3-way LEDs... at last?

[=]

--- And 72 watt, 52 watt, 43 watt and 29 watt halogen. There's no shortage of halogen bulbs in any store that I've seen.

Tomsic

[=]

That's right. It was a deal between the DOE, the energy advocates and the lamp manufacturers in 2007. The idea was to replace standard bulbs with energy-saving bulbs. The manufacturers said what they could do to improve incandescent bulb efficiency and then they all decided to set wattage limits so the manufacturers could tinker with light output and rated life to make bulbs that consumers would buy. The advocates were only after energy savings so they liked the idea of wattage caps. Since it was a consensus among the "stakeholders" who came to the public meetings, Congress passed the bill and George Bush signed it.

But the fun begins again next month since the law allows periodic reviews of the bulb regulations. The next phase includes the possibility of requiring all general service bulbs sold to be 45 lumens/watt. The halogen bulbs range from 15.5 to 22.2 lpw now. Will the advocates get their way? It probably depends upon who shows up at the DOE rulemaking meetings.

Tomsic

[=]

Yes, that bayonet base is called a GU-24. They're required in California if the fixture manufacturer wants the fixture to be classified "high efficacy" or if the fixture is to be Energy Star qualified.

Tomsic

[=]

Oh, I don't know that it will take Chinese manufacturers to get the price down. Cree is doing a fine job and they build bulbs in the U.S.

Tomsic

[philoÂÂ]

My wife is an artist and the Reveal work well for her...though most of the light in her studio is full spectrum fluorescents and the skylights.

As to those 72 watt halogen with the 100 watt equivalence... I have no idea how they can pull that crap. They are equivalent to a 75 watt bulb!

[Congoleum Breckenridge]

My local NW Ohio Lowes has the 30/70/100 in-stock for $34.99 Haven't tried one yet. Also Cree has a 75w replacement coming out soon to the HD

[gregz]

Today I came across a post of some high brightness led panels. Some of the smaller, warmer color temps look very interesting. Seems many of these use around 30 volts dc.

Greg

[bud--]

I tended to think of "Reveal" as one of the lighting scams, so I looked for some information:

From GE Reveal - "100W replacement"

1120 initial lumens [1600 is a reasonable lumen figure for a 100W bulb]

using 28% less energy than regular incandescent [giving you 30% less light]

CRI 100 ["filters out dull, yellow rays" and they have a high CRI? according to

(digital photography review) the CRI is about 70 "Unscrupulous bulb mongers push these horrible bulbs at many different groups."]

delivers outstanding energy efficiency [Reveal 1120L/72W = 15.6L/W real incandescent 1600L/100W = 16L/W filtering the yellow lowers the efficiency]

1000h rated life [750h for a normal incandescent - they actually didn't lie about this one]

IMHO Reveal is a scam. Did I miss something? ==========================

I was just looking for 100W light bulbs for a garage. CFLs aren't good because of the cold. LEDs probably aren't available in 100W, and are not a particularly good choice for bulbs that aren't used much. That leaves halogen. For 3 brands the "100W equivalent" was in reality a 75W equivalent. I agree with philo that this is consumer fraud.

Why aren't they prosecuted?

[gregz]

I don't find waiting for CFL's and fluorescents to warm up a problem. If your looking for an intruder, might be a problem. Still got an incandescent in the door opener.

Greg

[krw]

I find it exceedingly objectionable. I normally only have lights on a few minutes (sometimes a half). I want to see when I turn them on, not five minutes after I turn them off. I do have CFL in our GDO because it never gets that cold here. In VT, there was no way I'd use them. The ones in our living room took ten minutes to come up to full brightness. It was rarely on more then 30 seconds (long enough to climb the stairs).

[=]

Look at the ratings of those products again. The 100 watt standard incandescent bulb has a rating of 1600 lumens and so does the 72 watt halogen equivalent. It's the light output (lumens), not the watts that are "equivalent". As I indicated in another post, all of these ratings and phase-out issues were negotiated by the lamp companies and energy advocates. The government (Congress and the DOE) didn't get involved until EISA 2007 passed in Congress.

All of these bulbs have to have a "Lighting Facts" label. If you can show that any of the ratings don't match what the label says, you have a case and should alert the FTC. They're the light bulb police.

As for the Reveal bulb, what's wrong with a less efficient bulb that gives better color light as long as the numbers are there so the consumer can see them. Before GE and others started making the Reveal and other color-enhanced bulbs, they were specialty products known as "neodymium bulbs". Then the big companies caught on to the fact that there was a market. Consumers liked the color.

Tomsic

[leona912311]

I bought some reasonable priced and quality LED GU 10 bulbs form Amazon before, just around$9, and I think you can find more cheap and quality lights here

[gregz]

That about sums up the reveal bulbs I tried. I don't currently have a use now. Not great for room lights.

Greg

[=]

SNIP

I agree. There's one in our 3-way floor lamp now. There's plenty of light, but colors seem overly bright.

Tomsic

[Nate Nagel]

yeah... 75W equivalent won't be bright enough for reading lamp use, and while Switch really has some attractive and innovative products, they need to work on getting their pricing to a non-luxury-good level.

nate

[Nate Nagel]

If these are old school porcelain bare bulb lampholders, just get a y-adapter and use two Cree LED "60W" bulbs in each. Probably the cheapest "energy efficient" solution you're going to find other than CFL or doing the same thing with halogens.

nate

[Nate Nagel]

I think that's the idea; if you like the effect, great; if not, just stick with an unfiltered "bulb."

Oddly, the Cree True White LED "bulb" uses the same technology but in this case it actually improves the color rendering of the LED emitters (at least on paper, giving it a higher CRI rating) rather than artificially changing it as do the "reveal" incandescent bulbs. They appear to be only available in stores in California however, likely due to the "California quality LED specification" - very similar to the L-prize standards, both requiring >90 CRI (the "Energy Star" requirements only require a CRI of 80, so most of the consumer LED bulbs have CRIs only in the low 80s) but the California spec goes a step farther and requires power factor >0.9 whereas the L-prize rules did not specify (and my checking of a Philips L-prize lamp with a Kill-A-Watt showed that it did in fact have a low power factor, and that power factor decreased dramatically as the lamp was dimmed with a Lutron dimmer.)

Now do the Cree TW's actually look better in use as general home lighting than the standard issue Cree LED bulbs? I can't say, as I'd have to mail order them and I haven't been bothered to do so yet; I still have one unassigned L-prize that I picked up when they were still available for the $15 subsidized price.

I find it a little surprising that the general populace has just accepted inferior lighting, when those of us who grew up 20+ years ago had excellent albeit inefficient lighting in our houses in the form of incandescents but have grudgingly accepted slow warm up times, sometimes odd tints, and low CRI as acceptable. I went out of my way to purchase the L-prize bulbs because to me quality lighting is just a nice luxury and I also definitely support purchasing quality products when they're available.

nate

[Nate Nagel]

Actually IKEA is a good source for LEDs and I expect they will improve over time, as they've supposedly committed to LED technology and phasing out incans. The IKEA Ledare LED "bulb" is about $11 and has a nice high CRI (given on package as ">87") and is supposedly dimmable. In my opinion it is a special purpose bulb however as they advertise it as a "60W equivalent" which I consider to be flat out dishonest and fraudulent; it's only rated at 600 lumens making it a good replacement for a 40W incandescent bulb but not a 60W one.

nate

[bud--]

I agree that 1600L is a good value for a 100W equivalent lamp. It is the value I used, above, and I compared lumens.

If you start at (GE Reveal)

and click on 100W you get

I used the data from there in my analysis, above.

A Reveal "100W equivalent" is 1120L. Consumer fraud. In addition, as indicated above, GE fraudulently says

- the bulb has "outstanding energy efficiency" when it is lower than a standard incandescent

- the bulb has a CRI of 100 even though they subtract yellow, and digital photography review says the CRI is about 70.

And they misleadingly say the bulb uses "using 28% less energy than regular incandescent" when it also gives you 30% less light.

It is all in the analysis above.

Do you know where the negotiated equivalent watt-lumen numbers are?

As I wrote, 2 other brands at Lowes had "100W equivalent" halogens that had lumen values that were actually equivalent to 75W incandescents. The Reveal 1120L is a 75W equivalent lumen value.

The equivalents I use are the same as Consumer Reports (and reasonable values from my old lamp catalogs): 40W 450L 60W 800L 75W 1100L

100W 1600L 150W 2600L

and from the lamp catalogs

200W 3850L 300W 6200L

From the lamp catalogs, 40 and 60W lamps are 1000 hr. The rest are 750 hr.

I do have an ordinary GE halogen 75W equivalent that is 1050L (an honest equivalent) and 53 actual watts. I have tried to be careful to not buy the fraudulent-rated bulbs. The market has a whole lot of bad buys now (including long-life incandescent, low-lumen bulbs).

The numbers that "are there" are fraudulent and misleading.

Incidentally both you and Nate have interesting information on lightning. Thanks.

[bud--]

IMHO my garage, where the lights are not on much, is a poor place to use LEDs.

I wound up using ordinary 150W incandescents. I would have tried halogens if I would have found honest ratings.