# LEDs are not replacing fluorescent until these conditions are met



## Handlobraesing (Nov 12, 2007)

The greatest users of fluorescent lamps are still commercial and institutional facilities. They care a lot about payback period and long term cost.

CFLs are getting more common in homes, but they were not selling too well when they cost $10-20. Now that they're $1-2 ea in a 6 pack, they're making their entry to homes. 

LEDs are not going to penetrate into home market until they match the performance of CFLs and if people didn't really pay $10-20 for CFLs, you can't expect them to do so for LEDs.

Both fluorescent and LEDs have an advantage over incandescent, but LEDs are not going to prevail fluorescent until:


Stand behind 50,000 hours rather than saying 50 to 100K hours. Fluorescent lamps are available in as much as 46,000 hr life at 12hrs/day cycle. 46,000 is less than 50,000 but the BIG difference is that they're protected under warranty for as long as 4 years. http://www.nam.lighting.philips.com/us/ecatalog/fluor/pdf/p-5794.pdf

Be able to do something highly attractive for general lighting that fluorsecent can't. The fluorescent lamp replaced incandescents for their ability to last tens of thousands of hours and be as much as five times more efficient. You also have to keep in mind that going 100w to 20w would have much more appeal than going from 20 to 10W.

The above merits are consistent with both short and long term economic goals. If you reduce the power use of fluorescent lamps from 32W to 16W by doubling the useful efficacy, you save $10.512 per year at 12hrs/day and 15 cents/kWh, so the alternative could not cost over $10.52/year/lamp per year of operation and cost of replacement must be included.

Going from 160W incandescent to 32W fluorescent saves $84.096 per lamp per year under same conditions, so you have much greater allowance for installation expenditure.
For LEDs to have advantage over fluorescent, the cost should break even in about 3 years and continue to save for years to come.


----------



## knabsol (Nov 12, 2007)

LED technology must give a much larger benefit than efficiency or cost compared to other lightsources. Like when the LED technology comes to where you get pretty much free hands with its shape. Maybe a roll of paperthin high efficiency, high power lightning sheet, that can be cut in the preferred way for an example.


----------



## James S (Nov 12, 2007)

LEd's in the US will start to take off when a couple of things happen like you say, but most importantly will be the increase in efficiency and availability of the warmer white colors. Our european brethren may prefer the cooler colors, but in the US it's the "soft white" that sells the most units, like it or lump it.

My prediction for the first major penetration of LED's in the US lighting market will be in a portion of it that they are beginning to explore now. The small to medium sized spotlight. As a replacement for the MR16 style and size spot light in commercial applications especially.

If you look around when you go out there are literally bazillions of MR16 and MR11 bulbs in every commercial space and restaurant. I was sitting in some nice upscale chain italian place a couple of weeks ago and I counted 70 dimmed to about 40% MR16 style track lighting fixtures just withing seeing range of my table. This is the perfect market for the LED fixtures to go after. They dont have to be really bright, but they do have to have a warm color as opposed to a cold color in that atmosphere would be all wrong.

I would be very surprised if the bigger chains of places like that aren't watching the technology and will start replacing their lamps when the price comes down and the power supplies can accept being on a dimmer. And though Feit electric have come out with 12v MR16 CFL replacements as well as some other small lights along the same lines, they are floods, they have a cool color, and they cannot be dimmed. (not to mention they are still above the $10 price mark) in general CFL's do not currently have valid offerings in this niche.


----------



## IMSabbel (Nov 12, 2007)

Handlobraesing said:


> stuff



All of this can become 100% invalid if somebody gets the right amount of design and marketing to work together.

Make some flatscreen equivalent of a normal lighting fixture, hype it with i-pod styling and ads, and the result might be a success even disregarding every single of your points.

You always have to consider that people dont buy things because of rational reasions.
They are sheep driven in by ads, marketing and groupthink.


----------



## jtr1962 (Nov 12, 2007)

Most of your analysis is based on linear tubes. Anyway way you look at it, we would have been better off pushing linear tubes for homes instead of CFLs. The best way to do this might have been at the builder level by mandating installation of linear fixtures when a house is built. However, for whatever reason people for the most part haven't used linear tubes in their homes. What LEDs would really be competing against are CFLs. CFLs are creating problems of their own in terms of disposal and even fire danger due to various failure modes. The reason for this is mainly because of the drive to make them low-cost. One reason they had to be low-cost is simply because their lifetime is fairly short compared to linear tubes and especially LEDs. Economics favor higher-cost LED replacements simply due to the higher lifetime of LED. A properly-designed LED lamp can replace 10 $2 CFLs. Therefore, if the CFLs are economic enough for people to buy now at $2 a piece, they will certainly buy LEDs at $20. However, long-term I feel we can make decent LED replacements for way less than $20, perhaps as little as $5. Besides energy savings, LEDs have several advantages which would make extra cost over CFLs worthwhile. They can last much longer. They will probably use less than half the energy for a given light output. They will be dimmable, come up to full-brightness instantly, work well in cold weather, and are immune to frequent starts. They are also unbreakable-a significant advantage in a home with children.

I agree it may be much longer before commercial users switch to LEDs. The economics of linear tubes more than suit their needs for now. However, CFLs are a suboptimal solution. It won't take much more on the part of LEDs to replace them. Longer term I'd like to see purpose-built LED fixtures both for home and commercial use so we can get rid of the screw-in bulb mentality once and for all. One thing LEDs should be able to eventually do are offer adjustable color temperatures in the same fixture. We've never had a light source which could do this.


----------



## jtr1962 (Nov 12, 2007)

IMSabbel said:


> Make some flatscreen equivalent of a normal lighting fixture, hype it with i-pod styling and ads, and the result might be a success even disregarding every single of your points.


Exactly my lines of thought. People are used to obtrusive, IMHO ugly, light fixtures but LEDs offer the possibility of having virtually flat lighting. This would be an easy sell, especially in places with low ceilings. Show them how much better a room looks without hanging or domed lighting all over the place, and they'll switch in droves.


----------



## jtr1962 (Nov 12, 2007)

James S said:


> LEd's in the US will start to take off when a couple of things happen like you say, but most importantly will be the increase in efficiency and availability of the warmer white colors. Our european brethren may prefer the cooler colors, but in the US it's the "soft white" that sells the most units, like it or lump it.


I'm not sure I entirely agree here. 3500K seems to be the fastest growing segment of the CFL market now that people realize these things can be made in non-incandescent like shades while still offering decent color rendering. What hurt the sales of cooler CFLs was the poor color rendering of the earlier ones. People automatically associated cool lighting with the greenish light typical of cool-whites. Since these things usually end up being done in baby steps, my guess is once people get used to 3500K, a significant number will probably start wanting to go to 4100K and 5000K. This is doubly true if some of the energy savings associated with going to CFL and LED are used to increase lighting levels somewhat. When you think about it, everyone's eyeballs are the same. There's a good reason most of the rest of the world prefers cooler lighting-it's closer to what your eyeballs were designed for. I suspect also long-term studies may even end up showing that incandescent-type lighting causes eye problems, thus giving yet another reason to give it up.

Here again LEDs offer an even better possibility-adjustable color temperatures. There may be no need to have multiple lamps to cater to individual tastes if you can make a single lamp which can be adjusted from perhaps 2500K all the way up to 7500K. That would cover just about everyone.


----------



## jtr1962 (Nov 12, 2007)

I forgot to mention that another market wide open for LEDs are those small-base chandelier-type bulbs. There has yet to be a satisfactory, dimmable, reasonable cost replacement for those. Since the output these bulbs run from roughly 200 lumens (25 watt) to about 700 lumens (60 watt), this should be an easier market for LEDs to replace than large-base bulbs. Right now a single Cree XR-E running at less than 1000 mA can replace a 25 watt bulb.​


----------



## James S (Nov 12, 2007)

I actually was grouping 3500k with warm white  I like very much my 3100 and 3500k lights, I dont buy 2700k lights except where I am replacing a single 60 watt bulb, but in larger arrays the cooler temps up to 3500k are wonderful. As a single 60 watt bulb in the room a 5500k lamp sucks. It's certainly true that the middle of the road bulbs are selling well compared to the cool white ones, and thats good but there is still a huge market for warmer light that isn't going away. When you're used to MR16 track lighting dimmed to 40% in a restaurant, you simply can't replace that with an LED at 5500k, it's too big a change and people wont like it. In my kitchen 3500k beats 2700k hands down but thats a totally different application.

And I also agree completely about candelabra bulbs! The CF ones currently available suck and they are a huge market that hasn't been well served yet by any alternative.


----------



## Handlobraesing (Nov 12, 2007)

jtr1962 said:


> I forgot to mention that another market wide open for LEDs are those small-base chandelier-type bulbs. There has yet to be a satisfactory, dimmable, reasonable cost replacement for those. Since the output these bulbs run from roughly 200 lumens (25 watt) to about 700 lumens (60 watt), this should be an easier market for LEDs to replace than large-base bulbs. Right now a single Cree XR-E running at less than 1000 mA can replace a 25 watt bulb.​



Aesthetic and mood dimming aren't so easily approached. There's more going on than reduction in flux when you reduce the output. Dimming electronic ballast for fluorescent lamps used in commercial buildings to adjust for daylight and such where electricity cost is high simply goes up and down in flux. 

Mood and home dimming goes down in efficacy, color temperature and flux. It would look very objectionable if the chandelier is dimmed at the same color temp but just gets dimmer instead of having the tampering color temp. It would take computer controlled RGB based setup to mimic this. 



jtr1962 said:


> Most of your analysis is based on linear tubes. Anyway way you look at it, we would have been better off pushing linear tubes for homes instead of CFLs.



They are pushing linear, U-bent and and also fixtures specifically designed for CFLs. Even if the CFL fixture is no more efficacious in bulb-lumen-to-watt, they're usually more efficient as the fixture is designed to give more light output ratio as they're designed for it rather than incandescent bulb.



> The best way to do this might have been at the builder level by mandating installation of linear fixtures when a house is built. However, for whatever reason people for the most part haven't used linear tubes in their homes.


Now adays, 2' x 2' 2x F32T8U or F17T8 based fixtures are getting common.



> What LEDs would really be competing against are CFLs. CFLs are creating problems of their own in terms of disposal and even fire danger due to various failure modes. The reason for this is mainly because of the drive to make them low-cost. One reason they had to be low-cost is simply because their lifetime is fairly short compared to linear tubes and especially LEDs.


I thought the number one reason for needing to be cheap is the consumer psychology if seeking the low initial cost? Ballast failures aren't so uncommon on integral ballast cheapy CFLs. A CFL setup with externally mounted matchbox ballast with end of lamp life protection(that turns off the lamp instead of creating a hazard) fares MUCH better. These ballasts, often costing as much as $25-30 are often the programmed rapid start, preserving the lamp much better even though it may take a second or so before any light is given off. 



> Economics favor higher-cost LED replacements simply due to the higher lifetime of LED. A properly-designed LED lamp can replace 10 $2 CFLs.


High quality Hungarian or Dutch made lamps like the Philips & GE G24q base CFL lamps that requires an external ballast cost more than $2/ea whole sale.

How do you suppose they're coming up with CFLs with integral ballast for $1/ea RETAIL? Despite the long term cost savings, consumers just didn't want to plunk $10-15 ea on a CFL. You can make the LED lamp claim 50,000 hours, but if it costs $8 while the CFL costs $1, then you'll have tough time marketing to the consumer. 



> Therefore, if the CFLs are economic enough for people to buy now at $2 a piece, they will certainly buy LEDs at $20.


Doubtful. Consumers don't think of long term cost like commercial & institutional users.



> However, long-term I feel we can make decent LED replacements for way less than $20, perhaps as little as $5. Besides energy savings, LEDs have several advantages which would make extra cost over CFLs worthwhile. They can last much longer. They will probably use less than half the energy for a given light output. They will be dimmable, come up to full-brightness instantly, work well in cold weather, and are immune to frequent starts. They are also unbreakable-a significant advantage in a home with children.


People don't leave light bulbs laying around for kids to play and the fixtures are made of glass, so that's a moot point. By then, linear fluorescent could be competing fiercely with CFLs as well. 



> I agree it may be much longer before commercial users switch to LEDs. The economics of linear tubes more than suit their needs for now. However, CFLs are a suboptimal solution. It won't take much more on the part of LEDs to replace them. Longer term I'd like to see purpose-built LED fixtures both for home and commercial use so we can get rid of the screw-in bulb mentality once and for all. One thing LEDs should be able to eventually do are offer adjustable color temperatures in the same fixture. We've never had a light source which could do this.



Have you noticed cooler temperature linear lamps are becoming more common? You can find 5,000 & 6500K 32W T8 lamps are both HD and Lowe's now, not 3 years ago. Fluorescent lamps are available from ~2700 ish to 8,000 ish. Adjustable color temperature is possible using multiple lamps of different color temps by switching them or dimming them independently.

Again, it means something that fluorescent 4' lamps are available with four year warranty where as 20 times more expensive LED gimmick is only warranted for a year.


----------



## James S (Nov 12, 2007)

> Consumers don't think of long term cost like commercial & institutional users



This one does 

But the reason is not the same, it's not that consumers are cheap, it's that consumers don't get to amortize their purchases of things like that over years to help their tax base. So while it may make sense for them to do it, it doesn't show up on their shorter term books as good.

And consumers are suspicious. We expect the crap to fail early and the warranty to be bogus. So we dont actually count that much against the price. We've been burned too many times by purchasing the extended warranty that turned out to be a scam.


----------



## jtr1962 (Nov 12, 2007)

Handlobraesing said:


> Mood and home dimming goes down in efficacy, color temperature and flux. It would look very objectionable if the chandelier is dimmed at the same color temp but just gets dimmer instead of having the tampering color temp. It would take computer controlled RGB based setup to mimic this.


So you're basically saying by dimming people are actually doing it to imitate candlelight of some sort, and not to just lower the light levels? Given that standard incandescent is already quite yellow, I would think dimming would make them worse to the point where color rendering of blues, purples, or greens is close to zero. And this is actually desireable as opposed being an unfortunate artifact of dimming incandescents? If candlelight or worse is what someone is after, we can pretty much do that now with amber and orange LEDs while saving heaps of power. No need for RGB or computer control. I can't for the life of me see why anyone would want to create such an atmosphere, though. I like to actually see my food, and anything which might be crawling around it, when I'm eating out.



> Now adays, 2' x 2' 2x F32T8U or F17T8 based fixtures are getting common.


In homes? Not on this side of the pond, as much as I wish it were so. And 4-foot fixtures still offer better efficiency and more importantly more choices of tubes. I've found the selection of u-tubes and F17T8s limited, and the cost relative to 4 footers high. Still, I'll gladly take any increased use of linear fluorescent in homes over what we have now.



> I thought the number one reason for needing to be cheap is the consumer psychology if seeking the low initial cost?


This is because of poor math education levels and also poor consumer education. It wasn't always so. I tend to think cheap CFLs have made the situation worse. Now if someone comes out with LEDs which really do last 50,000 hours, the consumer will be suspicious after their poor experience with cheap CFLs. It would have been better all along if we had made quality CFLs, and simply taxed incandescent lamps to level the playing field. Or better yet simply banned the sale of screw-base bulbs entirely, forcing people to switch to purpose-built fluorescent fixtures which in the end save way more than they cost.



> People don't leave light bulbs laying around for kids to play and the fixtures are made of glass, so that's a moot point. By then, linear fluorescent could be competing fiercely with CFLs as well.


True, but even adults do occasionally drop them. That happened to me a few times thanks to my carpal tunnel syndrome. In one case I dropped a 4-foot tube. It would have been nice not to have to worry about these things breaking.



> Have you noticed cooler temperature linear lamps are becoming more common? You can find 5,000 & 6500K 32W T8 lamps are both HD and Lowe's now, not 3 years ago. Fluorescent lamps are available from ~2700 ish to 8,000 ish. Adjustable color temperature is possible using multiple lamps of different color temps by switching them or dimming them independently.


Yes, I've noticed. They create a much more pleasant atmosphere than either the cool whites or neutral whites they usually replace. A local grocery store went from 3000K to 6500K. Huge difference. The store looked small, cramped, and dirty with the 3000K. The new tubes made it look airy and clean. It would be the same thing going to these color temps in a home environment, unless of course dirty, dingy, and cramped is the effect the person is trying to create.


----------



## brickbat (Nov 12, 2007)

jtr1962 said:


> ...Or better yet simply banned the sale of screw-base bulbs entirely, forcing people to switch to purpose-built fluorescent fixtures which in the end save way more than they cost...



No, not better.

I pray you never win political office holding this view. Like most other Americans, I believe I am quite capable of making up my own mind about what type of lamps I'd like to use to light my home.

Don't get me wrong, I fully understand the cost benefit of high efficiency lighting, but I'd like its use in my home to be MY choice. 

As energy costs rise, people will switch to more efficient lighting of their own accord.


----------



## jtr1962 (Nov 12, 2007)

brickbat said:


> Don't get me wrong, I fully understand the cost benefit of high efficiency lighting, but I'd like its use in my home to be MY choice.


A decision like this ceases to affect solely you once we either need to build more powerplants, or start having rolling blackouts. Believe me, I'm all for letting everyone do whatever they want so long as it doesn't affect anyone but them. That's one reason I'd get rid of our drug laws immediately if elected. So I'll add one caveat-you can keep your incandescent bulbs if you use solar panels to power them. Then it doesn't affect me at all.



> As energy costs rise, people will switch to more efficient lighting of their own accord.


I certainly hope so. If more people already made the switch, we might have more and better choices available to us right now. Try to find residential linear fluorescent fixtures, especially with dimming ballasts, in most lighting stores, for example. Instead, almost everything is still bulb-based.


----------



## brickbat (Nov 12, 2007)

Let’s skip ahead a few years to life in the JTR state…

Dear old grandpa Jones goes to the store to get a replacement lamp for their home porch light fixture. Only lamps meeting the new JTR standard are now sold, so he buys a lamp, brings it home and screws it in the socket. A few days later, it’s a cold winter evening and Grandma is off to her evening church meeting. On her way out, she switches on the porch light so she can negotiate the icy steps to the driveway. But it’s so dim (as some CFLs are on a cold start). She slips and falls on the steps, and is knocked out. Grandpa, sitting in front of the TV doesn’t know what happened. After an hour, Grandma sadly succumbs to the sub-zero wind chill just a few feet from the front door.

Sad, eh? Implausible? I’d say no.

As the legislator responsible for the JTR energy saving bill, how do you explain to the grandchildren how your bill is helping them out?

Point is, do-good legislation, like the JTR energy saving bill, always has unfoerseen consequences.


----------



## jtr1962 (Nov 12, 2007)

brickbat said:


> Let’s skip ahead a few years to life in the JTR state…
> 
> Dear old grandpa Jones goes to the store to get a replacement lamp for their home porch light fixture. Only lamps meeting the new JTR standard are now sold, so he buys a lamp, brings it home and screws it in the socket. A few days later, it’s a cold winter evening and Grandma is off to her evening church meeting. On her way out, she switches on the porch light so she can negotiate the icy steps to the driveway. But it’s so dim (as some CFLs are on a cold start). She slips and falls on the steps, and is knocked out. Grandpa, sitting in front of the TV doesn’t know what happened. After an hour, Grandma sadly succumbs to the sub-zero wind chill just a few feet from the front door.
> 
> ...


So does doing things the same old way. What if it was an incandescent and burned out while grandman started walking? And how many people each year are killed or injured slipping on ladders changing incandescent bulbs which need to be changed way more often than CFLs? Or burned for that matter, either in fires started by the lamps or changing them out? I got a nice burn on my arm two weeks again changing out one of those $%$^&$$#@ small-base chandelier bulbs. If I owned this place instead of my mom, those damned chandeliers would have been replaced with linear fixtures ages ago. And won't LEDs solve the problem of not coming to full-brightness instantly? I specifically mentioned that. I *don't* think CFLs are a particularly good solution. At best they're an interim, half-baked idea to carry us over until something better comes along. It's looking more and more like LEDs will be that something better, certainly in the several years from now time-frame you mentioned.

The problem with CFLs (and to some extent screw-in LED bulbs) is that you're trying to shoehorn something to fit an existing fixture designed for an incandescent bulb. That's bound to lead to design compromises. Given that most of the incandescent fixtures sold these days are cheap garbage which needs to be replaced every few years anyway, I think purpose built fixtures make more sense. That's what I would legislate. So a more likely scenario would be when the bulb burns out the next day grandpa buys a new LED fixture because no screw-in bulbs are available, either him or a neighbor or an electrician put it in, and grandma never has to worry about tripping outside again. Her grandchildren will be her age before the LED fixture becomes dim enough to need replacing.

I'll repeat what others have said-left to it's own devices capitalism will only produce the crappiest, least safe solutions to any problem unless legislation requires them to do otherwise. If not for regulations, cars wouldn't have airbags or even seatbelts standard. In fact, they probably wouldn't even have brakes. I don't think a bit more regulation in this area is a bad thing. Truth is I'd like to see lifetime regulations even more than efficiency regulations. 750 hours for a typical incandescent bulb is just ridiculous. That's about 2 months in a 12-hour per day cycle in an outdoor lamp.


----------



## Handlobraesing (Nov 13, 2007)

jtr1962 said:


> So you're basically saying by dimming people are actually doing it to imitate candlelight of some sort, and not to just lower the light levels?



Creating mood is a big part of dimming. If you were simply reducing the light level, the chandelier would simply need to have a receiver that controls a series of relays/triacs to change the number of banks of lamps turned on and have it controlled by a wireless transmitter(like a ceiling fan controller)This method reduces light output and power consumption proportionately and doesn't introduce harmonics caused by the typical dimmer. When you actually DIM them, you reduce the output by half, but power consumption by something like 20%, because light bulbs become less efficacious when under-driven.



> Given that standard incandescent is already quite yellow, I would think dimming would make them worse to the point where color rendering of blues, purples, or greens is close to zero.


Don't ask me why, but color rendition of any black body radiator is 100 regardless of CCT. 



> And this is actually desireable as opposed being an unfortunate artifact of dimming incandescents? If candlelight or worse is what someone is after, we can pretty much do that now with amber and orange LEDs while saving heaps of power. No need for RGB or computer control. I can't for the life of me see why anyone would want to create such an atmosphere, though. I like to actually see my food, and anything which might be crawling around it, when I'm eating out.


People do care about mood. This is why nice restaurants are usually lit with lower color temp incandescent. Fast food restaurants are lit up like an office, so you can see everything on food.



> In homes? Not on this side of the pond, as much as I wish it were so. And 4-foot fixtures still offer better efficiency and more importantly more choices of tubes. I've found the selection of u-tubes and F17T8s limited, and the cost relative to 4 footers high. Still, I'll gladly take any increased use of linear fluorescent in homes over what we have now.


F17T8 and F25T8s are available in every single color offered for F32T8, just not yet stocked by Lowe's/Home Depot. The selection of 32W lamps was just as limited not long ago. 

Also, 2 and 3' as well as U-tubes are not cost prohibitive to have them shipped to home in small quantities unlike 4' and 8' tubes. 

Unusual fluorescent lamps are no less available than LEDs. They can be ordered in just like LEDs. 



> True, but even adults do occasionally drop them. That happened to me a few times thanks to my carpal tunnel syndrome. In one case I dropped a 4-foot tube. It would have been nice not to have to worry about these things breaking.


You can't stop them from breaking and causing the product to not work anymore, but the shatter-guard coated stuff prevents the glass from getting everywhere. 

You can't guarantee that LED based emitter cluster won't become inoperable from dropping either. 

If you drop a plate/glass, it will likely break. If you crash your car, it will get damaged. Compared to these things, the fragile nature of glass objects that needs to be handled very infrequently is the least of concern. 

If you're so worried,then you might have to switch to plastic ware, stop driving and take the transit. Then to prevent head injuries from falling, it's not a bad idea to wear a helmet walking to the transit system. 

(helmet, as stupid as it sounds, is really not a bad idea when you have ice-slick sidewalks and roads in places where people aren't used to freezing weather)



> So a more likely scenario would be when the bulb burns out the next day grandpa buys a new LED fixture because no screw-in bulbs are available, either him or a neighbor or an electrician put it in, and grandma never has to worry about tripping outside again. Her grandchildren will be her age before the LED fixture becomes dim enough to need replacing.


LEDs are not self-regulating so it needs a constant current driver. Other than the means of starting, such a driver is more or less the same as an electronic ballast for fluorescent. As such, some LED drivers will fail just like ballasts and computer power supplies. LEDs and its driver are no cooler running than fluorescent system for the same given power, so they'll still suffer heat accelerated failures. 




> Truth is I'd like to see lifetime regulations even more than efficiency regulations. 750 hours for a typical incandescent bulb is just ridiculous. That's about 2 months in a 12-hour per day cycle in an outdoor lamp.


Long life and 130v bulbs both last significantly longer than 750 hours. The compromise is efficacy. If you want to get 1600 lumens out of a non-halogen lamp using 100W, 750 hr life is caused by a technical limitation. If you use a 130v lamp, the power consumption won't go down much. Output will go down quite a bit and life goes up quite a bit.

What happened when California banned ATM fees? banks simply denied the use of ATMs to other banks' customers. If they legislate incandescent bulbs' life, they'll simply relabel the 130v lamps as 120v and make less efficient bulbs. 

So u can choose to use 75W 750hr bulb, or use a 100W 3,000 hour bulb and get the same amount of light. Unless electricity is dirt cheap, the use of long life lamp is a waste.


----------



## James S (Nov 13, 2007)

nah, legislating that I can't have regular bulbs is not a good idea. I'll just have to pay 3x as much to keep the chandelier in the dining room running with mexican black market bulbs 

What you do is to give me a tax credit for purchasing modern fixtures designed for tubes and or leds.

You also don't outlaw something because of it's name "incandescent" what if those guys succeed in doubling or tripling the output of an incandescent bulb with etching the filament and such? You give an incentive to update to lighting that is more efficient than a certain limit of lm/watt.

Then you get in touch with some of the major fixture manufacturers and you offer them an incentive to actually produce a fixture that takes fancier bulbs that people will want to buy and for builders to put in a house.

Guess what my choices are if I"m building a house or updating a room and my builder goes to HD or Lowes to buy can lights? ZILCH. It's an incandescent or a CF bulb in an incandescent fixture. Those guys wont carry it without an incentive as they know the market is young. You have to give them a reason to carry stuff and if that means subsidizing it to get the market growing then thats OK with me as these things will actually show a savings for the consumer immediately. The problem with subsidies is when they are open ended and attached to things that will never catch on without them when you are basically creating an industry that has no business competing with the rest on it's own merits. But I dont think that will be a problem here.


----------



## brickbat (Nov 13, 2007)

jtr1962 said:


> ...I'll repeat what others have said-left to it's own devices capitalism will only produce the crappiest, least safe solutions to any problem unless legislation requires them to do otherwise...



"Others have said"? Who exactly are you referring to, Karl Marx?

So your argument is that we need to rely on our legislators to act for the greater good and protect all us dumb citizens from themselves?

Yikes.


----------



## Daekar (Nov 14, 2007)

Yikes is right. I suppose that the very hobby that this forum exists to serve is filled with the crappiest, least-safe solutions to the problem of portable lighting? Obviously the enormous leaps in technology and overall increase in available product quality is due mostly to regulation and not due to motivation for profit by businesses. We should call our reps and thank them for planning the legislation which allowed Cree to create their LEDs, Surefire to make their lights, and PowerEX to make their batteries.



jtr1962 said:


> I'll repeat what others have said-left to it's own devices capitalism will only produce the crappiest, least safe solutions to any problem unless legislation requires them to do otherwise.


----------



## jtr1962 (Nov 14, 2007)

brickbat said:


> So your argument is that we need to rely on our legislators to act for the greater good and protect all us dumb citizens from themselves?


No, not themselves. More like protect them from the profiteers who will seek to sell them the worst possible crap at whatever the market will bear but will label it otherwise. I specifically gave an example of what is available, or rather not available, in lighting stores with the current lack of regulation in this area. In effect, I'm left with fewer choices, not more. I thought capitalism was supposed to be all about giving the average consumer choices? Sure doesn't seem that way. Basically whatever makes a few people in charge the most money is what gets sold. Everything else is either not produced at all, or produced in such low quantities as to be beyond the reach of most people. Whether through subsidies or regulation or both, sometimes governments need to step in for a while to give something new a fighting chance. If it still fails, then maybe it wasn't a good idea but at least we tried.



Daekar said:


> I suppose that the very hobby that this forum exists to serve is filled with the crappiest, least-safe solutions to the problem of portable lighting? Obviously the enormous leaps in technology and overall increase in available product quality is due mostly to regulation and not due to motivation for profit by businesses. We should call our reps and thank them for planning the legislation which allowed Cree to create their LEDs, Surefire to make their lights, and PowerEX to make their batteries.


No, what is available here is as described above: "produced in such low quantities as to be beyond the reach of most people". Sure, the market will always be happy to produce very expensive luxury items for various niche markets. After all, these have very high profit margins. What won't get produced is a variety of _low-cost, decent-quality_ products. I personally can't afford $150 for a whiz-bang Cree flashlight. For the $5 to $10 most of the general public is willing to pay for a flashlight all they'll get is a piece of junk which will fall apart the first time you turn it on. Now I don't expect regulations to force people to make cheap but good flashlights, but I do expect some oversight to see that products meet certain minimum standards of safety, efficiency, lifetime, and more importantly that they don't put false claims on the package. I don't care if someone wants to buy a piece of unsafe, unreliable junk for as little as possible. That's their perogative. However, they had better be informed of exactly what they're getting. And you think this is such a bad thing?

As for Cree's LEDs, I have a couple of Q5s which are performing closer to Q2s or Q3s. Now is this a case of a few bad ones slipping through the cracks, or blatant mislabeling to sell LEDs for a premium in a market that will pay quite a bit for a few extra lumens? I don't know, but I'm not happy about it either way. The P4s I bought last year all met specs. So far I have yet to test a Q5 that does.


----------



## made in china (Nov 15, 2007)

One reason I would NOT consider retrofitting my home to LED: The technology still has NOT matured yet. Improvements are made by leaps and bounds to LED technology yearly, so why would I want to invest in LED lighting anytime soon just to know that in a year it will be outdated. I would not doubt that in a few years we may see white LEDs that don't rely on phosphor on top of a blue emitter. Or that we'll have very high output LEDs that make MUCH less waste heat than now. Etc etc.


----------



## made in china (Nov 15, 2007)

Another point I wanted to add, on a very political/personal level: Eventually, a lot of Americans will lose their jobs as the demand for traditional lighting sources goes down. In our dept, we currently upgrade all of our traffic signals with LED modules. (more on that later). We very rarely relamp with incans anymore unless the fixture won't support a LED upgrade. So, in our dept, we've effectively slashed our needs for good ol' MADE IN USA lamps. All of our LED equipment is foreign sourced. American companies so far have not been able to compete in CFL production (all from China now) and I am SURE that the future LED home lighting will continue this trend. Which will see even more Americans laid off. Remember, aggressive plans have far reaching effects on more than what you can see. By mandating "high tech" energy efficient lighting, you basically hand out tens of thousands of pink slips to fellow Americans. Which of course starts a domino effect in our society. In the meantime, your "high tech" energy efficient lamps and CFL's are being produced in a developing country that has almost no environmental regulations (if they do, they are NOT enforced), no labor laws, etc etc. Now, what is the REAL cost of your "high tech" lamps?? Have you ever been to a manufacturing city (Development Zone per their term) in China? You would be horrified. A incandescent lamp is a very basic item. CFL's and LED's require alot of resources to manufacture, and they DO produce alot of industrial waste in the process. Part of the low cost factor of foriegn production is the simple fact that they abuse their employees and OUR environment. 

And as for those LED modules we use, they are very large, don't last very long, are very expensive and definitely much more involved than a glass bulb and tungsten to manufacture. Sure, we save money on our electric bill. But think about all the IC's, transformers, capacitors, semiconductors, heavy metals, etc that are needing to be disposed of almost as frequently as a common 67w traffic lamp? (67 w is 6000 hr rated, alot of our LED modules go bad in less than 3 years. The white LEDs and signal green LEDs fail about every 1-2 years at best!)

Think about the big picture. Maybe what Americans really should learn to do is consume less? We've grown accustomed to oversized cars, supersized fast food and several thousand lumens at the flick of a switch. Then when resources become expensive, we try to find the most "fuel efficient" "semi-hybrid almost 20 mpg" SUV's and we replace our 2 100watt incans with 2 23w CFLs because we don't want to sacrifice what we are used to. Maybe more people should consider buying an appropriately sized vehicle, and maybe they should cut the amount of lumens they feel comfortable with by at least half? Whether they accomplish that with one 60w bulb or a 13w CFL, in place of the two 100w bulbs, whatever.


----------



## jtr1962 (Nov 15, 2007)

made in china said:


> Sure, we save money on our electric bill. But think about all the IC's, transformers, capacitors, semiconductors, heavy metals, etc that are needing to be disposed of almost as frequently as a common 67w traffic lamp? (67 w is 6000 hr rated, alot of our LED modules go bad in less than 3 years. The white LEDs and signal green LEDs fail about every 1-2 years at best!)


This is probably caused by going with the lowest bidder on this stuff (not necessarily the fault of your department). I'm shocked that these things fail as often as you say because one reason traffic lights went to LED was specifically to increase replacement time. The energy savings was an added feature. Anyway, has anyone knowledgeable looked at the failed modules instead of just disposing of them? I'd bet that on the majority all or most of the LEDs were fine, and it was likely another electronic component which failed. If the LEDs are indeed burning out, then I'd blame poor circuit design, but maybe some minor modifications could fix that. LEDs in a properly designed circuit should never burn out. They should just gradually dim, eventually reaching a point where they are too dim for their function, necessitating replacement. Anyway, I'd say that the majority of your failed LED modules can be repaired and put back in service for less than the cost of buying new ones.

On the jobs thing, fact is very few things are made here for many reasons. Lower wages are only part of it. Try to find Americans willing to do factory work at any wage where they might be reasonably competitive. In fact, try to find Americans willing to do factory work at all. Most Americans these days want clean, non-physical jobs, or rather are conditioned to believe manual labor is beneath them. The automotive sector is about the last place with large number of manufacturing jobs. Even here, the wages and benefits to get people to do this type of work is so high that it will eventually put American auto makers out of business.

Another big factor is location. Where do you put the new factories? The city dwellers certainly won't want them. Given the price of urban real estate it wouldn't make sense anyway. So you put your factory in someplace fairly remote with cheap land and no neighbors to bother. Now how do your workers get to work? You probably couldn't pay your workers enough so they could afford a car. Nor would they want to commute 50 miles each way from the nearest town for a low-paying job even if the commute was free. You obviously won't have public transit there, and again the commute time wouldn't make sense.

Soon the chickens will come home to roost. China can't continue to pollute its environment forever. Eventually their medical bills will soar and they'll have to take action. This will drive up the cost of manufacturing there, perhaps even to the point where Americans might be competitive again. Or perhaps we'll eventually have androids doing pretty much all manufacturing by then. I wouldn't worry. There's going to be lots of new jobs created here in the US as a result of this new lighting technology. We're going to need new fixtures designed, people to install them, others to repair them. This will probably create more jobs than are lost from discontinuing manufacture of incandescent lamps. I'll also add that we _have_ to do this regardless. If we don't, we'll need new power plants. Where do we put them? We'll probably have rolling blackouts. There will probably be lots of other unforeseen consequences continuing on the path we're on, most more dire than the loss of a few jobs.



> Maybe more people should consider buying an appropriately sized vehicle, and maybe they should cut the amount of lumens they feel comfortable with by at least half? Whether they accomplish that with one 60w bulb or a 13w CFL, in place of the two 100w bulbs, whatever.


Cut lumens? Sacrilege!  Seriously, if we did more solar and wind we could probably increase our lumens if we want, especially when LEDs are putting out 150 lm/W. I do agree on the vehicles though. I wish we would set up our society so we can walk and bike more, and also use public transit more. Basically less spread out living, and less travel overall. The changeover to this type of living would create massive numbers of jobs. The land used to service automobiles is probably the biggest squandering of our finite resources.


----------



## 2xTrinity (Nov 15, 2007)

> Maybe more people should consider buying an appropriately sized vehicle, and maybe they should cut the amount of lumens they feel comfortable with by at least half? Whether they accomplish that with one 60w bulb or a 13w CFL, in place of the two 100w bulbs, whatever.


The biggest deficiency there is that most residential light fixtures are horrible at actually throwing lumens anywhere useful -- they're typically designed to look pretty. Consider that typical lampshades for example probably absorb about half of the lumens, and most of the rest that do make it out either hit the ceiling (little use) or the floor. I've seen tons of lamps which actually have matte black shades in many areas, rather than reflective surfaces -- simply absorbing a lot of the lumens iniitally produced.

The other trend is to have recessed "can" lights every 10 feet or so, with R30 lamps that are very deeply recessed (so that a lot of the light never makes it out). Instead of using incandescent lamps there, IMO a setup with recessed t5 linear tubes with parabolic reflectors and louvered shades, with a dimming ballast installed would have produced a much nicer effect with ~1/5th the energy cost. (Also, fluorescents on dimmers maintain the same efficiency at just about all intensities, wheras incans get decreasingly efficient as they are dimmed.) The newest retail stores have these sort of fixtures and they look great. Not only is the lamp more efficient, so is the fixture at getting the light from the lamp into the room.

The trends I have noticed now at my local Lowes/Home Depot stores are absurd -- in the fluorescent section, 90% of the stock is magnetic ballasted T12s (illegal to use in offices), and most of the incandescent bulbs that they sell for normal prices are the ones with the blue filters that are actually LESS efficient than the old ones! Normal incandescent bulbs in many cases have been raised to as much as $7 each! I strongly suspect they are simply dumping crap on the shelves in order to force people to pay $7/ea for incan lamps and take in a huge profit margin...


----------



## Amonra (Nov 15, 2007)

2xTrinity said:


> The biggest deficiency there is that most residential light fixtures are horrible at actually throwing lumens anywhere useful -- they're typically designed to look pretty. Consider that typical lampshades for example probably absorb about half of the lumens, and most of the rest that do make it out either hit the ceiling (little use) or the floor. I've seen tons of lamps which actually have matte black shades in many areas, rather than reflective surfaces -- simply absorbing a lot of the lumens iniitally produced.
> ..



The fact that current fixtures waste a lot of the light by covering it or directing it to useless areas is very true. in the case of a CFL or a normal bulb if the fixture eats up a lot of light you just slap in a more powerful bulb. This you cannot do with led's, you cannot just add more led's or increase the power without a significant increase in the size of the bulb due to heatsinking issues. if you do the bulb will not fit the fixture designed for the size of a normal bulb. This and the fact that led's offer a relatively narrow beam angle is why a 'retrofit' led bulb will never compete with a CFL or bulb in home lighting ( Unless a single led or array outputting 1000lumens with a 200 -270 degree beam angle which is so efficient that it only requires a heatsink the size of a ping pong ball is developed ) 
Decorative or accent lighting like mr-16 are a different story as i think led retrofit bulbs offer a big improvement of the current technology especially in energy consumption.

For led general home lighting to take off, manufacturers have to give up making led retrofits and start making complete fixtures where the led forms an integral part of the fixture and the fixture itself is the heatsink. 
Making this kind of fixture out of aluminium with fancy styling to make it appealing whilst distributing multiple leds correctly to achieve even lighting where it is needed should be relatively simple. cost wise i dont think that it would be much more expensive than a normal fixture from a materials point of view. normal fancy fixtures are quite expensive anyway.

Here https://www.candlepowerforums.com/threads/179301 is an example of an led fixture i built out of aluminium with the above thoughts in mind. It cost me about $80 for all the materials including the led's and driver.


----------



## SemiMan (Nov 15, 2007)

made in china said:


> Another point I wanted to add, on a very political/personal level: Eventually, a lot of Americans will lose their jobs as the demand for traditional lighting sources goes down. In our dept, we currently upgrade all of our traffic signals with LED modules. (more on that later). We very rarely relamp with incans anymore unless the fixture won't support a LED upgrade. So, in our dept, we've effectively slashed our needs for good ol' MADE IN USA lamps. All of our LED equipment is foreign sourced. American companies so far have not been able to compete in CFL production (all from China now) and I am SURE that the future LED home lighting will continue this trend. Which will see even more Americans laid off. Remember, aggressive plans have far reaching effects on more than what you can see. By mandating "high tech" energy efficient lighting, you basically hand out tens of thousands of pink slips to fellow Americans. Which of course starts a domino effect in our society. In the meantime, your "high tech" energy efficient lamps and CFL's are being produced in a developing country that has almost no environmental regulations (if they do, they are NOT enforced), no labor laws, etc etc. Now, what is the REAL cost of your "high tech" lamps?? Have you ever been to a manufacturing city (Development Zone per their term) in China? You would be horrified. A incandescent lamp is a very basic item. CFL's and LED's require alot of resources to manufacture, and they DO produce alot of industrial waste in the process. Part of the low cost factor of foriegn production is the simple fact that they abuse their employees and OUR environment.




From what I know, Dialight (American company... manufacture's in the U.S., Mexico, etc.) is one of the biggest LED traffic signal vendors using Lumileds (American head office) LEDs. They are also extremely reliable I believe. Perhaps you just need to evaluate who you source from. When you go with the lowest bidder and/or do not write a good specification, that is what happens.

Semiman


----------



## made in china (Nov 16, 2007)

SemiMan said:


> From what I know, Dialight (American company... manufacture's in the U.S., Mexico, etc.) is one of the biggest LED traffic signal vendors using Lumileds (American head office) LEDs. They are also extremely reliable I believe. Perhaps you just need to evaluate who you source from. When you go with the lowest bidder and/or do not write a good specification, that is what happens.
> 
> Semiman



Actually, we do use Dialight and GELcore. Our red and yellow LED modules rarely fail. I believe that the most common reason a red LED module would fail is prob due to lightning strike. We replace 5x more greens than reds, and of course rarely the yellow LEDs (we do have about 5% of our signals do use yellow LED, and we upgrade any broken yellow indication with LED).

Some greens have lasted up to 6 years, which is pretty good. That's about 3-4x longer than an incan. However, have you seen these modules? Huge amounts of plastic, some lead, copper, IC's, etc. There is currently no recycling program for these units. Even if there were, how much pollution would be made in transporting and processing these units? 

As for our 3M programmable green LEDs, they last only as long as a regular 150W lamp. They are OVERdriving the **** out of these signal green LEDs (100ma for a 5mm!) so lots of these are finding an early retirement.


As to the posts regarding fixture efficiency: Yeah, build a dedicated fixture for the LEDs. So as soon as the device fails, the whole fixture ends up in the junkyard and you have a big empty spot on your ceiling/wall where that fixture used to be.

My point: There is an environmental cost by the manufacturing of these new devices that offsets to some extent the benefit over the older incans/CFLs.

And to jtr: I definitely agree with you on the American labor point. But that's another soapbox for me to stand on another day.


----------



## jtr1962 (Nov 16, 2007)

made in china said:


> As to the posts regarding fixture efficiency: Yeah, build a dedicated fixture for the LEDs. So as soon as the device fails, the whole fixture ends up in the junkyard and you have a big empty spot on your ceiling/wall where that fixture used to be.


It's probably a good idea to design a fixture so that it can be refurbished. This is especially true given the pace of LED development. When more efficient LEDs are available, you send the fixture out to be retrofitted with new LEDs for less than the cost of a new fixture. Even when an LED fixture is disposed of, a lot of it can be recycled. The aluminum heat sinks are quite amenable to recycling, for example. Let's not forget that disposal of large numbers of lighting fixtures is nothing new. What happened to all those old T12 fixtures in offices and stores, and the pcb-laden ballasts which powered them? That probably represented more toxic waste than any future LED fixtures might.

In the end we can probably design an LED ballast to last for many decades by paying attention to the heat. Retrofitting the LEDs when they dim appreciable every decade or two can be designed into the fixture. Fact is electronics of all types are getting ever more reliable if made properly. It's probably not unreasonable to expect a well-designed LED fixture in an indoor environment to last as long as the building it's in. I think once we get past the screw-in disposable bulb mentality there will be a lot of incentive to design better residential fixtures. Commercial fluorescent and discharge lamp fixtures already easily last 20 or 30 years.

We're still on a steep learning curve with LEDs. Some of the premature failures can be attributed to that, most are just due to poor design to save what amounts to pennies. For example, many Christmas lights are half-wave rectified without filter capacitors. I'll gladly pay the extra twenty cents per string that these parts will cost to avoid flickering. I think most consumers would.



> As for our 3M programmable green LEDs, they last only as long as a regular 150W lamp. They are OVERdriving the **** out of these signal green LEDs (100ma for a 5mm!) so lots of these are finding an early retirement.


Seriously, I would refuse delivery of a product like that. For any application of 5mm LEDs where reasonable life is expected I would drive at 10 mA tops, better yet 5 mA. I'll bet they're probably using the cheapest (i.e. least bright) LEDs they can get which is why they're baking them to death. I'd bet decent LEDs driven at 5 mA might well be as bright. Fact is despite the common 20 mA rating for 5mm LEDs, 5 to 10 mA is really about the most you should drive them at unless you're happy with life of only a few thousand hours. If you drive at 5 mA, use decent LEDs (Cree or Nichia chips), and have wide copper traces for heatsinking, you might well get in excess of 100,000 hours (about 25 years on a typical duty cycle) out of your green LEDs. One thing LED traffic lights have going in their favor is they're not a continuous duty cycle. The LEDs can cool during the 30 seconds or so that another color is on.


----------



## made in china (Nov 17, 2007)

jtr1962 said:


> It's probably a good idea to design a fixture so that it can be refurbished. This is especially true given the pace of LED development. When more efficient LEDs are available, you send the fixture out to be retrofitted with new LEDs for less than the cost of a new fixture. Even when an LED fixture is disposed of, a lot of it can be recycled. The aluminum heat sinks are quite amenable to recycling, for example. Let's not forget that disposal of large numbers of lighting fixtures is nothing new. What happened to all those old T12 fixtures in offices and stores, and the pcb-laden ballasts which powered them? That probably represented more toxic waste than any future LED fixtures might.



They ought to standardize a few package shapes/styles so that in the future you can easily upgrade/service your LED fixture. I fear though that with the short attention span the industry has, there will be a mess of "standards" the first few years. Kind of like how old mobile phones all had charger/data connectors that LOOKED similar, but would never be interchangeable until recently now most phones use a mini USB for power/data.



jtr1962 said:


> In the end we can probably design an LED ballast to last for many decades by paying attention to the heat. Retrofitting the LEDs when they dim appreciable every decade or two can be designed into the fixture. Fact is electronics of all types are getting ever more reliable if made properly. It's probably not unreasonable to expect a well-designed LED fixture in an indoor environment to last as long as the building it's in. I think once we get past the screw-in disposable bulb mentality there will be a lot of incentive to design better residential fixtures. Commercial fluorescent and discharge lamp fixtures already easily last 20 or 30 years.



The other mentality we need to get past is the gotta-have-it-as-cheap-as possible-so-build-it-in-China" mentality. The real reason why "Made In China" (and other dubious manufacturing locales) is getting such a bad rep is because American corporation are too short sighted to care about the longevity of a product when the initial profit is the overwhelming concern to themselves. And in turn, the Chinese manufacturers themselves know that they won't necessarily be held accountable for defective equipment when they intentionally cut corners. Even if they are held accountable, there are many other businessmen knocking at their doors to build the next hot item at Wal Mart. Yes stuff made in other countries can be good, but there is little accountability on the manufacturers end for them to care. Remember, they need to fill several shipping containers to make it economically viable before anyone catches on to the low quality product it's already too late. 



jtr1962 said:


> We're still on a steep learning curve with LEDs. Some of the premature failures can be attributed to that, most are just due to poor design to save what amounts to pennies. For example, many Christmas lights are half-wave rectified without filter capacitors. I'll gladly pay the extra twenty cents per string that these parts will cost to avoid flickering. I think most consumers would.



Unfortunately, I bought Philips brand LED xmas lights last year. VERY high quality sets as far as build goes. However, I was so turned off by the 60hz flicker I have not even used them yet. I love the pure color and sparkly brightness of them, but as soon as I move my head the flicker annoys me. What a terrible oversight by a respected name.

Again, when cost is the primary concern in a disposable society....

Too bad though since technically LEDs should last a long time, they still find ways to end up in a dump anyway despite all the hype. If not for 60hz flicker, it'll be sub par plastics, defective wiring, poor QC, poor engineering, etc etc that will surely doom most LED sets to a short life.




jtr1962 said:


> Seriously, I would refuse delivery of a product like that. For any application of 5mm LEDs where reasonable life is expected I would drive at 10 mA tops, better yet 5 mA. I'll bet they're probably using the cheapest (i.e. least bright) LEDs they can get which is why they're baking them to death. I'd bet decent LEDs driven at 5 mA might well be as bright. Fact is despite the common 20 mA rating for 5mm LEDs, 5 to 10 mA is really about the most you should drive them at unless you're happy with life of only a few thousand hours. If you drive at 5 mA, use decent LEDs (Cree or Nichia chips), and have wide copper traces for heatsinking, you might well get in excess of 100,000 hours (about 25 years on a typical duty cycle) out of your green LEDs. One thing LED traffic lights have going in their favor is they're not a continuous duty cycle. The LEDs can cool during the 30 seconds or so that another color is on.



The traffic signal modules have standards they need to meet for color, luminous intensity, beam pattern etc. These 3M modules are about 4-1/2" in diameter and expected to replace a narrow spot 150W Halogen PAR lamp. It's a tough life. We actually have been sending back to the manufacturer for warranty.

Some LED traffic signals are almost always continuously "ON". During certain periods, an intersection may rest in green on the main street. Anyways, the above problem only applies to the small 4-1/2" green modules. The other modules are these big honkers that weigh about 2 pounds and are either 8" or 12" in diameter. The green ones (signal green LEDs are not long lived for some reason, aren't they GAiAs? I think the signal green LEDs are a newer chemistry) don't last very long. Not uncommon to have these die after 2 years, which is about as long as the ol' 67w incans. And these 2+ pound modules of plastic, metal and electronics goes straight into the regular garbage can. As "ideal" as LED setups are, they are not perfect yet. In the real world, I think they are worse overall. Some research group should research how much pollution is involved in the manufacture and disposal of the LED "solutions" compared to the standard incan bulb. Everyone only looks at the energy savings or maintenance costs. There's other costs here that people ignore.

Oh, and BTW, the white LEDs in the pedestrian signals are relatively short lived too. Generally the phosphors go yellow or the LED's just end up looking "burned" in prob 2-3 years of service then they fail. JOB SECURITY!!!


----------



## SemiMan (Nov 17, 2007)

made in china said:


> However, have you seen these modules? Huge amounts of plastic, some lead, copper, IC's, etc. There is currently no recycling program for these units. Even if there were, how much pollution would be made in transporting and processing these units?



Actually I have seen some of these modules, the Dialight ones and some of the cheap ones. On the electronics side, huge steps have been made forward w.r.t. environmental effects....though I have to check it applies to your product. I believe it does now. ROHS (Reduction of Hazardous Substances] legislation has removed most harmful materials such as lead from at least the end products. All told, the energy savings likely takes out far more hazardous pollution than would be added in manufacturing.

I am surprised that your greens are failing as much as they are. Dialight I remember putting out a press release that said they never trace failures back to the Lumileds LEDS. That sounded unlikely given how many they make, but it shows that is not the failure point. I imagine poorly protected power supplies or poorly designed are the weak spots. Perhaps they are better off giving up a bit of efficiency and cost for a more robust design.


----------



## made in china (Nov 17, 2007)

I think once they switch to power LEDs and under drive them a bit we'll see an improvement.


----------



## EricB (Nov 18, 2007)

made in china said:


> The green ones (signal green LEDs are not long lived for some reason, aren't they GAiAs? I think the signal green LEDs are a newer chemistry) don't last very long.


 GaN. Anything lower than 550-60nm. Green signals are generally 505nm. So they will have the same chemistry as the blue. Unless they have changed it; since the GaN is the newest technology' it was always the shortest lived. That was one of the things that needed improvement, along with the brightness. I know the brightness has passed the other colors, but I haven't heard much about the lifespans compared to the older chemistry, lately.


----------



## Closet_Flashaholic (Nov 22, 2007)

Several weeks ago, sitting around at lunch with 8 people discussing one person's new house that he is having built (keep in mind these are 8 techno-geeks in the truest sense of the word):

Person building house: I have decided to go with LED lighting for all fixtures in the house. It's expensive, but I think the payback makes sense over the next 10 years.

As we went around the table, the remaining 7 said that they had replaced most incandescent lighting with CFLs when they burned out. However each one stated that "there is no way in he** that they were going to buy an LED replacement for USD 60-72 per bulb when a CFL costs $2.." 

End of Story.

My Conclusion:
LEDs will not make significant inroads into consumer/replacement until the price gets competitive with CFLs. For new housing/construction, it might be an easier sell since the cost will be amortized along with the mortgage. But LEDs have a ways to go yet in the cost area. It's not a matter of efficiency, it's not a matter of longevity, it's mostly a matter of initial cash outlay and a little bit about ROI.

I am not saying that this is a good thing, I am just saying that it's the way we look at things. (A little short sighted and always looking at the short-to-mid term instead of longer term. This may ultimately be our undoing..)


----------

