RitcheyRch
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What do you think of the government mandating the use of fluorescent light bulbs?
While it may seem like a great idea with the gain in efficiency, the compact flourescent lamps create a whole new waste stream. They should not be broken due to the drop of mercury in each sealed tube. It is like every other energy conservation measure. A small gain here with a huge loss in some other accounting column. (See ethanol)
Tom are there any commercial or household type LED options for bulb use commonly available yet.
In conclusion, I wish to point to point out that I'm not a nerd; I'm a technology enthusiast.
Yes. Lots. There are LED bulb options for almost any socket that is still in service, AC or DC.
http://www.ccrane.com/lights/led-light-bulbs/index.aspx
... there are zillions of other sites and links out there too. That was just the first hit Google returned.
Manufacturing breakthroughs in the last 18 months have brought a 50% efficiency increase at 1/10 the cost of previous LED generations. Those benefits haven't trickled down the lighting food chain yet but they will.
Basically, Philips bought LumiLEDs (the industry leader) and is bringing LED lighting to the main stream. They have automated the process of mounting dies on thermal substrates so they can produce some extremely high power LEDs that they can sell for $2~4 each and make money. That's an order of magnitude improvement over the last generation and there are big improvements ahead, as well.
At this point, LED lighting makes sense for some applications. One such application is industrial fridge lighting. In a fridge, you have to supply energy to make light and you have to supply energy to cool the heat the light emitter produces.
Walmart is changing all of the lights in their big glass-door fridges from fluorescent to LED. My understanding is that project will pay for itself in just a few months.
The other thing about LED emitters is that they are relatively tiny. With a 50000 hour emitter life, it will soon make sense to build LED lights into appliances, under cabinet lighting, and all sorts of places that we currently use fluorescent and then shield the harsh direct light with a valance. With a tiny LED, the light can be recessed into the wood and not hang down at all. What's more, it wouldn't be the worst thing to deliver cabinets with LED lighting features that aren't easily replaceable. LEDs rarely fail and their reliability is going up all the time. At 50K hour life expectancy, there isn't a strong need for consumer replaceability.
With line power, socket losses are a fraction of a percent. With the low voltage and relatively high currents required for LED systems, socket losses become much more significant.
More importantly, sockets bring resistance and points of failure. Removing the sockets from the system will improve system efficiency and reliability. We're a decade away from eliminating sockets, though.
Here's something you may find interesting about incandescent lighting. You know how bulb life is going down all the time? Not long ago, 500 hour bulbs were the cheap garbage. Now, we've got bulbs as low as 200 hour commonly available. This, of course, is a conspiracy to give us less product for our hard earned money so we have to buy more bulbs, causing bulb manufacturers to make more money.
Well... not entirely. It turns out, bulbs are rated by how much power they draw, not by how much light they put out. If you take three 60 watt bulbs with projected lives of 200, 500, and 1000 hours, you will discover the 200 hour bulb has higher output than the 500 bulb and the 500 bulb has more output than the 1000 hour bulb. The lower hour bulbs have thinner, more delicate filaments, causing them to run hotter and produce more light with the same current flow. This also causes the filaments to deplete more quickly and break more easily.
In fact, given the current cost of power, the 200 hour bulb will cost you around $60 for the initial purchase and the power to run the bulb for it's life. The 1000 hour bulb will cost upwards of $100 to purchase and power for it's life. These numbers are approximate, given 100 lumen output levels. It's considerably cheaper to use lower hour bulbs.
LED doesn't make a lot of sense in most applications right now but that's on the cusp of changing.
The next era will be line power drivers and LED emitters built into modules that fit standard bulb sockets. The issue with that is rectification inefficiency. That's why the generation that follows AC driven LED modules will involve having a single, fairly efficient DC power supply that will drive most of the lighting for an entire home.
After that, the DC power supply can be eliminated by sourcing DC power on location. Each generation of photovoltaic cells brings roughly double the power efficiency and LED power efficiency is roughly doubling every three years so it won't be long when you can have a small array on your roof, a small storage system of gold caps or fairly efficient batteries, and DC power.
Once we go DC, there will be a world of other efficiency improvement options like DC fridges and appliances.... but I'll save those for another post.
In conclusion, I wish to point to point out that I'm not a nerd; I'm a technology enthusiast.
This post is far too light nerdy and long winded......thats an infraction.....all the best!
After that, the DC power supply can be eliminated by sourcing DC power on location. Each generation of photovoltaic cells brings roughly double the power efficiency and LED power efficiency is roughly doubling every three years so it won't be long when you can have a small array on your roof, a small storage system of gold caps or fairly efficient batteries, and DC power.
Once we go DC, there will be a world of other efficiency improvement options like DC fridges and appliances.... but I'll save those for another post.
Tom... is a nerd!
I don't mind the compact florescents in some places where the light tends to stay on like the laundry room or garage, but they still aren't a direct replacement for incandescent. They turn on too slowly, the light spectum is not acceptable for some uses, and it can be bothersome that they take a few minutes to warm up and put out the full light rating.
Tom...do they make affordable LEDs that have a broader spectrum?
...so are you saying the Edison was right about DC power after all??
I've got some CF lights that are pretty much instantly on. They are inside of fixtures and you wouldn't know they aren't incandescents unless you removed the fixture.
I think AC will be around for a long, long time, both in power grid form and locally sourced form. DC power doesn't transmit for shit. DC is only worth while when the source is extremely close to the consumption.
I wonder if those manufacturing the flor bulbs are funding the legislation. Seems like big money ahead for someone if it passes.
Tom are there any commercial or household type LED options for bulb use commonly available yet. I know you're a flashlight guru so I'm just guessing you might know more than I do about this too.
I wonder if those manufacturing the flor bulbs are funding the legislation. Seems like big money ahead for someone if it passes.
Tom are there any commercial or household type LED options for bulb use commonly available yet. I know you're a flashlight guru so I'm just guessing you might know more than I do about this too.