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New Crop of LED Filament Bulbs Look Almost Exactly Like Incandescents
An anonymous reader writes A recent article posted on a green building site gives a detailed analysis of a creative new kind of LED bulb that has been popping up Europe and Asia over the last year. They look almost exactly like Tungsten filament bulbs, require no heat sink, and offer extremely high efficiencies in the 100-120 lm/W range. The article describes their construction, compares them to conventional LED bulbs, and describes the result of a report by the Swedish Energey Agency that analyzed the performance of several brands of these these bulbs on the European market. Particularly interesting are links to teardown videos.
Is it 3D printed? No.
Is it the Internet of Things? No.
Is it Elon Musk? No.
How can anyone think this will work?
Someone needs to use this tech to make fake nixies, they'd look great.
We have a bunch of these--had to mail order them, since they aren't available at retail yet. They look very realistic, and produce a nice warm light. I wouldn't want them for my only lighting, but compared to the old fake edison bulbs, they are fantastic--no stupid excess of heat, and much more efficient.
Eh, we got a bunch of LED lightbulbs on discount through our power company.
Compared to compact fluorescents, they're pretty nice... less fiddly without the ballast issues and dimmable. The light appears warmer and flicker-free.
Compared to incandescents, they use a lot less power, and feel a lot less fragile. Haven't had one burn out on me yet.
I suppose if I wanted to use it for heat, I'd prefer an incandescent or halogen bulb.
I've only killed 1 LED bulb so far.. Well wounded is more like it...
It spent 6 months in a sealed shower light fixture before it started to flicker after it was on for 10-20 minutes.
I moved it to a desk lamp and it's happy there.. Another LED is in the torture box and doing fine.
If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur. --Red Adair
I heat my house with incandescent bulbs. Until LED's can do the same thing, I will never switch. What kind of an idiot would switch to a less efficient method of lighting AND heating their house?
Forget those new fangled light bulbs, I still burn whale oil to light my house. A little pricey to import from Japan, but well worth the effort in the end.
These are really cool. But it did make me chuckle when the article talked about how current LED candelabra bulb in particular are quite ugly. The candelabra bulbs were made to (poorly) mimic the shape of candle flame, and now we are attempting to mimic that imitation because we have gotten used to the way it looks :)
I'm gearing up for phase 2, which involves replacing 4 or 5 of the big CFL tube bulbs with LED replacements. The current tube bulbs are at least that old, too. I'm going to have to rewire a bunch of ballasts to put the new LED lights in. The LED tubes in the store put out easily as much light as the CFLs they're replacing. So, um, maybe you just have shitty power or something.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
They look almost exactly like Tungsten filament bulbs
In my house there are three consecutive rooms: one with an incandescent bulb, the second with a compact fluorescent and the third one with a LED light. I asked my kids which one they prefer and to my surprise, they both chose the LED light. Then I bought a somewhat "warmer" LED and put it in the corridor next to the white LED room. As an old timer, I prefer the warmer LED. Not my kids. They describe it as artificially yellow and again to my surprise they choose the whiter LED.
The only reason we prefer the ugly yellow hue from indandescents is because we are used to i. It isn't "warm", its sucky. Same with thing happened when gas lighting was first replaced by incandescents: people pined for the soft orange glow of gas lights but within a few years people realized how bad that hue was.
My kids, young and unencumbered by tradition prefer the LED lights. So will everyone else rather soon, as we slowly transition to whiter more sunlight-like hues that are now possible with LEDs.
cost about the same as incandescent light bulbs?
Over time, they should end up costing less. Unless you don't pay for your electricity.
Cree for the higher lumen stuff, and Ikea (dunno who makes theirs) for the 200-lumen stuff.
Both the Cree and Ikeas I get are 2700k, and trust me on this.. I was a huge tungsten snob, it's all about the color temperature.. I bought the LED lie hook line and sinker.
All of mine are opaque (soft white) and when they're in the fixtures, they're indistinguishable from the tungsten.
My power draw for my lighting (all-up) was around 550 watts. Now it's around 56. (both figures calculated by totting up all the wattage from all the fixtures)
There's also a knock-on effect, the LEDs run so much cooler I suspect the AC runs less. Maybe not a lot less, but any less is welcome.
The only thing I haven't LED-ified is the home cinema, due to the lighting requirements there it's all MR-16 mostly 10* 20w spots on a dimmer, rarely run them brighter than 50%. For now I refuse to give these up.
Oh the bathroom is also still tungsten. Four huge 25w globes. These new filament-type LED may just the thing to LED-ify the bathroom.
And yes.. I've also noticed a lack of bug-attraction with LED, as evidenced by the two 1000-lumen LED monsters in the garage. Barely any bugs wander in. A moth maybe. A bee, once. But nothing near the bugstorm induced by my very brief fling with CFL. Very brief. Like 2 days. I hate them. Hate hate hate!
LED FTW
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
I know you are joking but there are more efficient methods of heating than resistive heating. Namely heat pumps.
I actually agree - it's useless legislation. LEDs are so much more efficient, and so much longer lasting that they are quite capable of phasing out incandescent lamps without regulatory help. With the economy of scale and decreasing manufacturing costs, it won't be long until LED lamps are almost at price parity with incandescent lamps, which means the latter won't be manufactured except for a few decorative purposes. It's one of the rare times where the invisible hand is actually working as advertised.
waiting for a good price point
I don't know how much these cost where you live, but where I live I can get LED bulbs at Home Depot from $6 to $20 depending on quality and brightness. They have an expected lifetime of 20+ years, and I don't have to change the light in that time. To me, this is a no-brainer and I've been buying LEDs for my whole house.
In fairness, I know that the power company where I live is subsidizing the bulbs, and absent the subsidy they would cost more. But it seems likely that you might be able to buy subsidized bulbs where you live too.
Also, I just checked the EarthLED web site, and without asking me where I live, the site showed me a deal: $100 for a 20-pack of LED bulbs. I've never heard of the brand ("Euri") but surely you could pay $5 per bulb for something that will last so long?
I like the Cree TrueWhite bulbs and I pay extra for them. LED bulbs tend to be a bit too yellow, so Cree developed a "notch filter" that takes out some of the yellow from the light, correcting the color. But now the light is a bit dimmer since some was taken out; so Cree puts a few extra LED modules into the bulb. Result: same amount of light, better color, consumes a little more power but not too much more.
I have also replaced all the 48-inch fluorescent fixtures in my home with Cree Linear LS4 fixtures at 3500K color temperature. Wow, it's so much nicer light and completely silent. Totally worth it.
If you are using incandescent bulbs, and you replace your most-commonly-used ones with LED bulbs, you will save enough money on electricity to pay for the new bulbs within a reasonable time. If you already have compact fluorescent bulbs, and you don't mind their light, then LEDs aren't guaranteed to pay for themselves right away and it might make sense to keep waiting. Otherwise, go for it.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Going with your numbers, the 40W bulb costs about $5.48 in electricity per year, the 4W $0.55. So factoring in the cost of the bulb initially, after year 1 the cost is: $6.28 to $12.55; year 2: $11.76 to $13.10; year 3: $17.24 to $13.64. After just three years you saved almost $4 by going LED. So, if the LED specs are true and they last 20 years you would end up paying $104.95 for the 40w vs $22.42 for the LED (and that includes the initial cost of the bulb).
Also note I didn't include the replacement cost of the 40W, as it would most likely burn out a few times in 20 years but you get the point.
LED's have other positives: no warm up time, dimmable, low heat generation, no electric hum and I don't need to climb a ladder to replace a burnt out one every few years! The last one is my favorite.
Same here. I don't have a single CFL or incandescent left in the house except for the light that is in my oven and the lights in my bathroom heatlamps. The one in our stairwell is on 24/7. I have not had a single one flicker or dim let alone blow.
I replaced all our light fittings with sealed unit flush mounts. They cost me $25 AU from a retail store. I went for day light white though rather than the yellow, takes a little getting used to but now I would struggle to go back to warm white.
This is where I'm at as well, although I may just replace the fluorescent fixtures themselves with ones designed for LEDs.
My first LED bulbs were installed in April 2011. I saved the box and receipt because I wasn't sure they'd last. Since then I've been gradually replacing the (often crap) CFL bulbs with LEDs. I've yet to have an LED bulb fail. I've even started replacing our three way incandescent bulbs in the torchieres with 3 way LEDs because the tech has won me over - sure they're pricey, but three way bulbs are more expensive anyway and don't last long at all.
Except for the kitchen (where the fluorescent tubes are) we're pretty much converted.
Oh, and at Costco I can get three packs for under $15 right now.
#DeleteChrome
I actually agree - it's useless legislation. LEDs are so much more efficient, and so much longer lasting that they are quite capable of phasing out incandescent lamps without regulatory help. With the economy of scale and decreasing manufacturing costs, it won't be long until LED lamps are almost at price parity with incandescent lamps, which means the latter won't be manufactured except for a few decorative purposes. It's one of the rare times where the invisible hand is actually working as advertised.
I'd be surprised if LED's are ever as cheap as incandescents, a few year back I bought a bulk pack of bulbs - I paid around 35 cents/bulb, and the 100W bulbs were the same price as the 60W bulbs.
LED's have many more components than a light bulb, and are more difficult to assemble.
There's still a large number of people who just don't like LED's or CFL's... and some even claim that the high efficiency halogens just aren't the same, it could take decades for those people to make the switch to LED's without legislation that makes it more difficult and more expensive to purchase incandescents. If even 1 out of 100 people want to stick with incandescents, that's over a million households in the USA alone, still plenty of room for economies of scale to keep prices reasonable.
Your theory is that eventually a transformer and rectifier and a semiconductor, will be about as cheap as a wire filament? Or that humans are particularly good at spending their money in the present to save more in the future?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
ditto for CFL, what a boondongle forced on us by ignorant legislatures and "progress social" morons who value symbolism over substance. What I really hate is the the one in six that put out a 7.5KHz or so shrieking noise, that's worse than the bad light and uneven lifespan
I'd be surprised if LED's are ever as cheap as incandescents, a few year back I bought a bulk pack of bulbs - I paid around 35 cents/bulb, and the 100W bulbs were the same price as the 60W bulbs.
LED's have many more components than a light bulb, and are more difficult to assemble.
One thing to consider is total cost of ownership, and over the lifetime of an LED, you would have bought somewhere between 30 and 100 incandescent bulbs.
Another thing to consider is that the one LED will use about 1/8 the power of those incandescents, so unless your power is free, you're now looking at 240-1000x the total operating cost for incandescents compared to LED's.
My next-door neighbor has very little money, so back in 2009 she bought a big SUV because it was $1200, compared to $3000 for a subcompact... and then couldn't afford the gas to get to work. People are really lousy at looking at anything other than the initial purchase price.
A third thing to consider is that as fewer people buy incandescents, the cost of maintaining tungsten-drawing machinery and other lightbulb-specific manufacturing equipment is going to rise. Vacuum tubes are hard to make well, and while we have a century of experience in doing so, silicon is dirt cheap and getting cheaper.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Don't you mean there are cheaper methods of heating than resistive heating? Because as far as I can tell, resistive heating is 100% efficient. Incandescents convert some fraction of the input energy to visible light. Almost all of the rest is emitted as heat. And if there was no light emitted, a resistive element is nearly 100% efficient.
No, he means more efficient:
In electrically powered heat pumps, the heat transferred can be three or four times larger than the electrical power consumed, giving the system a coefficient of performance (COP) of 3 or 4, as opposed to a COP of 1 for a conventional electrical resistance heater, in which all heat is produced from input electrical energy.
Translation: If your heating is all electric, with resistive heating you get a watt of heat per watt of electricity. With a heat pump you get more that one watt of heat per watt of electricity.
Which is a pretty nice failure mode instead of losing the entire bulb like before. Anecdotally that's meant a shift to scheduled maintainance where the lights are inspected and the ones in worst condition replaced instead of having to rush out each time an entire halogen bulb goes. It will be interesting to see a real comparison to find out if that's really the case.
It's expensive wire.
Tungsten.
Very high melting point, very high strength and a bit of effort to go from ore to wire.
You don't have to look at Wolfram Alpha to get the first idea about Tungsten.
I find it interesting that there are sound engineering reasons behind this shape, not just the retro look. The filament shape solves the 360 degree light distribution of most LED lamps but raises the issue of how to cool it effectively when not in contact with a heat sink. Helium has a much higher heat conductivity than air and moves the heat effectively to the envelope. Holding the helium for years without leaking is difficult requires something more gas tight than plastic. Forunately, there are many factories for glass bulbs that would otherwise be closed due to the decline in incandescent lamp sales. The technology for the glass envelope and sealed leads is a result of many years decades of development and probably would not have been worth the investment just for this purpose but these factories are already there with trained personnel and fully depreciated equipment.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
CFL were forced on us by legislation
No, CFL is just one of the options. The choice is between CFL, LED and halogen. And LED is clearly starting to take over the CFL market after just a few years.
Because an incandescent bulb is natural? I didn't know they grew on trees *eye roll*