60W equivalent LED bulb uses 9.5W and costs $13
designingwithleds.com
designingwithleds.com
The amazing part of this bulb is not it's watts or it's cost.
It's that a manufacturer finally put it's warranty where it's mouth is.
With a 10 year warranty I will actually buy it compared to the Phillips.
BTW I've yet to have a cheap chinese led 110v bulb last more than 3 years.
I believe switching capacitors in the power supply are what limit the lifetime of most LED bulbs - electrolytic caps being one of the worst offenders. Good thermal management helps mitigate these problems, but a lot of failures are chemical in nature - caused by the degradation of the capacitor's electrolyte. This is why we've all seen the capacitor choice in motherboards and PSUs used as a marketing item.
Full disclosure: I used to work for a well-known LED lighting company, but please take the above with a grain of salt as I am not an electrical engineer. [Edit: And of course, these views I've expressed are my own and not representative of my past employer.]
And the biggest problem with this bulb is the CRI of 80. That's much worse than CFL's which are typically around 90.
So I guess I'm struggling with the significance of CRI.
This is why I'm wondering if the CRI is really a magical "light goodness" benchmark number or what. Some people certainly seem to be treating it that way.
Yes, the latest LEDs are far superior to CFL. And oatmeal tastes better than dog shit.
That's a lot of power dissipation (360 Watts), particularly since one of the fixtures was on up to 12 hours per day (4KW-h almost daily for that).
So I replaced all nine bulbs with TCP LDCT3WH30KCC 3-Watt (15 W incandescent luminance equivalent) 3000-K 80-CRI bulbs. 27 Watts, down from 360.
Excellent energy savings, excellent dimmability (better than the incandescents), but all those beautiful violet, green, blue, gold and other various facets of color from the prismatic glass were just gone -- collapsed down to a cold white; as if the glass weren't prismatic anymore.
I do not understand why I don't see at least some narrow-band stripes of some few individual colors.
So I put back just two 40-watt incandescent bulbs. That was enough to bring back a nice refractive color spread from the prismatic glass. The dissipation is up to 91 Watts from 27 Watts, but it's beautiful again.
Energy problem resolved satisfaction (75% reduction), while keeping the aesthetics alive too.
Try to get LEDs that have no diffuser lens in front, since the LED itself is a point source.
In general "warmer" CFLs have a better CRI.
You can trade off energy efficiency for CRI. This is true for LEDs as well. So if you don't need great color then go for a lower CRI since you'll save energy on the light output.
But because of that, when comparing energy efficiency of LEDs vs CFLs you MUST use a comparable CRI, otherwise it's not a fair comparison.
But I'll save you time: There are no commercially available LEDs that beat CFLs in energy efficiency for the equivalent CRI.
As someone who is enthusiastic about LEDs from a distance (I'm not about to run out and replace all my lights at once) I'm comfortable with the idea that LEDs are still a couple of generations away from replacing existing technology in a satisfactory way. But damn, those generations sure are happening fast.
I became aware of Cree because of flashlight LEDs and what they accomplished in that space over the course of a year or so was pretty amazing. At present I can still take out my little AAA light with the newest Cree LED and say "check this out" and surprise people with its brightness. The early LED flashlights were largely junk, but in contrast, this is a great use of the technology.
How did you come up with that typical number? Typically, CFLs meet the minimum energy star requirement which is 82.
If you don't believe me, browse through GE's catalog for a while...
http://genet.gelighting.com/LightProducts/Dispatcher?REQUEST...
For me the answer is simple: $13 is way too much to pay for a light bulb, I don't care how efficient it is.
While it's a good thing for households to move to energy efficient lighting it's not nearly enough. We need to work out ways for industry to reduce their energy waste / use.
$13 for a lightbulb isn't too bad, if it's a nice light and efficient and lasts a long time.
Businesses pay more than that if they need their light-bulb repair technician to get a ladder.
For me the benefit of all these low energy bulbs is to have lamps everywhere, rather than one or two bright lights. It's a shame that most of them are a harsh blue/white light at the moment.
You probably should care. It only takes 6 hours per day of usage for your 60W incandecent to suck up $13 of electricity in a year. And you'll have had to change it at least once. The LEDs will last for over a decade.
Yes, if you're only renting a house/apartment for a year then you may not recoup your costs (although it will be close). Similarly if the light is on for less than an hour per day. But if you plan on sticking around awhile it makes complete financial sense. You can literally save $200 per bulb over the lifetime of a bulb used heavily.
Also, the prices will continue to fall.
EDIT: mikeash is right that I should have mentioned the dependancy of efficiency savings on your local electricity prices. I used 10 cents per kilowatt hour, which is a bit under the national average of 12 cents (meaning I was being conservative in potential savings).
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/10/27/141766341/the-pric...
I'm sure it's worthwhile for any heavily-used light even in very cheap areas, but the specific breakeven time will vary quite a bit.
If you live in Iceland, the payback is probably never. If you live in Singapore, you will recoup the cost in months.
I personally use LEDs everwhere except my bathroom during winter, where I use inefficient globe bulbs because it warms the bathroom.
I'm not sure how much of a difference it's likely to make, though. Houses in cold climates usually use more efficient heating systems, so the heat from a light bulb will be pretty costly by comparison. With a 50W savings, the cost for additional heating to make up for that will probably only be equivalent to about 10W of electricity, or less, depending on your setup.
Air conditioning is usually pretty efficient, with efficiencies better than 10 (10W of heat removed for 1W of electricity used). So that 50W savings will still be 55W or less when taking air conditioning into account.
I think you are off by a factor of 3.412. The SEER rating may be 10, but that means you push 10BTUs per Watt Hour, or 2.9 WH/WH.
I am also assuming that burning NatGas produces electricity about 40% efficiency delivered, and burning it at home for heat is about 80% efficient.
Thanks. Never thought people would actually use an efficiency rating where 1 didn't mean 1:1. Now I know better.
#1 is the annoyance cost of having to replace a lightbulb. Almost all of my lights are either recessed in the ceiling or in annoying-to-access fixtures; not having to find a ladder or chair and balance the replacement in one hand is well worth the ~$10-20 LED bulbs cost. Amortized over their expected lifetime it's minuscule and if I move I'm taking the bulbs with me.
So, the price you would use to calculate savings is not your average price / kWh. You should use your max price / kWh.
That's also why if/when you install solar panels on your roof, you recover your investment faster if you don't quite cover your entire electrical needs.
I thought all utilities were on a tiered pricing model. It's actually a technique employed by Arcata, CA to fight pot growing houses [1][2] that use > 600% of the baseline usage.
Also, I have lived places where middle of the day pricing is higher. My utility company just sent me an offer for tiered pricing by time of day. Smart meters help with implementing time of day pricing.
[1] http://www.arcataeye.com/2012/08/measure-i-the-grow-house-el...
[2] http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/11/03/pot-tow...
The only gas in my house is my central heating, and my old water heater. I plan to replace that with point-of-use electric tankless units. No more waiting 2 minutes for hot water at the kitchen sink! With a $3,000 grid-connected solar kit I'm pretty sure I can get to near $0/month on electricity, even with the electric water heaters and the Nissan Leaf I just bought last night. ;-)
It's the future brother. Stuff lasts longer, provides a better experience and is cheaper. It's win/win/win. The environmental wins might not be all that dramatic with the impact of production factored in, but if you're in it for the long haul I figure you can still feel OK about it if you were up to replace a bulb/water-heater/car/etc anyways when you make the switch.
PS: Have you seen the price on POU tankless water heaters? Once you have the panel/breaker/wiring in place, they're dirt cheap compared to traditional water heaters.
So your 400 watts of bulbs will consume 133 watts in the cooling process.
It's a new, pretty efficient HVAC unit though. Thankfully. First home I've had that didn't struggle to maintain 76F indoors during the hottest part of the day.
Still, there's not a ton you can do around the house as cheap as replacing the bulbs in the high-traffic areas. Anybody can do that. Replacing your HVAC for something more efficient is going to be a challenge for most.
Then there's high-R-value windows to install. Foam insulation on exterior walls (brick, so that's a lot of dry-wall work). Radiant barriers in the attic space. More ceiling insulation. Tankless water heaters.
Outside of maintaining your weather stripping, I can't think of anything that pays off as much, for as little, than replacing your light bulbs. Maybe getting a Nest thermostat? We've got recessed lighting in the Living Room, which had four big 90W halogen bulbs when we moved in, and are almost always on if somebody's home. Replaced 'em with 17W LED bulbs (http://www.usa.philips.com/c/led-light-bulbs/ambientled-17w-...).
That comes out to about $7/month in savings. (360w vs 68w @ $0.0912 per kw/hr). In the year since I installed them they've paid for themselves. They'll last 22 years according to Phillips. The ROI on LED (for your highest-traffic rooms at least) is stupid cool, and I'll effectively never have to bust out the 8' ladder to replace them. I might be off base, but I think I've typically replaced halogens every couple years or so. So even over 5 years the old bulbs probably would've cost me 10X more.
For our situation at least, that's a no brainer. If I can spend $50 today and avoid paying $5/month indefinitely, that's a big win in my book. I may not be able to afford to buy a car cash, and have to pay the financing penalty, but at least I can break out of the "financing" cycle with my home lighting. ;-)
My $35 power bill is my desktop computer, refrigerator, hot water heater, and the 7 lights that end up turned on just to light up a 500 or so sqft living space. (Recessed lighting is evil.)
So what is your gas bill right now? It costs around five times as much to heat with electricity.
If you wanted to be smart about it, add an electric heater with a sensor. Best of both worlds that way. Hot water is instant but after two minutes you are using cheap gas-heated water.
You're right of course, but given my cheap electric rates, the fact that "some day" I could produce electricity on my roof, and I won't be throwing 2 gallons of water down the kitchen sink waiting for it to warm up, that it'll be a win overall.
I'm not going to be drilling for gas in my back yard anytime soon after all. :-)
Plus, I'd find it hard to believe that generally speaking my electricity isn't far better for the environment considering it's 100% wind. It's probably easier to ask what weeks has there not been some mishap in Texas City than not. That's not normally a primary driver for me, but all things being equal it's a plus.
I'm surprised there isn't a push for low voltage LED lighting. Running low voltage cabling and electrical boxes is a lot easier and the LEDs run off of low voltage anyway. Outside of appliances, who needs 120VAC in most of their rooms?
"Receptacles shall be installed so that no point measured horizontally along the floor line of any wall space is more than 6 feet (1829 mm), from a receptacle outlet." [1]
[1]: http://publicecodes.cyberregs.com/icod/irc/2012/icod_irc_201...
Lighting is all CFL, though - the bulbs are about $1.40 apiece and consume 13w of juice, which works out to around $11/year to run 24/7. A 60w incandescent would cost around $52/year to run 24/7. We obviously don't run them constantly, but even if the incandescents were free, the CFLs are a better deal over the bulb's lifetime.
I expect the car will probably kick that up <$10.
I got the faith: I replaced every incandescent in our condominium association with CFL. After one year, most all the CFLs had failed, despite having 3- to 5-year warranties. Also noticed another peculiarity: CFLs are stolen more often! Apparently our condominium parking lot has become a CFL bank for individuals who want to lower their light bills.
So last week I bought a 4-pack of 40W incandescents for $4! That is down from the $12 I would have paid for four CFLs that wouldn't last any longer and that, when broken, are a mess/danger to clean up.
No more CFLs for me, thank you! The whole CFL thing is looking like a scam.
When a company or a government agency gives instructions for clean-up they're going to go 'by the book' as much as possible.
They give these scary sounding instructions because for every 50 people who manage to put a broken CFL into a bin without instructions there's going to be 1 who'll gather a bunch of broken CFLs in a sack and toss it into a lake; or who operates a trash business and who stores kilograms of them in the open leaching stuff into the water table.
See also women being told to avoid '4d scans' (no medical purpose; everything carries some risk even if unknown and unquantifiable; thus avoid this risk because there's no medical benefit) or coffee cups with "This is hot" printed on them.
CFLs are very picky about the quality of the electricity supplied to them, and the cheaper CFLs save money by using a cheap ballast which ends up frying the bulb pretty early in its lifespan.
If you buy a name brand (such as Phillips) you will get a product that lasts 3+ years easily.
Now in theory LEDs can a bit over a decade if not driven really hard, but to get the current brightness you see out of home lighting LEDs the poor things are driven way past the point of living their optimal lifespan / lumen.
It doesn't help that LED bulbs are housed in super hot bulbs with heat sinks desperately working to keep the bulb from frying itself!
We returned bulbs on warranty but, seriously, if you're spending money/time driving to/from Home Depot to get replacement CFL bulbs on a warranty instead of buying cheap incandescent bulbs that work, you are suboptimizing.
Then go with LEDs then. They still save you money in the long run.
> if you're spending money/time driving to/from Home Depot to get replacement CFL bulbs on a warranty instead of buying cheap incandescent bulbs that work, you are suboptimizing.
How is it sub-optimal? Aren't you driving even more to and from Home Depot buying new incandescent bulbs?
Incandescent bulbs last years; CFLs don't. I save money and time buying incandescents instead of CFLs.
If I were to replace all the bulbs in my house at $13/per I would be looking at about $1,000. And the energy savings would be noise in my budget. I mean it would literally be dwarfed by one extra dinner in a restaurant per month. It's not worth any mental energy at all. I like incandescents, and that's what I use.
A bulb that never needs replacing (assuming you stay in residence less than 10 years) and pays for itself (and more) in energy savings? Sold. Easy.
As a case in point, in 2009, industry consumed 256 million tons of oil equivalent, versus 262 mtoe for the residential sector (ie households).
And it's also true that residential lighting is not a big energy consumer, even though it still represents close to 10% of US electricity use (not of overall energy use, of course).
http://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication...
OTOH, if you live in a climate where heating is necessary, and even more if you heat with electric heat, there's obviously little gain to be had by switching to LEDs.
In any case, I'll note that the "residential" line does indeed read 262 mtoe but the "production" line at the top is 1,686 mtoe, leaving the "residential" category consuming something like 15% of total production.
Most novices and outsiders would probably be content to count non-residential energy use as "industrial," even if that doesn't match the IEA's more detailed classification. Especially energy-intensive commercial activities that I imagine must make up the "transport" category (like aviation, trucking, railroads, and shipping).
Actually, residential energy consumption is expressed in final energy terms. This is the actual consumption by end-users of energy carriers (e.g. electricity, gasoline, diesel, natural gas, etc...). The sum of all these end-use consumption is the Total Final Consumption (or TFC).
This is to be distinguished from primary energy sources (crude oil, coal, natural gas, etc...), which are used to produce the energy carriers that end-users consume (e.g. in a power plant to produce electricity, or in a refinery to produce gasoline). The sum of all primary energy sources consumption is the Total Primary Energy Supply (TPES).
Since residential energy consumption is reported in final terms, the correct denominator to calculate the share you were looking for is TFC. Residential energy consumption thus accounts for 17.9% of TFC, versus 17.7% for industry.
The non-residential sector is denominated in IEA terminology as 'Commercial and Public Services'. This sector encompasses office buildings, hotels & restaurants, education & research, hospital & healthcare, sports facilities and public administrations. In short, buildings that house the tertiary sector. Therefore it can't be identified at all with the industry (btw industrial buildings consumption are accounted for in the 'industry' sector).
In total, residential and non-residential buildings account for 32% of TFC in the US, second only to transport (39.5%).
Disclosure: I've worked as an analyst at the IEA for 4 years.
Unfortunately 60 watt equivalent has become some sort of benchmark for new light bulb technology. If you really want to replace lighting in some meaningful way, start quoting 100 watt equivalent numbers to me.
60W was enough for me a decade ago. Now for fine work I need 100W. I can still see with 60W, but what was enough for fine work a decade ago is not enough now. I understand this will get worse as I get older. I don't have any particular visual conditions; I'm just aging.
Indeed I have no trouble with low light (yet!), but just because I can read a book with a single 60W bulb in a living room doesn't mean I want to.
The 60W incandescent light bulb has been the "standard lightbulb" since before most of us were born. Honestly I don't understand this criticism at all. Certainly LED lighting is available in many form factors other than a 60W bulb...
My condo's living room doesn't have a ceiling mounted light fixture, or a place to install one at. I'm sure the job could be done, but it'd be a major pain.
> The 60W incandescent light bulb has been the "standard lightbulb" since before most of us were born. Honestly I don't understand this criticism at all. Certainly LED lighting is available in many form factors other than a 60W bulb...
Thus I'm stuck using a stupid stand lamp, which right now is only 1 bulb. (My previous 3 bulb stand started smoking when I put in a 150W equivalent CFL, heh)
Sure 60W has been standard, but for what purpose? Just one of them is useless, and heck 3 of them isn't much better. 3 75s is actually useful, and a couple of 100s is preferred.
Granted, I tend to prefer darker rooms anyways and I'm quite happy to have candle light in the evenings (about 100 - 200 lumens).
It never occurred to you just to buy a second lamp?
I'd love to. 750sqft Condo, I have one outlet that is hooked to a switch, other outlets are either in some horrid location or already used up with a power strip attached.
Not everyone has large open areas that they can just throw stuff in.
What I need to do is get a better quality standing lamp that can take a slew of light bulbs! But even then, I am not going to be going for 60W, why should I when I can go farther with fewer bulbs of a slightly higher wattage? (Or wattage equivalent in the case of LED and CFLs)
I was surprised how bright the 100W-equivalent LED unit from Philips is. It is rated at 1780 lumens vs 1600 for an incandescent 100W.
LED lighting is costly and complex enough that directional LED bulbs are more or less at cost parity with omnidirectional LED bulbs. In fact, true omnis are often more expensive just because LEDs are inherently directional. This is the first time in the history of lighting where omni wasn't significantly less expensive than directional.
Truth is, there are very few scenarios where a high-output omnidirectional lamp actually makes sense. We're used to omnis because they were much cheaper to purchase than their more efficient, directional brethren and because it's convenient to just slap a bright bulb in a socket and say "eh - good enough."
Since most people buy LED bulbs for the gains in efficiency, doesn't it make more sense to buy the lower-power directional lamps which are more fit for their application? How many fixtures do you have in your home that require a true omni-directional lamp? How many of those fixtures need a high-output omni? Now, how many fixtures do you have that could make good use of a directional bulb (either narrow or wide-beam)?
tl;dr: Talking about incandescent watt equivalency only benefits marketing people and confuses consumers - take a look at directional lamps and you'll be less disappointed.
There was that awesome Kickstarter awhile back for a nice omnidirectional LED bulb, I'm looking forward to its delivery!
> Truth is, there are very few scenarios where a high-output omnidirectional lamp actually makes sense. We're used to omnis because they were much cheaper to purchase than their more efficient, directional brethren and because it's convenient to just slap a bright bulb in a socket and say "eh - good enough."
With this I disagree. Open spaces such as a living room are perfect for omnidirectional lighting.
Indeed when I have lived in places with track lighting the annoying part was always trying to spread the light out enough to make it seem omnidirectional without having a bunch of bright hot spots around the room.
When I am cooking or something, sure, light up my working surfaces, but for general ambiance when I am at home I want the entire bloody room I am in lit up!
Now just do that while saving power. :)
Indeed, if you look at how recessed lighting is installed (and I'll be the first to point out that recessed lighting is generally stupid), there are a ton of cans installed in a grid throughout the ceiling to provide what is essentially uniform brightness in a room.
First I'm not a lighting designer, I just used to work next to a few of them so I'm probably (definitely) overconfident in my opinions in this area. That said, I personally go back and forth on what you're saying.
Let me qualify: when I say "directional," I mean uniform 180° or narrower. The real difference is in the optic: flood vs spot. You can get a surface mount 180° flood fixture (ceiling mount) or a well fit recessed fixture with something like a BR40 (good wide-angle disbursement) to do exactly what you're talking about. If you want wide-area lighting, stay away from PARs, MR16s, GU10s, etc. Are omnis in a stood-off fixture easier? You betcha. Is paying to light your ceiling necessary? Nope.
All of that said, I hope they get dirt cheap but efficient omnis out there too. Forcing the general consumer to think about stuff like this is a barrier to entry, and broad swaths of people being more efficient is a Good Thing indeed.
Here you go: http://store.earthled.com/products/switch-switch100-led-ligh... , though note that the upfront cost is high. Scroll down to see the performance specs.
The real challenge is to propose an affordable LED bulb that can provide at least 1300 lumens.
Also a CFT would be 12W and cost $2 ($1.25 if you look around). Over 10 years in most markets that would be cheaper.
PS: My Home is almost 100% LED's. I love them. But that doesn't mean they are always the cheapest, the most efficient, or the best for the planet. I just prefer the dimmable nature and the consistent color across the dimming.
I even have a problem with CFLs in a different room where on occasion I turn the switch on and the light won't come on at all right away unless the other switch that controls a different set of lights is on already. It's pretty bizarre. It's not a big enough deal to spend the money on finding an electrician for something this small but it is strange.
All of mine turn on instantly - if they are not technically at full brightness I certainly can't tell.
Except for those from Feit Electric - those are terrible, don't buy from that company.
I was just saying: An "instant" on and off light will affect your vision differently than one that (for example) dims slowly for a few seconds after turning it off. If this isn't "by design" and it takes minutes, than that's a serious problem.
To "turn on less lights" I'd have to install "more (varied) lights".
To each his own, but it's funny, I _love_ this about the LED lights. It has been a pet peeve of mine pretty much forever that I cannot get the low level of light I want out of dimmed incandescents because the light becomes unbearably orange when turned down that low.
http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/categories/departments/liv...
When I moved into my home 6,5 years a go, I bought compact fluorescent lamps at IKEA (the kind that looks like a regular incandescent light bulb). I have yet to replace one.
I read an article about the IKEA bulbs being quite good about 85% colour rendition compared to normal bulbs. If you feel like it you can test it by printing a camera colour test chart and compare how it looks under different lighting.
Edit:
For you downvoters out there, it is considered a serious risk. Here's another article about the problems: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7431198
www.popularmechanics.com/home/reviews/news/4217864
If you make a habit of breaking them open near your face and inhaling the gas, you probably have bigger problems. I've read that the actual average mercury exposure from a broken CFL is less than 10% of the mercury exposure from a serving of tuna.
What is the proper way to handle a broken CFL? Open the windows and let the room air out for 15 to 30 minutes, then remove as much material as possible without a vacuum cleaner. Using disposable gloves, scoop the glass onto a piece of cardboard and wipe the area with a wet paper towel. For smaller pieces of glass and powder, use duct tape to pull up the fragments and wash your hands after cleaning up the debris.
It's a bit funny how many of us obsess about the calibration of our monitors and tablets, even installing utilities that change the color temperature at different times of day to be easier on our eyes. But we don't seem to care as much about the ambient light that we see everywhere.
Also, many of my fixtures expose the bulbs and look ridiculous without a clear glass incandescent bulb.
I recently acquired a 40W-equivalent version of this bulb, and in A/B testing vs a 57W "efficient" incandescent, I lost track of which bulb was which. The LED bulb actually had a warmer color that the incandescent, plus very similar brightness.
Of course, most of my bulbs are horrible, dim, slow, ugly, toxic, cool white CCFLs, installed by the previous owner (even in fixtures with exposed bulbs,) so pretty much any bulbs constitute a serious improvement.
Also: I forgot about my can lights. They don't seem to have that form factor.
I'll have to try one out. It may just be that I'm on the vinyl side in the lighting equivalent of the "vinyl vs CD" debate.
The CRI of incandescents is 100, LEDs are around 90, and CFLs are around 70. Under real world tests, the human eye can't distinguish additional colors in LED vs incandescent bulbs.
No.
http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=99&t=3
In addition, all those places on earth where it's dark at night should be able to use lower power lights, when the price comes down a little more.
My only gripe is the ~22% markup over the US pricing when the Canadian Dollar is worth ~2% more than the American (and has been for some time now).
I found it funny the way they had their lights laid out in my local store. There has always only ever been one aisle dedicated to twist-in bulbs.
When I entered the store today, and walked straight to that aisle. All I could find were phillips LED bulbs. Rashes of them. Almost every shelf in the aisle featured a Phillips LED bulb of some sort, for twice the price of the Crees. There were even Phillips LED comparison kisosks where consumers could turn on and off all of Phillips' LED bulbs. It was really quite a spectacle.
I broke down and finally asked a sales rep, only to be told the Cree bulbs were in the "fancy/expensive" lighting section of the store. The one where they sell all of the chandeliers and lamps, and you have never been able to find twist-ins for sale.
My gut feeling is that Phillips is scared they're going to lose market share over this, and are using their massive Home Depot contracts to negotiate poor placement for the Crees (and possibly poor pricing?). FYI 90%+ of the bulbs sold in Home Depots are Phillips.
It'd be interesting to know what kind of maneuvering the companies are doing. Here in the US Cree is paying for a single "end cap" (end of the aisle placement in the front of the store) and the bulbs are selling out fast. Home depot is also their main distributor. But the store is littered with other brands, not just Philips.
I picked up my two cree bulbs in an "end cap"-esque box today, however it was not at the end of any aisle, rather hidden away in the lamp section.
The Canadian dollar is worth 2% more, meaning for one Canadian dollar you get USD$1.02. On the other hand, stuff in Canada is more expensive no matter whether you're paying in CAD or USD. Exchange rate is to do with currencies, independent of location; cost-of-living is to do with location [pretty much] independent of currency.
To see a much more drastic difference in cost of living, try going somewhere like Siam^WThailand.
Maybe someone else can fill in the details on the factors that influence exchange rate and cost of living.
[1] http://www.lightingprize.org/
[2] http://news.consumerreports.org/home/2012/08/first-look-at-t...
[3] http://www.usa.philips.com/c/energy-saving-light-bulbs/ambie...
The competition requires a CRI of at least 90, but this bulb only rates 80.
Could someone explain that a bit more please?
1) put red, green and blue LEDs in the same package and either bring all the connections outside for an external balancing circuit (which also lets you do multicolour effect), or balance the currents internally and just bring out two connections.
2) make a blue LED (with substantial UV output) and use a phosphor coating to re-emit "white" light. This coating appears very yellow when the LED is off, and is similar to the way a conventional fluorescent tube works.
2) is cheaper and more efficient, but only emits "white" light - the trick is getting it to not appear too blue as the phosphor doesn't absorb all the blue light.
EDIT: also, the white light from (1) is not really very white - the spectrum is hard to tailor compared to using a phosphor.
LEDs however, only output one narrow spectrum. So, to solve this issue, the "white" LED is really a Blue LED + a material that converts the color blue into white.
You mean many wavelengths of light. The light spectrum is the sum of all wavelengths of light. Also, the plural is "spectra".
White LEDs work by emitting blue light but being coated in phosphors that emit the other colours when hit by that blue light.
Often you'll see that white LEDs appear a little "cold" in colour which is caused by the slight excess of blue light compared to the phosphor generated other wavelengths.
1) Use multiple colors of LEDs, which will make the light source look white but objects lit by this source will have off colors.
2) Use a phosphor coating on the LEDs, where the phosphor absorbs (most of) the narrow frequency band output by the LEDs and emits the color(s) that you want.
In this case, they went with option 2 with a phosphor that absorbs blue light and emits broad spectrum white light.
(This is also the way that fluorescent bulbs work: the hot mercury vapor inside produces invisible ultraviolet light, but the phosphorescent coating absorbs that UV and re-emits it in a range of visible wavelengths. And it's no coincidence that they're using a blue LED with a short wavelength: in general, a phosphor can only re-emit at longer wavelengths than it absorbed. That may imply that these bulbs emit little or no violet in their "white" light, since violet has a shorter wavelength than blue.)
If they lose power like CFLs, even though the warranty is 10 years, you may be forced to replace it way before that.
There are two ways to get white light (which is light of "all" visible wavelengths) from a LED: combining a red, a green and a blue LED, or using a coating that when energized by (typically blue) light, in turn reacts and emits white light.
You can read more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-emitting_diode#White_ligh..., of course.
Note: I'm just an (embedded) software guy with a hobby interest in electronics. :)
In one of the smallest rooms of my house, there are two of the Philips LED bulbs of the "yellow when off" variety. In an adjoining area there is another bulb of the same type.
There is audible RFI with the room's lights on when the battery-powered FM radio (with a rod antenna, about 3 feet from one of the bulbs) is accurately tuned in to a favorite but moderately distant (perhaps 30 miles), moderately powered (6 KW, not a lot) FM station. Moving the rod antenna away can stop the RFI, but then the antenna happens to block a doorway.
Turning off the lighting stops the RFI. The lamp in the adjoining room is apparently distant enough not to interfere with the FM radio.
I wonder if the CREE bulbs are any better in this regard, but not seeing anything in the teardown pictures that looks like shielding or ferrite chokes makes means I'll probably keep the existing bulbs; the RFI isn't bad enough.
1) http://www.fxguide.com/fxguidetv
2) http://www.fxguide.com/fxguidetv/fxguidetv-170-dedo-on-dedol...
They're certainly ugly, but for the record, they aren't yellow when powered. I also learned today that they have a little fan inside -- supposedly silent in most circumstances.
I suspect that ten or twenty years from now we'll look back on these early designs and laugh our heads off. Just as with computers.
This is a common practice -- attract shoppers with a killer low price on an item that, for one reason or another, isn't actually available. I'm not saying Home Depot intentionally did this -- maybe they innocently underestimated public interest.
FWIW, I picked up 'Philips 9.5-Watt BR30 Indoor Flood Soft White (2700K) LED Light Bulb (4-Pack)' for $60 online from Home Depot, thought it was a pretty decent deal at the time.
Why not say where? I don't think anyone will object that you're flogging a particular source. Your quoted price is lower than anywhere else by a substantial margin.