = 1Mwh (1000 Kwh). The LED consumes 23W * 10K hrs = 230 Kwh. At 10 cents per Kwh (I pay about 12 cents; prices in the U.S. range from 8-25 cents), that's $100 to power the incandescents. And $23 to power the LED.

      • LED total cost = $60 to buy + $23 to power = $83 over total lifespan
      • Incandescent total cost = $2 to buy + $100 to power = $102 over total lifespan (plus whatever cost you assign to the hassle of changing bulbs 10x as often)

      That said, a fluorescent would get roughly the same power cost as the LED, and cost less than a tenth what the LED costs up front. But they're not well-suited to dimmable fixtures, they require special disposal, and they frequently have a delay before they reach full brightness (and some claim they get less "natural" light). If none of that bothers you, then go with fluorescents. But if it does, then your fallback option would be the LED, which is cheaper over its lifespan than even 20 cent incandescents.

      --
      $_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
    2. Re:Uhhh... at WHAT price that is? by Razgorov+Prikazka · · Score: 0

      Good one. Point taken!

      --
      rm -rf --no-preserve-root / ...and let /dev/null sort them out...
    3. Re:Uhhh... at WHAT price that is? by Luyseyal · · Score: 1

      Well, you can also add in cold climate vs warm climate costs. In Texas, CFL or LED wins because your A/C runs less. I imagine if you live in North Dakota, the incandescents would win.

      -l

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    4. Re:Uhhh... at WHAT price that is? by ShadowRangerRIT · · Score: 1

      Not really. Incandescents (particularly ceiling mounted) don't distribute their heat well, so you rarely get a one-for-one watt exchange. And they heat the house in roughly the same way the emergency heat on a heat pump does; in a wildly inefficient and costly way. In North Dakota, you're probably not using a heat pump (which is at least as efficient as the incandescent at heating, but not much more efficient in truly frigid climates), and would probably be better off (at least monetarily) with CFL/LEDs and a heating oil/natural gas furnace working a little harder.

      --
      $_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
    5. Re:Uhhh... at WHAT price that is? by Luyseyal · · Score: 1

      Interesting. Hadn't really considered the fact they're usually on the ceiling which is kind of obvious. Still, one plus is that they heat (near) where you need it, like a space heater, versus burning gas/oil for a whole house (or worse, electric furnace). As you probably know, 4 75W bulbs plus a human body will heat a small room (10x10) in no time and since you want the heat, it's not a negative. I absolutely agree that one or two 60W in a large open floorplan is not very efficient vs central heating.

      That gives me a crazy idea for a transparent laminate floor, heated with a zillion incandescent bulbs underneath. If I knew Blender, I might do a 3D scene of that just for fun.

      I live in Austin, TX, and am just speculating about cold climates. Take it with a road full of salt.
      -l

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  19. 60 Hz Flicker? by troylanes · · Score: 2

    I recently put some rather expensive LED bulbs in my fridge (long story...) Anyhow, reaching in and pulling anything out freaks me out due to the flicker... it's like a strobe light or an old CRT... Is there a DC converter or are they still hitting the LEDs with raw AC?

    1. Re:60 Hz Flicker? by WindBourne · · Score: 2

      All LED bulbs have DC converters. My guess is that you bought some GE or Chinese junk. It simply will not last long. Do not waste your money on that. The Phillips and even better the Switch Light Bulbs, are the way to go.

      --
      I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
    2. Re:60 Hz Flicker? by cruff · · Score: 1

      I've seen bright LED holiday lights that used a half wave rectifier scheme and they flickered badly at 60 Hz. I refused to use those types inside on the tree because it would drive me batty with them flickering in my peripheral vision. The better ones use a full wave rectifier and you get 120 Hz flickering, which may be tolerable for most people. The intensity of the light source affects the frequency at which the flicker will disappear, and this will also vary for different people. When I built a "dawn simulator" alarm clock using a bunch of white LEDs, I ended up doing the PWM dimming at about 200 Hz to avoid the flickering at lower light levels.

    3. Re:60 Hz Flicker? by Khyber · · Score: 1

      It's called Pulse Width Modulation. LEDs driven at a constant current will not exhibit this strobing effect. Do not listen to Windbourne.

      --
      Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
    4. Re:60 Hz Flicker? by gmhowell · · Score: 1

      If you're digging around in your fridge so often that this is a major lifestyle issue, you've got problems that bulb choice just can't cure.

      --
      Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
    5. Re:60 Hz Flicker? by fnj · · Score: 1

      Funny, I put a cheap screw-in LED "bulb" in my refrigerator and it works excellent and looks divine. Everyone comments on it.

  20. I have several of the Philips 60w equiv by CFD339 · · Score: 5, Informative

    So far, none of the Philips "Ambient LED" bulbs I've purchased has failed. I have several, in 40 and 60 watt equiv. The 60's (around 850 lumins) are not the latest prize winners, but are still quite efficient.

    I --HATE-- the CFL bulbs. I have found them to be unreliable as well as uncomfortable to use for reading or working. These new LED bulbs, however, have a very nice color to them, a fairly wide spectrum, virtually no flicker at all, and as I said -- so far, I have yet to have one fail.

    I actually prefer these new ones to incandescent bulbs for reading and lighting a room -- I would never have said that for any form of CFL or long tube fluorescent.

    --
    The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
  21. SWITCH LIGHT BULBS by WindBourne · · Score: 1

    The problem with LEDS (and CFLs) is not the bulbs, but the power converters inside. In every case, they produce a load of heat. One approach for the bigger bulbs is to add in a fan. Of course, many of those are being built by cheap low quality chinese manufacturers. A 10-30 year bulb will last only 1-2 years. IOW, they are PURE JUNK. This ESP. includes the GE bulbs (that are not even produced by GE, but simply re-labeled chinese junk). The phillips at least use Phillips LEDs which are of better quality, but not as good as say Cree.

    So, what is the RIGHT approach for this?
    Switch light bulb immerses the power in oil and then allows passive cooling. They have multiple patents on this. And will shortly have a 100 w bulb on the market. They are in final testing of it. These use the same Philips LEDs, but the passive cooling will allow this to actually last what is claimed. And all for under $30.

    --
    I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
    1. Re:SWITCH LIGHT BULBS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They have a patent on cooling through using a liquid? Seriously? Any idiot who's ever done any PC modding, or say repaired a car could come up with the same concept.

    2. Re:SWITCH LIGHT BULBS by WindBourne · · Score: 1

      And yet, until Switch, nobody had.

      --
      I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
    3. Re:SWITCH LIGHT BULBS by Khyber · · Score: 1

      "The problem with LEDS (and CFLs) is not the bulbs, but the power converters inside. In every case, they produce a load of heat"

      WRONG, DEAD WRONG. Most power converters have a power factor of .95. It's the LEDs that generate the majority of the heat, the best ones only being roughly 40% efficient.

      Want to know how I know you don't design LED systems? I've got 150w drivers that run dead cool, pal.

      --
      Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
    4. Re:SWITCH LIGHT BULBS by fnj · · Score: 1

      You THINK the LEDs will suffer the same shortcoming as the terrible CFLs, but in fact the driver circuits are very different. You have absolutely no basis for your prediction. At any rate, we will before very long find out. I already have one Philips LED that has been running 24x7 for one year with no hint of any degradation.

  22. Same efficiency as CF, costs 10x as much by kheldan · · Score: 1

    I'd be insane to be an early adopter with these, and I wouldn't recommend them to anyone for that reason. Unlike many I have CFs that have lasted for at least 5 years now, and are just as energy efficient as these $60 LEDs. I think I'll wait around for them to be competitively priced. $60 is just too much for a friggin' light bulb.

    --
    Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
  23. as usual, it's all about more money by OpFour · · Score: 1

    $60.00 for a light bulb... $60.00 for a LIGHT bulb... $60.00 for a LIGHT BULB... $60.00 FOR A LIGHT BULB...! just keep saying that over and over again until it sinks in good and deep and then ask yourself, "am I now part of the sheeple that will purchase this?"

    1. Re:as usual, it's all about more money by Jeng · · Score: 1

      If it works as advertised then the mantra would be $60.00 FOR A LIGHT BULB I WILL NEVER HAVE TO REPLACE.

      --
      Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
    2. Re:as usual, it's all about more money by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Eh, I've paid over $100 for a light bulb before. Halogen aircraft taxi lights ain't cheap, but there's no better way to turn a $30 spotlight into a floodtastic thing of beauty. Luckily, the landing lights (spotlights that'll hit a cloud) are more like $30-40, but you gotta have one wide-open flooder.

      Point is, it's not "$60.00 FOR A LIGHT BULB", it's $60 for a particular bulb, which cheaper bulbs may or may not replace satisfactorily. Maybe if you spent less time saying sheeple and more time explaining why, in your case, a cheaper bulb (or a succession of much cheaper bulbs) will work as well, you wouldn't sound like an idiot.

    3. Re:as usual, it's all about more money by dr2chase · · Score: 2

      I have an investment proposal for you that will pay you back 16.8% annual interest for 5 years in constant monthly payments (like a mortgage).
      Buy that $60 23W LED bulb and use it to replace a cheap 100W incandescent that you run 5 hours per day (and I assume you pay $0.12/kWH for electricity).
      It comes with a warranty, right? This investment is nearly risk free.
      (other assumptions: 1500 hour life for incandescent, $1/bulb replacement cost)

      Can you find any other investment right now that will pay you anything like this? Why would you make fun of this before checking the actual costs and returns?

    4. Re:as usual, it's all about more money by OpFour · · Score: 1

      If it works as advertised then the mantra would be $60.00 FOR A LIGHT BULB I WILL NEVER HAVE TO REPLACE.

      yea, thats not gonna happen... poor business model. In business, you make your money on the comeback, not on the initial offering.

  24. In nearly unrelated personal news... by joh · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Since half a year now I have a 6x1W LED lamp (from IKEA) hanging off the ceiling in my kitchen. This thing fires 6 tightly focused beams at the walls, which makes 6 funny areas of bright white light to distribute around my kitchen (it has adjustable steel tentacles) . It's bright (where it shines), it's reasonable well designed, it's sturdy and looks seriously cool. It also consumes only a laughable amount of electricity.

    And you know what? I happen to like that thing a lot. It eats 6 bloody watts and gives more than enough light everywhere I need it while generating a really nice light landscape. And yes, it does this while eating just 6 bloody watts of electric energy. It also fires up 100% instantly after switching it on.

    Hey, there's nothing wrong with LED lights! Gimme more of those! How can geeks NOT like these things?

    I have even thought of buying the cheapest LCD screens off ebay and making lamps from them. Hey, you spend how many dollars on gadgets and then you're mean on lighting? Why? Light is cool and LEDs are the next best thing after stealing fire from the gods (or nature or the OS of that particular simulation or whatever).

    Stop complaining and invent BETTER LED LIGHTS! And make them cheaper! You will sell billions of them! You lazy, dumb, complacent idiots!

    1. Re:In nearly unrelated personal news... by Khyber · · Score: 2

      I do make better LED lights. Mostly for growing plants, though. Nobody wants to use my ideas for building interior lighting.

      Sucks for them. 12w to light up amost my entire 30x50 back yard is pretty damned good, considering I needed roughly 300w incandescent to do the same thing.

      --
      Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
    2. Re:In nearly unrelated personal news... by olau · · Score: 1

      Agreed on the coolness of LED-integrated lamps. I recently bought 50 0.5 W LEDs from Ebay plus two power converters. Cost me 6 USD or so. Next year it would probably be 3 USD. Let's see what we can build with them. :)

  25. Doesn't the 100w equivalent CFL use 26 watts? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Spend a crapload of money to save 3 watts? Not me. Now if they got it to 10 watts...

  26. High heat applications by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Anyone know how these new bulbs (CFL or LED) perform in high-heat situations? I have a hood over a commercial stove that vents up to 550k btu/hr of heat, and has 3 100W bulbs, currently incandescent. It gets fairly warm up there, 160F or so IIRC. Anyone know if that temperature OK for LED bulbs?

    1. Re:High heat applications by WindBourne · · Score: 1

      Stay incandescent or halogen. CFLs/LEDs have power converters that need to have lower temps.

      --
      I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
    2. Re:High heat applications by Khyber · · Score: 1

      No, they don't need lower temps. Not at all. The LEDs themselves need lower temps for cooling reasons. I have no problems operating these LEDs out in the Mojave.

      --
      Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
  27. Better plan.... by jsm18 · · Score: 5, Funny

    If only these were made by Apple and not Phillips. There would be block long lines forming to buy the latest iBulb.

    1. Re:Better plan.... by joh · · Score: 1

      Well, they certainly would be made from glass and metal. Would look much better, especially since they are supposed to last for a long time this is important. I would even pay quite a bit more for them.

      Yes, good idea. Apple should do that. Sell a good, cool LED bulb and you could make a lot of money. You could sell it for lots of money, because all other LED bulbs just are awful.

      Complaining is easier, though.

    2. Re:Better plan.... by StripedCow · · Score: 1

      Don't worry. Apple will invent the exact same light bulb next year.

      --
      If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
    3. Re:Better plan.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They would also cost twice as much as other bulbs that can do the exact same thing if not more just as well.

      But hey you would atleast get a logo on the side of it so you can always bring it up in conversations.

      Person 1: "Wow it sure is a nice day out. So how have you been?"
      Person 2: " I own apple bulbs"
      Person 1: "........."

  28. What few consider by Grayhand · · Score: 2

    People squawk about the price but consider these factors. How many light bulbs are left on more than an hour a day in most homes? Say living room and kitchen? Maybe a family room or office? Bedroom? Okay so we are talking four or five bulbs, the rest can be compact florescent. Even at $60 you are talking about $240 to $300 to replace all the important lights in the house. Remember nation wide lighting is a large percentage of the power used. In the average house it's 14%. Say you have a $100 power bill and your lights run $14. Let's be generous and call the florescents $4 of that so the LEDs would cost around $2.50 a month so the savings was $7.50. It would take 40 months to pay them off. That's assuming 5 bulbs with no discounting or rebates. If they last 10 years then you get 6.5+ years of saving $7.50 a month and that's conservative. The returns are better than the stock market. The speed of return would be higher if you just replaced the 2 or 3 most used bulbs but the savings are still impressive on 5 bulbs. Buy one bulb a year and in 5 years they are all replaced and by then they'll be cheap enough to replace the rest of the florescent bulbs. My mind is constantly blown when people complain about paying more now just so they can get cheap or free power later. If solar panels payback in 5 to 7 years you are talking 20 years of free power and people still complain that they have to spend extra money now. Most homes can cut their power bills in half with more efficient appliances and most pay a hell of a lot more than a $100 a month. If everyone got on board they'd save a lot of money and we could shut down some coal plants instead of building more. People keep calling it a rip off and the bulb companies are cheating you but how is saving you a ton of money cheating you?

    1. Re:What few consider by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If solar panels payback in 5 to 7 years you are talking 20 years of free power

      Generally that is true but most people ignore this stuff:

      • Damaged panels from the neighbors football or something
      • Panels loose some efficciency over time
      • I'm told by people who researched putting them in that the inverters only last around 10 years (or at least only carry 10yr warranty)
      • You have to clean them regularly for full output
      • You have to keep trees pruned

      I'm not saying it's a bad idea, but the headline figures are not the ones you want to base your savings calculations off. Especially a 10year inverter failure - that one will add at least a couple of years to your payback time. At least until grid power rises some more.

    2. Re:What few consider by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ++ to the selective use of these things.

      I recently purchased AmbientLED bulbs for areas where I want some mixture of:

      1. Instant-on full brightness
      2. Quality dimming performance
      3. Efficiency
      4. Better tolerance of frequent on/off cycles.

      For me that meant: bedroom, living room, and an entrance hallway. Install LEDs in areas where you require those attributes.

      Use CFLs most everywhere else, and keep the incandescents in your low use areas that require instant-on brightness, such as storage closets. I keep an incandescent in a walk-in pantry that has a motion activated switch; walk in, get what you need, and it automatically shuts off 10 seconds after you leave. The bulb probably runs a total of 5 hours per year.

      I'd put LEDs in my kitchen too, but I already have a set of ten BR30 CFL bulbs in the ceiling cans there that have been going strong for four years without a single replacement. The CFL warmup time does bug me though and I will eventually replace all of them with LED once I start to lose a significant number of the BR30 CFLs that I already paid for.

      Oh, and for the people who are jumping on the LED train and need BR30 bulbs, be aware that the Philips AmbientLED BR30 bulbs have a 3000k color temperature. In my house it is too white; the color also looks weird and washes out the nice color of my walls and cherry cabinets. I don't like those bulbs very much and they do not look as nice as my CFL BR30s. On the other hand, the remote phosphor AmbientLEDs (which are the subject of the Slashdot article) have a nice warm output that closely matches incandescent and I 3 them. There are other manufacturers that make BR30s with a lower color temperature but I'm not certain of their quality.

  29. LEDs hard to scale past 50W equivalent? by peter303 · · Score: 1

    I heard (cant find source) that LED efficiency drops off quickly after about ten watts of power (60W incandescent). Hence the DOE "L-Prize" of $10M (won in 2011) to push the envelope. They've reached the "reading lamp" level of quality, but not quite the overall indoor/outdoor lighting requirements yet.

    1. Re:LEDs hard to scale past 50W equivalent? by Khyber · · Score: 1

      Nope. The efficiency drop comes if you run these in series, which is what they're doing, and using a voltage-clamp driver. If you run them in parallel configs, you will not have anywhere near the loss. A little over-cycling using PWM, and you can really push the envelope without much worry in the heat department.

      I've got a 12w LED floodlight that can light up nearly my entire back yard.

      --
      Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
    2. Re:LEDs hard to scale past 50W equivalent? by hbar+squared · · Score: 1

      LEDs are semiconductors. And as every slashdotter worth their salt knows, what happens when you push >50W through a chip with passive cooling and a tiny heatsink? That's when the magic smoke comes out.

  30. L Prize bulb doesn't flicker by YesIAmAScript · · Score: 1

    Not at 60Hz or 120Hz. There is no noticeable flicker or pulsing even when dimmed.

    --
    http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
  31. Bulb math by metrometro · · Score: 1

    First off, CFLs suck, and always will. Ignore them.

    The comparison is incandescent and LED. I did some figgerin' and those $40 LED bulbs at Home Depot actually are pretty cheap.

    Inputs:

    Midwestern US, relatively cheap coal power.
    Overhead 60w floods. Unlikely to be damaged.
    Energy use: 65w vs 9.5w.
    Time on: 5 hours per day.

    Time to payback: 2 years. Your milage may vary. Use half the light light, payback takes twice as long.

    Once you pay back, every 2 years, it puts $40 in your pocket, per bulb. Bulb should last 10-30 years at that level of use. Don't think of it as a light source. Think of it as an energy farm that feeds on your waste and turns it into BitCoins and lower atmospheric CO2.

  32. That's weak by Khyber · · Score: 1

    I've got 150 lux/w LEDs right now. Philips is NOWHERE near leading the industry. Cree is kicking ass with 220+ lux/w LEDs.

    This is news, how? You can find superior lighting in China and South Korea right now.

    --
    Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
  33. This isn't an L Prize series bulb by YesIAmAScript · · Score: 1

    EnduraLED/AmbientLED are the lesser line with lower efficiency and lower CRI (worse color rendition).

    The Endura/Ambient series predates the L Prize bulbs by a couple years.

    --
    http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
  34. Don't buy retail by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    For people complaining that they were burned by CFL's when they came out, all I can say is you got what you paid for. Going to cheapo depot and picking up a 3 pack for $10 should tell you right there just how good of a bulb you purchased. I have the same Panasonic EFT28E50 running for OVER 10 YEARS now, and that bulb went for $20 a pop back in 1999.

    If you want LED bulbs, step out of the Walmart, get the hell out of Home Depot, and don't even look at your closest Target or what have you. DO NOT BUY RETAIL. That crap is mass produced in China, sold in lots to big box stores, then the manufacturers dissolve and reform another company to mass produce some other crap. There's a reason why they can blatantly say "lasts 5-7 years" on the packaging yet fail to do so, because they know they won't be around a year from the day they make them.

    Go to an electrical distributor, buy real products, get your moneys worth. Any other way and you'd have no one but yourself to blame for your buying crap.

  35. 23 watts? PUSSIES! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Cowboy Neal uses 212 watt LED clusters to light up his house:

    http://www.rigidindustries.com/product-p/eseries50.htm

  36. How about brighter bulbs ? by Kohath · · Score: 1

    Since I have 100W fixtures, and since the new bulbs use 23W to get the same brightness as a 100W bulb, why can't I get a 50W bulb that's 60-100% brighter than my old 100W bulbs?

    Efficiency is good, but I want brighter lights.

    1. Re:How about brighter bulbs ? by dr2chase · · Score: 1

      The LEDs themselves can only get so hot, otherwise both their efficiency and lifetime both drop off (so does the lifetime of any electrolytic capacitors in their power supply). A 50W LED light needs more heat sink than will fit in/around/near your 100W fixture.

      The killer app is under-cabinet counter lighting; the LEDs can be spread out on their own individual heat sinks, which all together have a low profile.

  37. Better CRI by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Cheap fluorescent lamps have somewhat tiring unnatural light, probably due to low CRI.

  38. Philips LumiLEDs are the equal of Cree by YesIAmAScript · · Score: 1

    Where did you get the idea otherwise? And LED emitters are not called "bulbs".

    The Philips L Prize bulb (similar to this one) has been tested, heat isn't a problem. You can be quite certain of getting the rated life. They don't have a 100W version yet, maybe there is a heat problem as you say.

    Under $30 sounds nice.

    --
    http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
  39. Other Brands by locopuyo · · Score: 1

    There are companies other than Philips and GE that make light bulbs. I bought several LED bulbs on amazon that were under $25 and one even has a LIFETIME warranty. So far they all have worked great. I even have the 60 watt equivalent Phillips LED but I got it for under $25 as well.

  40. I don't think that will work well by bigtrike · · Score: 1

    You're not going to get very good light if your filament is at 68 degrees fahrenheit when powered on.

  41. Looked for the Nite Light bulb yesterday by gelfling · · Score: 1

    4 4w regular bulbs for $3 or 2 0.25w LED bulbs for $5. All they need to do is throw in the nite light fixture because that's what it cost.

  42. Spectrum by Skapare · · Score: 1

    But how close does it come to the spectral quality within the visual wavelength range of genuine incandescent lights?

    --
    now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
  43. Weight is a concern too by Beeftopia · · Score: 1

    A typical light bulb only weighs a few grams. The LED bulbs I've hefted are quite heavy in comparison. Hundreds of grams. So, will light fixtures be able to support them? I've got a somewhat precariously perched desk lamp. It has a weighted base. I'd like to try an LED in it but the weight differentials of the LED bulb and the current bulb got me to thinking about the impact of the LED bulb's mass on the system.

  44. Ya I have to think power quality by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 2

    Been using CFLs for a long time and life has not been an issue. I have some that have not been replaced, I installed them when I moved in 8 years ago and they've not needed replacement (once that don't get used as often, needless to say). In my room, I have had to replace them, but due to brightness, not failure. I've since replaced them with LEDs, since I like the colour spectrum of the LEDs better, and they warm up faster (LEDs are instant according to my eye, CFLs take a bit). My whole house is CFL or LED too, since I live in warm climate and incandescents are double whammy.

    So the people with all the failures all the time either have poor power (maybe shoddy grounds) or buy shit bulbs.

  45. You could, you know, check and not whine by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 4, Informative

    Philips does indeed say what their warranties are. I don't have that bulb, but I do have 3 AmbientLEDs. The warranty says "Philips warrants that this bulb will be free from defects in material and workmanship and will operate for a period of 6 years under normal usage..." and then goes on and on as such things do. They also state they expect it to last 15 years or more under normal usage and specify what that qualifies as (as in how many hours a day and so on).

    Seems like they are willing to back it up. Philips isn't some fly-by-night company either, they've been around for quite some time, reasonable bet they are around to deal with claims, if they need to.

    I'm willing to throw my money in on their bulbs. They look good, work good (they run in a regular dimmer no problem), are efficient, and so on. I'm fairly confident they'll replace them if they break, and I'm fairly confident they won't break so they are worth the money to me.

    1. Re:You could, you know, check and not whine by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Additionally in the UK the Sale of Goods Act makes that 15 year lifetime under normal use claim a promise the shop must keep. If the bulb lasts 7 years you would be entitled to a 50% refund from the shop (not Philips, the place of purchase).

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    2. Re:You could, you know, check and not whine by L4t3r4lu5 · · Score: 1

      By the manufacturers definition of "normal use".

      I can guarantee you that, while in the store looking at the competitors products, their definition will be great, but as soon as you get home you'll notice just how different normal use is from "normal use".

      --
      Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
  46. Shitty incoming power by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You shitty and unstable power going into your house.

    I have no problems with CFLs from the expensive ones all the way down to the cheap ass bulbs from ikea.

    You might want to talk to the audiophiles and get a power cleaner for your home.

    1. Re:Shitty incoming power by Neil+Boekend · · Score: 1

      A computer controlled power cleaner? Pah, in my day we used a washcloth and some soap! These kids today and their toys. Turning them all lazy!.

      --
      Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
  47. They dim great by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 1

    Not quite as good as an incandescent, but very well, down to 10% at least. I have 3 of the AmbientLEDs (the older model, got them a year or two ago when they came out) in my living room and I'm quite happy. Thy dim low enough for late night TV watching and all that, give plenty of light in full on mode, and it is just a regular old dimmer on the wall.

    That was why I bought them. Had incandescents in there because CFLs wouldn't dim for shit. Hated them not only because of the energy waste but more because the damn tings needed changing once a year and that involves a ladder. These LEDs ought to last a decade or two.

  48. What I want by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    is a replacement for one of these. Newer houses/apartments put 'em in the bathrooms with 4 of them on the vanity. That's at least 160 watts. I'd like to cut that at least in half.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
    1. Re:What I want by ShadowRangerRIT · · Score: 1

      So, something like this?

      --
      $_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
  49. There are better bulbs out by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It looks like a better design over their previous bulb, however, I don't like philips bulbs as much as the Life Science EcoSmart 40 watt equivalent bulbs from home depot for $17 that aren't hideously orange like these. Incandescent are too orange, if you ask me.

    These life Science bulbs have a flatter top but a lip over the edge. The flat thing seems to have a reflector that shines the lights around as opposed to being a spotlight. I prefer to get two of them instead of one $60 bulb.

    There seems to be a few others that are in my opinion better than the Philips. I think I found some that might be even better at Lowe's hardware but I have yet to give them a try.

  50. Dimmability by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I bought one of the Phillips L prize bulbs. It does not dim well with a pretty recent vintage Leviton dimmer. When going through different levels it moves in very noticable steps and it actually brightens up and then jumps down when you try to make the light dimmer. At the high end it blinks very noticably at 60 Hz and at the low end it just doesn't get very dark before it shuts off completely. I think if you want to dim this bulb you need to buy a new dimmer that is known to work with this bulb.

    On an on/off switch it is really beautiful. It turns on instantly and the light is really well balanced.

    As to your first point I have bought dimmable CFLs online that really do dim. They don't go all the way down to 10%, but they dim over a pretty large range without jumpyness. But for the two lights in the house that I dim, I just use halogen bulbs. A 53 watt halogen replaces a 75 watt incandescent, dims very nicely, the $2.46 price (in a 12 pack) isn't much more than the incandescent, and the light is very plesant.

  51. Efficiency confusion question? (no politics :) by thatseattleguy · · Score: 1

    Curious. A straight technical question I'm not quite getting:

    We've long been told incandescent bulbs are barely 2% efficient - that 98% of their output is "heat" (meaning any electromagnetic energy not in the visible spectrum) and only 2% is "light" (meaning EM in the visible range). Kewl, fine.

    So if a 100W-equivalent LED-based bulb consumes (for the sake of round numbers) 25 watts, it's four times as efficient as the equivalent incandescent, meaning 8% overall efficiency (4x2% = 8%), right? But I thought LEDs (the diodes themselves) were supposed to be 20-50% efficient, not 8%? I know there are supporting electronics and all, but why the huge discrepancy between the LEDs themselves and their instantiation in a consumer fixture?

    Perhaps someone with actual experience in the field can enlighten (ahem) me on this.

    1. Re:Efficiency confusion question? (no politics :) by thatseattleguy · · Score: 1

      Replying to my own posting. Reading later comments above, the phosphor-pumping step (necessary to produce pleasant-looking "white" light rather than monochromatic base-LED light) cuts into the efficiency greatly. As in, "white" LEDs are a mix of monochromatic LEDs and phosphors that re-emit their light in more broad-spectrum and more complex ways. At an efficiency cost, of course. Hadn't considered that - makes sense.

      I do have a few LEDs in my house and like them a lot. But then other than not being dimmable, I didn't mind CFLs much either - the "not fully bright immediately" thing was to me an advantage, not a disadvantage, especially before morning coffee.

  52. THIS IS FUCKING SLASH-SPAM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You've been able to get 26 watt 90 watt equivalent LEDs on amazon and elsewhere for ages. This is nothing but spam. Is it really worthy of a huge new slashdot article for dropping 3 watts and gaining a whole 10? FUCK YOU SLASHDOT. THIS IS BULLSHIT.

    1. Re:THIS IS FUCKING SLASH-SPAM by Neil+Boekend · · Score: 1

      No you haven't. There are brands that claim to be 90W equivalent bulbs but if you look at the lumen output it isn't equivalent to a 90W incandescent and/or those were CFL's.
      Asuming the bulbs you mean are leds: these Philips leds have 1700 lumen. 90% of that would be 1530. I'd be surprised if they emitted 1000 lumen.

      --
      Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
  53. Need to factor in depreciation costs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    What people aren't factoring is the depreciation of these light bulbs. If I buy a light bulb now I pay $60. Let's say it's $40 in a year. You have just lost $20 on your investment. If you haven't saved $20 in electricity in a year, you are better off waiting to buy the light bulb in a year.

    You save $11 over one year assuming you run the light bulb 4 hours, pay 10 cents a kill-a-watt, and save 77 watts per hour.
    But your depreciation cost would be $20, thus you would lose $9. You would be $9 richer if you waited to buy the light
    bulb one year from now.

    Government subsidies might be a good idea if society benefits from earlier adoption of LED light bulbs.

  54. I'll just use CFLs until LEDs come down in price by Ranger · · Score: 1

    And yes there are places you can take your burned out CFLs to dispose of the mercury in them safely. The CFLs are supposed to last 5-7 years, and I'm sure by that time (assuming civilization hasn't collapsed to Mad Max scenario) LEDs will have come down in price.

    --
    "You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
  55. It's a conspiracy, I tell you!!! by repetty · · Score: 1

    Light bulbs are no longer a free market item. Once the govmint got involved in banning certain kinds, the freedom kinda went POOF!

    Boo-hoo. Grow up, why-doncha?! Incandescent lamps are a joke... they're heat emitters that leak a little light.

    Sometimes governments are necessary, sometimes governments get things right. They did on this one.

    In a couple years, someone looking back in the Slashdot archives and reading your whining are gonna laugh at you (if they aren't already).

    1. Re:It's a conspiracy, I tell you!!! by Neil+Boekend · · Score: 1

      I don't think they'll be laughing. It'll be more sadness that people used to think that way.

      --
      Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
  56. Seriously??? by uvajed_ekil · · Score: 1

    Philips' 100W-equivalent bulb will be available some time in the fourth quarter. Pricing has yet to be announced, but it will likely be well over $30.

    Seriously? Well over $30? Okay, thanks, but no thanks. I'll stick to CFLs for most of my home lighting needs (with a few old hot bulbs where appropriate), for now at least. And to think, lots of folks still laugh at "expensive" CFL prices. I would love to transition to LEDs, but it has to make financial sense first. CFLs are just as energy efficient, and much cheaper.

    --
    This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
    1. Re:Seriously??? by LeadSongDog · · Score: 1

      I would love to transition to LEDs, but it has to make financial sense first. CFLs are just as energy efficient, and much cheaper.

      Ya gotta consider what it costs to physically change the bulb. First of all, you need to hire that Harvard MBA to hold it while the world revolves around him.

      --
      Oh, I'm sorry sir, I thought you were referring to me, Mr. Wensleydale.
  57. 23 watts ? for LED ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Wait a second, 23 watts ??? I already use an LED bulb I bought online which uses 3 watts and gives a maximum output of 760 lumens (100 watts of light), and this cost me 8 quid... Phillips will have to do better than that in my book...

    1. Re:23 watts ? for LED ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And you believe the claims of some chinese "manufacturer" no one ever heard before because ...?

      Hint:
      The most efficient white LED emitters from Cree and Luxeon are barely > 100lm/W. And that's without converter losses. Yet your magical $8 lamp claims to be >250 ...
      A 100W incandescent is 1700 lm, not 760.
      So even if you believe the bullshit lumens on the box, it's not even a 60W equivalent.
      Now assuming it's made with factory reject LEDs (good bet at this price) it's probably about 150lm, or about equivalent to a 15W incandescent.

  58. Cree released light replacements a while ago by YesIAmAScript · · Score: 1

    No, they can't do 208 lumens per watt from 120V AC.

    http://creelighting.com/products/downlights/6inchdownlights/CR6.aspx

    Cree's light replacements have excellent CRI and color temperature, and very long life. They are dynamite replacements for incandescent downlights (architectural cans). But they aren't as efficient as Philips' bulbs (60 lumens per Watt versus 94).

    The Philips LumiLEDs emitters (aka Luxeon) are as good as Cree LEDs.

    I own a couple excellent flashlights that use Cree LEDs. They aren't actually as efficient a the Philips L Prize bulb, but they do throw a ton of light and have very good battery life considering how much light they throw.

    Also, a car headlamp isn't as bright as you think, it is partially so bright because it throws all the light in one direction. My Fenix TK35 uses a Cree LED and does appear to be as bright as a car headlamp. But it's only 820 lumens, a Philips L Prize bulb is 940. A car headlamp (or my TK35) appears to be so bright because it throws all the light in one direction. A normal house light bulb has to throw omnidirectionally, meaning it illluminates a much larger area. A car headlamp would cover less than one octant.

    --
    http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
  59. Warrantee by sociocapitalist · · Score: 1

    Phillips has these great 5 and 10 year warranties on their bulbs but they seem to me to last about the same as normal bulbs.

    Anyone else have similar experience or do I have a problem with my wiring...?

    --
    blindly antisocialist = antisocial
    1. Re:Warrantee by LeadSongDog · · Score: 1

      What's the point of a warrantee when you can't establish the date of purchase? Unless you buy the whole housefull at once, it's too much paperwork burden to be worth it. I know this is /., but how many real people log their CFL purchases and installations?

      --
      Oh, I'm sorry sir, I thought you were referring to me, Mr. Wensleydale.
    2. Re:Warrantee by sociocapitalist · · Score: 1

      Just looking to see if other people notice that these things burn out just as fast as normal bulbs or not.

      For a lot of people it actually might be worth tracking the dates of purchase as these things cost much more than 'standard' bulbs do / did.

      --
      blindly antisocialist = antisocial
  60. Theft? by NuclearKangaroo · · Score: 1

    One potential issue with LED bulbs that I don't hear people talking about... theft. It's pretty unlikely anyone's going to steal a $1 incandescent bulb, but when these things get over $50 in price, you're left with the problem of "securing" that investment.

    Spending $50 or $60 to save money over time doesn't make much sense if the bulb keeps getting stolen.

  61. don't point them down by Artemis3 · · Score: 2

    The cheaper CFLs have electronics that can't handle the heat, when ppl use them the usual way with the screw (and electronics) up and the glass part pointing down, it fries them (heat goes up).

    Want to have them last longer?, make sure they are the other way, with the screw down and the glass pointing up. When they are horizontal, the longevity is average. Incandescents don't care and can point down just fine.

    Incidentally i have a couple of 10w Phillips LEDs, flood lamp style. They use 4pcs of 2.5w led each. Some people has had them burn out quickly when used in a typical enclosed flood lamp fashion, perhaps pointing down from above. I noticed they also have electronics that heat like crazy; thankfully mines are pointing up (their light is too strong for my room, opting for bouncing instead) and they are uncovered, with plenty of ventilation.

    Even with bouncing, their combined strength is similar to a 100w incandescent.

    I believe these leds are spending a lot in ac/dc transform. Perhaps if houses had some sort of dc standard, it would make implementation and longevity easier (a single ventilated transformer elsewhere instead of lots of small inefficient ones attached).

    Btw with leds if the transformer doesn't fry, they also become dimmer with time. They just last much more than fluorescents, and no mercury or fragile glass is needed.

    --
    Artix
    Your Linux, your init.
  62. LWD Light is pretty harsh. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I prefer the warm light of an incandescent bulb. I bought a 100W (23W) LED Light for under my carport. The white light is too harsh on the eyes.
    Even more harsh than fluorescent bulbs! I used to have a self contained sodium bulb there.. not yellow, not orange.. somewhere between white and amber, mote white. I can't event find them anymore. It was pretty cool since you didn't need special lighting, it was all self contained, ballast and all.

    As far as internal lighting. There's nothing like incandescent.
     

    1. Re:LWD Light is pretty harsh. by LeadSongDog · · Score: 1

      The white light is too harsh on the eyes.

      I call bullshit. The AC just hasn't bothered to shop for the right phosphor mix to please his eye. The better brands have several options. IIRC, Phillips marks a blackbody-equivalent colour temperature on the packages of their CFLs. Others use terms like "warm white", "cool white", etc to keep you guessing.

      --
      Oh, I'm sorry sir, I thought you were referring to me, Mr. Wensleydale.
    2. Re:LWD Light is pretty harsh. by LeadSongDog · · Score: 1

      Well, there goes any /. cred I had as a mindreader. Turns out LWD is a tyop of LED. But the point still holds. The "white" colour is a purely arbitrary mix of three monochromatic LED luminances, so just pick the one that mixes the way you like. Market forces will drive the availability of a few options.

      Eventually someone will figure a way to make them colour programmable at next to no cost.

      So: hardhacks anyone? Can we modulate these suckers for data transmission?

      --
      Oh, I'm sorry sir, I thought you were referring to me, Mr. Wensleydale.
  63. as if you'd need a law so liberals can do that by John.Banister · · Score: 1

    It's to force HARD WORKING AMERICANS to pay too much for light bulbs, and to make us needlessly fill our houses with failure prone "technology" designed by TREE HUGGERS that has a special lump full of electronics we don't understand, so that we won't be able to tell when the GOVERNMENT sneaks in and swaps 'em out for the kind that SPY ON YOU.

  64. Bloomberg last night said LED prices will drop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Was watching some Asia/Europe news on Bloomberg last night, and they mentioned that prices like this will go down much more over the next few years.

    Standard LED uses 1/20th the power of standard bulbs, while CFL uses 1/8th the power. So, even if it is dimmable and "warm bright" light, that's not much of an energy savings.

  65. My room is already lit by LED light: by V.+P.+Winterbuttocks · · Score: 1

    The cool blue glow from the computer screen and keyboard backlights. (Keyboard dims on inactivity - such as when I have a movie full-screen. It'd be nice if they'd open the driver to that so that the movie player could control the keyboard backlight, but I can't complain too much.)

    Yeah, there are a few CFLs hanging from the ceiling in the middle of the room, but I rarely turn them on. I'm not sure if one of them works (sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't). I try to just avoid turning them on because short on-off cycles are hell on CFL bulbs.

    --
    I'm the real Vorokrytin P. Winterbuttocks.
  66. Aah.. Philips again.. by doccus · · Score: 1

    I grew up in a Dutch household, where I learned that Dutch pride in Philips is so strong, it borders on worship ;-).. If you have a satisfied Dutch customer, you have a customer for life.. in other words, the dutch are very loyal, and would never make a claim that could hurt the company that employs them..Now.. translate that into a company comprised entirely of Dutchmen (and er.. women ;-).. If they say something's gonna work, you can BET on it.. I have absolutely no doubt that this new lightbulb will last as long as, and be worth exactly what they're claiming... I don't actually *need* a light bulb now, though... ;-)

  67. solution by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I will carry around one LED bulb from room to room, screwing it in each time i enter. that way, i only have to buy one bulb. dont need light in a room im not in, so why have a bulb there?

  68. Same problem has stiffled wind power in the US by Nicolas+MONNET · · Score: 1

    According to someone I know who works in windmill financing, the whimsical nature of wind subsidies in the US has been almost as bad for the industry as if there had been none. Wind projects, as well as manufacturing and deployment infrastructure (barges, trucks, cranes ...) are decades long investments. Congress let subsidies expire almost every other year; that's made it nearly impossible for financiers and actuaries to project the profitability of farms.

  69. Lobbying is much cheaper than $100million by Nicolas+MONNET · · Score: 1

    What makes lobbying so damaging is that there is a large multiplier effect. A $1 million lobbying effort would easily drive a $100 million profit.

  70. Remember pinhole cameras... by SockPuppetOfTheWeek · · Score: 1

    Approximate a point source by masking the light source with a sheet of paperboard with a pinhole poked through.

  71. Govmt Test Review and Lab Documents Online by lighthouse10 · · Score: 1

    As you say, slightly worse specs than the L-Prize bulb, itself with quality issues, and issues over how it won the US Govmt prize... http://dunday.com/2012/03/lots-of-public-money-for-doubtful.html The poor quality of the bulb on testing and how competition rules were skirted - as referenced with competition rules, patents, lobby finance records, the prize committee's own lab test review document and designated lab test reports

  72. RE Fixed 2700K COPY of regular incandescent bulb.. by lighthouse10 · · Score: 1
    BTW Funny how the expensive LED technology is awarded, for just copying simple incandescent fixed 2700K color temperature - rather than to be used for its OWN inherent technology advantages, in flexible and adjustable light color temperature etc.

    Never use (or be allowed to use) anything simple like a regular bulb, when a complex expensive alternative will do! ;-)