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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."
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?
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?
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.
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!
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
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!
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.
Changa hates change.
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