# Best LED for upgrading my white solar LED garden lights?



## WhiteRabbit (Sep 11, 2014)

I'm overhauling our solar garden lights (originally from IKEA), and I'm wondering if there would be both a muich brighter and more energy efficient LED that I could use to replace the sole 30ma 3.3v white LED that's in each of the outdoor garden light fixtures? Through-hole packaging and a wide-angle of light dispersion would be best, asthen I could just snip-off the existing LED's and solder the new ones onto their leads.

What inspired me to ask is that earlier in the year I read that CREE had LED's which could produce 303 lumens/watt (http://www.cree.com/News-and-Events/Cree-News/Press-Releases/2014/March/300LPW-LED-barrier). I'm quite sure I'm getting nowhere near that many lumens per watt with the LED's that came with the IKEA garden lights. If need be, I could upgrade the solar battery bank to output a different voltage and (hopefully) use PWM to adapt a higher current LED to equal the same number (or fewer) of milliwatts expended per LED. 

So, with the above as background, any suggestions?


----------



## WhiteRabbit (Sep 14, 2014)

WhiteRabbit said:


> I'm overhauling our solar garden lights (originally from IKEA), and I'm wondering if there would be both a muich brighter and more energy efficient LED that I could use to replace the sole 30ma 3.3v white LED that's in each of the outdoor garden light fixtures? Through-hole packaging and a wide-angle of light dispersion would be best, asthen I could just snip-off the existing LED's and solder the new ones onto their leads.
> 
> What inspired me to ask is that earlier in the year I read that CREE had LED's which could produce 303 lumens/watt (http://www.cree.com/News-and-Events/Cree-News/Press-Releases/2014/March/300LPW-LED-barrier). I'm quite sure I'm getting nowhere near that many lumens per watt with the LED's that came with the IKEA garden lights. If need be, I could upgrade the solar battery bank to output a different voltage and (hopefully) use PWM to adapt a higher current LED to equal the same number (or fewer) of milliwatts expended per LED.
> 
> So, with the above as background, any suggestions?



Bump.

As a starting point, CREE says it's most efficient single die LED is its XLamp XP-L LED, which CREE says delivers "up to" 200ln/watt at 350ma. http://www.cree.com/LED-Components-...iscrete-Directional/XLamp-XPL?WT.mc_id=CRX494


----------



## WhiteRabbit (Sep 14, 2014)

The CREE MC-E emitter probably would be even better. It produces 320 lumens at 350ma.


----------



## WhiteRabbit (Sep 17, 2014)

152 views and not a single comment? I guess I should have posted this thread somewhere else, because here it's going nowhere. Therefore, I'm closing it. For more on this topic, visit this thread instead: http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb...ter-than-a-lesser-constant-current-equivalent


----------

