A Tale of Two Tests: Why Energy Star LED Light Bulbs Are a Rare Breed

cylonlover writes "Just over a week ago Gizmag reported that Philips' 22 W LED light bulb, designed as a like-for-like replacement of a 100-W incandescent light bulb, was the first LED bulb of its type to receive the stamp of approval from Energy Star. But looking at the Energy Star requirements reported by Philips in its press release, it seemed a little strange that Philips' product is the only one to have been certified – given that products long on the market appear, at face value, to meet those requirements. Since then, Gizmag has spoken to LED light bulb makers Switch Lighting and other industry players to find out why they're apparently playing catch-up."

Comments

Still waiting

[Anonymous Coward]

Other manufacturers are still waiting to certify because they haven't had enough time to build their planned obsolescence into their LED bulbs yet

Re:Still waiting

[Anonymous Coward]

To get the Energy Star certification, the bulbs need to have a projected lifetime of 25000 on-hours (where lifetime means the bulb can emit no less than 70% of its rated light output during that time). If there's going to be planned obsolescence, it's going to be from better bulbs replacing them even though they're still working.

Re:Still waiting

[Grizzley9]

To get the Energy Star certification, the bulbs need to have a projected lifetime of 25000 on-hours (where lifetime means the bulb can emit no less than 70% of its rated light output during that time). If there's going to be planned obsolescence, it's going to be from better bulbs replacing them even though they're still working.

As it is with CFL's it will likely be true with LED's. Sure the bulb will last that long or meet those requirements. The cheap electronics controlling it though is another story and is the reason many of my CFL's from various brands have failed. YMMV.

Re:Still waiting

[Hamsterdan]

Agree. Besides, using incandescents at 99c per 2-pack is not that expensive. I've replaced only 2-3 incandescents in the last 10 years, but about 10 CFLs.

Re:Still waiting

[Ramze]

Makes me wonder why they don't have a test for how many on/off cycles one can handle. Incandescent bulbs can go for nearly 100 years if their power source isn't disrupted or turned off. It's always the power spikes that blow a bulb -- usually when you turn one on.

Re:Still waiting

[Maxo-Texas]

I have one "40 watt" (which is really 20 watt imho) which has been going for 75000 hours on my porch (so far). 24 hours a day for 9 years except during hurricane Ike. I paid $35 for it back in 2003. It was pitiful for home use. But it's an awesome porch light. Doesn't attract bugs and provides enough light to see my keys.

Re:Still waiting

[Maxo-Texas]

They are actually quite expensive.

Swapping 10 fixtures to LED can save you $20 per month in direct costs. Which means you pay for more than one bulb per month with the savings. On top of that you are not pumping all that heat into your house and then paying to cool it back down.

My electric bill dropped significantly from going to LED. In terms of alternative energy- they are a hell of a better deal than solar panels or even extra insulation.

I've lost some CFL's but so far I haven't lost any LED's and I turn them on and off a lot.

Re:Still waiting

[mattack2]

I admit this is somewhat FAQ-ish, but do LED "bulbs" work well in bathrooms too? The humidity is another concern, plus of course bathroom lights are ones turned on and off more often than many other lights. (I have used CFLs in bathroom lights, thought that's not recommended.. some have gone bad, but it seems like the current batch I have has worked better there.)

Though the city my new house is in gives a rebate for up to 6 LED bulbs, so I'll get 6 at some point.

Re:Still waiting

[Maxo-Texas]

At least a couple years so far on three in 2 can lamps and an overhead fixture.
About 7 hours a day usage. Humidity only up for 30 minutes a day tho.

We were replacing incandescent bulbs more than once a year in there.

At my house, I have two cfl's and two incandescents.

Re:Still waiting

[Maxo-Texas]

Phone call distracted me. I chose the incandescents because they were instant on.

I use the CFL's because they are cheaper than having 4 1000 watt bulbs in the fixture.
The mixture seems to work.

I can't remember if i have an incandescent or an LED over the shower itself. It's probably an LED since it's been there at least 3 years. That fixture is sealed against humidity but has vents in the attic I think.

Re:Still waiting

[mattack2]

Do you really mean 1000 watt bulbs? Or was that a typo? I have a 300 watt halogen torchiere lamp, though comparatively I don't use it much, even though it's the only light in one room. (Will probably replace it.. it'd be great if you could get a LED that would replace the little cylinder-type halogen bulbs.. maybe you can, I haven't looked.)

BTW, 7 hours usage.. may want to look at your diet.. just kidding.

Re:Still waiting

[ChrisMaple]

Roughly, the number of hours an incandescent lamp will run is inversely proportional to the 13th power of the voltage applied to it. Cycling has very little effect, and it's been that way for over a half century. Turnon appears to kill many a weakened lamp because an already damaged filament collapses onto a shorter portion of itself when turned off, then goes out in a blaze at turnon as a much higher specific power evaporates the filament. Without the off-on cycle, the bulb would have failed in a few hours anyway. It's the gradual evaporation of the filament, not the accumulation of thermal shock cracks, that kills the lamp. For an incandescent lamp to last 100 years, it would have to be run at about 63% of its rated voltage, which means a very dim, red, almost useless light.

By way of contrast, CFLs have inadequately specified power supplies that undergo overstress at each turnon. Since cost pressures are extreme, more durable components are not specified, so the lamps fail after a moderate number of cycles.

The cost/quality tradeoffs for incandescents are not so dramatic and their prices are so low in the first place, that it's rarely an issue.

Re:Still waiting

[ChrisMaple]

I've read no data, but if the manufacturer is doing a good job the LEDs and associated electronics should be well sealed from the atmosphere. Note that solar LED garden lights are not sealed and last for several years (and the failure point is usually battery, battery contact points, or cadmium sulphide light sensor.)

Re:Still waiting

[Maxo-Texas]

lol.

No, 100 watt bulbs. 1000 would be pretty intense.

My friend leaves her bathroom lights on so that part of the house won't be dark.
It was giving her a large electric bill.

My bathroom light usage is probably 2 hours a day. I have a 4 100 watt bulb fixture over the sink and a 60 watt fixture over the shower (but I have a 40 watt bulb in it). I probably turn the bathroom lights on and off a half dozen times a day.

In my computer room I have a 60w LED that's on 12 hours+ per day and then a couple extra floor lamps which each hold five bulbs. I have random led bulbs in them. (I bought a lot of different types til I hit on the G7's).

Re:Still waiting

[way2trivial]

So, it would look like this?

http://www.centennialbulb.org/photos.htm

running at 4 of 60 watts

Re:Still waiting

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing the bathroom does not have natural light and/or uses a dark color scheme.

Re:Still waiting

[lsatenstein]

To get the Energy Star certification, the bulbs need to have a projected lifetime of 25000 on-hours (where lifetime means the bulb can emit no less than 70% of its rated light output during that time). If there's going to be planned obsolescence, it's going to be from better bulbs replacing them even though they're still working.

As it is with CFL's it will likely be true with LED's. Sure the bulb will last that long or meet those requirements. The cheap electronics controlling it though is another story and is the reason many of my CFL's from various brands have failed. YMMV.

I will stay with incandescents for the following reasons. My situation is different from yours.
a) Leds are focused. If you put them in a lamp, the projection is towards the ceiling.
b) CFLs have short lives. Only if you leave them on 24/7, will you get the lifespan they advertise.
c) CFLs lightt intensity drops with ambient temperature. They wont start if much below -10C or -10 F.
d) In summer darkness arrives after 9pm, and daybreak at 4am. We hardly use lights in summer.
e) In winter darkness arrives at 4pm, and daybreak at 7:10am. We use lights.
f) My home is electrically heated. Any heat from the bulb is displacing the heat produced from the electric baseboard.

So, for northern Climates where homes are electrically heated, CFLS and LEDs are worse than regular incandescents.
Disposal of incandescents is less poluting than the other two.

Certifications

[Anonymous Coward]

All certifications, at some level, are scams.

Every single one.

Re:Certifications

[firex726]

Yea, fuck those ROHS, UL, and FCC certifications!

Re:Certifications

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, RoHS is most certainly a scam. The net effect on the environment has been horrible. Rather than the electronics manufacturers engineering in planned obsolecense, the EU did with RoHS.The environmental impact is literally an unmitigated disaster in parts of China. The cost of aerospace grade components has increased substantially (yes, we have an RoHS exemption for aerospace applications; tin whiskers are a stupid cause of death) and we've got a different set of more toxic metals accumulating in the benthic muck and getting "recycled" with 3rd world environmental standards. What a fucking win for the environment.

Re:Certifications

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, fuck those ROHS, UL, and FCC certifications!

Yes, indeed, please fuck ROHS. It is a wrongheaded idea that has caused no end of problems. Why do you think really critical devices are exempt?

Re:Certifications

[Defenestrar]

Yeah - and all those stupid tests an EMT has to pass.

Re:Certifications

[Rude Turnip]

There was a proposed lightbulb a few years ago, using some sort of technology that would have generated a signal that would wipe out every Wifi signal for a block.

Re:Certifications

[MickyTheIdiot]

That's licensing... which is a different thing. Professional licensing is professionals looking at another professional and making sure they are competent, and it's a lot different than some organization slapping down a test.

At some point most of these certs that get a stamp put on a package require money to be exchanged for nothing. Some are more useful than others (certainly UL has some worth), but there is a lot of money changing hands for very little with most of these.

Re:Certifications

[0100010001010011]

I always wished I could be an ISO9000 certifier. Guy came in for 2 days. Reviewed a bunch of documents. Got a $200 meal on us and some very expensive (and long) business lunches.

Re:Certifications

[MightyYar]

Rather than the electronics manufacturers engineering in planned obsolecense

There is no reason to "engineer in" obsolecense. Mobile tech is moving so quickly that things become obsolete all by themselves. And I'd wager that the average smartphone meets it's maker in a drop or splash, not from a bad solder connection.

Re:Certifications

[Anonymous Coward]

You didn't have to buy meals for him...

Re:Certifications

[mcvos]

But it might help to get the certification.

Re:Certifications

[Anonymous Coward]

No true certification fallacy?

Re:Certifications

[chill]

Honestly, I'd pay extra for that. Do you have a link?

Re:Certifications

[Muad'Dave]

Some current CFL's do it just fine on the amateur radio bands. Admittedly it seems that it's gotten better lately, but I remember some early ones that were so noisy RF-wise I could just about hear them in my fillings.

Re:Certifications

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not that poster, but this might help you. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfur_lamp

Better efficiency than a CFL and better color rendition, but primarily for higher wattage applications (street lights). LEDs are still better in lower wattage applications and still top the efficiency charts.

Re:Certifications

[Belial6]

The early CFLs also used to emit a huge amount of IR noise. I found out about it when I was alone in my house and my TV changed channels on it's own. ~10 minutes later it changed channels again, and shortly after it turned off on it's own. It's a bit disturbing when you are in a house by yourself and the TV starts changing channels on it's own.

Re:Certifications

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhh.... I do a lot of design work which has to conform to UL standards.

UL has a lot of stuff that says "this electrical insulation must meet this temperature and not fail." Not having UL certifications is just BEGGING for companies to sell electric cables which may cause house fires.

Re:Certifications

[Khyber]

LEDs are still better in higher wattage applications.

Seriously, have you not seen Cree's XP-G2 or MK-R diodes? 180+ and 200+ lumens per watt, respectively, at far better CCT and CRI than sulfur plasma?

Re:Certifications

[Khyber]

*ANY* lamp will emit IR. That's a natural side-effect of thermodynamics.

Whether or not the frequency pulses will trigger your TV or not is a different story.

Re:Certifications

[Anonymous Coward]

So am I to assume you don't wear a DOT or Schnell approved helmet when you ride a motorcycle? Nor submit your vehicle(s) to the regular inspections required by law in most places? Thus, no independent verification of working brakes, signals, safety features like seat belts, safety glass windshields and zero holes in the bodywork that would allow carbon monoxide into the cabin space?

Likewise, do you prefer to go to Discount "Dr" Dan the barber-surgeon for your health care needs rather than a member in good standing of your local college of physicians and surgeons? After all, a medical degree and regular peer review of your patient outcomes to ensure a high standard of care are just another form of certification and therefore, in your opinion, scams.

In my view, the certifications that are scams are the ones that allow someone to claim to be certified even when they have failed to meet the standards associated with that test, provided they pay the necessary fees. The other problem with some certifications is that they are wrongly touted or believed by others as meaning more than they actually do. Example: The CompTIA A+ computer certification (full disclosure, I have it) does not mean you are a qualified computer technician, though many people assume it does. It only means that the holder, at time of certificate issue, had a certain minimal set of computer knowledge which CompTIA member companies agree is the foundation of a computer technicians training. Similarly, a degree in engineering does not mean one os ready to be an engineer. (a fact which engineering associations themselves stress with their requirement of lengthy on-the-job training and internship before your allowed to wear the Iron Ring) A degree in engineering only means you have the necessary knowledge "tools" to become an engineer.

TL;DR version: certification of a persons skills are the equivalent of a mechanics tools. Certification of products or services does not mean the thing in question is the best available, nor that it is suited for your application. It only means that it has met certain minimal standards, a fact which many forget.

Re:Certifications

[Anonymous Coward]

You might have that backward, in the sense that sulfur lamps are used only at very high wattage levels, typically 5+ kW. They can have CRI of 80+ and up to 150 lm/W now (so about on par with the lm/W according to the spec sheets for XP-G2 and MK-R, and about the same CRI for the "typical CRI" listed in the spec sheets, but not as high as the guaranteed CRI 90 versions). The main difference at those higher powers though is that the sulfur lamps typically have very long service lifetimes (100,000+ hr of use) and the bulbs are cheap to replace compared to several kW of LEDs.

Re:Certifications

[Grizzley9]

There was a proposed lightbulb a few years ago, using some sort of technology that would have generated a signal that would wipe out every Wifi signal for a block.

I think they made a TV show about it. http://www.hulu.com/revolution

Re:Certifications

[HornWumpus]

Your argument would have been a lot better if you didn't start with DOT helmets. An egg shell filled with whipped cream can get a DOT cert.

Find one race league that will let you on the track with a DOT helmet.

Re:Certifications

[Anonymous Coward]

Although in the case of CFLs, it isn't just thermodynamics, but that there are some IR lines in the spectrum from transitions, including one near 940 nm typical in remotes. In some older bulbs, I remember seeing that IR line being almost the fourth brightest line in the spectrum, bright enough it messed with some spectroscopy equipment I worked with. But switching out the bulbs for a different brand or going to incandescent usually fixed the problem, and in latter bulbs the IR lines were less common except when the lights were first turned on for a minute or two.

Re:Certifications

[catchblue22]

Yea, fuck those ROHS, UL, and FCC certifications!

Yes, indeed, please fuck ROHS. It is a wrongheaded idea that has caused no end of problems. Why do you think really critical devices are exempt?

What about ROUS's?

Re:Certifications

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, that depends on what IR band you are talking about, and what temperature the lamp actually is. For a lamp at room temperature about the size of a light bulb, you would only get maybe 1 photon in the 800-1000 nm range per second from black body radiation. At around 100 C, you might get a couple million photons, which for many people is still effectively close enough to zero to not matter. And for something like a CFL, despite the higher temperature of the plasma in the tube, it is so optically thin, its IR emissions might not matter much variety of atomic and molecular transitions that happen in that region for the plasma and phosphors.

Re:Certifications

[Anonymous Coward]

(yes, we have an RoHS exemption for aerospace applications; tin whiskers are a stupid cause of death)

Just hit your aerospace application with a hammer, or kick it and it will work again.

Re:Certifications

[ChrisMaple]

Vehicle inspections for common passenger vehicles are a waste of time and ineffective. They're guaranteed employment for garage mechanics and a drain on the economy. First off, they're annual. Is it OK to go a year with defective brakes, bald tires, broken turn signals? The driver notices these things first (or should check them more often) and either wisely fixes them or (in the common case) suffers an inconvenient breakdown. Second, the state's judgement of what is or is not an actual safety hazard is poor.

Re:Certifications

[thegarbz]

This is a side effect of a very poor way your TV has implemented it's remote. Remotes that follow the NEC based protocol will use a 38kHz carrier and mark-space encoding. They start with a very specifically timed pulse and gap, followed by a datastream. That data has its own check by sending the inverse of the data and checking at the other end that the data made sense. It is impossible that it will get triggered by light source. The other popular protocol RC5 works in a similar way using bi-phase encoding and a 36kHz carrier. It doesn't have a checksum but the 36kHz carrier combined with the requirement for precise timing to get the bi-phase encoding right makes it highly improbably that a code will be triggered randomly.

Your TV probably implements one of these standards very poorly by either ignoring checksums where they exist, or by ignoring the timing coming from the remote and simply counting pulses. I've seen both of these "mistakes" done because some coder didn't want to put effort into decoding properly, and then it is susceptible to interference.

In any case not the fault of the lightbulb.

Re:Certifications

[haruchai]

Hey, that's a good show.

tl;dr: 9 month test required + uniform radial flux

[girlinatrainingbra]

TL; DR: the testing requirements for Energy Star for LED light bulbs require running them for 9 straight months, and one company was out of the gate first and this is the first and only one certified as energy star for its 100-W-equivalent LED light bulb. Other point: light distribution must be uniform radially for " 170 degrees of radial [sic] flux": sounds like just a smidge under a half-sphere of radiant flux which is probably what was really meant. I can't find any definition of or any other usage of the term "radial flux".
.
I use "half-sphere" to mean ($2 \times \pi $) steradians, and you can pretty much visual what I mean by a half-sphere. So I guess an "A-bulb" has to radiate light almost uniformly over 8/9-ths of that solid angle.
.
"Radiant Flux" is the term used to describe the radiant power : the measure of the total power of electromagnetic radiation (including infrared, ultraviolet, and visible light). The power may be the total emitted from a source, or the total landing on a particular surface. So neither "radial flux" nor "radiant flux" makes sense in that article. Wrong units either way. Spatial distribution of radiated light would be measured in steradians.

Avoid CFL mistakes

[muhula]

I'm glad to see a high bar set for the certification of LED bulbs. CFL lights rarely hit their expected life span, among other problems

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using the same ones for 11 years, one takes longer to start these days, but none have died. Perhaps they're die when a house has a bad power source?

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[njnnja]

among other problems

When one of the CFL's broke in my kids room, I followed the EPA rules to clean it up. What a pain.

So I bought a bunch of no-name LED bulbs on Amazon and although the lighting is a little harsh (as many others have noted), it's a good light to read by (1000+ luments/75 W equivalent) and a lampshade helps (a lot).

Now I am just waiting for someone to sell a reasonably powerful G16.5 base led (like 300+ lumens/25-40 W equivalent) so that I can replace the remaining incandescents left in the house (except for the oven light!).

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[RivenAleem]

We have a pair of circular CFLs that were in the living room of one house for atleast 10 years, and have been working in the kitchen of our other house (we moved) for the last 16.

One of them does take quite a bit sometime to blink on, but I'm told that you can replace the starter in them easily, and that the remainder of the bulb is essentially fine.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Kingkaid]

Most people also use CFLs in a way that is inappropriate for them and against their original designs. I have seen a CFL spotlight for the outdoors - this is obviously a bad idea. CFL lights should not be used for short bursts and also require some time to fully "warm-up". Turning them off quickly kills their lifespan too. And they sell these CFLs in Canada... where winter is cold. And CFLs do not like the cold. *sigh*

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Phreakiture]

Yep, this problem was alluded to in the article in explaining why this certification was so stringent.

My experience with them is very mixed. Even within brand tier it's been kind of mixed. My best experience for lifespan was from Sylvania, but second-worst was GE. Second-best was Commercial Electric (which I think is now known as nVision) and worst was Lights of America. The quality of CFLs has been very uneven and difficult to predict.

The worst experience was from when we moved into our current home ten years ago and promptly deployed CFLs en masse throughout the house. Of the Lights of America CFLs we bought at the time (about a dozen of them), two of them lived past the first month. Those two are still in service. Of the other ten, we took them back on warranty, and replaced the first few with like, but when they went out on us as well, we started getting refunds and buying another brand.

The best experience, was for two Sylvania CFLs purchased in 1994 when they cost around $20. One died last year when the fixture it was in fell over and broke the envelope. The other one had met a similar fate some years before. I felt that they didn't owe me anything.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Anonymous Coward]

The leading cause of death for CFLs is heat. CFLs last their rated lifetime (and often much longer) when they're used in well-ventilated fixtures. They die quickly when they're mounted upside down in fixtures that trap the heat around the base of the bulb.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[ancientt]

Anecdotal evidence is just that. I've used them all through my house and bought different qualities. I find that in general they either stop working in the first two months or keep working through several years. My power supply is very good.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Anonymous Coward]

Most people also use CFLs in a way that is inappropriate for them and against their original designs.

That's because we have been sold a bill of goods that states that CFLs are better than incandescents, so we should switch to CFLs.

I have seen a CFL spotlight for the outdoors - this is obviously a bad idea.

If it were obvious, no one would make or buy such a product. Consumers don't know anything about light bulbs of any type.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[muhula]

Exactly -- I'm looking for a consistent quality ACROSS brands. Certification should mean that el cheapo brand performs well, and that I don't need to do my own test to see which brands work better or to pay more for a more expensive brand because it might work better

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[X0563511]

Just like hard drives!

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Anonymous Coward]

I have used CFLs almost exclusively in my house for the past 6 or 7 years. I've purchased a number of the bulbs (from various brands), and I've had probably 3 or 4 that have died on my in that time. All of them were after 3-5 years of use. Even with that failure rate though, they are still way more efficient and cost effective than replacing incandescents every years or so. I have started switching over to LEDs in some instances though. I really like the instant-illumination they provide. The thing that bothers me the most about the CFLs is the varying times it takes for them all to warm up to their full brightness when first turned on.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Anonymous Coward]

When one of the CFL's broke in my kids room, I followed the EPA rules to clean it up. What a pain.

The EPA page basically says, "Be very careful and take these steps to safely clean up a broken CFL. If you can't follow this procedure, well, it's really no big deal."

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[MightyYar]

Lucky bastard. There are some in my house that are that old, but some only last 6 months. Outdoors, lifetimes are embarrassing. There is a GE bulb that I am having success with outdoors, probably because the bulb has a plastic cover over the coiled CFL bulb. The problem is that when I buy them at Target, they aren't built in the same place and don't say that they are outdoor rated. Buy the "same" bulb at Walgreens and it is outdoor rated and manufactured in a different place.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using the same ones for 11 years, one takes longer to start these days, but none have died. Perhaps they're die when a house has a bad power source?

Yes, you need a pretty clean power supply to get maximum life out of them. And going along with that, the fixture it's placed in needs to not be a complete piece of shit. Also, they have a fairly narrow optimal temperature range compared to an incandescent bulb- running them in very cold environments (such as the one above my porch where the temp drops into the -20(F) range for weeks during the winter) will drastically reduce the lifespan.

I'm all in favor of low-energy consumption, but when you look at the cost of re-wiring houses, rebuilding electric grids, replacing fixtures, installing heating elements for cold-weather areas, etc. the actual energy costs to totally abandon the old-style bulbs far exceed the gains from the LED and CFC's. And that doesn't even start to account for things like asbestos removal and disposal, lead cleanup from old paint and pipes, and other environmental costs associated with replacing wiring and sockets in older buildings.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[drinkypoo]

I'm glad to see energy star mean something. Most of the time it means fuck-all. On an appliance or your computer or even your monitor it only means that the device has automatic power saving features.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[jones_supa]

One of them does take quite a bit sometime to blink on, but I'm told that you can replace the starter in them easily, and that the remainder of the bulb is essentially fine.

Yes. It's a small capsule which you turn to release it, and replace with a similar type.

The all-in-one market CFLs sadly don't have this option...

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[jones_supa]

This is true.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[dr2chase]

It has an enormous lot to do with the quality of the power supply components and how hot the bulb gets (this is also true of LEDs). Comment on TFA mentions this -- electrolytic capacitors have a lifetime that is very sensitive to heat, and can be quite short.

The main flaw with these energy star standards is that they too heavily weight towards backwards compatibility -- if, say, someone came up with a new way of packaging LEDs into new construction, where the lights and the power supplies were decoupled (one power supply, many little lights), the energy star standard would be simply unable to evaluate it -- it's not a "100W replacement", it doesn't fit into a standard fixture, etc. And there's good technical reasons to do it that way -- spreading out the lights simplifies the cooling, getting the power supply away from the lights helps with keeping those components cool, etc.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[jones_supa]

I find that in general they either stop working in the first two months or keep working through several years.

That's the bathtub curve... it sounds like there is some Quality Assurance problems by the manufacturer(s).

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Anonymous Coward]

CFLs were sold to the public as straight replacements for incandescents... which work just fine in those (huge numbers of already installed) "upside-down" fixtures.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. It's just a normal cleaning procedure broken into all the small steps.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[OriginHacker]

The leading cause of death for CFLs is heat. CFLs last their rated lifetime (and often much longer) when they're used in well-ventilated fixtures. They die quickly when they're mounted upside down in fixtures that trap the heat around the base of the bulb.

This is so true. CFLs in my desk lamps that point downward tend to show yellowing near the base where the heat collects. CFLs in lamps that point upwards tend to have a much longer life and not so much of a pronounced yellowing at the white base. Heat does seem to be a big issue with these bulbs.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Anonymous Coward]

So? If you find a make that will guarantee a certain lifetime regardless of the way the bulb is used, and it breaks due to trapped heat, then return it and get a replacement or a refund. If you can't get a refund, perhaps it's time to stop being a priss and to start learning about the technology you're using. Besides, fixtures which trap heat are a bad design, particularly when used with incandescent bulbs which produce a lot of heat. The wire insulation isn't too fond of long exposure to high temperatures either. Hello fire hazard.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Anonymous Coward]

Consumer CFLs are extremely voltage sensitive, particularly to over-voltage. I have an outlet that regularly spikes to 131v (house was electrified in the 30s) and cooked 2 CFLs within a month before I stuck a cheap-o UPS on it.

I have not seen issues in high-hat type lighting fixtures as most CFLs do not put off much heat. One thing I wish manufacturers would put on the label is what a blown CFLs smells and looks like. The first time I lost one I thought Very Bad Things(TM) were going to happen because it smells like burning chemicals and the base has a blackens a bit. This is from the internal fuse going in the ballast and is perfectly normal. I just wish they put that on the package because it seems like kind of an important thing to note since most people have never seen a CFL go so they have no idea that this is normal.

LEDs are the future anyway; CFLs are just a transitional technology. The PF on consumer CFLs are abysmal... roughly 0.5 on most I have tested. So that 13W CFL is actually pulling 26W to get there.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[h4rr4r]

Consumers don't know anything of any type.

FTFY.
Being should pay for ignorance, this helps do that.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps they're die when a house has a bad power source?

Or poor wiring. I've got CFLs throughout my house for at least 5 years, and with the exception of my kitchen, none of them have died except 1 bulb in the bathroom a few months ago. My kitchen and dining room have the exact same setup...2 lights on a circuit, exact same type of ceiling canisters. Everything else about them is the same. They're even really the same room (I've got one of those connected kitchen/dining room with no separation), so there pretty much no temperature difference between the lights (and they're nearly equal distance from the stove, same sort of insulation in the attic, etc). The lights in the kitchen need to be replaced about once a year on average. The dining room has never been replaced. I can't figure any explanation for that than just poor wiring in the kitchen half.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Anonymous Coward]

There are quite a few incandescent that do not have a long life if run in the upside down position, or if run in a fixture that gets hotter than normal. Have you ever looked on the package of cheaper lights that have no symbols over a fixture or show which positions they will work in? I've tried being cheap and getting the cheap ones despite them saying they won't work in such positions, but they die within a month or two, instead of years like the slightly more expensive ones. So by your own account, incandescent bulbs are not event straight replacements for incandescent bulbs...

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Anonymous Coward]

So that 13W CFL is actually pulling 26W to get there.

No, it's not. PF is about the "shape" of the load, not the magnitude of the load. A 13W CFL consumes 13W, regardless of PF. The utility company is not fond of low PF devices because they require higher rated lines and components and cause higher transmission losses, but you only pay and consume the rated power, not the reactive power.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Anonymous Coward]

I had one LED bulb fail after a year or so. Opened it up; there was one power diode, acting as a rectifier, that apparently had been poorly soldered. Replaced it with a similar diode of equal rating, soldered it carefully, and it has been going for another year already.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Anonymous Coward]

So? If you find a make that will guarantee a certain lifetime regardless of the way the bulb is used, and it breaks due to trapped heat, then return it and get a replacement or a refund.

I've actually done this, but it's a royal pain in the ass to do over a $5 lightbulb. On the other hand, replacing failed $5 lightbulbs every year gets expensive. Not to mention the environmental costs of manufacturing and recycling all of those mercury-filled bulbs, plastic bases, and electronic ballasts.

...perhaps it's time to stop being a priss and to start learning about the technology you're using. Besides, fixtures which trap heat are a bad design, particularly when used with incandescent bulbs which produce a lot of heat.

So basically, I'm supposed to spend several dozen hours and several hundred dollars replacing all the light fixtures in my house to be more CFL-friendly? What if I live in a rental and can't replace the hard-wired fixtures? Am I supposed to buy a bunch of portable lamps and lock out the switches to the fixtures?

Is throwing out a bunch of otherwise functional light fixtures also good for the planet?

The wire insulation isn't too fond of long exposure to high temperatures either. Hello fire hazard.

The fixtures were all UL approved for whatever wattage of incandescent bulb they were meant for. They would have to have sufficient shielding between the bulb and any wiring for that amount of heat. I'm pretty sure that UL's engineers understand basic thermodynamics.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Guppy]

worst was Lights of America

Seconding this opinion, Lights of America definitely had some lifespan problems with their CFL bulbs. I've heard claims that (at least in some models) their bulbs were using preheat-type electrodes in Instant Start mode.

On the other hands, I have had great results from Sylvania (one PAR38 fixture in the main hallway lasted ~11 years in heavy use, several hours every day); Philips has also been pretty reliable.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in Wisconsin, which is also acquainted with the cold. I have two of these CFL spots in a motion detector on my garage They work just fine, and have done so for at least 2 winters.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[operagost]

My own experience with GE has also been poor. Their lifespan is not good, until recently they started at about half brightness and took as long a minute to attain full brightness at room temp, and they are the only brand I have literally had go up in smoke. My experience with Sylvania is also great, which is why I prefer them and Philips (second best).

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[FireFury03]

I've been using the same ones for 11 years, one takes longer to start these days, but none have died. Perhaps they're die when a house has a bad power source?

The quality of CFLs seems (or at least, seemed a few years ago) very variable.

A good number of years ago I made an off-hand remark to a tree-hugger friend of mine (who was perpetually going on about how great they are) that when I'd tried CFLs a few years previously, I found them extremely slow to start and had therefore switched back to incandescents. He informed me that this was no longer the case so long as I bought good quality bulbs.

So I went out and bought a pair of new bulbs - rather than the normal cheapy £2-a-pop CFLs, I opted for relatively expensive GE bulbs. As it turned out, these bulbs were actually *worse* for startup time than my very old cheapy ones, and 6 months after I bought them one of them died with a loud bang, taking out the main circuit breaker and leaving scorch marks around the light fitting. About a year later the second one went flickery and then did pretty much the same thing - bang, scorch marks and tripped the main breaker. The second bulb was in a different house to the first, so I can't attribute the failure to the supply.

These days I do use CFLs in most of my light fittings. I've gone back to using cheapy bulbs, which have greatly improved in recent years, but are still depressingly slow to start compared to incandescents. Thankfully I've had no more CFLs fail, but I've avoided GE and I don't think I have any over about 5 years old.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[LateArthurDent]

CFLs were sold to the public as straight replacements for incandescents... which work just fine in those (huge numbers of already installed) "upside-down" fixtures.

So do CFLs. GP was saying they don't meet the CFL rated lifetime under those conditions, CFLs will still last a hell of a lot longer than incandescent even when placed in a fixture that traps the heat around the base of the bulb.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[HornWumpus]

On/Off cycles are killers of CFLs (and incandescents).

The first LED bulbs in my house went into the bathroom.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[lgw]

There's a big difference between the "instant on" CFLs and the normal kind. The instant-on kind had a really bad track record for a while (and maybe still do). I had 2 actually explode, raining down in a shower of glass fragments, and never had the expected life out of one (tried several brands), while the normal kind have been fine IME.

Looking forward to the switch to LED bulbs where at least they'll fail more gracefully, and might eventually even give a good color.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[lgw]

Ahh, so advocate tearing down a house and rebuilding it because that's the easy way to get good lighting? Most engineering is easy if you just ignore the legacy requirements.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[dr2chase]

Rewiring and adding or changing fixtures typically costs a little bit less than demo and rebuild of the whole house. We've had trained professionals do it for us (new stove), and I've added circuits all by myself from basement panel all the way up to a 2nd-floor bathroom. Lighting under cabinets with LEDs is dead simple, and the heat output from individual LEDs is so low and the fixtures so light-weight that you can make do with a very low-tech "fixture" (e.g., a few inches of aluminum flat stock).

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Jarik C-Bol]

have you ever known your average Joe Consumer to actually pay attention to getting the right wattage bulb for his lamp?
"I want this to be brighter, so i'll just stick a 120 watt bulb in there"

and then the house burns down because the lamp shade is full of dead moths, and a 120 watt bulb in a 40 watt fixture.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Khyber]

You can replace the starter easily if you don't break the electrodes trying to separate the ballast from it.

And even though most of these bulbs have plug-in ballasts (avoiding the need to solder before putting the casing together) you're still going to have a bitch of a time finding the exact proper replacement in order to ensure efficiency.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Khyber]

The leading cause for CFL death is ELECTRONICS HEAT.

And when you buy CFL bulbs that have the entire ballast contained within a sealed and unventilated plastic housing, what the hell do you expect?

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Khyber]

"There are quite a few incandescent that do not have a long life if run in the upside down position, or if run in a fixture that gets hotter than normal."

You're thinking HID lamps. Incandescent doesn't give two fucks about orientation.

Source: I design and install lighting from horticulture to interior lighting.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Khyber]

"Exactly -- I'm looking for a consistent quality ACROSS brands. Certification should mean that el cheapo brand performs well,"

el cheapo can't get certified despite higher-quality because of the insane barrier to entry - cost of certification.

Energy Star is a scam, plain and simple. A RICO scam, at that.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Khyber]

Just FYI, here's how much of a scam Energy Star is - they can't even prosecute LED grow light manufacturers claiming ES compliance.

So they keep on going. Take money when they can, give certs out to those that can pay, and that's it.

Welcome to my nightmare. Energy Star needs to be wiped the fuck out.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Khyber]

You mean power transformer with resistors. Not quite a rectifier. Trying to use a diode as a rectifier in an LED system is dumb as shit and leads to the most failures unless the power supply is already rolling the DC needed.

This is why I use constant current drivers with more components.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Khyber]

"and might eventually even give a good color."

Guess you've not been watching LED for the past 5 years.

Better look at this, pal.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Khyber]

The only real difference is the lack of a vent and the inclusion of a sealing ring.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[lgw]

They're getting better, but most keep the same color temp when dimmed, so they're no quite there yet. There was a /. story about some wifi-enabled Phillips bulbs that you could actually program to switch both brightness and color temp, but you had to do it by wifi, not with a dimmer switch.

Still, give it time and I'm sure they will get there.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Khyber]

" Comment on TFA mentions this -- electrolytic capacitors have a lifetime that is very sensitive to heat, and can be quite short."

Except most CFLs I see use tantalum capacitors, not electrolytics, because tantalum caps are smaller, much smaller, and cheaper, and mroe reliable.

Plenty of companies send them to me, and I do LED lighitng, and they think these CFLs can still compare. Not when I'm pushing 150+ lumens per watt for visual lighting, you can't compete.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[ColdWetDog]

I live in Wisconsin, which is also acquainted with the cold. I have two of these CFL spots in a motion detector on my garage They work just fine, and have done so for at least 2 winters.

Not surprising. If you are a typical Slashdotter, nobody comes around your house so the motion detector never fires and they lights just sit there.

Have you actually tested them with a live human recently?

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[WuphonsReach]

I'm glad to see a high bar set for the certification of LED bulbs. CFL lights rarely hit their expected life span, among other problems

My CFLs last anywhere from 3-10 years. Top killers are heat and dirty switches (with a lot of "bounce"). Are LED bulbs better? Probably, but there are bad actors and substandard designs in both types.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Khyber]

"and the heat output from individual LEDs is so low"

Maybe from your cheap-ass tail-thru LEDs.

You try powering a 1w SMD-LED without any thermal consideration.

You'll be lucky to get 500 hours of operating time out of it. It will slag itself.

Just saying since I'm working with 15w LEDs in a 7mm x 7mm package, and those can slag themselves within a few SECONDS without proper thermal consideration.

The myth of LEDs don't emit heat is bullshit. HPS is about 20% efficient in energy in/light out. LED at the max is 40% in single wavelengths currently.

So the reality is you get a 400w LED, you might emit 25% less heat vs an equivalent power HPS, but you're still dumping more than 200w of heat out into the air/localized fixture.

Speaking as an LED light manufacturer and current leading tester of the MK-R and XP-G2 LEDs from Cree.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Khyber]

Into the bathroom? BAD MOVE.

Protip: LEDs HATE humidity, and most of them are NOT reliably sealed until you add some pressure from a lens assembly.

The MK-Rs Cree sent me are HORRIBLE in higher-humidity applications. So far, I've had several MK-Rs, brand new engineering samples, fail just hanging a few inches from my covered fish tank.

Sadly, this has been the case with EVERY 'high-humidity' LED manufacturer I've worked with/tested.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Khyber]

"Now I am just waiting for someone to sell a reasonably powerful G16.5 base led (like 300+ lumens/25-40 W equivalent)"

Sure, you want my dual Cree MK-R lamp? 400 lumens for 2 watts if you can keep the junctins at room temperature. If not, maybe you'll get 170 lumens per watt. I'll build one for you to fit an E26/27 socket or get one of my four Chinese makers to build it to specs you'll never get from anyone else.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Khyber]

Just bear in mind your current CFLs are likely nearing the end of the useful electrode/phosphor lifespan by now.

Very soon you'll be hitting incan efficiencies. Might want to refresh those CFLs or go LED.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Khyber]

The big issue here is really the ballast/electronics, not the phosphors or in-tube electrodes.

That sylvania needs to be replaced, though, if it lasts as long as you claim. It's well past phosphor droop levels, even if it only had a true life cycle of 10,000 hours, over that time.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Khyber]

"I'm glad to see energy star mean something. Most of the time it means fuck-all."

ALL OF THE TIME IT MEANS FUCK-ALL.

It's a bullshit certification company for MARKETING PURPOSES.

And if you can't pay, you can't play, and are at the mercy of those consumers stupid enough to fall for ES certification.

Here's how stupid ES certification is:

They do not certify LED-based growing lamps. This proves they're incompetent in dealing with certifying light of any sorts, despite these lights having higher efficiencies than full-range white LED light in every fucking measure.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[HornWumpus]

If your bathroom is condensing you've got bigger problems. Mold etc.

LEDs are solid state devices. You have other problems. Maybe thermal stress/shock caused by getting wet when hot. I assume you had them heat sinked while hanging?

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[dr2chase]

Compared to the light from an incandescent bulb, LEDs have plenty low heat output, and I implied (but didn't say it plainly enough) that you might distribute the LEDs in smaller units than is current practice with incandescent fixtures.

3W LEDs (one amp into an XRE or XPG) need something like 9 square inches of aluminum stock in free air, 1W gets by with plenty less. 15 watt needs more, obviously. But for a standard ceiling, if you were putting discrete 3W LEDs up there, you could cut a hole in the drywall, use about 6-9 inches of 2" aluminum flat stock, and just epoxy the LED on to that. Put 1/2 standoffs on the bottom side of the flat stock, slip the whole thing in to the hole (LED side down, obviously), and you've taken care of cooling. Find some photogenic way to put a diffuser over the hole you cut in the ceiling, and you're done.

I think that LEDs might be doing better than 40% right now, too. I've read, somewhere, that best we can do with "white" is about 300 lumens per watt, and CREE is apparently selling (I saw your note below) 200 lumens/watt. The theoretical max lumens for a single wavelength is more than that, but that's green, not white.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[green1]

They don't care about orientation, but the point was heat, and when talking about bulbs mounted upside down, you're usually talking about enclosures like pot lights or such where heat that rises can't escape. CFLs and LEDs don't generate nearly as much heat as incandescents, but they're a lot more sensitive to what heat there is.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Khyber]

"Consumer CFLs are extremely voltage sensitive, particularly to over-voltage."

sounds like your CFL makers failed to think about power lines being possibly more efficient than regulation (131V is actually a good voltage to ensure you aren't under-volt killing your equipment when run through a transformer, and a resistor should handle the rest) and failed to consider current regulation.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Khyber]

"No, it's not. PF is about the "shape" of the load, not the magnitude of the load."

WRONG. The power factor of an AC electrical power system is defined as the ratio of the real power flowing to the load, to the apparent power in the circuit.

Ignore the idiot AC that doesn't know shit about semiconductors and power transfer.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[PRMan]

I put them in when my kids were 5 and 3. They are now 15 and 13 and I came home one day and they said, "Dad, the lamp's broken."

I said, "Did you change the bulb?"

They looked at me dumbfounded. I mean, they know in theory that you can screw in a lightbulb, but they were like that commercial where it literally never occurred to them because they never had a bulb fail in their entire life.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Anonymous Coward]

Now if you would be so kind to explain what apparent power is to prove me right...

You're not going to even try, because you can only barf out a definition so that you can call someone stupid, but you don't understand what it MEANS.

The power factor is not something consumers need to worry about. It certainly doesn't influence their power bill. That 13W CFL adds 13kWh to the bill for every thousand hours it's on.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[number11]

I've been using the same ones for 11 years, one takes longer to start these days, but none have died. Perhaps they're die when a house has a bad power source?

you need a pretty clean power supply to get maximum life out of them. And going along with that, the fixture it's placed in needs to not be a complete piece of shit. Also, they have a fairly narrow optimal temperature range compared to an incandescent bulb- running them in very cold environments (such as the one above my porch where the temp drops into the -20(F) range for weeks during the winter) will drastically reduce the lifespan.

Really? I use them for front and back porch and they last a long time (multiple years) for me. Starting back when they had ballasts (heavy) and replaceable tubes, and now the integrated ones. I just use whatever cheap low-wattage ones that I find. It doesn't go to -20F for weeks here (maybe a day or two) and the lights are in sheltered (unheated, enclosed porch, but exposed bulb) locations. The only "special treatment" is that in the cold season (for about 3 months) I don't turn them off at all, a habit I started since early CFLs didn't start reliably in below-zero weather (my impression is that the newer ones do). And since that's the dark season, it's just easier to leave them on. Actually, they get left on much of the rest of the year, too, since I've lost the habit of turning them on and off. If there aren't any bad solder joints, I can't think of any reason why cold would be a problem except for starting, or maybe if it's cold enough so that the arc in the tube becomes unstable. But I've only seen unstable arcs with regular fluorescent tubes (which have a lot more surface area).

when you look at the cost of re-wiring houses, rebuilding electric grids, replacing fixtures, installing heating elements for cold-weather areas, etc. the actual energy costs to totally abandon the old-style bulbs far exceed the gains from the LED and CFC's. And that doesn't even start to account for things like asbestos removal and disposal, lead cleanup from old paint and pipes, and other environmental costs associated with replacing wiring and sockets in older buildings.

Even though I live in a neighborhood of old houses (yah, we have asbestos and lead paint) I have never heard of anyone having to do cleanup and disposal to replace a few fixtures. Why would you replace the wiring? If it could handle incandescent bulbs, it certainly can handle CFLs. And why would you muck with the furnace, ducts, or hot-water pipes (which is where the asbestos would be, I have never seen asbestos involved with wiring)? You don't need to do a gut and rehab for this job.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[number11]

Consumer CFLs are extremely voltage sensitive, particularly to over-voltage. I have an outlet that regularly spikes to 131v (house was electrified in the 30s)

If you're spiking to 131V, you may have a bad (house or pole) ground. With a good ground the voltage should never be above nominal (110-120, depending on you local utility). With a bad ground, worst case is 2X nominal (if the ground doesn't function at all), which is very dangerous.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Anonymous Coward]

You're thinking HID lamps. Incandescent doesn't give two fucks about orientation

No, plane old incandescent do care about their orientation. The cheaper ones don't properly support the filament or have too few supports for the filament so that if they are used upside down the filament is not supported enough when at operating temperature. Such bulbs will fail within a week or two typically if used upside down. The orientation can affect other things in the long run too, like what parts of the bulb darken the most.

Source: I design and install lighting from horticulture to interior lighting.

I guess you've never worked with ceiling fans or chandeliers then? Never had a customer call to complain that their light bulbs were burning out too fast, only to find they were buying the wrong kind to save a dime each? Do you have any experience with residential lighting? Even if not, just go to a hardware store, look at the incandescent bulbs, and many of the cheaper brands have a little symbol/graphic they put on the back showing three orientations (upright, side-ways, and upside down) and will sometimes have the upside down one crossed out. This seems to be more common with candelabra bulbs in the 40-60 W range. It used to be a common issue with higher powered bulbs, the 200+W ones, but those are less common now, and I don't have customers demanding those in place of other types of lights, unlike some that insist on certain kinds of ceiling fan or chandelier lights.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Anonymous Coward]

" if you can't pay, you can't play"

Contradicts

"There is no fee for applying for Energy Star certification, nor for using the label."

In TFA. Perhaps you could R it before making false statements?

Also:

"They do not certify LED-based growing lamps"

So what? I don't want a lamp for a grow-house. I want lights for my house. Like most people. Just because something doesn't cater for your niche doesn't make it useless in general.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Anonymous Coward]

All the CFL's I've ever used performed an impromptu plasma jet flare-out and stopped functioning. Usually after about a year of operation. This is in the exact same fixtures that a decent 60W "infrared heating element" lasts a solid 3-5 years.

The best part is the smell of burnt mercury and plastic that lingers for hours afterward. I live 40 miles downwind of the worst-polluting coal-fired power plant in the continental US. And a CFL during flame-out makes me long for a gasp of clean outdoor air.

Fuck CFL's.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[steveha]

I agree with your points. It's interesting to note that the cost of an LED bulb that goes in an old fixture is similar to, or more expensive than, a brand-new fixture with LEDs built in!

When you design a fixture as an LED fixture, you can design it to dissipate the heat. The whole exterior of the fixture can be used as a heat sink to put heat out into the room (i.e. get it away from the LED chips). But when you design a backward-compatible bulb, you must pack those chips in a small space, and you need to put in a lot of them in all different directions. So you need a carefully-engineered design, which packs a lot of LED chips in a small space yet keeps them cool.

It's clearly better to have all the LEDs pointing in the direction you want the light to go, but old incandescent fixtures often have the bulb on its side with a reflector above it. So the carefully-engineered LED bulb that shines in all directions is now working to bounce light off a reflector, rather than just have all the LEDs shine where you want the light.

You can already buy a "can light" replacement, the Cree LR6, that has a decorative bezel that helps serve as a heat sink. It's easy to install too. I had a single can light in my home and I have already installed one of these; I love it.

So "can lights" are a solved problem, but normal light bulb fixtures are harder.

You can buy fixtures now with soldered-in LED chips. And they should last two decades, which isn't bad. But I'd like to see a standardized modular design, where power supply is one modular piece and the LEDs are mounted on another (designed to work as a heat sink). This would solve the problem someone noted, that two decades from now the fixtures you bought may no longer be made, and replacing them one at a time won't look ideally pretty.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Anonymous Coward]

Certification is actually pretty cheap and well within the reach of small businesses. The company I've worked for has no problem getting products certified by a third part certification body, and if a company were a bigger, national manufacturer, they could get first party accreditation so they can certify their own products. The only way it is expensive is if the requirements for certification don't match what your product already does. If the certification itself is your only barrier to entry, either you have a lawyer screwing you over or you just have a low threshold for filling out paperwork.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Anonymous Coward]

You can get crappy incandescents to fail way too quickly in an open chandelier if they are not meant for that orientation. It isn't just about heat confined in a fixture for them.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Anonymous Coward]

They do not certify LED-based growing lamps. This proves they're incompetent in dealing with certifying light of any sorts, despite these lights having higher efficiencies than full-range white LED light in every fucking measure.

What relevance does that have? They don't certify panel indicator lamps either, but those have been really efficient for a long time. They certify only specific categories of products. Otherwise, if a company makes only LED lamps for home lighting, but doesn't make grow lamps, does that prove that company is incompetent in dealing with lights of any sort? Heck, I guess if a light company in Scotland doesn't make any grow lamps, they can't be staffed by real Scotsmen either.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Goghit]

That's consistent with Consumer Report's tests. We've found the same thing over the years, to the extent we only have Sylvania CFLs in every fixture except for the high use area where we've installed LEDs.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[ImprovOmega]

Just like any electrical (and often mechanical) device. It's called a bathtub curve and it applies to failure rates over time. High incidence of failure in the "burn-in" phase (1-3 months typically), steady state and very much lower failure rate during expected lifetime, and then increasingly higher failure rates (often jumping exponentially towards the end) at end of life phase. This is a well known phenomenon in fault tolerant applications. It's also why you don't want to put anything important on your shiny new SAN until it's been spinning for a month or so and you've swapped out all the failed drives.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Anonymous Coward]

The power factor of an AC electrical power system is defined as the ratio of the real power flowing to the load, to the apparent power in the circuit.

Yes. But that is agreeing with the parent that it is about shape and not about magnitude. If you had a 60 Hz current going into the device in phase with the applied voltage, you would have a PF of 1. If you change the magnitude of the current going into the device, you would still have a PF of 1. Only if you changed the phase of the current with respect to the voltage, or if you added harmonics (i.e. change shape...), you will get returning power, giving you a lower PF. Regardless of the magnitude, certain current wave forms will have certain power factors... because it is a ratio... that's the point.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[roc97007]

Or perhaps they were less subject to "value engineering" 11 years ago than they are now. Which reminds me, I have three CFLs around the "vanity mirror" in the master bathroom that need replacing. Damned things are going out all the time.

In contrast, of the very first three CFLs I bought, back in the 1990s, two are still working.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[roc97007]

...which explains the failures in flush mounted ceiling cans, but doesn't explain the failures in bare bulb fixtures, nor does it explain why some of the longest lived bulbs are the ones outside in completely enclosed fixtures. (Which is counter-intuitive, as CFLs aren't supposed to do well outside.)

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[mhotchin]

It sounds like you are actually describing a bad neutral. This is a VERY VERY bad condition, as in may-kill-you-or-burn-down-the-house level bad.

If you see lights changing brightness (and staying that way while the item is on, not just start-up flicker) when 120 volt apliances or fixtures turn on or off, but every thing is fine for 240 volt items (water heater, electric stove, electric dryer), then RUN, don't walk, RUN to an electrician and the power company - the problem could be in your main breaker box, or anywhere upstream of that to the transformer serving your house.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[number11]

It sounds like you are actually describing a bad neutral. /p>

Yes, brain bubble, sorry. Neutral. (Which is normally grounded at the panel.) In the US, 131v is alarmingly high for line voltage, no matter when the house was electrified.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Maxo-Texas]

Try a "G7" LED bulb (on Amazon).

They don't fit in small fixtures.

Good light- I think the keys are 3000k (instead of 2900k) and 900lumens (instead of 800-850 lumens).

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never really done any serious investigation into to the average consumer habits, but my guess would be that the average consumer just sticks a 60-watt incandescent bulb into just about everything that will fit one. Since most existing fixtures and lamps were designed for at least 60 watts, this is perfectly safe, if a little dim (pun intended.)

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Maxo-Texas]

There is no need to rewire a house, rebuild an electrical grid, replace fixtures for LED lights.

I agree on extra heating for cold weather. (tho you have to use extra cooling during the summer). But using radiant electric heat created by a lightbulb is inefficient compared to other heating methods.

Keep the incandescent for your porch but most of your living areas are probably over 32 degrees even when you are out of the house (to prevent plumbing from freezing).

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[mattack2]

Energy Star is a scam, plain and simple. A RICO scam, at that.

As someone else pointed out, from the article:

There is no fee for applying for Energy Star certification, nor for using the label. In fact the tests in themselves do not specify pass or fail results, but instead simply quantify performance and lifespan. It's the EPA that decides the benchmarks.

How is that a scam?

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Anonymous Coward]

Outside of the bit about turning off the AC or heating, how is that much more of a pain than cleaning up any other small pieces of glass? Vacuum cleaners can make kind of mess with normal glass without a decent filter, and usually it is a good idea to put broken glass in a tougher bag before throwing it in the trash so it doesn't cut through the trash bag by accident. You can ignore those steps for normal glass anyway, and you can ignore them for CFLs too.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Anonymous Coward]

(131V is actually a good voltage to ensure you aren't under-volt killing your equipment when run through a transformer, and a resistor should handle the rest)

Actually, no, that is not a good voltage. Utility standards usually allow for either 5% or 6% over 120 in the US (although down to -5% or -13% for minimum voltage), while NEMA standards for what a product should be able to handle is +/- 10% voltage. That 131 V is right at the edge of that and out of spec for utility voltage. While motors will be less likely to overheat with a little bit higher voltage, going 10% over spec is not usually a good idea depending on how it is designed, and for many other equipment it may be potentially damaging if they don't have extra overhead or is not designed with a switching supply meant to handle both 120 and 200+.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[ChrisMaple]

At one time, GE (I think) made standard incandescents of a particular wattage on two different production lines, with two different filament shapes (W shaped and circular.) The W shaped filaments were a problem when the bulbs were mounted horizontally; in a fair number of them a portion of the filament would sag against another portion, causing a short and premature failure. High voltage, high wattage incandescent bulbs tend to have weak filaments and the manufacturer doesn't always get the design right. It's not a common flaw, but it can happen.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Khyber]

"3W LEDs (one amp into an XRE or XPG) need something like 9 square inches of aluminum stock in free air"

Dunno where you get that one from. I've got 300w panels being cooled by dual 5x7 chunks of 1040 aluminum.

"I think that LEDs might be doing better than 40% right now, too"

Nope, that's the current max for single wavelengths. I work very closely with companies like Cree, Nichia, etc. Not much of any company's LED product gets close to that number, excepting the UV/Blue LEDs.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[mattack2]

Tearing down a house? He just meant more distributed light.. (My idea:) Maybe something slightly like Christmas tree lights, with a bunch of very small but bright LEDs, spread out over a wall or ceiling.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Anonymous Coward]

Last week you spoke of MK-R being a UVB emitter with a multi-phosphor coating. They appear to still have the big hole in the blue-green range characteristic of royal blue + broadband yellow and I see recent patent documents from Cree characterizing high efficiency white LEDs as blue emitters with yellow phosphors. I would like to know more if you can share because an LED with a smoother curve in the 4000-6000K range would be very nice to have. The warm-white curve is pretty good and I can see how it reaches a CRI of 93.

Re:Avoid CFL mistakes

[Phreakiture]

Well, if they hit such low efficiencies, I'm assuming that it comes in the form of a drop in light output. I'll keep an eye on it, though and periodically check them with a wattmeter. Thanks for the heads-up.

like for like replacement wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate changing light bulbs, and frankly don't care if the LEDs cost a lot. I'd pay more just to not have to change light bulbs. I bought a bunch of the Philips 75W equivalents. While they provide the same intensity of light, the spectrum is considerably different, and very noticeable. The LED casts a cold spectrum that to my eyes is just a yellowish version of what florescent light emits. In the middle of the room, in ceiling cans, it looks fine. But one the side when it casts against walls or shelving, it really makes everything look cold.

One other odd fact, LEDs do still throw off a lot of heat, and they take much longer to cool down than incandescent lights.

Re:like for like replacement wrong

[Kingkaid]

Try the yellow Philips LED lights then. They give off the same spectrum as incandesce and are rather cool (currently only 60W max I think).

Re:like for like replacement wrong

[MightyYar]

They give off the same spectrum as incandesce

I don't think that is possible.

Re:like for like replacement wrong

[mcvos]

Who cares about the IR? It's just the visible light that really matters.

Re:like for like replacement wrong

[MightyYar]

Sure... I mean, the ideal is just the visible section of a black-body radiation curve. I just don't know how that can happen. If Philips has pulled this off, then WOW!

Re:like for like replacement wrong

[Overzeetop]

They haven't. Best Philips I could find, I think, had a CRI around 90; most are in the 80s (where 100 is blackbody for the rated color temp).

I have some Sylvania Par20s with a 95CRI and at full power they are not only as bright as 50W halogen PARs but very, very close to the same color (I think they're 2900K, vs 2800ish for incandescent halogens). Best price I could find was $34/ea, but they're great - and dimmable. At dim, though, they're goofy looking because the light temp doesn't change, but I can live with that. I had one of 13 fail within 2 weeks of installation, and I'm still waiting (3 weeks later) for a replacement.

Re:like for like replacement wrong

[mcvos]

Probably an approximation of that curve. I don't see why that wouldn't be possible, although I admit I don't know all that much about LED engineering.

Re:like for like replacement wrong

[Zeromous]

I use these all around my house. They are great, but don't work with dimmers.

They also work well outdoors in pretty extreme weather (-40 to +40)

Re:like for like replacement wrong

[MightyYar]

Their spectrum is still very spiky, though not anywhere near as bad as CFLs. And who knows? Maybe people like spikes in certain places? GE sells those blue-tinted bulbs that some people seem to prefer.

Re:like for like replacement wrong

[jones_supa]

Just to meta-nitpick, you guys are probably talking about color temperature rather than spectrum... Even two 2700K light sources can have different color rendition properties.

Re:like for like replacement wrong

[MightyYar]

Thanks for the info. I'm renovating a room and so I'm considering LEDs back there.

At dim, though, they're goofy looking because the light temp doesn't change

Yes, it would be great if they dimmed the reds less than the other colors to simulate a warm, dimmed room. I'm considering installing 3-color indirect lighting and trying to rig up a controller myself to make a pleasing dim color.

Re:like for like replacement wrong

[Chris Mattern]

An LED bulb can be tuned to give off any spectrum you want by using multiple chips, although some spectra can be quite expensive to produce, even by LED standards.

Re:like for like replacement wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Or just use a combination of short wavelength LEDs and phosphors which give off a much broader spectrum. Usually that comes out much cheaper than trying to mix many different kinds of LEDs together.

Re:like for like replacement wrong

[FireFury03]

Their spectrum is still very spiky, though not anywhere near as bad as CFLs. And who knows? Maybe people like spikes in certain places? GE sells those blue-tinted bulbs that some people seem to prefer.

Shouldn't the spectrum of LED bulbs be similar to CFLs? Afterall, they both work by shining UV on phosphors and having the phosphors reradiate it into the visible spectrum...

Re:like for like replacement wrong

[Khyber]

" The LED casts a cold spectrum that to my eyes is just a yellowish version of what florescent light emits."

This is because Philips lights suck in CRI.

Go Cree if you want real color temps. Philips is just a shit-tier knockoff and does nothing to truly further the LED industry.

Re:like for like replacement wrong

[Khyber]

You're so wrong it's not even funny.

First off, the data sheets for any LED that is NOT IR/UV specific will never mention Ir/UV, despite them emitting plenty (most white diodes are a highly-efficient UV LED with a specialized phosphor blend, and IR is a natural by-product of thermodynamics.)

Try again when you know the basics of science, please.

Re:like for like replacement wrong

[Khyber]

only 90 for a Philips Cree-stealing LED?

I get 93+ CRI for real Cree equipment at half the price and 7000K. And I get the heatsink, drivers, and boards for free.

Re:like for like replacement wrong

[Khyber]

You'll be displeased. Single-color wavelengths are so much more efficient you'll likely end up getting a color temp you don't want even with a remote control doing RGB.

Already been there, already done that. You'll see my LED work around football/tennis pitches in EU and Australia.

Re:like for like replacement wrong

[green1]

There is no such thing as a dimmable LED or CFL bulb, don't believe what the manufacturers tell you, they don't exist.

I have tried a huge variety, and none of them dim down as well as old fashioned incandescent bulbs. I'd love to be proven wrong, but I just don't see it happening. So far the best I have found has been the philips 12.5w 2700K dimmables, they will dim down to about 20-30% visible brightness before cutoff, many others won't go below about 50-80%. They also put out a nice colour of light. I will probably buy more of them, not because they're great, but because they're the best I've found so far.

Re:like for like replacement wrong

[Khyber]

Fuck you're so wrong it's not even funny. Update your knowledgebase. At best we need a boost in the 420 and 670 nm range.

Get with the times, please.

Re:like for like replacement wrong

[Khyber]

And it comes out with far less efficiency versus a standard RGBW array.

Try again when you understand actual LED technology.

Re:like for like replacement wrong

[Khyber]

"They are great, but don't work with dimmers."

Because your dimmer is in the wrong fucking spot. Do it AFTER the power driver. If you can't, then spend the extra to get a remote-controlled lamp that works in the socket as described.

It's like slashdot suddenly forgot that it's a fucking geek/nerd spot. You fuckers should already have electricity down by now, and know where to place a fucking potentiometer. It's not like this information hasn't been available since the fucking 1960s, after all, half a fucking century ago.

Re:like for like replacement wrong

[MightyYar]

Huh? My comment doesn't mention IR/UV? Did you reply to the right comment?

Re:like for like replacement wrong

[MightyYar]

Thanks for the info.

Re:like for like replacement wrong

[MightyYar]

I don't see how my statement that they are still spiky but not as bad as CFLs is untrue. Here are some charts comparing tungsten to CFLs and the Phillips L-Prize winning bulb. In particular, there is quite a big bump at around 625nm.

Re:like for like replacement wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

I have Philips Econic 7.5W dimmable LED bulbs, and they dim smoothly all the way down to off, on a normal dimmer, albeit one with a very low minimum load requirement. If your LED bulbs cut off around 25%, maybe a different dimmer can get you the rest of the way. You can try putting an incandescent bulb in parallel with the LEDs to see if the dimmer doesn't handle the low load well.

Re:like for like replacement wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

What is there for me to try again? There are products like that already on the market, that use phosphors to broaden the spectrum of RGB LEDs instead of using more than three or four color leds to increase the color quality. Of course it cuts into the efficiency, but some people want color quality over slight losses in efficiency.

Re:like for like replacement wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, didn't a few comments up you try to chew me out for saying some LEDs get their white light by using short wavelength LEDs combine with phosphors? Aren't you contradicting yourself now?

Re:like for like replacement wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

"You fuckers should already have electricity down by now, and know where to place a fucking potentiometer. It's not like this information hasn't been available since the fucking 1960s"

Dimmers aren't "fucking potentiometers." Maybe you shouldn't be using information available in the 1960s...

Re:like for like replacement wrong

[Zeromous]

You know I how I know you have no clue what you're talking about?

Re:like for like replacement wrong

[ChrisMaple]

Thanks, that's a very good comparison set. Just from the graphs, I'd prefer the old Phillips LED lamp to the prize winner.

Re:like for like replacement wrong

[Khyber]

Would you like to know how I know you have zero clue?

I build these things, and design the dimmer switches for them.

Try again when you actually make money doing this, yea?

Re:like for like replacement wrong

[MightyYar]

Yeah, I had the same thought, except that it was also dimmer. I wonder if it has something to do with the eye's sensitivity to certain wavelengths? I'm hoping Khyber will chime back in since he seems to have some experience with the technology and seems emotionally invested in it.

Re:like for like replacement wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't the spectrum of LED bulbs be similar to CFLs? Afterall, they both work by shining UV on phosphors and having the phosphors reradiate it into the visible spectrum...

Nope.
"White LEDs" (we ignore RGB, RGBW, and such color-mixing systems to produce white) use visible blue light, not UV, with one or more phosphors converting some fraction to yellow (and maybe a second orange or yellow-green), which combines with the unconverted blue light to give a color somewhere on/near the blackbody locus. So you get a two-humped spectrum in the visible range, a narrow blue peak and a broad yellow peak (even multi-phosphor LEDs -- the orange, yellow-green peaks are also broad, and more or less merge with the yellow).

CFLs, as you say, use true UV, and have multiple phosphors converting to various colors in the visual range -- again summing to a color somewhere on/near the blackbody locus. But you get several peaks.

Re:like for like replacement wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Most dont' - there are two types -

*combination of red/green/blue leds
*blue led (not uv led) plus a phosphor responsive to blue light.

(or a mixture of the two) (ok that's three types)..

eg see http://www.philipslumileds.com/technology/quality-white-light (it's not just philips - other manufacturers do the same)

There's some more info on the L-prize winner here, including spectra - for for use google...

Re:like for like replacement wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

You may want to wait just a bit. LED panels composed of many different coloured LEDs are starting to get popular in Japan. Last time I was there I saw panels that could pump out anywhere between 2-10,000 lumens with a remote control that lets you adjust the colour to anything you like. The price was very reasonable (for Japan, which is usually more expensive than the west). These panels work well as replacements for the currently popular style of lighting in Japanese rooms, but would be quite different than most westerners would expect. Not sure it will transfer over, but who knows... I expect the price to fall rapidly in the next year or so.

Re:like for like replacement wrong

[MightyYar]

Thanks. I need to redo the room now (as per wife), but I'm thinking of wiring it for DC to support lighting upgrades down the line. Worst case, I just waste a bit of money on extra wire. The kitchen is already wired this way, but not because it was future-proofed. They wired it for low-voltage (halogen) area lighting, with big power supplies in the basement. Currently I'm running around replacing stupid little halogen lightbulbs all the time, but I'll probably replace those with LED as well. Just need to make sure the food still looks edible under LEDs! My experiments with CFLs in the kitchen have been mixed, but mostly it makes the food look like a dog puked it up.

Re:like for like replacement wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

I build these things, and design the dimmer switches for them.

No you fucking don't. You are just some random fucking hobbyist. You think you know what you are talking about because you managed to hobble together some kind of ghetto lightswitch. You are a fucking joke.

Re:like for like replacement wrong

[Overzeetop]

I have a "playroom" where I have two sets of lights. One set is ceiling cans with 23w CFLs and produces a very bright, white (3000k) even lighting for playing games or doing crafts. One set are sconces around the room perimeter with 60W incandescents on a dimmer. They produce a nicer light which is dimmable all the way down to barely-on, which is perfect for watching movies.

Re:like for like replacement wrong

[MightyYar]

Yes, I did such a thing in our bedroom. A dimmed-down incandescent uses so little energy that you rapidly approach a incredibly long payback time. Maybe I'll put in a mixed system in the renovated room as well.

Re:like for like replacement wrong

[AaronW]

I have several LED bulbs that dim beautifully. One decorative one I have will dim down to just barely glowing from full brightness (40 or 60 watt). I don't recall who makes it. The Philips ones I have dim nicely down to about 20%.

quality?

[Anonymous Coward]

Out of interest:

Do LED's emit a similarly ugly and harsh light as CFL's?

Any recommendations?

Used all kinds of CFL's from different manufacturers and, while some are better than others, none ever had a pleasing warm light, that feels comfortable to my eyes and for me generally. The only bearable one's are those behind some kind of closed lamp shade.

Re:quality?

[ArhcAngel]

The "ugly and harsh light" is described in the industry as Color Temperature. I'm not sure if it is a requirement to include but most bulbs come with a Color Rendering Index (CRI) rating. It's a scale from 0-100 (100 being a reference incandescent bulb) to rate the Color Temperature of a bulb. LED's are harder to quantify using this method however so a new method is in development called Color Quality Scale (CQS). Who knew a simple light bulb could be so complex? I found a really good read at Jason Morrison's web site with cool pictures and everything!

But to answer your question...it depends on the LED bulb. Since LED's come in several colors but white isn't one of them LED bulbs make white using a couple of different methods. So there are some LED's that have the same harsh temperature and others that are very close to the warm glow of an incandescent. Philips just announced a new process that will bring near incandescent quality with better efficiency (200 Lumens Per Watt (LPW)) than existing LED technology but it is still a few years from production.

Re:quality?

[dr2chase]

Here, some pictures worth quite a few words: http://dr2chase.wordpress.com/2011/02/26/led-color-rendering/
(From a similar discussion, here on Slashdot, about a year ago).
It's my opinion that the camera magnifies the differences, which means that the mixed LED case (cool+neutral+warm) looks really good to your eyes in practice. I think it would be good to fit some diffusers over the point sources, because sometimes you do get an "interesting" multi-shadow effect.

Here's what those same LEDs looked like in construction: http://dr2chase.wordpress.com/2011/02/20/undercabinet-lights-basement-kitchen/

I use a bunch of good-quality (*) neutral CREE LEDs under our kitchen cabinets, and that looks fine, and my better half does not complain (and she does note that most fluorescent bulbs look like shit). Here: http://dr2chase.wordpress.com/2008/10/19/more-undercabinet-lights/

(*) for a given manufacturer, so a "CREE neutral white" might be one of 2, 3, or even 6 different bins (I just checked across XML, XPG, XRE products).

Re:quality?

[boristdog]

Some do, some don't.

IKEA has some "inexpensive" ($10 each) LED bulbs (you can get various bases on them, too) that emit a near-incandescent type light. They only seem to be about 40W equivalent (they are not labeled as any equivalent) but 3 in a ceiling fan light fixture lights up a room nicely.

I'm about to buy some more to test in the bathroom fixtures to see how they hold up in the moist environment. CFLs suck at that.

Re:quality?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dunno, but I do know that LEDs are really good at emitting cold light. Makes you go "wow" when you're e.g. on a new train that uses LED lighting.
We've got LED T8 tubes in our basement, and they're soooo much nicer than the fluorescent tubes we had before. And the ones we got are prototypes from maybe three years ago, so I'm sure you could get even nicer ones these days.
Always got to shake my head when I'm inside a brand-new building that still uses fluorescent tubes.

Re:quality?

[tibit]

There's something to be said for T5 tubes in high-bay fixtures. You turn them on for the first time and it feels like going outside into full sunlight. Sure they get a tad dimmer after a while, but it's still a big win over legacy fluorescent.

Re:quality?

[psydeshow]

The "ugly and harsh light" is described in the industry as Color Temperature. I'm not sure if it is a requirement to include but most bulbs come with a Color Rendering Index (CRI) rating. It's a scale from 0-100 (100 being a reference incandescent bulb) to rate the Color Temperature of a bulb.

CRI doesn't measure color temperature; it's an indirect measure of the fullness of the spectrum given off by the bulb.

Color temperature tells you how reddish or bluish the light is -- does it look more like incandescent light (reddish) or daylight (bluish)?

CRI tells you how well the light given off by the bulb will allow you to see a range of colors. A CRI of 100 means perfect color fidelity. A CRI of under 90 or so and you will notice that some colors don't look right, because the bulb has dark bands in its spectrum. The CRI measuring process takes color temperature into account -- both warm white and cool white bulbs can have similarly high CRI scores.

For an example of extremely poor CRI, see low pressure sodium bulbs that used to be used a security and parking lot lights. Everything illuminated by them -- cars, clothing, faces -- looks either yellow, black, or dark purple.

Star Energy shapes up?

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess their approval process got a little more stringent after approving a gas-powered alarm clock.

MythBusters

[Saethan]

I, personally, consider the light bulb tests MythBusters did certification enough!

Radial distribution should not be a requirement

[Skapare]

"Also companies fall out because they don't have the full light distribution required. For example, with an 'A lamp,' you have to have, to get the full Energy Star standard, 170 degrees of radial flux or light distribution all around the product at generally the same intensity all the way around," he added.

This is just stupid. The light distribution needed should be a matter of application. Efficient lighting also means not wasting light in directions that do not need to be illuminated. Instead of the 170 degree standard, the bulb should be quantified to what degree of lighting coverage it does achieve, and must be marketed accurately.

Re:Radial distribution should not be a requirement

[TheRealMindChild]

Hold on there, Buddy. If the light distribution didn't have a hard number, you end up with something similar to TV sizes. Some 32" models are 32". Some 31.5. Walmart TVs are known to go lower than that even though it is illegal. Imagine buying a bulb, 5 different brands. There is nothing stating the minimum radial flux. One will be 170 degrees, another 160, and the value brand will be 100 degrees.

Re:Radial distribution should not be a requirement

[dywolf]

its supposed to replace an incandescent bulb, which does this by default without any special design. such bulds when they need directed typically put in a light ficture with a reflector of some sort. the idea is to make a simple drop in replacement that doesnt require a compelte design shift of the entire light fixture industry.

Re:Radial distribution should not be a requirement

[bws111]

Right. Not mention there are already different types of bulbs for other applications, such as flood and spot. Presumably those have different requirements than 'lamps'.

Re:Radial distribution should not be a requirement

[Will.Woodhull]

This is just stupid....

Agreed. Something here is stupid.

...The light distribution needed should be a matter of application. Efficient lighting also means not wasting light in directions that do not need to be illuminated. Instead of the 170 degree standard, the bulb should be quantified to what degree of lighting coverage it does achieve, and must be marketed accurately.

This is done already. When an application does not need the 170 degree (or greater) field of a Type A (general use) bulb, then one should consider using a Type R, Type PAR, or one of the other recognized bulb types. Choosing the wrong bulb for the application is definitely stupid.

TFA limits its discussion to Type A, which is appropriate for its purpose. It clearly says it is talking about Type A, although I can see that a speed reader might just jump right over that significant detail without noticing it. It is saying that in the Energy Star system, the omni-directional nature of Type A bulbs is now quantified (before LED bulbs there was no pressing need to do that).

Learn to read critically, people. There is more to good reading than just getting through an article in record time. Identifying significant details is also important, and in technical (versus pleasure) material, it is often critical. A good technical writer covers the subject in as few words as possible, which means every word is significant. If he says he is talking about Type A, then there is the clear implication that there are other categories that any reader with a working brain could google for if they needed to know more.

Re:Radial distribution should not be a requirement

[msauve]

No, it's not stupid at all. The article specifically mentioned that was a requirement for "A lamps," i.e. replacements for the common household incandescent bulb. Those illuminate is a manner similar to the requirement, which is specific to "Omnidirectional Lamps."

LED replacements for non-omnidirectional bulbs, like the common PAR floodlight bulbs, have their own requirements.

The requirement only applies to "lamps intended to replace existing standard electric lamps," and it's there to make sure an LED replacement produces a pattern of light similar to the bulb it's replacing.

That's no stupid, it's wise.

Re:Radial distribution should not be a requirement

[Skapare]

Intentionally replacing an incandescent bulb is still a design decision. Part of the waste of incandescent is the wide radiation pattern. That's why they do make spot light variations. And they should make LEDs like that, too. But with LEDs, it's easier to make spot lights.

Re:Radial distribution should not be a requirement

[Skapare]

Bulb "types" are still made around what incandescent happens to be. LEDs do not fit well into these models as the technology is different. The very same shape can do a variety of radiation angles in LED that incandescent could never do.

We need to be encouraging people to use, and manufacturers to make, bulbs that are more efficiently used. Dictating a radiation angle as part of efficiency is not the right way. Saying a given LED is equivalent to a Type A incandescent bulb just gets people to do things inefficiently as they have done before.

Re:Radial distribution should not be a requirement

[operagost]

It is a matter of application. An "A" bulb is a standard lamp designed for omnidirectional illumination. For example, the everyday Edison screw-type medium base bulb that goes in your table lamp is an A19. An "R" (reflector) is a reflector for flood operations in a relatively narrow angle, like in a recessed can. A "PAR" is a parabolic reflector, with an even tighter angle and used in floor lamps and cans. If you want focused operation in your application, you don't buy an A bulb.

Re:Radial distribution should not be a requirement

[lgw]

Feel free to invent a new bulb form factor, one more appropriate for LED lighting for a special purpose. No one will buy it, of course, because all the fixtures in their house are already built, but maybe you can also convince the housing industry to build differently to take advantage of your new form factor. After all, it's worth the cost to change the design for a $300k house in order to save a few cents of power each year, right?

Lighting is driven by fashion, not efficiency. Like most products, it's a matter of what people actually want, not what others say they should want.

Re:Radial distribution should not be a requirement

[Belial6]

New form factors might not be as hard of a sell as you think. I have notice that when it comes to LED, many of the big box stores actually sell fixtures that have the bulbs permanently wired in. The premise being that the bulbs will last the life of the fixture. So, those manufactures clearly believe that people will replace fixtures often enough to make a profit.

Re:Radial distribution should not be a requirement

[lgw]

Well, that's a good point. I think the important middle ground here is new fixtures that fit existing fixture form factors (some of which are quite flexible, but the "cans" are pretty specific), but with new bulb form factors. That's exactly what I'm looking for to replace the spot lights in my kitchen - I can wire up a new fixture in the same ceiling hole, but that's the limit of what I can easily change.

Remodelling the kitchen to use some new and better idea of how to light it, one that has only become possible with LED lighting, is simply never going to make sense on the basis of the lighting. Now, some year down the road that kitchen will eventually be remodeled, and if someone enterprising has created a new LED-specific fixture by then, so much the better. But that sort of change won't happen fast, that's for sure.

Re:Radial distribution should not be a requirement

[green1]

How about requiring that it meets whatever number the manufacturer advertises, instead of forcing a number on them?

If I have a pot light in my ceiling, I probably need less than 100 degrees, however if I have a table lamp I need as high as I can get. It's all about application, and as long as the bulbs are marketed accordingly, there's no problem with it.

Test to the stated rating, don't force me to use lights that waste energy in directions they aren't needed.

Re:Radial distribution should not be a requirement

[green1]

My wall sconces all take "A Lamps" they also only need to put out light through half their surface. Unfortunately things like this force me to use bulbs that waste energy by directing light in useless directions.

I'd love to find an LED bulb that only puts out light through one side and fits in a normal wall sconce. would almost double the efficiency of these fixtures. But despite being more efficient, it would never pass certification, so who would want to make it?

Re:Radial distribution should not be a requirement

[green1]

Pray tell, which bulb type is designed for wall sconce applications where light is only needed coming out one side of the bulb?

There isn't a standard for this, so they all use "A" bulbs. this means that we waste a lot of energy lighting up places that don't need light. But manufacturers can't fill that niche with even more efficient bulbs, because the certification says the light needs to be wasted?

The current bulb types are built around what an incandescent bulb could do. technology has improved, the standards haven't. We need to work around this. As long as the manufacturer is up front about the light emission pattern of the bulb, we should test to the manufacturer's claims, not an arbitrary number.

Re:Radial distribution should not be a requirement

[msauve]

..until you discover that you can't aim the bulb as you'd wish. There's only about 1/4 turn between contact and full tight with a standard E26 socket. So now, you need not just a lopsided bulb, but one that has its own aiming mechanism. Your fixture is also, if any good at all, designed to reflect light from the back, which would constitute a significant part of the light pattern. You may well find that acts to diffuse the light, reducing glare.

You'd do better looking for a different fixture.

Re:Radial distribution should not be a requirement

[Anonymous Coward]

Some 32" models are 32". Some 31.5. Walmart TVs are known to go lower than that even though it is illegal. I

[citation needed]

Re:Radial distribution should not be a requirement

[Anonymous Coward]

Test to the stated rating, don't force me to use lights that waste energy in directions they aren't needed.

Then don't be stupid enough to use a rating meant for omnidirectional lights, or try to force those that need a standard for omnidirectional lights to not have one. There are other ratings out there for directional lights and for ones that don't need to illuminate nearly the full solid angle of a sphere.

Re:Radial distribution should not be a requirement

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, just like the iPhone and its non-replaceable battery. Good capitalism, I suppose.

Re:Radial distribution should not be a requirement

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe that is why a lot of sconces are designed to handle type A bulbs from the start, as it wasn't always easy to find half reflecting incandescent bulbs either. Get a reflector that is designed to attach to the bulb afterwards, or find a better way to use the directional LED lights that are much easier to get.

Re:Radial distribution should not be a requirement

[Anonymous Coward]

Learn to read critically, people. There is more to good reading than just getting through an article in record time. Identifying significant details is also important, and in technical (versus pleasure) material, it is often critical. A good technical writer covers the subject in as few words as possible, which means every word is significant. If he says he is talking about Type A, then there is the clear implication that there are other categories that any reader with a working brain could google for if they needed to know more.

I agree wholeheartedly. Could you give a car analogy for me so I can understand it better? Thanks.

Re:Radial distribution should not be a requirement

[thegarbz]

But why bend over backwards to accommodate old standards? That's one of the big problems that holds back any technology. Attempting to create a drop in replacement for old equipment instead of creating a new way of doing things.

Reflectors aren't perfect. The reason many ultra bright LEDs emit in a kind of spot is because the encapsulation of the LED has a high refractive index and as such it's easier and more efficient to not attempt to radiate any light sideways. Instead we are now forcing an industry to attempt to overcome problems with internal reflections within the LED itself in an effort to make them radiate sideways all so we can then put a lossy reflector around them to emit again only a portion of the light downwards. It's absurd. Not to mention that many of the reflectors do what the LED bulb would do by itself naturally anyway so having it there is neither an advantage, but critically not necessarily a hindrance either. If anything it gives you another advantage as the light going upwards doesn't heat the reflector and thus concentrates less heat near the electronics.

If you're going to make a standard test that is only achievable for drop in replacements, at least advertise it as such and provide an equivalent standard for the new technology used the way it is intended.

Re:Radial distribution should not be a requirement

[thegarbz]

Feel free to invent a new bulb form factor, one more appropriate for LED lighting for a special purpose.

The ideal radiation pattern for an LED is a spot with between 30-70deg beamwidth. If you think this sounds remarkably similar to ceiling down lights then you would be right. A large majority of the Type-A bulbs actually are installed into fittings with reflectors. Also just because a fitting has a reflector doesn't mean it needs to be used. There's many lights on the market which are perfect drop in replacements for downlights in a variety of voltage ratings (allowing drop in replacement for 110/220V replacing old incandescents or CFLs, or for 24V for typical halogen lights).

These already sell quite well but they don't qualify for an energy star rating comparing them to an incandescent lightbulb due to a technicality in the specification. Apparently we should be wasting efficiency by radiating light sideways just so we can lose more efficiency by using an imperfect reflector to get the light back down. It's madness.

Re:Radial distribution should not be a requirement

[Anonymous Coward]

There are MULTIPLE SPECIFICATIONS including ones for DIRECTIONAL LIGHTS eg try https://www.energystar.gov/products/specs/node/238 the v1.2 specification

Re:Radial distribution should not be a requirement

[Skapare]

It's not about form factor. It's about lighting pattern. If you think that a form factor can only have one lighting pattern, then you are part of the problem.

Re:Radial distribution should not be a requirement

[Skapare]

The reflectors for incandescent lights are not 100%. They are pretty good. But there do exist lights in the Type A form factor that have reflectors built in. They do have some light coming out even wider than 180 degrees, but most of the light is within 60 degrees. These are not PARs. They have exactly the same glass shape and size as a Type A, but with a narrower beam (mostly).

Since LED "pieces" already favor the narrow beam, it would be natural and efficient to make LEDs in various bulb form factors with exactly that narrow beam, efficiently. Making the beam wider reduces the efficiency if the wider angles are not needed (except when installed in a quality reflector base).

Downlights are an excellent example. I have 2 of them. They fix a standard A-bulb, but have a lousy reflector (all the wrong angles). They waste light, and would do so with 170-degree LEDs, too. 60-degree LEDs would be about right.

The whole stupidity is that they are trying to compare what could be a good design, to what is typically a bad design, and give it a rating if it achieves the bad design. Sure, LEDs and CFLs will be more efficient at producing the same light pattern as an incandescent. But this is only encouraging inefficient methods of usage to continue, rather than allow the naturally more efficient usage of LEDs to be done where they work (probably near half the cases).

The light pattern should be a consumer choice. Consumers may use them stupidly for a long time. But consumers should have the option to use the correct pattern with an Energy-Start rating.

Re:Radial distribution should not be a requirement

[Skapare]

No one wants to force people to use a 60 degree light for an application needing a 170-degree light. What I do want is for CPSC to just stop being stupid and allow the Energy-Star rating for ALL angles of lighting that are market viable ... as long as the worthy technical issues are met. It would be acceptable to require the bulb assembly to actually perform correctly at the stated and marketed illumination angles. If it is marketed as a 100 degree pattern, then it should be pretty damned close to that.

This rating is for Type A bulbs. That's a bulb SHAPE (and implies an Edison socket). A wide range of fixtures are made for THIS type of bulb. Incandescent bulbs do exist with integrated reflectors to confine the normally very wide pattern to narrower beams that do improve the efficiency. LEDs should not be disallowed an Energy-Star rating because they try to meet the same markets (downlights being the biggest part, I believe).

Re:Radial distribution should not be a requirement

[Will.Woodhull]

The light pattern IS a consumer choice.

One of those choices is to use LEDs with their inherent limitations in existing fixtures. Other options are using the incandescents the fixtures were designed around, or CFLs. In many situations, despite the obvious inefficiencies, LEDs in existing fixtures may still be the best practice, at this time. The Energy Star rating is of use in determining this.

Nowhere in the article or in any other writing I have seen on the subject is it suggested that the Energy Star rating has any applicability outside of this narrow context (your posts being the sole exception, but an inappropriate one). And especially no one is suggesting that the E.S. rating be applied in any way to the design of the fixtures (except for your posts).

I imagine that you are thinking about selling a house that has lighting fixtures designed to take full advantage of LED strengths, and you also want to be able to say that all the lighting is Energy Star, just like the refrigerator, the oven, the water heater, and the furnace.

Too bad, you cannot do that yet. The Energy Star rating system is bogged down by reality and cannot expand as rapidly as your unbounded imagination. Sooner or later it may be extended to cover LEDs in fixtures designed for LEDs, but since some of the testing takes months to complete, don't hold your breath.

Re:Radial distribution should not be a requirement

[Skapare]

But these choices MUST also have an Energy Star rating if the genuine specifications are met. That is essential for people to know they are saving money and being green with their choices. CSPC needs to UNbog it if it is bogged down. Not doing so is a disservice to the public. They need to start NOW (well, Monday, April 15, 2013) for the very reason that these tests do take a long time. Later is not good enough. If they delay when the tests start, that's delaying when the results will be available. And that is the wrong thing to be doing.

Why light bulb form factor?

[XNormal]

If you are investing in a light source that will not need replacement for a decade then why, exactly, do you care so much about it being shaped like a light bulb?

LEDs don't like heat. Packing the equivalent of a 100W incandescent in a shape that pretty much minimized surface are to volume ratio is a very bad idea for heat dissipation.

LED light panels make much more sense.

Re:Why light bulb form factor?

[T-Bone-T]

All my fixtures are designed for light bulbs and they will certainly outlive any bulb. That's a pretty good reason for me.

Re:Why light bulb form factor?

[MightyYar]

Sure, if you are doing a new build or renovation. Some of us are stuck with old houses and old fixtures.

I'm slowly renovating an older house, and I'm looking into stringing low-voltage wiring to support LED lights without needing a power converter in every fixture or unit.

Re:Why light bulb form factor?

[mcvos]

But why does that have to remain the standard? You can get leds in much more varied and interesting shapes. Why should we stick to bulbs?

Re:Why light bulb form factor?

[T-Bone-T]

Because standards tell you that something will work and the current standard distributes light in a way that is useful in most cases. If you want to deviate from the standard and get some LED bulbs in interesting shapes, go ahead. I'm sure it will look great but hopefully the bulbs you use are somewhat common in case you need to replace them.

Re:Why light bulb form factor?

[mcvos]

Because standards tell you that something will work and the current standard distributes light in a way that is useful in most cases.

Not really. That's why there are so many fixtures that try to send the light in one particular direction (often wasting half of the light), try to shade it or modify it in some other way. Almost nobody likes a bare light bulb.

Re:Why light bulb form factor?

[Overzeetop]

Because

(1) you don't have to pay an electrician to remove and reinstall a lamp, but you do a fixture
(2) you don't disrupt the flow of business and it takes a shorter time to re-lamp than replace a fixture
(3) if you find that the LED sucks, you can go back to what you know works
(4) In 10 years, when one (or more) of the 30 year life fixtures dies and they don't make that model any more, I can replace a lamp and the fixture will still look the same. If I have to replace a fixture, then I have an oddball looking spot in my ceiling. Not everything is a warehouse where aesthetics mean nothing.

Oh, and there are a good number of older consumer fixtures which either (a) anticipate a certain light pattern or (b) actually use the lamp as the structure to hold the shade. I you think it's hard to convince people to buy a $20 lamp instead of a $1 one, it's even harder to get them to buy a new $60 fixture to put it in.

Re:Why light bulb form factor?

[Boawk]

If you are investing in a light source that will not need replacement for a decade then why, exactly, do you care so much about it being shaped like a light bulb?

Lamp shades that clamp on to the bulb itself?

Re:Why light bulb form factor?

[frinkster]

Sure, if you are doing a new build or renovation. Some of us are stuck with old houses and old fixtures.

I'm slowly renovating an older house, and I'm looking into stringing low-voltage wiring to support LED lights without needing a power converter in every fixture or unit.

Yeah, next month I'm moving into a new place and each bedroom will have a fully wired junction box in the middle of the ceiling. I have to provide the fixture.

I'm looking at LED fixtures and finding any useful information online is proving to be difficult. I see a lot of no-name Chinese stuff and I have no idea if it is good or if it is junk.

I see various stuff from names I recognize, such as Philips, but then you are looking at ~$500. I can buy a standard fixture and some LED bulbs for less than $100. If there is really some reason I should go for the LED fixture I would love to know it, but the info online is fairly useless for making a reasonably safe decision.

Re:Why light bulb form factor?

[Chris Mattern]

I'm not ripping out every light fixture in my apartment for some stupid panels.

Re:Why light bulb form factor?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are more than one standard for light bulbs. You care complaining about the one that is specifically meant for people trying to replace omnidirectional incandescent light bulbs. Instead of complaining that something is wrong with that standard, essentially telling people who want that shouldn't have a standard for what they want, why don't you instead go get a bulb that is made to a different standard, as there are several for people who want directional lights and/or different form factors? It is like complaining that a tire standard for cars won't suit people who drive large trucks... when there are other standards for truck tires.

Re:Why light bulb form factor?

[green1]

I have tried, repeatedly to find decent LED fixtures for my house. I have wall sconces and ceiling lights I would be happy to replace with LED fixtures. Unfortunately I just can't find any that fit my decor. The only ones available at my local big box renovation stores are LED versions of pot lights, beyond that there are VERY few available anywhere in the world, and none that I have found that aren't extremely ugly.

Lighting a wall sconce or ceiling light with a bulb providing a 360 degree radiation pattern is a huge waste. but until I can find another option, I'm stuck with it.

Re:Why light bulb form factor?

[dr2chase]

Have a look at some of the stuff at ledsupply.com. Their stuff tends to be good. Newer CREE (XPG, MKR if they've got it) is what you want, you need to take some care in heat sinking. They sell drivers, also, both DC/DC and AC/DC, some of them dimmable from an external signal, some of them (I think) dimmable from a wall dimmer. Here's an example of how you work with their stuff: http://dr2chase.wordpress.com/2011/02/20/undercabinet-lights-basement-kitchen/

Re:Why light bulb form factor?

[thegarbz]

The problem is the standard places a restriction on the bulb inside the fixture rather than the performance of the fixture with the bulb. There are a wide variety of bulbs available for fixtures which all will "work", but in this case the standard says to get energy star rating we need to radiate light sideways (hard for an LED to do without losing efficiency), just so we can reflect it downwards using an imperfect reflector (costing us another 5-15% of the light), instead of simply buying a light which radiates the pattern in we want when mounted in the fixture.

It's a poorly written standard which excludes perfectly suitable products from an application for no reason.

Re:Why light bulb form factor?

[w0mprat]

Because

(1) you don't have to pay an electrician to remove and reinstall a lamp, but you do a fixture (2) you don't disrupt the flow of business and it takes a shorter time to re-lamp than replace a fixture (3) if you find that the LED sucks, you can go back to what you know works (4) In 10 years, when one (or more) of the 30 year life fixtures dies and they don't make that model any more, I can replace a lamp and the fixture will still look the same. If I have to replace a fixture, then I have an oddball looking spot in my ceiling. Not everything is a warehouse where aesthetics mean nothing.

Oh, and there are a good number of older consumer fixtures which either (a) anticipate a certain light pattern or (b) actually use the lamp as the structure to hold the shade. I you think it's hard to convince people to buy a $20 lamp instead of a $1 one, it's even harder to get them to buy a new $60 fixture to put it in.

But even with the same socket type and it's dimension limitations why does it still need to be round and bulb like? A spherical bulb is the worst case scenario for heat dissipation, other shapes would perform better. Many LED bulbs have a cluster of LEDs often with some lens over the top of them. To me that allows a lot of freedom for heat dissipation considerations. But it's not a lack of imagination from manufacturers, they are just are playing it safe by assuming consumers won't accept odd shaped lights.

I find LED spots and floodlights have less of a problem as there is room for a heatsink. Yet MR16's get so hot it scares me.

Re:Why light bulb form factor?

[AaronW]

I agree. The thing is that with LEDs there is a lot more freedom in terms of design since you are no longer bound by the restrictions from a standard edison bulb or flourescent tubes.

Re:tl;dr: 9 month test required + uniform radial f

[X0563511]

I think by "radial flux" they meant uncollimated light. At least that's my first take when I read it.

Politics

[Anonymous Coward]

Anytime a company has a branding, they have some sort of partnership or business model that will result in them getting money. Even though many others surely would qualify, many have no interests in paying for the right to use somebody elses name on their own product. I would never do it either.

Re:Politics

[bws111]

Energy Star is a US government (EPA) program, not a company . You don't pay to get the 'branding'.

uncollimated light vs. collimated light

[girlinatrainingbra]

Yeah, but since they prefixed "radial flux" with "170 degrees", it sounded more like a description of "3-d angular subtend" of just under a half-sphere. Though considering that "laser diodes" also exist, the concept of collimated light certainly does make sense with "LED" light sources. I guess inferences aren't just based on context but also on the knowledge and reading history of the reader, too! Do you work with LASERs? (does anyone ever really capitalize all the letters in laser anymore?)

Re:uncollimated light vs. collimated light

[Pope]

Could we contain this radiant flux for later use, in some sort of storage device? I'm thinking of something much like a capacitor.

Re:uncollimated light vs. collimated light

[CaptSlaq]

Could we contain this radiant flux for later use, in some sort of storage device? I'm thinking of something much like a capacitor.

Well played, Mr. Brown... well played...

Re:uncollimated light vs. collimated light

[Anonymous Coward]

Could we contain this radiant flux for later use, in some sort of storage device? I'm thinking of something much like a capacitor.

Well played, Mr. Brown... well played...

Heavy.

Re:uncollimated light vs. collimated light

[X0563511]

No, not at all :)

However, I am an amateur radio operator, so I think about electromagnetic wave behavior more than the average joe. I might be a bit "beyond" the average ham as well, in that I consider light and radio to be the same thing (because it is) governed by the same behaviors.

Re:uncollimated light vs. collimated light

[Khyber]

"Yeah, but since they prefixed "radial flux" with "170 degrees", it sounded more like a description of "3-d angular subtend""

ITT people don't understand what a viewing angle is.

Re:uncollimated light vs. collimated light

[Anonymous Coward]

Could we contain this radiant flux for later use, in some sort of storage device? I'm thinking of something much like a capacitor.

Well played, Mr. Brown... well played...

I did some math ... it would work, but do you have any idea how much power it would take to start it!? More than a gigawatt!

Re:uncollimated light vs. collimated light

[SlashAdotter]

Speaking of which, where are the plutonium light bulbs they promised in 1985?

Look at the CRI of the bulb

[bigtrike]

You'll want to pay attention to color temperature and CRI. Warm white is about 2700K. A CRI closer to 100 gives you a better light quality.

Re: 9 month test required + uniform radial flux

[msauve]

I have no idea where the 170 degrees mentioned in the article comes from. They probably meant 270, double the 135 mentioned below, because it's assumed to be symmetrical.

The actual Energy Star requirements are for "Luminous Intensity Distribution," and call for:

Products shall have an even distribution of luminous intensity (candelas) within the 0 to 135 zone (vertically axially symmetrical). Luminous intensity at any angle within this zone shall not differ from the mean luminous intensity for the entire 0 to 135 zone by more than 20%. At least 5% of total flux (lumens) must be emitted in the 135-180 zone. Distribution shall be vertically symmetrical as measured in three vertical planes at 0, 45, and 90.

Re: 9 month test required + uniform radial flux

[girlinatrainingbra]

Thanks for the link to the actual requirements. Yeah, your interpretation makes sense. That article has a good topic and idea, but poor execution. (Ohmigodzilla, I'm thinking like a teacher grading essays now!)

Double helix.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Double Helix build as light bulb is wrong.
I can't open paint or something else to show you together with this post how it should work.

sidenote: you will be knocked-out or go in state of trance, if you do this with your body / mind.

no radiation output

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought they also tested leds for radiation

What about plants

[s122604]

I grow plants indoors. I have found that a mix of big-box-store available 6500k and 4500k CFLs work quite well

Does anybody have any experience growing plants under LEDs? Does it work?

Re:What about plants

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grow_light#LED

Re:What about plants

[smellsofbikes]

I'm starting my tomatoes under 10 Cree LED's mounted to a heatsink, with water-cooling on the heatsink running through a copper pipe in the water beneath the starts, so they get both light and heat. They're doing fine so far, is the best I can say: growing faster than last year's starts, which were getting full sun but no heat, whereas these are getting very indirect sun but 14 hours of LED per day. Because I'm a geek I have an arduino measuring/recording the temp of the LED heatsink, the water beneath the plants, and checking a realtime clock to decide when to turn things on and off, with control over the LED dimming (for overtemp) and pump speed (likewise). The Crees are cool white, putting out about 50 lumens each, which is a meaningless measure for growlights, but useful for comparison, I guess. Tomato starts at the edge of the array are growing much more slowly than the ones right under the lights (the LED's are packed all in one small array) so since the whole works is at the same temp, I presume that means the ones in the center are strongly benefitting from the LED light. If I did it again, I'd make an array that was planar rather than packed in at one point, for growing in a downstairs space with only small windows, but I'd stick with the single block of LED's for what I typically do, with them sitting in a south-facing window upstairs.

Re:What about plants

[dr2chase]

Yes. Yes.
http://www.ecaa.ntu.edu.tw/weifang/led/Effects%20of%20Frequency%20and%20Duty%20Ratio%20on%20the%20Growth%20of%20Potato%20Plantlets%20In%20Vitro%20Using%20Light-emitting%20Diodes%20--%20Jao%20and%20Fang%2039%20(2)%20375%20--%20HortScience.htm

Re:What about plants

[Anonymous Coward]

> I grow plants indoors.
> Does anybody have any experience growing plants under LEDs?
NASA

> Does it work?
I don't think they've tried it with pot, so unknown for your application.

Re:What about plants

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and the nice thing is for plant growth you have a few more options than for typical household lighting. Instead of using a small number of high power LEDs, you can use a large number of smaller ones on a large panel, which turns out to be more efficient electrically. Additionally, you can fine tune the spectrum for different plants, or even triggering different seasonal responses in plants. Some plants, like strawberries, can be coaxed by the color of light to go into either a growing phase or fruiting phase. That sometimes lets you save money by using single color LEDs instead of full spectrum ones too. This all depends on what you can find on the market, or if you have time to wire up something yourself.

Re:What about plants

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm designing a LED 'tile' for a growing experiment. In our case, we need a lots of blue (440-470nm) and red (650nm). I've seen other grow lights that add a few warm white (phosphour type) LEDs for additional wavelengths. I'm not a scientist myself, but my understanding is that the plants photosyntetic pigments are the most sensitive to these wavelengths (Photosynthetic_pigment).

Re:What about plants

[Kaenneth]

Well, it's obvious that most plants do not absorb green light (which is why they look green...)

Re:What about plants

[psydeshow]

I grow plants indoors. I have found that a mix of big-box-store available 6500k and 4500k CFLs work quite well

Does anybody have any experience growing plants under LEDs? Does it work?

Yes. LEDs work just as well as CFLs. Better in some ways, because the low heat of LEDs means you can get them much closer to the plants. You can effectively surround a plant with flexible LED strips for maximum coverage. And of course they are more efficient, lumens per watt.

They are also wickedly expensive. I've grown lettuce, tomatoes, quinoa, and peppers under LED as supplemental light in a sunny window, and the setup I used was close to $150. Roughly the equivalent of 60W CFL, but running at 20W. Cost-wise, you're still better off with CFL unless heat is an issue.

Re:What about plants

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude! judging by the care and attention you claim to put into those tomatoes, I think they should be some quite fine tomatoes to smoke... erh i mean putting in salads.

Re:What about plants

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember that for plant growth you only need red and blue light - so for max. effieciency you know what to do.

This is why LED lit plant lights look purple. eg http://www.lighting.philips.com/gb_en/application_areas/horticultural/news/20110627_newsarticle_more_efficient_plant_cultivation.wpd (apologies for yet another Philips advert).

Back in the day we had tuned fluorescent tubes that had a similar spectra (looked pink). Only issue is that a lot of people will assume you are growing pot, even if your interest is in growing freshwater tropical water plants..

LED bulbs suck...

[moosehooey]

I bought a number of different LED bulbs back when they were even more expensive (around $50 each). None of them lasted for more than a year or two. I think it was the power supplies, not the actual LEDs. And, they were in the open, not in an enclosed fixture, but they still got extremely hot. So if they only test it for the life of the LEDs, fuck 'em. They need to test the electronics too.

Re:LED bulbs suck...

[hAckz0r]

I too jumped on the bandwagon early, even before there was one to ride. I must have bought the first bulb offered from an electronics magazine. It must have lasted, all but 25 hours. The LED's were still good, but a tear down showed that the electronics failed, not a single LED. With a minor repair it was working again, for about another 15 hours. Epic Fail. It was a design issue. Cutting corners to lower the cost and maximize profit.

Overall the electronics is much more important than the lifetime of the average LED. Why? Because if a single LED fails you won't likely even notice unless you are inspecting the bulb looking for it. The light may decrease slightly, but the other LED's will continue to shine. When the electronics fails, the bulb is toast. Nothing will produce any light, and if designed/built incorrectly the electronics can start a fire. A single LED won't burn the house down, but a short conducting several amps from the 120v 20 Watt supply certainly can. Then its just a matter of how much flammable plastic they used in it. Cost savings there can kill.

Re:LED bulbs suck...

[green1]

many of the new bulbs you would notice if one LED failed, because they don't have many to start with. modern LED bulbs tend to use very few, high power LEDs and a diffuser cover.

That said, I've been relatively happy with my current LED bulbs, Philips 800 lumen dimmable 12.5W 2700k. good light colour, and they've lasted so far for a couple of years in enclosed fixtures on a dimmer (though the "dimmable" part is a bit of a fiction, they're still the best dimmable, non-incandescent bulb I've found)

Philips L-Prize

[Chirs]

They're harder to find than the normal "AmbientLED" ones, but the Philips L-Prize bulb has a CRI of 92 instead of the ~80 of most LED bulbs. Much more accurate colour spectrum.

there are other options

[Chirs]

You can buy rebranded Cree CR6 fixtures at Home Depot. These replace standard 6" ceiling pot fixtures, but rather than use a bulb shape they actually replace the bulb and ceiling trim too. This lets them put the LEDs on a flat circuit board and also lets them extend some of the heat sink down onto the ceiling to radiate away the heat rather than trapping it in the fixture.

I just bought 4 and the only complaint I have is that they keep their colour temperature when dimmed. I'd prefer that they shift to orange like incandescent bulbs.

We haven't been playing catch-up

[Khyber]

And Gizmodo has those interviews all wrong, because the interviewees aren't telling the full truth.

The REAL problem is the barrier to entry caused by Energy Star certification programs and other certifications. We're not playing catch-up; we're playing save-up so we can pay the exorbitant and outrageous extortion fees these entities are charging us.

Phillips little 22w LED ain't shit.

I can take two Cree MK-R, drive them at 6w, and absolutely utterly destroy any 100w CFL (and if Philips needs 22w to do what I can do in 12, well, you see the barrier to entry? I'm a small business, Philips has tons of money.)

And in reality, a single 6w-driven Cree MK-R destroys 100w incan/26w CFL/22w Philips LED, at 7000K CCT and a CRI of 93.

Tis okay, though. Phillips wins the interior lighting race. They still sorely lose on the horticultural side, and I'm way outperforming them across the globe (in actual tests, not sales.)

Re:We haven't been playing catch-up

[dr2chase]

Damn. I didn't know that was shipping yet as a product. And I see that they do the mixed-spectrum right on the die, and get very nice results.

Re:We haven't been playing catch-up

[Grizzley9]

And Gizmodo has those interviews all wrong, because the interviewees aren't telling the full truth.

A small bit of clarification, this is from Gizmag, NOT the juveniles over at Gizmodo. Not the same thing, but have an unfortunate similarity in name.

Re:We haven't been playing catch-up

[Anonymous Coward]

And Gizmodo has those interviews all wrong, because the interviewees aren't telling the full truth.

The REAL problem is the barrier to entry caused by Energy Star certification programs and other certifications. We're not playing catch-up; we're playing save-up so we can pay the exorbitant and outrageous extortion fees these entities are charging us.

Phillips little 22w LED ain't shit.

I can take two Cree MK-R, drive them at 6w, and absolutely utterly destroy any 100w CFL (and if Philips needs 22w to do what I can do in 12, well, you see the barrier to entry? I'm a small business, Philips has tons of money.)

And in reality, a single 6w-driven Cree MK-R destroys 100w incan/26w CFL/22w Philips LED, at 7000K CCT and a CRI of 93.

Tis okay, though. Phillips wins the interior lighting race. They still sorely lose on the horticultural side, and I'm way outperforming them across the globe (in actual tests, not sales.)

Re-run your numbers at the 2700K and 80 CRI that the Philips lamp is rated for, and don't forget to include thermal, driver, and optical losses.

I get ~1000 lumens for a 2700K Cree MK-R 80CRI package run at ~1.1A, so we'd need 2 of them to at least equal the 1780 lumens (measured) of the Philips A-lamp. At a Vf of 12V, that's ~13W per LED, so 26W of LED plus driver losses. For a 90% efficient driver, that now puts us at 29W, and a distribution that won't meet Energy Star. Derating to 1780 lumens assuming that everything decreases linearly puts us at ~25W for the Cree MK-R based approach, or abour 13% more power.

It's all in the engineering

[tibit]

There's a consensus of sort that power supplies are often the most underengineered things out there in any electronic device. Well, guess what, in a CFL or a LED the entire electronics are the power supply, there's nothing else. When a CFL fails, it's not because the bulb has failed, it's because the power supply is dead. It's certainly possible to engineer a power supply that will last, but such know-how is rare and expensive, and engineering management often doesn't understand that it takes real effort to make a long-lasting power supply. You have to qualify every single part, pretty much -- there's no such thing as letting the purchasing loose to get the best deal. If you want to make a CFL or a LED lamp that will last as long as the life of the light-emitting element, you need to do proper design, then qualify sample parts, then do extensive testing on prototypes, then purchase a batch of parts for a production run, then re-qualify all of those parts again, then have the boards assembled, then qualify the board assemblies, and only then you ship. That's what it takes to get a quality product out. That's what it takes to get a lamp out that will be so old by the time it gets replaced that the house might have changed owners a bunch of times in the meantime. Guess how it's done in real life on consumer CFL/LED bulbs, LOL.

Re:It's all in the engineering

[PRMan]

Given that my first bulb died after 10 years, I'm going to say they did pretty well.

22W is efficient?

[greg_barton]

In that case the 12W Nano Light will blow the Philips light out of the water.

Re:22W is efficient?

[Jarik C-Bol]

why don't I believe any of the claims that kickstarter is making? It just feels... like a scam....

Re:22W is efficient?

[greg_barton]

I guess we'll see when the bulb gets delivered. Only time will tell. And its not kickstarter that makes any claims, its the individual projects. I have gotten useful products from each project I've contributed to so far.

Re:22W is efficient?

[Jarik C-Bol]

my grammar betrayed me. I meant 'That' in the context of "that particular kickstarter project' I think i may have accidentally 'nouned' kickstarter.

Re:22W is efficient?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm... low price, low CRI, claimed high efficiency and high rated lifetime ... south korean manufacturer ... Seoul Semi LEDs.
Reply to that from anyone who has experience re. Seoul Semi datasheet claims vs reality and what passes QC there ... good luck.

Go Green with the 1KW 100watt replacements

[Anonymous Coward]

Why expose the world to all those chemicals, when you could upgrade your lighting to 1000 WATTS pure green clean energy?

How to go green in three steps

Step one buy a $450 bulb
Step two unscrew your old power saving 100 WATT bulbs
Step three screw in the 1000 WATTS pure green clean bulbs.

Philips

[DaveGod]

I don't know what is available outside the main UK stores, but I only buy the main model Philips energy saving bulb. From my limited experience they are the only ones that do not require a noticeable warm up, have a decent light, they last for a reasonable length of time and they're also extremely cheap at John Lewis. I hardly find any other bulbs that manage any two of those.

I'm not surprised if they are also leading on LEDs in the mass-market.

(No I do not have shares in Philips, but I criticise companies often enough so I'll commend where its due.)

not quite

[Chirs]

LED-based bulbs can use additional coloured emitters to fill in gaps in the phosphor spectrum.

I have some Cree CR6 bulbs and they use multiple colours of emitters to give a "white" light.

Re:not quite

[Khyber]

That's called ceramic recombination.

And those phosphors are far better than fluorescent phosphors.

See?

Re: 9 month test required + uniform radial flux

[Khyber]

The ES certification makes ZERO sense to those of us with real optoelectronics experience, for both human and horticultural lighting.

Energy Star can't even use photon flux density, the REAL SI unit.

The interpretation makes almost no sense given the totally differing methods various semiconductor manufacturers have.

And if you worked in this industry like I do, you'd see that.

It's a purely pay-for-play scam based upon the worst 'scientific' measurements ever conceived.

Speaking as a horticultural and interior lighting research director.

you're missing some factors

[Chirs]

The Philips 22W bulb needs to *replace a standard bulb*. That is, the complete unit including the power supply needs to fit in the space of a regular bulb, and it needs to radiate in a certain pattern. If you're not limited by the standard bulb form factor then a bunch of different options open up.

Also, your comparison with the MK-R are misleading. According to their web page, a single Cree MK-R uses 15W to put out 1800 lumens (which is what the Phillips bulb puts out). Only the 2700K/3000K versions are available in a 90CRI version, and the higher the CRI the lower the lumens/Watt.

Re: 9 month test required + uniform radial flux

[ColdWetDog]

Speaking as a horticultural and interior lighting research director.

Now that's a pretty impressive euphemism for a marijuana grower.

Re: 9 month test required + uniform radial flux

[g1zmo]

FTA:

There is no fee for applying for Energy Star certification, nor for using the label.

I have no such optoelectronics experience, but I am as skeptical and cynical as the next guy and curious about where the "pay-for-play" aspect comes in.

Rebates

[bill_mcgonigle]

Well, crap-ola on a stick.

I just bought six $20 bulbs from HD last week because there was a $10-per-bulb rebate slip on the shelf for any bulb over $15.

Looking at the fine print on the slip now it says, "Must purchase an Energy Star -certified LED or pin-based CFL fixture".

Hold on then, can this be? :internet: EPA has a spreadsheet - sorting by A-type size yields 98 rows:
 
:stupid slash filter won't let me post them:

In excerpt then:

The Home Depot EcoSmart LED A19 ECS A19 V2 WW
The Home Depot EcoSmart A19 LED Lamp ECS A19 WW V1 120

which matches the packaging, but there's no Energy Star label on the package. Phew.

FWIW, I was at the Big City HD yesterday and they had the new Cree bubs in, so I picked one up to try. I really like the $20->$10 HD lights, but the Crees look nicer ($13, not rebate eligible). Too bad HD won't sell those to me for $15.

Re:Rebates

[Algae_94]

I picked up one of the CREE bulbs at HD the other day. It was one of the day light (5000K) bulbs. It's a very nice and well functioning bulb at a great price, but I don't like the color spectrum it emits. It seems to be a very cool color to me. I'll have to try one of the warm white bulbs before I pass judgement on them.

My favorite LED bulb in use is still the GE bulb with cooling fins around the bulb. Unfortunately GE charges far too much for them ($50 at Target is what I saw the other day for a 60W equivalent). I don't have any lamp shades that clip on the bulb so they work fine for me.

The Philips bulbs are good, but I've only tried the older ones that are yellow when off. Those bulbs have a very warm color and have about a second delay before coming on.

Re:Rebates

[bill_mcgonigle]

The Cree I got is 2700 degrees. I think I actually prefer the Home Depot 3000 degree one, but it looks 'odd'.

Dropped phone = engineered failure

[raymorris]

Most phones, of course, get dropped. Therefore, if a phone is engineered to be destroyed by being dropped, that's a planned, engineered failure.

Remember the old Bell system phones with the cradle you set the handset in? The cradle was designed so that when you knocked the phone off the table, it wouldn't hang up. You could keep talking. If the same drop destroys a phone, it's engineered that way.

Re:Dropped phone = engineered failure

[MightyYar]

Well, yes and no. It's not "engineered to break" - it's engineered to be small and compact. That it happens to be susceptible to drops is an engineering tradeoff, not a design goal. There are rugged phones on the market, but they make up a small niche because they are bulky and awkward, or at the least, expensive compared to more dainty devices.

Re:Dropped phone = engineered failure

[Maxo-Texas]

It seems more like a choice to me.

1) Design it so it has a bezel to protect the screen.
2) put some silicone bumpers on the corners to protect it from falls.

An aftermarket case for my $600 phone cost me $6. If features of the case were designed in to the phone, they would add pennies to the cost. Without the case, my phone could be broken in one very short fall. With the case, my phone has taken at least a dozen 3 to 4 foot falls with no damage.

Re:Dropped phone = engineered failure

[MightyYar]

And the case makes the phone thicker, heavier, and uglier (subjectively).

Re:Dropped phone = engineered failure

[Maxo-Texas]

But it doesn't have too. You don't need much clearance on the bezel to protect the screen.

And everyone I know now has a case on their phone. Which has to be much bulkier than if protection was designed in. Just like everyone I know pays to put a screen protection film on their phones too.

It could come from the factory that way.

Re:Dropped phone = engineered failure

[MightyYar]

But it doesn't have too. You don't need much clearance on the bezel to protect the screen.

Then why are the rugged phones so much bulkier? They all look almost like a phone with a permanent case.

And everyone I know now has a case on their phone.

I know an even split. I'm currently no-cover, though sometimes I have one. Lots of young folks refuse to cover their pretty phone. Women often don't bother since they have it in a purse. It's rare to see Blackberry or slideout in a cover.

Just like everyone I know pays to put a screen protection film on their phones too.

I tried that crap once and it was horrid. Made the screen less responsive to touch. My wife has one integrated with her huge Otter case and it is thinner and better, but the matte finish makes the pretty iPhone screen look horrid.

It could come from the factory that way.

It could, but why would they do that when the rugged phone market is such a niche?

Re:Dropped phone = engineered failure

[thegarbz]

But it doesn't have too. You don't need much clearance on the bezel to protect the screen.

You need enough to absorb the impact of the fall. Energy is not wasted it is simply dispersed more slowly and the only way to do that is with a bumper of sorts.

Also you're talking about an industry which hails great achievements as shaving 0.2mm of the size of the device.

If you want a rugged phone, BUY ONE, they are available. Instead it seems that you too are favouring other features over ruggedness. Or buy a cover which works well. Either way the original point made still stands, this is not engineered obsolescence, but merely a sideeffect of a sexy looking product.

Re:tl;dr: 9 month test required + uniform radial f

[Anonymous Coward]

light distribution must be uniform radially for " 170 degrees of radial [sic] flux

Imagine a polar coordinate system at the base of the bulb. Take a flux measurement over a sweep from 5 decrees to 175 decrees of the polar angle. It's a description of activity and an end product rather than a physical unit.

Re: 9 month test required + uniform radial flux

[Anonymous Coward]

Energy Star can't even use photon flux density, the REAL SI unit.

What the heck are you talking about? Do you mean spectral flux density? Or do you have some issue with the SI unit lumens being used instead of something more directly in terms of the SI base unit like candela*stradian?

ZERO sense to t... horticultural lighting.

No shit. It is your fault if you use a unit calibrated to human eye sensitivity for a task that may have other sensitivities involved. You might as well complain the Scoville scale sucks because it doesn't work well for measuring how much alcohol is in whiskey.

But for tasks involved in human vision the lumen is quite well candela and derived units are quite well suited. And this is from years of industry work with a background in spectroscopy.

Lumens per Watt means nothing, if...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can't get lamps that are bright enough for the desired application.

LED's are fantastic for low light levels. Currently they are getting good enough for domestic use, replacing old 60 Watt incandescents.

But if you need a lot more light (industrial or outdoor) there are no LED based products available. Pack too many LED's in close proximity and they burn out very quickly because of inadequate cooling.

That's one thing that sulphur (or even halogen) lamps have no issue with. Hotter is better, for those lamps (within reason).

Re: Lumens per Watt means nothing, if...

[Anonymous Coward]

These LEDs are amazing in both industrial and office environments.

http://www.laurenillumination.com/

Re: Lead Solder

[SpaceManFlip]

Yeah, I always use real solder with lead in it if I'm building something or fixing something... unless I can't find any

Re: LED Bulb interference

[SpaceManFlip]

The current-generation LED bulbs actually have a pretty wide spectrum of RF radiating from them. The band they radiate in is able to interfere with broadcast TV in the VHF and UHF bands.

I read about that awhile back and forgot it, then a month or so later I installed a couple of LED bulbs in a room of my house close to my TV antenna... and I lost a channel in the VHF band.
Later on I remembered about the LED bulb RF emission problem, and I realized that my TV reception was impacted negatively by the LED bulbs I installed near it. So I moved my antenna and got my channel back.

VHF and UHF TV are not that relevant anymore, but some folks still choose the free option rather than pay for crappy limited expensive options from other providers, so this LED bulb interference could be bad as more people install them.

This is the best bulb I've found.

[Maxo-Texas]

http://www.amazon.com/Light-Lumen-Replacement-G7-Power/dp/B0064AE2K4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1365796844&sr=8-1&keywords=g7+led+bulb

The G7.

There are two reasons.

1: This bulb is set at 3000 kelvin.

It looks NORMAL like a regular LED bulb. I'm sorry but LED bulbs set at 2900k look either Pink or Orange to me and most the people i know. I'm sure that real incandescent bulbs are 2900 kelvin and the rest of the LED companies are trying to mimic them but it doesn't look right in LED.

2: This bulb is 900 lumens.

I know 850 lumens is supposed to replace a 60 watt bulb. But it doesn't for me. It seems dim. At 900 lumens, it seems a little brighter than a 60 watt bulb and I actually like that. I suspect 870 or 880 lumens would be the correct value for a perfect swap.

Downsides: I've never had it happen to me, but I've read that some G7's buzz.

I have approximately 12 brands of LED bulbs going in my house, including phillips. I use the phillips 75 watt in a fixture with a lamp shade. I have a 9 year old "40 watt" bulb which is really more like 20 watt on the porch-- it's always on.

I also find pretty good light (and they fit in cieling fans better) from the lights with the squashed disks. They do give light over a large area. The top is about 1/2" think and about 2" around. They also give a little more lumens than similarly rated bulbs. I have three of those.

I have some multiple fixture floor lamps that all the other random bulbs go into.

At this point, other than the "globe" fixtures in the bathroom, new bulbs going foward will all be G7's until I hear of something better.

I do also have some of the new 3500 kelvin CFL bulbs from Home Depot. I really like the light. It's "superwhite" but not "blue". But like all CFL's they seem to take 60 seconds to achieve full brightness.

I have an old random 75w CFL in my utility room.

I only have three incandescent bulbs left in the house at this point. Two globes in the bathroom and one standard 60w in the attic.

Re:tl;dr: 9 month test required + uniform radial f

[Anonymous Coward]

How the fuck do you know this shit? Aren't you a biologist? Or am I thinking of another poster? You've posted about 4 hours of fricking wikipedia bait for me and urrrgggg urge to learn new stuff...too strong.... damnit!! haha

Re: 9 month test required + uniform radial flux

[HornWumpus]

No. I'm a marijuana grower. Free sunlight. You've been able to see my farm on Google earth for years now.

Khyber is a true believer. I think he honestly believes solar cells on the top of a building will grow 4 floors of crops with LED lights. But don't bother him with discussions of solar cell efficiency.

Re:tl;dr: 9 month test required + uniform radial f

[quarterbuck]

Flux is the thing used to clean and cover parts while soldering. Maybe 170 degree radial flux means that the solderer must spread flux at least on his side of the PCB. Maybe the other side of the PCB is too difficult to reach without turning the assembly line around :-)

Alaskan here

[Firethorn]

I live where it's even colder: Alaska, previous North Dakota.

I'll admit, I don't set up CFLs outside. But I have installed them just fine in unheated garages. Even when it's -30F out, the normal response is a slow start up. Lasted for 5 years there, in the garage door opener slots so they would pop on every time I entered or exited the garage.

Unfortunately, recent CFLs seem to have taken a nosedive in quality, I haven't been satisfied with the last 2 packs I bought.

BTW, I write install dates on my bulbs, so I know how long they're lasting.

The more you know

[Zynder]

As you know people on /. will do all sorts of things to discredit posts and nitpicking small things to make you look ignorant. In an effort to repel these trolls, I have taken it upon myself to help other Slashdotters. I see you post on /. all the time so you may find this useful in a future article. Take my advice or not, it's up to you. I mean no disrespect.
When referring to the color temperature of a light source, the proper unit of measure is the Kelvin. The Kelvin does not have the word degree attached to it. So in your post, you bought a 2700K & a 3000K lamp (bulb is also not the correct term, fyi). Saying that you have a 3000 degree lamp, to most laymen, brings about an image of a lamp that is actually at a temperature of 3000 degrees! If a layman hears 3000K lamp, then they will either not know what a Kelvin is or they will know you are referring to it's color temperature. They will most certainly not think it's actually 3000 degrees which is the important part. If a professional hears a 3000 degree lamp, then they will just throw your statements out as bullshit (but at least they already know it can't be 3000 degrees!). You have a 4 digit ID so historically you're supposed to sound like one of the wise old wizards that everyone shuts up to listen to. I hope this helps.
Knowing is half the battle!

forgot the link

[Anonymous Coward]

Forgot the link http://www.molalla.net/members/leeper/L%20prize%20bulb.htm

Poor ROI

[nessman]

Bottom line is - most CFL's run about $1.50-2.00 nowadays. I've already made the investment in CFL's throughout my house several years ago - they all still work - and I'm not about to spend $20 for lightbulbs that aren't exactly omni-directional like normal type-A bulbs are. I have something like 35 light fixtures in my house, most of which have 60w equivalent CFL's in them now - it would cost $650 to replace all of them with say Phillips 60w equivalents (the ones with the orange lenses).

Annual power savings over CFL's is negligible. 12.5w for LED vs 13w for CFL. I'd simply never see any ROI.

We don't keep all of our lights on all day long. Just in the rooms we're in (and even with CFL's - I'm always yelling at the kids to turn the lights off).

Now - down the road, when CFL's start shitting the bed on me - and LED's are price-competitive with CFL's, sure - I'll go that route.

Re: 9 month test required + uniform radial flux

[VisceralLogic]

FTA:

There is no fee for applying for Energy Star certification, nor for using the label.

I have no such optoelectronics experience, but I am as skeptical and cynical as the next guy and curious about where the "pay-for-play" aspect comes in.

You still have to pay for the lab to test the product... then you can submit to the EPA fee-free to get certified.