The false economy of in home LED lighting

Other Types of Lights LED Light Bulbs
79

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!!!

80

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.

81

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.

82

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”…)

83

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!

84

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.

85

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.

86

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?

87

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

88

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.

89

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…”)

90

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…

91

Just posting some user experiences via this link:

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> 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.

93

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:

94

I tried to replace my kitchen lights with CFLs and it was a losing battle. The light quality is just horrible and makes natural wood look terrible. I tried probably 5 different CFLs that were “well reviewed” and was not happy with any of them, on top of the fact that they do not dim well… the best Ive found are similar to what someone mentioned before, they dim to approximately 50% and turn off… and many of those flicker before 50%. Why spend $20-50k on a nice kitchen and then have it ruined by terrible lighting?

On the flipside I bought one $27 Philips R30 LED 2 years ago (now $17 each) and cannot tell the difference between it and my incandescents. $27 was too high at the time to replace all of the bulbs, and now I am moving so I dont plan on it… but the new house has been designed with 100% LED in mind.

Plain and simply, CFLs lose because of CRI, the best CFLs compete only with the cheap Chinese LEDs for color rendering (particularly the soft/warm light), and that is not acceptable for most uses.

95

Simply put, most people dont appreciate so-called high-CRI even when its brought directly to their attention. IMO, high noon sun on a clear day is high CRI, 90 CRI LED is absolutely horrible by comparison. This thread has only reaffirmed to me that we are still a long way off before consumer level LED bulbs can come even close to justifying their ridiculous cost. Even when their prices are severely discounted and subsidized, they are still grossly overpriced.

Owning a well furnished home with immaculate solid oak antique wooden floors, with mostly oak, brass and other wooden furnishings has shown some improvement in color rendition with an LED, but ONLY while using my 100 watt Bridgelux 97 CRI 3500K specialty emitter.

Compared to CFL, I saw only little improvement while viewed under a large 24 emitter nichia 92 CRI array, which was an overwhelming disappointment considering all the hype I had read about that particular emitter. Especially when compared to any other neutral or warm white bulbs: Cree LED’s or CFL’s of similar tint. IE: not CW). To each their own, and Im glad some people can perceive a substantial difference. Being the absolute lumen freak that I am, my myriad of friends have grudgingly been subjected to them all (including my hot rodded gas mantle lantern collections burning thorium coated mantles with my own homebrew fuel mixtures… which incidentally has by far the best perceived light quality of any light source we have yet to view). The only LED that stands out in the entire crowd is the +$100 97 CRI bridgelux setup I just linked… mostly attributable to the 5300 lumens and 3500K that is complimentary to illuminating my decor, along with the even light disbursement. To further add insult to all the overwhelming denial and hype, hide any typical household light source under a lamp shade and all bets are off. Who views a naked bulb?… and recessed lighting isnt common in every room of most homes.

If you want true high CRI, even lighting and great color temp, throw away all those silly LED bulbs you think are so great and step up and build a custom luminary with a 97 CRI Bridgelux (not a chinese piece of garbage claiming to be a Bridgelux). Then you’ll laugh at yourself and wonder why you wasted so much money and time trying to justify those LED bulb purchases and convince others. OR… you could listen to my friends and believe that the testimony from dozens of people would never even notice the difference. They only notice increases in brightness and not much else.

Any marketing MBA’s out there? Not surprisingly, its statistically proven that most people who justify the extra expense for frivolous self-proclaimed “upgrades” will justify and defend their purchases in front of others, regardless that nearly the entire casual observable population might think otherwise. Thats what the internet is for: enthusiasts not finding agreement and consensus from those around us, we find specialty groups that are most likely to help justify our purchases, and by trying to convince others. :bigsmile: Reading that again = :smiley: :smiley: !! We’re all guilty of it, including myself! :smiley:

Now if I can just figure out how to power 10 x 100W Bridgelux emitters in my bathroom, I could shower while wearing my welding goggles and tell myself that the high CRI is a nice “upgrade”. Not a chance… they will remain CFL until there is a truly sensible reason to swap them.

As an side, try replacing your hallway and bathroom lights from slow warm-up CFL’s to LED’s. Whether of not that circuit is on a dimmer, you WILL eventually nuke the crap out of your eyes in the middle of the night and strongly consider grabbing a crow bar to pound them all clean though the ceiling. Others in your home will always appreciate those CFL’s and their slow starts… trust me on this.

AND most importantly: since we’re presumably all demented flashaholics… who cares? BUY! BUY! BUY! :stuck_out_tongue:

96

Not after you consider the long term costs… my house has over 300 LED bulbs in it (all Sylvania and Phillips) I was replacing a $5-$10 halogen bulb at least once a week. And many times I had to replace $36 Lutron dimmers when a bulb failed.

After going LED starting around three years ago I have not replaced a single dimmer and had only three LEDs bulbs die early on (replaced under manufacturer warranty). Electricity savings is around $100/month. I figure they have pretty much paid for themselves now (and not counting my time savings and aggravation of replacing bulbs and dimmers).

Granted, a lot of those 300 bulbs that I bought were from a re-seller of Home Depot store returns and I paid around or less for them than the halogens cost (that’s why I have LED bulbs in closets that have never been switched on). But I paid full bucks ($25-$35 each) for around 80 of them (95 CRI PAR20’s, PAR16’s and MR16’s)… pretty much all the bulbs that get used the most.

As far as CRI goes, once you get above 90, the human eye can’t tell the difference… and I’ve done museum lighting for some VERY picky snobs artists. That is within the noise and natural variation level of natural lighting. Most people can’t tell 80 CRI or above. BTW, 3500K-3600K is considered to be the optimum color temperature for viewing artwork.

97

I despise the fact that we’re told and even forced to use “green” bulbs. But I do use 5000k 20w LED bulbs in the areas I spend most of my time. Mainly cause they’re dimmable and I prefer a cooler color temp. I’m also curious how long those phillips bulbs will really last. Most everywhere else I use 300w halogen floodlights on dimmers.

98

isn’t it an irony the law was signed by a party that claims climate change is a myth