Posted on 12/17/2007 5:23:48 AM PST by Libloather
Link only -
I agree that fluorescents are better.
But government mandates are insane.
There are versions of the fluorescent bulb that are dimmable.
I daresay all products have a 100% failure rate, but if you were using a normal CFL with a dimmer, it probably failed very quickly. You must buy the "dimmable" variety.
I've been using full-spectrum fluorescent bulbs and lamps for 12 years. I wouldn't use anything else. I prize them for their light quality, lack of heat, color accuracy, and ease on the eyes for reading more than anything else.
The economy and longevity (I usually get 3-4 yrs. from a tube or bulb) is gravy.
OTT-Lites .. they're the best.
The prices I’ve seen for daylight 100w equivalent CFs run about $14/bulb ordinary incandescents cost about $.50 so these are 28 times as expensive and since I’ve never had one last as long as 5 x they just are too expensive to make sense yet. The $1.50 ones from costco make sense, but not the $14.00 bulbs.
There are applications where fluorscents work well, like in closets, garages and storage spaces but NOT for close task lighting. Drawing or reading with them gives me a headache and the hum makes me crazy. We have a lot of them but I insisted my husband remove them from the bathroom.
I have a few halogens and like them. I hope the LED’s in development work as well and become cost effective.
Damn straight I am.
Maybe it's different in The Big City, but out here in "God's Country" you can bet your bippy people will be doing stuff like that.
This is the part of the world when during the Great Depression, Aladdin salesmen made a good living driving down country roads looking for houses that had dim yellow light coming from the windows, so that he could show them how bright his mantle lamp was.
Within an hour of where I sit, there are people without telephones, who use CB radio for communications.
Yeah, people will be doing this. When it's either "put some heating oil into the lantern" or "spend the dinner money on a chinese fluorescent light" you can be certain that they WILL be eating dinner.
The irony is that they'll only get that super-long-lifespan if you leave them on all the time. Each turn-on cycle helps kill them. The more frequently you turn them off and on, the sooner they'll die.
Plus, the fact that the ones with decent output (i.e., 26W and above) are VERY dim when first turned on (our living room, with SEVERAL of them in a ceiling light) looks like it's lit up by a 15W bulb for about FIVE minutes, until they warm up), means that people WILL leave them running all the time.
The "water-conserving toilet" metaphor is dead-nuts accurate. Instead of flushing a real toilet ONCE, the "water-saving" toilets use MORE water due to the need to flush multiple times. And, instead of turning a real bulb on -- when needed -- and off, when done, these things will NEED to be left running, because no one in his right mind is going to wait five minutes every time he walks into a room and flicks on the lights.
This is proof that "Supreme Soviet"-style centralized uber-statist command-economy does NOT work.
There used to be this thing called "liberty"...
He makes LBJ look like a piker.
Next year several car manufacturers will have them for headlights. Has nothing to do with glowbull warming, they are just better more efficient lights.
They are fantastic for BEAMED light applications, but they suck hind teat for general illumination applications (i.e., room lighting).
I have a 3W Rayovac 2/AA white LED penlight in my pocket. It is insanely bright. If I aim it at your eyes -- with your eyes closed as tightly as you can scrunch them closed -- you will NOT be able to tolerate the light. It's that bright.
If aimed at a reflectorized road sign in broad daylight from about 50 yards away, the sign will light up brightly. It's that bright.
But, if I unscrew the reflector, and try to use it as a "candle", it puts out less light than a real candle. It's that DIM.
These are very amazing sources of light -- and VERY specialized. Don't hold your breath waiting for usable, affordable, equivalent-to-real-bulb LED lighting.
Sort of. In a manner of speaking.
What there is, is a dimmable ballast. It is NOT "socket-compatible" with an incandescent bulb using a normal light dimmer. It's a special ballast, with a proprietary dimmer control. It's NOT something you can use to replace a bulb in a dimmer-controled socket (and that includes nearly all X10 stuff).
I have a 200 lumens CREE X-Lamp, 3.4v at 1 amp draw, it’s bright. You can get one similar a Lowes, it’s called a Task Force 2C CREE X-lamp 60x brighter — It’s about 150 lumens out the front and has a focusing optic. I modified mine with a newer more powerful CREE Q5 bin LED, should give 200-240 lumens out the front.
Focusing lenses, phosphor coatings and arrays help with the dispersion. You can design the optics and coatings for throw or diffuse light, just depends on how you do it. The new car lamps will use arrays, the new stop lamps use multiple LEDS in a socket. Dealing with light output is going to change with LEDS, just turning on a filament and wasting 95% of the energy isn’t a good idea. Most incandescence bulbs depend on phosphors to give the diffuse light, they call them softwhite, same with LEDs.
Today there are a lot of street traffic lights that are LED arrays. They cost a lot but the maintenance costs are much reduced since the replacement cycle is greatly lengthened. They just replaced all the ones in our city with LEDs. They are also doing parking garages.
One thing you can count on, as they ramp production, the LEDs will be cheap ... Semiconductor technology always works this way. Whether it will equal the incandescent cost, probably not because of the added electronics, but life cycle costs will greatly favor the LED. You should see 10-100,000 hours.
CFLs are a ridiculous solution, capered to LEDs.
I’ll have to make some room in my garage right next to the R-12 and R-22.
BTW, the Rayovacs (OEM'd by another outfit that sells to various other marketeeers) are the dirty little secret of the white LED flashlight world. They dollar for dollar the best thing going. Our two lights cost approx. $25 each, which is absurdly low for the kind of performance they deliver.
That said, neither of these LEDs are impressive at all when operated sans reflector. That light is amazing when focussed in a tight beam, but when spread out according to the inverse square law, it's visual evidence that current LED tech just ain't even close to prime time insofar as general room illumination applications are concerned.
For anything that needs spot illumination (i.e., over the stove, or tracklighting aimed at pictures on the wall) they'd do great -- but for lighting up the room, nope, not even close.
WRT traffic lights and headlights, it's the same scenario. In the first case, you're looking AT the LED(s). Even a 30ma 5MM LED can be seen at a great distance -- when you're looking AT the device. In the case of headlights, we're back to aimed/focussed/beamed light, in which the LEDs do excel. But neither of those applications acquit the LED as a viable room light.
One last comment, regarding the "100,000 hour lifespan" -- that's a big adspeekish, because LEDs are rated according to something like a halflife projection. Unlike most semiconductors, which are essentially "forever" devices (excepting defective units which suffer "infant death" in the first few hours of operation, and, unless subjected to abuse in the form of excessive voltage, current, or heat), the "Power LED" is not "permanent" (unless operated significantly below rated output).
At the 100,000 hour point, the device will still be tossing out light, but it'll be a LOT less light than when it was new.
There are three way fluors available.
Apparently for somewhat dismal values of "works":
Dimmable Compact Fluorescent Floodlight Redux
Have you used them? (Even if they did work better than reported, the price is too far into the nosebleed section for my pay grade.)
The phosphor coatings are getting a lot of play, especially in back-lighting of LCD screens. The technology is moving fast now, who knows what the next few years will bring. I have a project to use strip LED lights under the cabinets in the kitchen, the wife thinks it’s cool the way they light up the counter/floor/room with no heat. Heck all you need is a light sensor and leave them on all the time :-) -- May even run them on rechargeable AA batteries.
I don’t think reflectors are the way to go with LEDs, optics is where it’s at IMHO. With optics you can tailor the beam, a desk lamp is one application that fits, wall sconces and other area lighting applications are more likely first applications. I think in the not to distant future the LED 'bulbs' will be built in to the wall, roof or cabinet. Open the door to the cabinet and the LED comes on, provides a task light to see what is in the cabinet or even closets.
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