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Light Emitting Diodes: Lighting the way to a brighter tomorrow.
Hey all,
Light Emitting Diodes, or more commonly referred to as LED's, have remained, mostly, a hidden gem of electronic geeks enthusiasm everywhere. Since the "wonderful" (and I use that term sarcastically) movie from Mr Al Gore, green technology is becoming increasingly mainstream in today's society.
Don't get me wrong, I'm happy that Mr Gore's actions have jump started society into action, but as to why I sarcastically refer to his movie as "wonderful," pertains to his obvious lack of consideration for units, thus rendering his graphs, and vast majority of data presented, meaningless. That however, is a rant for another time.
Over the past few months, and myself being an earlier adopter of innovative electrical "stuff", I have acquired one of the most impressive light bulbs I have ever seen.
(Oh great, Light bulbs? Really...? Lame!) If this is what your thinking, you may stop reading now. Of course, this being a Geek's forum, I am counting on the chance that at least a few others may find my following analysis interesting. :^)
And now back to the point:
I'm sure many of your have adopted the "new" type of Compact Florescent light bulbs (CFL's) that are more efficient than standard Incandescent "Edison" bulbs of previous generations. What you may not be aware of, are the recent advances in LED bulbs that are rather shocking (and yes, pun intended).
As I mentioned before, after a 2 year waiting period, I've acquired something called the Geo Bulb. Here's why it's worth mentioning (and being an engineer, the facts will always be provided):
If you use a CFL bulb on an average of 12 hours per day, it will probably cost you a little less than $7 a year. Not so much eh? Multiply that by every single bulb in your home, and the total cost per year will amaze you.
The average sized CFL (40 watts) puts out about 400 or so lumens, which is respectable (1 lumen is the equivalent to 1 lit candle).
The Geo Bulb, what I'm referring to, will put out the same amount of light, for get this, 7.5 watts. This is the same as a 60 watt incandescent bulb that, based on the time frame stated above, will cost you about $31 per year.
It (the Geo Bulb) produces minimal heat, a promised lifespan of 30,000 hours, and uses less than $4 a year.
So why hasn't this kind of bulb hit the mainstream yet? Simple: Price. Despite the fact that the Geo Bulb will pay for itself in no time (assuming usage is less than 12 hours a day like pretty much every bulb in your household) first impressions are everything, and people get caught up by the storefront price of $120.
It's a whopping number, I agree, but it's meant to be an investment.
Here is a picture of the Geo Bulb.
I've tested the supplier's (C Crane) claims, and they hold true. While this won't be a mainstream product for a while yet, it is sure to excite the avid electronics geek.
Until next time,
- EE
(As a side note, if you read through this entire post, add me as a friend, if you aren't already. I'm sure we will get along)
Light Emitting Diodes, or more commonly referred to as LED's, have remained, mostly, a hidden gem of electronic geeks enthusiasm everywhere. Since the "wonderful" (and I use that term sarcastically) movie from Mr Al Gore, green technology is becoming increasingly mainstream in today's society.
Don't get me wrong, I'm happy that Mr Gore's actions have jump started society into action, but as to why I sarcastically refer to his movie as "wonderful," pertains to his obvious lack of consideration for units, thus rendering his graphs, and vast majority of data presented, meaningless. That however, is a rant for another time.
Over the past few months, and myself being an earlier adopter of innovative electrical "stuff", I have acquired one of the most impressive light bulbs I have ever seen.
(Oh great, Light bulbs? Really...? Lame!) If this is what your thinking, you may stop reading now. Of course, this being a Geek's forum, I am counting on the chance that at least a few others may find my following analysis interesting. :^)
And now back to the point:
I'm sure many of your have adopted the "new" type of Compact Florescent light bulbs (CFL's) that are more efficient than standard Incandescent "Edison" bulbs of previous generations. What you may not be aware of, are the recent advances in LED bulbs that are rather shocking (and yes, pun intended).
As I mentioned before, after a 2 year waiting period, I've acquired something called the Geo Bulb. Here's why it's worth mentioning (and being an engineer, the facts will always be provided):
If you use a CFL bulb on an average of 12 hours per day, it will probably cost you a little less than $7 a year. Not so much eh? Multiply that by every single bulb in your home, and the total cost per year will amaze you.
The average sized CFL (40 watts) puts out about 400 or so lumens, which is respectable (1 lumen is the equivalent to 1 lit candle).
The Geo Bulb, what I'm referring to, will put out the same amount of light, for get this, 7.5 watts. This is the same as a 60 watt incandescent bulb that, based on the time frame stated above, will cost you about $31 per year.
It (the Geo Bulb) produces minimal heat, a promised lifespan of 30,000 hours, and uses less than $4 a year.
So why hasn't this kind of bulb hit the mainstream yet? Simple: Price. Despite the fact that the Geo Bulb will pay for itself in no time (assuming usage is less than 12 hours a day like pretty much every bulb in your household) first impressions are everything, and people get caught up by the storefront price of $120.
It's a whopping number, I agree, but it's meant to be an investment.
Here is a picture of the Geo Bulb.
I've tested the supplier's (C Crane) claims, and they hold true. While this won't be a mainstream product for a while yet, it is sure to excite the avid electronics geek.
Until next time,
- EE
(As a side note, if you read through this entire post, add me as a friend, if you aren't already. I'm sure we will get along)
Comment
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Comment by Gabriel MICLAUS on April 16, 2009 at 5:39pm -
By the way, if you search for a powerful simple LED, you can find as 1-3w = $3-5, 5w = $6, 10w = $17, and a 9w replacement with driver for 110v = $56 (http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.11264).
For one dollar everithing, that is performance!
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Comment by Gabriel MICLAUS on April 16, 2009 at 5:29pm
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Last week found in Montreal at DOLARAMA - a shop with $1+ objects, a "LED Night Light Bulb" (Replacement bulb - Replace standard incandescent bulbs) using 7w and lasting... up to 14 years. For one dollar, just we see.
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Comment by Simon Spivey on April 14, 2009 at 2:48pm -
The orig. post sounds like it's comparing a 40W CFL to 7.5W LED to 60W incandescent, but a 15W CFL is probably closer equivalent to a 'standard' 60W incandescent. (at least the ones I've bought.)
I haven't yet found an LED that I'm totally happy with. The closest I've found in the affordable-not-designer category was a set of narrow (1/4"?) LED self-adhesive strips. They made fairly good under-counter lighting but too faint to use as room lighting. They were rectified--a lot of LED lights bug me because they're too flickery (off 50% of the time). I'd like to see better CRI on them as well, but I think all the warm-white are going to designer applications and the cheaper ones use those bug-zapper-blue variety.
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Comment by EEngineer on April 14, 2009 at 1:40pm -
@Simon: There are many types of CFL ranging from 15 W to 40 W. I did compare a valid mainstream CFL (produced by GE) and the LED bulb mentioned above. Incandescent bulbs are typically 60 W and higher.
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Comment by Simon Spivey on April 14, 2009 at 1:26pm
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I think the current (n.p.i) crop of LED lights are roughly in the same efficiency ballpark as CFL--the 40W vs 7.5W sounds like an incandescent-vs-LED or inc-vs-CFL comparison. As for the mercury, burning coal remains the greatest source of Hg.
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Comment by Robert Greenstreet on April 14, 2009 at 12:01pm -
I've found some LED lights at Costco and Sam's Club. I bought a package of 3 "40 watt" LED lights for $13.xx. I surmised that the "40 watt" claim was _way_ over-stated. As suspected, it turns out that claim _is_ absurd from a practical standpoint. However, I am now using 2 of these bulbs to replace small incandescent bulbs which must run 24/7. Also, I remember when CFL's first came out. They took forever to illuminate and their color was not pleasant at all (not to mention that their reliability was terrible). 10+ years down the road, however, CFL's are many times better than they used to be, in all respects. The brightness claims used to be ridiculous, but are now much more realistic. Over many years, I've found "green" technologies are extremely "iffy" when they are first introduced -- but if they are given a chance (over time), they often turn out to be very useful. I'm grateful for places like CCrane, but if the technology were to be introduced to the common marketplace, the prices would become far more affordable. I say, "Let's support new technologies to the degree that we can each afford to. BTW, if our gov. would get serious about solar and wind energy, 20 years from now, we'd wonder why we dragged our feet for so long. No new technology comes to market fully developed -- remember Windows 1.00? ;-)
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Comment by EEngineer on April 14, 2009 at 7:27am
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@Emmerich, I would agree with you that there is no way to replace all of your lights with the Geo Bulb. Infact i don't expect that product to hit the mainstream for several more years. I've only bought 1 right now and I don't plan on buying more until there's a price reduction.
@Dave: While your correct on the fact that CFL's do contain mercury, many people misjudge just how much is in the bulb. I'm not trying to downplay the dangers of mercury, however, there isn't enough for you, to get mercury poisoning if one was to break in front of you. Of course there is always a way to expose yourself to that small amount which would require you to lick the broken bulb, and if that is the case, I think mercury would be lower on your list of worries. :^)
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Comment by Emmerich on April 14, 2009 at 6:32am -
With all this talk about conserving energy and new lighting technology in the media today, I've been thinking about what I'm going to do when my lamp's light burns out. I think I will be getting a CFL. There is no way that I could afford the initial price tag of something like the GEO bulb. It would be much easier for me to stick with incandescent lighting and pay out an arm and a leg over time.
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Comment by Dave H. on April 14, 2009 at 5:52am -
They're efficient, yes, but the colour rendering's usually pretty poor: unlike incandescent bulbs which are full-spectrum sources, the CFLs and LED bulbs make their "white" light by mixing three colours (RGB, like a monitor!) that map to the colour response of the eye (do the CD-reflecting-at-an-angle trick, you'll see separate images in each colour, rather than the continuous spectrum you'd get from a real bulb) - fine for generating an image on a screen, but as their individual colour spectra have gaps, they don't reproduce the colours that they don't produce much light for very well when viewing olde-worlde printed / painted images. Another issue with 'em is that they flicker (too fast for the eye to see), so they can "strobe" moving objects and rotating parts can appear staionary - very dangerous around power tools!
CFLs have another downside, unlike incandescent bulbs (glass, tungsten and lead-free solder) that can be safely thrown in the trash, they contain significant amounts of mercury, a lot of interesting plastics made form non-renewable oil, and have to be handled as hazardous waste once they break...
As to the LED bulbs, there's likely to be an amount of Gallium Arsenide in the LED chips, also pretty toxic/hazardous!
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Comment by Amit Dahan on April 14, 2009 at 4:22am -
It looks so alienish :P I love it
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