I went big for CFLs a long time ago, but have been switching to LEDs in the last 3 years or so. Reasons?
1. Higher CRI makes for a much more pleasant light. CFLs currently top off around 80. As you know, LEDs can be above 90.
2. Waiting for CFLs to warm up got annoying. I much preferred having instant-on at full power. Especially when I'm just walking through the hallway or grabbing something from a room.
3. CCFLs address some of these issues, but are less efficent and more expensive.
4. Disposing of the CFLs properly is a pain in the butt when you don't have a car.
Mine seem tooā¦ I have had two bulbs (out of over 300 die). Both were infant mortality issues. One bulb was a Chinese bulb and a wire to the driver was not soldered properly. Another was a Sylvania 15W PAR38. It popped an internal fuse. I have had several bulbs running 24/7 for over three yearsā¦ thatās over 25,000 hours.
EPA Energy Star certification involves characterizing the bulb as a unit. The makers have to document testing of the bulb as a whole. They cannot specify lifetimes that they canāt back up and get certification. That is one reason many bulbs say 25,000 hoursā¦ their life testing past that could not be backed up with hard data.
Even though you live in the same country as the, Livermore-Pleasnton Fire Dept who have a bulb that has burned for over 950,000 hours, so far, aka 110 YEARS continuously!!
Located at 4550 East Avenue, Livermore, California.
Well, at least they are far better than the ones I got over a year ago for similar price.
Tint is pretty warm but bearable.
They light up straight away, which can be a plus.
They make some less light, compared to 7W CFL yet they heat up almost the same.
The shade of the lamp stays 4Celcius cooler when these are in.
CRI is by eye worse, than with 940 fluorescent but that should not surprise anyone.
If you need E14 socket lights to light up fast but no High Quality light is needed measured by CRI, these might well be a good option.
national tv (NBC) was promoting a āgo greenā iniative for xmas by converting all of the incan xmas lights to led. something i have done a long time ago. i think the case has been made here that led household lighting is still not there wrt cost effectiveness however there are other variables at play and since i do not mind paying more i choose to go led and anxiously await the time when leds replace cfls. if cost effectiveness were the only variable in choosing lights we would all be buying 800 lumen flashlights that cost no more than $12. and really the name of the forum should be changed to budget led light forum since leds are the priniple topic for discussion with the occasional hid thrown in.
First, I call it āThe Disinterested Third Party Fallacyā: The mistaken notion that some (any) third party, other than the two of us, can make a better decision about whatās best for you and for me. And you know what we get from fallacious reasoningā¦
I want to help you keep your fingers!!
As far as LEDs are concerned, my old eyes see the PWM flicker FAR more on LEDs, since they literally cut ALL the light when theyāre Off. And they change color when you lower the If, so you either dim them with flickering pulses or dim-and-recolor them with lower current. Not the choices Iād pay for! OTOH, I will admit that sometimes the color shift makes the Light betterā¦
No, Iām not trying to claim my eyes are immune to Persistence of Vision!! Of course they all look āsmoothā generally. PWM flickering makes dangerous things like car engines, fan and saw blades appear to stop moving. Thatās as bad as it gets in my book. Itās like lying, and you KNOW how much I hate that!!
Fluorescents (whatever their shape) spark off the plasma & then donāt need that huge blast anymore. Even in the cold (like, e.g., a walk-in freezer), once they start, theyāre supposed to calm down. The flickering may be due to bad manufacturing processes or variable AC supply. Donāt laugh. In the PC LAN repair business, we see āBad ACā far too frequently to āassumeā the power company is doing its job. It sounds like maybe yours keep trying to restart. This will cancel any cost savings you might get from fluorescents. Have you tried replacing your Ballast? They make new fluorescents where the tube( s ), fixtures/reflectors, ballast and everything can be hung from its own power cord! And make huge (wicked-cheap) light, with your choice of colors (like the 5000K 4-tube fixtures in my garage & workshop).
The point of all that (waaay off-topic) is, when Iām scroll-sawing (or any time the cutting edge blurs like that), I try to LET the blade āblurā, and just guide the āholeā thatās appearing at the end of the cut. Itās a weird way of looking at things, but it works for me. Just focus on keeping the leading, inside edge of the cut half-way into the pencil line & the cut will be beautiful. I developed this trick working as a āsaw manā on a home-building crewā¦ I would have a big problem if the moving blade appeared to stop!!!
If you have a three-phase supply , you can treble the apparent flicker frequency by using different phases ā¦ You do need three times as many light units though.
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Very interesting discussion here. I use exclusively CFLs due to the high cost of electricity where I live. Iām very interested in LED lighting, but from what I can tell, none of the LED bulbs can give me the brightness that I need. I like a very bright room in most circumstances, and so I use 26W CFLs that are approximately equivalent to a 100W inca, if not a bit more. Light output is somewhere over 1600 lumens for these bulbs. I donāt think thereās any LED bulb that can match that. Please give me links if Iām wrong.
That being said, CFLs arenāt ideal. Where I live, they cost around $3/ea, and they donāt last all that long. Most of the locally available CFLs have a putrid, vile, repulsive, sickening, hideous, repugnant, detestable, depressing stark white color. I donāt have enough adjectives to express how much I hate the tint of the CFLs that most people use here. The color is positively depressing. They are just recently starting to import warm light CFLs, but almost nobody here uses them yet. So Iāve been using warm color GE bulbs from the United States, which I really like. They last fairly long, but nothing like the 6 years they advertise. Iāve also had a few duds. The locally available CFLs also burn out quickly, and worse yet, are a fire hazard. In many cases I have been startled by the sound of popping and crackling from up above, followed by sparks and electrical smoke. Not very nice to think what could happen while nobody is at home with a CFL left turned on.
This thread is a good reference, and I think it should be in the LED Light Bulbs category. Anybody mind if I move it there?
Itās a little Suzuki sj, I value reliability and capability over some idea its best because its British. :bigsmile:
The japs have been fairly whuppin the landy bum for a long time with both. Plus, Landrover = British Leyland, I canāt think of a worse example of British manufacturing, I canāt think of one good car they ever made. Iām either Fordās if its saloon cars or jap if its 4 x 4.
I think its safe to say we trust you moving threads
SB, if youāve had your CFLs for awhile, you may find there are much warmer tinted versions available now (I hadnāt seen them before but bought some new bulbs since i just moved).
They work in pretty cold temperatures, and once they warm up (which they do at any ambient temp) they really pump out some good light. Great for garages/shops, etc. - especially for renters that donāt want to waste money/time on new fixtures.
A very nice 24W LED bulb. I have the Sylvania branded versions (both made by Lighting Science Group). They claim 1300 lumens, but I measure over 1400 lumens. They will beat the pants off any CFL bulb. I suspect that even a decent 18W LED bulb will provide more effective light than you CFL.
Plot of light output and CCT as it warms up. My CRI number is rather bogus. That little bobble in the light output at the end of the curve was me trying to put a thermometer on the bulb and moving it around:
I have 3 light fixtures that use candelabra base bulbs. I have yet to see a candelabra base CFL bulb that didnāt look ugly as sin in such a fixture. Iām gradually working on switching them all over to LED bulbs, buying a couple of bulbs when I run across something newer, better, brighter, cheaper.
Iāve been using CCFLs for years now, energy saving is good, but they are annoying in CRI, short lifetime and slow startup. Iāve bought a couple 40w and 60w LED bulbs, but I will be extremely glad when bright 75w and 100w equivalent LED edison base bulbs show up at reasonable prices. Longer life, better CRI and instant on make LEDs worth a premium over CCFL prices, but they still need to get down to the $10/bulb range for me to switch over completely.
Itās a little annoying that the power company here subsidizes CCFL bulbs, but not LED bulbs. The CCFL era canāt die soon enough for me.
Iām wondering why thereās all these people claiming CFLās donāt last long. Iām thinking wrong use. One thing CFL bulbs donāt like is heat. Itās bad for their cheap electronics and thatās whatās causing them to break down, the electronics go bad. And because price point is the biggest consideration people are using for the purchase of their CFLās obviously itās a you get what you pay for purchase which compounds the problem, cheap electronics will fail earlier. As for me my room uses a single 45 watt CFL for light, yes itās insanely bright but I like a bright room. Iāve replaced it one time and the previous one lasted 6 years. A 45 watt CFL isnāt a bargain basement offering either since thatās a more specialty CFL, they cost me 30 bucks like 10 years ago, now theyāre down to $12 but thatās still more than the $3-4 of bargain CFLās and the higher cost is evident in better overall construction and they never flicker and are instant on. The difference is the fixture itās in keeps the base exposed to cooling air. Many people put these CFLās in small glass enclosed domes or fixtures designed for incandescents. When you do that they get baked in their own heat and the electronics fail.
This is actually a good practice even for ledās. Keep the led fixture cool. Even though they may run a little cooler than CFLās theyāll benefit from having more cooling. Because even though the ledās may last a long time, if kept at elevated temperatures everyone here knows ledās will dim quite severely from extended high temperature operation.
The OSRAM facility CLF bulbs seem to managed that problem pretty well, I know an apartment manager who switched from incandescents to this special CLF bulb, he even uses them in on-demand switches in staircases in large apartment buildings.... which would normally lead to certain death for standard CFLs within weeks. He has 200 of them running for over two years now and I think he replaced one of them. They are expensive in small quantities, but if you order them in large quantities they are doable. And yes he did the math upfront and yes they are profitable over their life expectancy vs. incandescents and LEDs ... at least with German Energy prices of 26-27 ā¬-cent ( isn't that insane?) per kWh this year and the projected development in the future.
and really the name of the forum should be changed to budget led light forum since leds are the priniple topic for discussion with the occasional hid thrown in.