That was my point, 2 x 18w LED bulbs produce a much more pleasant light than the 4 x CFLs. Given that I have several lifetimes of CFL lamps to work through, the break even point on power savings is 2 years or more so I'll continue to use the CFLs elsewhere where the duty cycles are lower and light colour less critical.
Chris K
Only if you're replacing tungsten filament lamps (which it very much looks to be the case with that level of energy saving). The savings on replacing an existing fleet of CFLs are a lot more modest.
I've just done a rough and ready assessment on replacing my existing collection of 20W CFLs (including a couple of 8W CFL lamps in wall fittings in the living room, normally the only lighting SWMBI has switched on when she's watching the telly) and estimate that upgrading the living room, hall and landing lights, the very ones that _do_ get left on for the longest periods of time is unlikely to reduce my _annual_ bill by more than 12 quid.
It was a very different story 10 years ago when I replaced the tungsten filament lamps with CFLs at about 2 or 3 quid a pop and got a saving of some 50 or 60 quid on the annual bill. That's when the lamping upgrade exercise gave the best ROI of all time.
Sure, it wasn't as 'perfect' a solution as the LED upgrade now is since the trade off was an acceptance of a half minute or so run up time to full brightness. For lamps that were normally left switched on for the evening, this wasn't a serious issue. However, this temperature sensitivity did make CFLs pretty well unusable in exterior locations without the use of expensive double glazed fittings along with an even more protracted run up time.
A decade or so back when we were substituting something like, for example, a 1KW incandescent lighting load with a 250W CFL load, that gave us a massive 750 watt reduction, repeating the same exercise now only yields a 100 watt reduction at best with the current crop of LEDs (for those willing to wait another year it's more likely to be 150 watts).
The only tangible benefit with the best of today's LEDs is an instant startup lamp with (if the manufacturers' claims are to be believed) a lamp life some 3 to 5 times better than the typical 6 to 8 thousand hour rating of the CFL along with a wider range of applications extending into much cooler environments. All worthy reasons, of course, to upgrade if we're prepared to accept the high price of early adoption - not everyone is.
For those of us who do take a rather jaundiced view of the 'early adoption' pricing model, it makes far more sense to be rather more choosy about how we go about replacing our existing stock of CFLs and hold off making any mass purchases for as long as we reasonably can and that includes resisting the temptation to succumb to the 'low priced' LEDs on sale in LidAldi which are far from the bargain they appear to be in the eyes of the general public unaware of the rapid improvements in LED lamp efficiencies that have been made in the last two years which are only now starting to come through the distribution channel.
What the likes of LidAldi and a lot of other retail stores are currently flogging off at 'bargain prices' is older, less efficient stock that's currently backed up in the distribution channel, awaiting the store's best efforts to clear the current backlog.
By the LED manufacturer's own reckoning (Cree and Philips), it's going to be another 18 to 24 months for their latest 200 and 300 lumen per watt R&D examples to appear as actual product on the retail shelves. In effect, since both companies announced their 200 Lumen per watt devices back in January and February this year, such high efficiency lamps (3 times better than the best CFLs) won't be on sale until at least this time next year.
Although the initial pricing on such 200L/W product is likely to carry an even higher price premium than the current 'best available' LEDs, I'd expect the prices to drop out of the stratosphere even quicker than the previous generation's pricing did due to the much larger reduction in running costs compared to the CFL (typically a reduction to one third that of a good quality CFL compared to the reduction by one third to one half with the best LEDs now available).
The availability of the newer lamps should help depress the pricing of the existing overpriced 10W 810 lumen 15 quid lamps to a more reasonable 5 quid or less (that's a lamp type that's about twice as efficient as its 20W CFL equivilent so still a worthwhile investment in terms of running costs once "The Price Is Right"er. As I see it, it's just a matter of biding your time.
If our kitchen, height adjustable, pendant lamp, bought from Ikea a decade or so back, is anything to go by (LES - E27 lamp socket), you're absolutely correct. The (metal chinese hat styled) shade is held on with a retaining ring that has a much larger diameter than those used on BC lamp sockets.
Largely thanks to Ikea pushing LES fittings onto the general public these past two or three decades (thin end of the wedge effect).
Slight thread hijack - anyone experience of Ikea bulbs:
Prices seem half decent . . .
normally
There is a bit of a clue in the numbers b22 and E27... B-)
They're not the worst but be careful when choosing your 1000 lumen LES LED lamp, I spotted a 65% variation between a couple of models with that output.
Also, please note that they're only a little more efficient than a CFL (6x more light per watt compared to CFL's 5x more per watt than an incandescent). We can reasonably expect to see LED lamps with twice the efficiency of CFL this time next year (instead of the current 20% improvement over CFL as at present).
Far too low a colour temperature for my (our) taste. They appear to be very much designed to look like tungsten filament in terms of light emitted.
When I fitted ones with a higher colour temperaure, SWMBO objected. We have "warm White" ones.
It is as much my partner as me who likes the higher colour temperature!
It is more difficult when there is a mixture of existing lighting some of which will remain 2700K or so.
Most folk prefer 'warmer' looking lighting to the 'cooler' looking simply on account the bluer tint triggers an association with blue skies lacking direct sunlight typical of the cooler parts of the day (early morning/late afternoon).
It wouldn't matter so much if we set our home thermostats 2 or 3 degrees C higher but most of us are looking to keep our heating bills in check which allows the 'cooler' looking light to exagerate the percieved 'chilliness' of the just below warm setting most of us set our room temperature stats to.
I've noticed that the colour temperature for 'warm white' now tends towards 3000K and even 3200K rather than the original 2700K for tungsten filament and the earlier 'warm white' CFL/LED lamps. I'd expect the next generation might find the older 2700K lamps to be just a little too warm looking for their taste over the next decade or so.
In this case, habituating the next generation to a 'cooler' colour temperature lamp is a useful trend since it makes for higher lumen output per watt lamps just from the colour temperature shift alone.
lm/W bit low - not necessarily a bad thing if enclosed. I've a 3.5W one in a bulkhead and it illuminates the area well (helped by the aluminium foil between glass and cage to shade it so that it doesn't shine outside the area required). Toolstation's prices aren't too bad on some lamps and there are BC caps.
Without having the data available to compare, I'm not qualified to comment on these figures, but would add another factor, which is the power used by number of lamps that we used to leave on when not necesary due to the warm up time of a CFL over LED. And, of course, the convenience factor of being able to turn a light on and get...well...light (!) Not that I have taken the plunge to change the whole place to LED, but I replace with them whenever a bulb goes. The Toolstation range are not bad in terms of price and performance together with easy availability. I wouldn't over-think aspects like the light distribution as it doesn't seem much of an issue in practice. Where I have gone wrong has been in buying LEDs that are more powerful than necessary in some applications. Like the 6-lamp set up in the dining room that I filled with 5W candles, that could burn the average retina out in milliseconds. Fortunately, it's switched as 3 + 3, so can be mitigated, but I'm still trying to think of how to re-deploy those onesto justify replacing them with something more subdued....
You could try 7W CFL candle lamps. They won't dazzle on switch on and take about half a minute or so to work up to full brightness so should fit the bill just nicely. :-)
LEDHut and Lightrabbit items bought in the past year or two have had no failures so far, despite being on a lot of the time. Which is what I'd been led to expect of LED lifespans.
Ditto. Apart from some legacy lights, all my fittings are ES and I only bought one or two BC fittings by accident more or less (clamp-on shelf edge lights). Even the legacy lights mostly have BC-ES adapters in them now.
Yes, I prefer warm white. I thought 2700k (the Ikea bulbs) is warm white?
Interesting, thanks. Is that quite a performance hit, then?
And I'm not sure about acclimatising people to a different whiteness - perhaps folk like the warmness for a physiological reason, like a mild form of SAD?
Having said this, from very limited reading*, it's LEDs themselves rather than the whiteness that matters.
*
Thanks :)
I had an LEDHut golf-ball style (enclosed mini corn-cob) which had a bilious green cast for ages, so bad I relegated it to third-rank use. I noticed it had gradually become warmer and it's now merely a touch cool white instead of ghastly.
Just avoid the cheap junk from the far East - 100% failure rate on mains-powered LEDs now [1]. Otoh, the cheap and cheerful Chinese-sourced flashlights / torches are all going strong, with the only failure being one that was suspect from the start as the High setting on that was definitely over-running the chip and it cooked.
[1] I suspect the mains circuitry is the fault, rather than the low-voltage side, so they might be repairable, if I can be tuited.
Have not had them long - but will definitely be looking out for changes. Thank you for posting that.
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