A 12-watt NanoLight in white.
Posted on 02/06/2013 11:03:50 AM PST by null and void
NanoLight surpasses standard fluorescents and LEDs
It may look a little funny, but NanoLight is used to the stares. The futuristic-looking light bulb has an unconventional look big enough to match its unique energy-efficiency.
A 12-watt NanoLight in white.
The bulbs look a bit like a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle, all sharp corners and seams, because that’s essentially what they are: several small circuit boards with LEDs connected that are cut to fit together. The loose, interconnected design allows the bulb to dissipate more heat than a standard bulb while also directing light in all directions.
“Most bulbs are hidden away in enclosures and never seen,” say NanoLight’s creators, Gimmy Chu, Tom Rodinger, and Christian Yan. “The look should not be important. In certain installations though, we think the NanoLight is quite fitting, offering a unique futuristic look. We can’t wait to see what people do with them.”
Currently, NanoLight comes in 10W and 12W bulbs. While the 10W uses 50% less energy than a compact fluorescent bulb with the same light output, the 12W is NanoLight’s breakthrough product. The bulb generates more than 1600 lumens, equivalent to a 100W incandescent light bulb. That works out to a little more than 133 lumens per watt — about 200% more efficient than other light bulbs on the market.
10-watt black NanoLight in a desk lamp.
Despite its incredible efficiency, both versions of NanoLight stay cool to the touch even after hours of use. And, unlike compact fluorescent lights, the NanoLight achieves full brightness the instant it is turned on, eliminating the slow, flickering effect.
The project almost immediately surpassed its $20,000 goal on Kickstarter with more than 2,000 backers pledging over $100,000. Until March 8, you can add your pledge to the campaign. A 10W bulb is available for a $30 pledge, while the 12W version requires a $45 pledge.
Despite their success, Chu, Rodinger, and Yan continue to improve on NanoLight. They’re working with a graphic designer on the possibility of printing artwork onto the bulb and are also developing a dimmable prototype of NanoLight.
To learn more about NanoLight, visit the Kickstarter page. ■
I like it!
My Tiffany lamps wouldn’t appreciate these.
What is the ROI on this $45 replacement for a $1 100W incandescent? Will I live long enough to benefit from it?
LED’s ...or some sort of P-N-P junction
That depends on the future cost of energy and your expected life time under Obama care...
Who needs ROI when you will have the hipest bulb daddy-0. this like really swings ya dig?
So roughly speaking, if the 12 watt bulb lasts 6 months its paid for itself..although this may vary depending on how much time you have it on in a week and much electricity costs for you.
Id almost agree with you but a true bizzaro world appliance would make the room dark. but this does have the angles.
The ROI is excellent when your neighbors pay for it, and you get an exemption from the President in return for a small political contribution.
Did you notice the black bulb in the desk lamp fixture, hmmmm?
The bulb when produced for sale will cost $10 a watt!!!
I think I will wait until the cost comes down.
By the way when one LED goes bad do they all stop coming on?
Or do they just go out one at a time until they all expire?
Check your calculations, it’s $3.00-3.75/watt for the pre-production prototype.
I can do that math. Stand by.
Yes but I got rid of all my blacklight posters years ago. some were very Bizzare indeed!
No idea. OTOH, they expect a typical LED to last 25,000 to 100,000 hours. Roughly 3-11 years.
If AndyTheBear’s figures are correct, even at the low end it will have paid for itself 5 or 6 times over.
What they don’t say is effective color temperature or CRI. Are they warm, daylight, cool or what?
I get 23% per year in a 10 year analysis.
Assumptions:
1) KWH / Year: 1,142, Department Of Energy
2) Cost / KWH: $0.1153, Average U.S., ElectricChoice.com
3) Cost / bulb: $1 v. $45
4) Watts: 100 v. 12
Standby for a breakeven period.
An LED IS a P-N junction!..........
Payback Period occurs at about the end of Year 4, non-discounted cash flows.
That's for the hippie demographic, and CSI TV shows.
Assuming the bulb is on ~20 hrs a week?
22 hours per week, the U.S. Average.
Your mileage may vary. ;-)
I used the same calculator. 40 hours a week comes out to 5.7 hours per day, I put in the national average of $.11 per kilowatt hour. Your cost calculator said that the cost to run a 100 watt light bulb for a year was $20. If you had your 100 watt light bulb running 24 hours a day for a year... the cost would still be only $96.36. What figures did you input?
http://www.citytrf.net/costs_calculator.htm
I am a big fan of LED flash lights, but I don't think that they make good sense yet for interior lighting. But if Comrade Obama gets his way and out rates "necessarily skyrocket" they may pencil out better in the future.
and does the addition of the other P make it a PNP transistor or something like that.
I remeber some thing from basic tr theory at the NATC as Not Pointed in and Pointed in
The problem is not that the LEDs go bad one at a time, but that the Chinese electronics fails and the whole thing goes out.
It looks like one of these Chinese “cottage industry” products. They send out boxes of parts to peasants who hand-assemble them in their own homes. All twisting-wires and snap-together assembly, no soldering.
Hard to believe that mass mechanized production wouldn’t be cheaper, but the people have to have something to do, right? The LED’s are probably made at some factory set up by a Western company and these are just the ones that fell off of the back of the truck.
Changing the cube surfaces from 'white' to 'mirrored' would make a big difference in their 'look'.
Given your assumptions my numbers are in close agreement with yours. I get about 3.8 years.
Given the low end 25,000 hour estimated life, it would last about 22 years.
That would save you about $260 in energy costs assuming the current rates don’t go up.
Given Chinese manufacturing quality? You’d about break even...
I must be missing something somewhere (like brain cells, I'm told!). My kilowatt hour is 10.4 cents. A 100 watt bulb will burn a kilowatt in 10 hours. That's 10.4 cents (+ tax....). 40 hours a week would be 41.6 cents. Times 52 (for a year) would be $21.63. For a regular 100 watt incandescent bulb.
Did I calculate wrong? BTW, 75 watt is the brightest we use, except for porch lights. Normally, it's a 60 watter in each light fixture.
I should have said, “About the end of the fourth year in use”, which is exactly 3.793 years by my calculations. We disagree by 23 hours.
:-)
PNP & NPN are transistors. A single PN junction is a Diode.......
It’s great for applications when you want constant on - 168 hours per week.
It’s great for applications when you want constant on - 168 hours per week.
3.796848188 by mine.
Revised with an 8 hour "day"...it takes $25.40 per year for the 100 watt standard and $3.05 for the 12 watt LED...so we are looking at maybe 2 years rather than 6 months to get your investment back if the LED is around 45 bucks.
You’re living up to the accuracy of your name.
Being Uncle Miltie, my answer is close enough. The decreasing returns to the marginal effort applied to achieve more accuracy are not worth the marginal gains.
:-)
I bought the biggest LED light bulb in Home Depot to try out on my reading lamp. It was hideously expensive and didn’t put near enough light to read by.
Keep trying. Meanwhile, I’m sticking with incandescent.
Emp or brownouts will kill an Led quickly
The payback period is a lot faster than anyone’s suggesting, because no one’s taking into account the heat produced by incandescent bulbs, which requires costly air conditioning to remove.
I have a couple of hard-to-reach fixtures for which I will happily pay a premium for longer-lived bulbs. I switched to CFLs long before big brother told me to. I replaced the first one with a LED bulb six months ago. Would’ve done it sooner but the lumens were still too low. A 60 watt incandescent equivalent finally arrived in my neighborhood hardware store last fall, and the clerks tell me they fly off the shelf as fast as they come in. It seems I’m not the only cranky old man who will be happy if he never has to change another high light.
That’s why I stopped at 3.8 years originally.
These really save a ton of money on power costs. In addition to using these in lamps and ceiling lights we bought forty par 38 equivalent LED's for our museum replacing all of the 75 and 90 watt halogen's. Our $500 light bill went to $200. Now after three years none have failed. A savings of $300 monthly for 36 months? Do the math.... We spent $40 each. I suspect they will last ten-fifteen years.
I look forward to trying out these new products as well.
Are you sure that it is significant enough to consider? But moreover what about heating savings in the winter? And wouldn't hot weather which needs AC be correlated with more sunshine and thus less need to have the light on...so perhaps the incandescent bulb is on more often when the building has the heating system going than when it has the ac going.
That first photo looks exactly like it was cobbled together out of pegboard.
Maybe some places. Not where I live.
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