The false economy of in home LED lighting

Yep, saying all CFL suck ... is like saying all LEDs suck based on having seen only the white 5mm ones.

Product benefits

  • Extremely durable due to extremly high switching resistance
  • Much longer relamping intervals (compared with the standard reference product)
  • Variable use at Direct Current and Alternating Current
  • Extremely fast lumen ramp-up thanks to Quick Light Technology

Areas of application

  • Where the lamps need to last a long time or have to withstand frequent on/off switching
  • Installations with automatic disconnection circuits (e.g. in stairwells)
  • Emergency lighting
  • Hard-to-reach holders
  • Wherever light is required quickly
  • Hotels, restaurants, facility management
  • Outdoor use in enclosed and ventilated luminaires only

Product features

  • Extremly high number of switching cycles: >1,000,000
  • Extremly long average lifetime: 20,000 h (equals 20 years at 2.7 h per day)
  • Quick Light: 60 % light output in ≤20 s
  • Warm Comfort Light – energy-saving light similar to that of an incandescent lamp
  • Can be used in Direct Current systems: 176…310 V DC
  • Very broad ambient temperature range: -30…+50 °C
  • Already complies to ecodesign requirements of EC 244/2009 regulation stage 5

Don’t buy 99 cent CFL’s go for quality ones if you don’t know how to spot specifically good CFL construction, often times I’ll take one of the light bulbs in a multipack I just bought apart to see if it’s built good. A good way to generally figure out how good something is I’ve found is to simply look it up on Amazon and sort it by average rating. If something can maintain a good 4-5 star rating with at least 50 reviews generally you’re gonna stand a good chance it’s not a piece of crap.

I’ve had nothing but good luck with the GE Energy SmartTM bulbs even in harsher enclosed fixtures. They definitely last me at least 4 years on average. Not as much as my specialty 45 watt monster CFL’s but considering the price they definitely pay for themselves in energy savings.

I understand that marketers spin specs to present their product in the best light (no pun intended) but bullet points like this really chap my hide for several of reasons.

1) Requiring up to 20 seconds to achieve 60% of its rated brightness strains the connotation of “quick light”. Especially for a society raised on incandescent light where full output was almost instantaneous.

2) How bright will it be after 1 second at 25C? How bright after 1 second at, say, –10C? That is, is the light suitable to be used in a porch fixture? If it takes even 5 seconds to achieve a reasonable brightness in the winter, then it’s not going to help you identify who or what is scratching at the window at 3am…

I’ve been switching to LED’s since CFL’s are generally less durable and don’t offer drastically higher light output. I know LED’s still have a long way to go but at the moment it’s more useful to have a few light fixtures that can take a good knock or two rather than the fragile glass that CFL’s and incandescent’s are often housed in.

I’ve seen some CFL’s fail dramatically but never in a way that would have caused some harm (One made a burning smell when it was on but no access heat or smoke was emitted, had the fire dept a bit confused since they couldn’t find it) and as of now no bad results from LED bulbs. Light output is generally not crucial since most fixtures generally have more than enough places for bulbs so a bunch of 650+ lumen LED’s generally work just fine.

Best thing is not having to change the bubs all the time and that they aren’t major health/safely issues when disposing. Heck I can probably salvage the HS’s and all that from them when they finally do bite the dust and possibly reuse them (Safety in mind when working with mains power).

I see CFL’s becoming less dominant and LED’s becoming more popular but it might take some time yet and who knows if there is going to be a new revelation in that time frame. My LED’s are abused more than my other bulbs and they handle it a lot better than them as well; If I go though 6 CFL’s a year vs 2 LED’s then I think that I’ve had my money’s worth, at least in convenience (Although I wish LED’s were still cheaper/brighter, who doesn’t?).

I had been replacing at least one halogen bulb a week. Since switching to LEDs, I haven’t replaced a single bulb in over two years. And frankly, the LED bulbs that are out there now are plenty bright. Every one that I have puts out more lumens than the halogens that they replaced.

I, for one, would LOVE to know more facts about that!!!

SWMBO and I made the Leap of Faith into CFLs a few years before they became useful as Light Sources. (I sense an echo here: wildly exaggerated claims, tint-color lottery, variable QC, no useful engineering info, etc. — all the same, just concerning CFLs (and tubular FLs “back in the day”) as I hear today over every new LED manufacturer to come along…) She won’t turn lights OFF, I usually have to be reminded to turn them ON. We put CFLs in her “always ON” sockets, and incans where we need occasional light, special light (120W for one), or where the huge pigtails don’t fit. But I digress…

We don’t have government subsidies around here to skew the cost bases & thereby confuse people, although the power co-op did give away dim brown CFLs (“60W-equivalent”) to anyone who wanted any. Our “best” home-LED bulbs run closer to $40USD than $4. And the “best” CFLs don’t even hit $4 if you don’t care what color or quantity of light they put out. That makes it RARE to find anyone actually USING the LEDs…

It’s surprising how many “ordinary” people DO care — a LOT — about the color and quantity (and quality, if any of you remember “flicker” of FL tubes) of light their bulbs emit.

(Full Disclosure: the color-reference-standard a lot of posters here seem to prefer is what I call “60W White” because it seems to my eyes to match the color emitted by a standard 60W incandescent bulb. These bulbs cost us poor folk Zero Dollars and Forty-Two Cents ($0.41667). Each. My preference is “100W White”, just so you’ll know. Top-shelf 3-Mode (dimmable!) ones of these cost a whole $1.24! Even with magick thinking, it takes a LONG time to balance that equation!!!)

I have a friend (believe it or not) who popped on a cheap LED for his workshop. He didn’t keep the package, and doesn’t care about details, so don’t ask. All I can say is, it was the cheapest one Lowe’s had last summer. As a near-to-hand “task light” or as a ‘courtesy light’ so visitors don’t crash into stuff, it’s fine, but here’s what I want you to try with one (1) of yours: Walk across the room and try to read the label on a laptop HDD, or the instructions for microwaving a meal… Now, (sorry, but someone had to say it) leave that one bulb as it sits and walk to the OTHER side of the room and repeat the test… IFF your LEDs make enough Light to do that job, I’m VERY interested, nevermind the cost. (I’ve seen your beamshots… You of all people know what I mean by “throw”.)

I’m just trying to defend the idea that QUALITY and QUANTITY of the ACTUAL LIGHT is at least as important to some of us as the Price Tag (yes, I mean Lifecycle Cost) of the bulb used.

And I do know that CFLs and LEDs are MONOchromatic, where the light I seem to need most is OMNIchromatic Meaning: why only 5000 (whatever)k? What about 5000k AND 3700k AND 14000k (and IR and a little bit of UV) all together like humans are used to seeing??? ALL wavelengths make the best “white” light… So the notion of “cost of light quality” over “price of green hype” will likely rub quite a few people the wrong way. I hope so… I have yet to meet anyone who will commit the effort to think thoroughly about something they feel comfortable believing. Full disclosure: as much as I love the LEDs for flashlights, I can’t see any way they could ever be made AS USEFUL, overall, as plain old point-source burning wires. When they make a small, spherical, BRIGHT (not “…for an LED”) multi-chromatic LED, I will be at the head of the line!!!

The color temperature scale already encompasses all light below the rated color temperature. If you look at how black body radiation is categorized, the higher the color temperature the more complete and even a spectrum of light is generated. So in effect a 5000k light bulb already includes all the colors emitted by temperatures below it. If it didn’t include the 1400k spectrum range the bulb’s color would actually simply just look blue. Monochromatic light is light of ONE color only, like a green or red led. White light is composed of many colors. I think you may be confusing a smooth color spectrum with one that has peaks or spikes, a weakness with certain LED’s or Fluorescents or if you try to make composite white from RGB color sources but certainly one that can be mitigated with proper phosphor controls for CFL or LED. Hence why you can have high CRI daylight white CFL’s near indistinguishable from daylight, try getting daylight white from a burning wire and the filaments wouldn’t last long at all.

And having tons of IR and UV from hot burning halogens simply wastes a lot of energy and in particular UV is damaging to the eyes. That’s why all halogen desk lamps have to have a glass UV filter on them.

Oh yeah and as for all the mercury paranoia. Yes mercury is bad, but CFL’s contain so little of it and unless you’re licking the scraps up with your tongue you’re facing very little exposure to mercury.

In fact if you’re worried about mercury. Don’t eat tuna, at all, no lobster either. The specific mercury compound methyl mercury is even more toxic than elemental mercury because elemental mercury doesn’t accumulate so brief exposure poses even less a hazard. But methyl mercury like that emitted from coal plants and what collects in sea food is much more dangerous.

http://science.kqed.org/quest/2009/06/12/how-toxic-is-a-busted-compact-florescent-bulb/

In fact the amount of mercury absorbed from a broken CFL under the worst possible scenario of improper ventilation and cleanup is about equivalent to eating just one can of albacore tuna. Something to think about there. Don’t eat tuna if you don’t like mercury.

I think we’re agreeing here, but just to be thorough…

Here’s a published “Spectral Power Distribution” chart of actual Daylight:

Here’s Cree’s SPD of their own XM-L’s three “color” ranges:

Just to illustrate the “monochromatic” (perhaps I should say “BI-chromatic, given the camel-hump shape from Cree) nature of the ”modern” lights.

And yes, getting good white light out of a wire costs you filament life. The Good News is, as chemical engineering has evolved, they’ve discovered ways to prolong that lifespan, e.g. with Noble Gases that “rebuild” the filament — providing you put the “proper” current through it (!!!) which seems to be the root cause of a lot of reported problems with incans…

I’m not just condemning LED or xFL lamps!! I use them as much as I can! Just pointing out how far they have yet to evolve, just to catch what we have now, which is still evolving (IFF the “disinterested third parties” can keep their stupid “policies” to themselves!).

IFF light quality is more important than lamp cost, is all I’m saying…

(Full disclosure: this is kind-of a prelude to a post I’ve been hatching re: I was fortunate to get the opportunity to MEASURE, with a calibrated camera, the color temperature of a Cree “3C” XM-L LED in a “stock” TrustFire F20… To spare the suspense, yes the dead-center measured ~5000k, but the “rotten cat urine” ring around the hot spot was NOT, and by the time I got to the “Lewd Lilac”/”Perverse Purple” ring (“spill”??) the Kelvin color number shot up into 5 digits!!! Looking at these XM-Ls beams I would DREAM of monochromatic LEDs!!! Even CFLs tend to be “all the SAME color”…)

Or “too many of” the Native Fish of the waters of the State of South Carolina !!

If my own experience is any gauge, people will hate on us both for pointing that out!

We too have many of the new cfls. I’m also sick of em. They simply don’t last as long as the labels indicate. The ballasts burn up, melt the plastic housing and look very capable of burning the house down. The color is always but always wrong. (I’m a photographer, this is important!)
Who want’s photo’s of their babies looking green? Or yellow? I’m sure nobody here does.

Anyone here realize a single candle is rated at 100CRI? So how do CRI numbers actually help us, if the numbers are only related to the Kelvin temperature of the bulb in question? They just make confusion. Like so much else the government has their hand in these days.

Mercury is so horrible…I remember playing with it as a kid, lucky to be alive. Lead is horrific…handled it in fishing sinkers and bullets for almost 50 years. Lucky to be alive. If fluorescents are so special, why are TV’s going LED backlight?

I say, for the Americans out there, buy American. That’s green enough for me. Whether that be incandescent, led or matches.

Best answer? Go to bed at sundown and get up at sunrise and most if not all of your lighting issues will be solved. Incredible annual savings! Lighting stress headaches a thing of the past! lol, ok, so there are no best answers. In all things one must weigh the options based on their own personal use and desire and go with what works best for them. So the only best answer is the fact that intelligence is needed, gather information and weigh the possibilities, then do what works for you.

I don’t think you can make a TV comparison justification to lambaste fluorescent room lighting. The main reason they’re going led is for different various reasons; one is it makes the TV sets thinner which sells better, the other is it lets you artificially bump up contrast ratios with selective led lighting, and the other is better color temperature controls using RGB backlighting instead of trying to control the LCD’s themselves which would reduce color contrast at more extreme ends of color temperatures.

And if you’re doing photography then yes halogens make sense because they’re not on ALL the time, only when working. It’s also easier to work with because with incandescent lights are always the same CRI 100, you just need to match color temperature. But with that said, how many photographers use flash strobes? A great many. How good are flash strobes when it comes to CRI? Pretty poor, xenon strobes are 80 CRI on average. It’s just that decent strobes which cost a lot are just consistent. I’m sure if you were willing to pay as much for your home lighting as your photography lighting, you’d have no complaints.

But to compare high level photographic lighting to a 99 cent CFL, come on, that’s a bit unfair. But for the most part the 99 cent CFL is a bargain. Heck even at their full unadjusted price of about $3-4 they’re still a heck of a bargain. And I don’t know what it is people saying they’re popping CFL’s quicker than incandescents, they’re really doing something wrong. I definitely know that I keep less CFL’s in storage than I remember with regular bulbs. Regular bulbs I remember having to keep a supply of a dozen or so to make sure in one season I don’t run out, when I made the switch to CFL’s my replacement supply for one season is just a couple of them collecting dust.

The selling point in TV backlighting is energy conservation, not lumen output. Fluorescent backlighting in television sets is rapidly becoming a thing of the past due to it’s greater long term cost of use as well as poor control of light distribution. Thermal control is also a substantial issue between the two forms of backlighting.

Lambasting a room with lumens is actually one of the issues, in many cases the “room” doesn’t need all the light, just the sitting area’s where books, tv guides and such are read. I’ve seen a great many houses built with no overhead lighting, room light wasnt an issue.

And no, it wasn’t my intention to compare “cheap” fluorescents to photographic lighting. Remember also that there’s no such thing as a .25 cfl, the tax base subsidizing pays the balance and the tax base is YOU! So the higher price IS being paid, it’s just hidden to appeal to the sense of economical purchasing power. Not to mention the problem we’re getting ourselves into buying all the cheap stuff from China. The point I was trying to make with photography (albeit I failed) was that going into peoples homes where the cheapest cfl available is their lighting source, it’s dang near impossible to give them quality photo’s even when using high dollar photographic lighting, as the cfl’s put a nasty mix into the equation that even photoshop has issues dealing with. People are not as healthy, with eye strain, headaches, moodiness, and depression from (studies indicate) poor lighting. Yes, there are fluorescents out there that don’t fall into this category, but they have to be found, and they’re not the cheap ones. One has to research to find out about them and then find them. And let’s face it, the percentage of people willing to spend their time researching something that’s not fun is very low.

You asked about CRI in flash strobes. The real deal with CRI is having a standard to compare to. Any color light can be held to a standard to achieve a high CRI, hence my example of a lowly single candle having 100CRI ratings. The camera, or should I say good cameras, use the standard base settings from the known output of the strobe and adjust color settings accordingly. Get the settings wrong and the colors are horrendous! Drop the flash output and the settings change accordingly, if you’re using automatic settings….in manual color temperature modes you’d better know what you’re doing when you change the flash output or the results won’t be pretty.

Point being, if the U.S. government is going to mandate that we buy CFL why aren’t measure’s taken to ensure that US companies are producing said product to employ US citizens in producing quality healthy economical lighting? Isn’t social sustainability, natural resource sustainability, what green is all about?

Well XM-L led’s are notorious for their color separation so I wouldn’t be so surprised with results, try to test it with frosted TIR optics…

Interesting document to read: White LED with High Package Extraction Efficiency (Technical Report) | OSTI.GOV

All of the LED lights in my house have CRIs between 85 and 95. I defy you to tell the difference between their light and incandescent bulbs.

BTW, Cree LEDs generally suck at color rendering and tint binning/uniformity.

YES it is!! Thank you for bringing it out!!

I can’t help but wonder if anyone at Cree has read it…

I haven’t finished it yet, but I think it’s fascinating and encouraging to see how even the experts hate the “rotten cat urine” color…

So far, the PDF only addresses luminous efficiency — redirecting the back-scatter OTF. IIRC, that “lumens uber alles” idea is what drove Cree to make the ooky XM-L colors OTF… Maybe the next model will work on “Consistency” and “Light Qual…” no, I don’t want to jinx it…

… “OTF” … To keep this On Topic, they also haven’t yet addressed the LEDs 2nd-biggest in-the-home shortcoming: the inability to illuminate what’s BEHIND the LED… Incans and xFL still rule the “fill the room with light” game, IMNERHO. But one can still Hope.

Good stuff!!! Back to reading!

(a lot less) Dim
(PS: TIR is next on my list, thanks. I don’t beLIEve that solid plastic will help (especially frosted or “fly-eyed”), but I am choosing a diverse group to order for testing. I don’t need “throw”, but I do hope for a Good Flood… “The proof of the pudding…”)

That’s true, CREE has a lot of work to do regarding light quality. For example ww xm-l T2/3500K/80CRI when compared to bridgelux ES BXRA-W0402 Q4 color bin (3045-3220K/80CRI) looks simply awful even with frosted wide angle tir optics…

Regarding “fill the room with light” game, some things are simply not possible or viable and we “must” accept that currently there is no suitable led replacement that would have 100% same characteristics as incandescent light bulb. However there are many ways to fill the room with light but non of them are simple or cheap as changing ordinary light bulb. Personally I prefer indirect (ambient) lighting combined with direct for work areas, for example fixture with fluorescent tubes that is opened on top and has satin glass under tubes, suspended from ceiling is almost ideal cheap solution as it offers lot of soft/glare free light on working surface and at the same time lights up the ceiling of room. My work colleague used 500W+ of spot halogens for living room and it was still (too)dim. Using two 28W t5 fixtures on furniture under ceiling in combination with GU10 leds for spots in existing fixtures greatly cut down power consumption and there is much more light in the room and it’s very comfortable for the eyes. So it can be done but not without little effort…

Just posting some user experiences via this link:

> mercury
Old fluorescents (including the 4’ tubes and early CFLs) had liquid mercury, several drops were visible when the tube broke (pinhead sized drops).
Newer fluorescents of all kinds use a solidified amalgam (like the old dental fillings). Purpose of the mercury is to supply a little bit of mercury vapor always present in the tube along with the argon, enough to conduct electricity to start it up.

The “blue” and UV spikes in the CFL spectrum are mercury lines. Get a

The tradeoff for any place that gets electricity from burning coal (almost everywhere, to some degree) is the amount of mercury produced in the smokestack — and the numbers showed less mercury from using CFLs than from using incandescents, counting everything. Not to mention reducing smokestack emission gets the mercury in fish and waterways controlled.

It was an ugly tradeoff. If (I say if) the LEDs are being made well enough they’ll definitely be better than either of the other types. But yeah, the rush into CFLs was kind of a dead end path, I wonder if that same amount of money had been invested in improving LEDs a decade earlier, we’d have better LEDs already.

The first CFLs I bought were “Panasonic Light Capsules” that cost about $40 apiece. Five of six of them still work — except the phosphor is flaking off the inside of the tubes so they’re nasty sources of ultraviolet light.

I have one of these public lab spectrometers: http://publiclab.org/wiki/spectrometer
I’ll post some spectra when I get them. Or there are lots of spectra at LEDMuseum.org
or go directly to LEDs - Gallium Indium Nitride UV, violet, purple, blue, aqua, turquoise, green, white. Also Gallium Arsenide and others. New LED MUSEUM! GaN, InGaN, SiC, GaAs, GaP, GaAlP, ZnSe, flashlight, flashlights.

By the way — the new Luxeon “PC Rebel” LEDs I’ve looked at don’t have that huge blue emission spike.

Our home has been changed over to using LED’s almost entirely except for two old fashioned 48 inch florescent tubes, and two T8’s .
We use about 100 KW less each month. Our porch light light is still a CFL. :frowning: