THe only place I have CFLs is in the unfinished basement, where 1) I don't care what how the light looks. 2) I don't care about the absurdly long warm-up. Much. 3) The lights may stay on for more than an hour a day so there might be some energy to save. 4) Haven't gotten the T8s wired in yet.
#1 was resolved years ago. Current CFLs have good color temp and CRI.
#2 seems to only apply to encapsulated CFLs, not a single one of the open spiral CFLs I've used has a warmup time over a second or so after it's initial couple hours of burn-in.
#3 there is energy to save regardless of daily run time. If your sub hour a day run time saves #0.03 that's still a savings. Total lamp lifetime savings is still the same, it just takes longer to accumulate.
#4 I use all 4' T8 fixtures in my shop and I'm pretty happy with them. LEDs would save more power, but it would take more fixtures to get the same coverage as a cheap dual 4' T8 fixture.
Much like CFLs I'd be suspicious that the electronics in the base are going to go Tango Uniform before the actual light emitting bits wear out. This is another reason that I'm partial to the "L-prize" bulbs because they would have had to have been built with better-than-bargain-basement components to make it through testing. Again, I wouldn't pay $50 for one but $15 for what appears to be the Cadillac (well, that's an old school comparison, perhaps Lexus or Benz?) of light bulbs seems like a good deal.
This teardown appears to support that reasoning (yes, I'm totally geeking out on light bulbs today)
Which ones? Subjectively, I don't like them, and objectively I haven't seen any commonly available with CRIs listed significantly >80 (and most don't list it at all)
The bigger the CFL the longer the warm up time it seems... which means if you have an older house with older fixtures that were designed for adequate lighting with 60W bulbs or greater then you'll be annoyed by the warm up time. You're right, you can get a 13W CFL that isn't *too* annoying, but if you need more power than that out of a single "bulb" then the ramp up is back...
I guess where my frustration with CFLs stems from is a desire *not* to replace old light fixtures with newer ones using fluorescent tubes or multiple CFLs (what can I say, I like old stuff)
Yeah, T8 or T12 shop lights are hard to beat for illumination. The CRI may not be the greatest but they're head and shoulders above CFLs in lampholders for sheer illumination and the CRI is likely better too - and 4' T8s are available in tons of different color temps etc. as for years they've been the standard for commercial illumination. I ended up using them in the whole basement of my last place; two troffers in the "man cave" area that had a drop ceiling, and shop lights in the laundry room.
It might look kinda goofy in a pole light during the daytime...
as I said before this whole geekery started after buying a 4W "flame" LED bulb at Lowes (Utilitech Pro brand) it works in the pole light but doesn't really light up the driveway completely; I was looking to see if there were any higher lumen ones available (not for an affordable price) and that's when I came across the $15 good Philips bulbs @ HD.
Maybe one of the 40W equivalent Crees would be the ticket? They're not particularly decorative but they are more like a traditional frosted light bulb in appearance and you don't really care about CRI as much in a pole light as you would indoors.
Unless you want to advertise to the world that you geek out on stuff like LED bulbs, in which case by all means get the Philips (although I think the older ones with the silver fluted base and orange remote phosphor panels look even cooler )
I did not do the math but the Phillips lamp, and that's what I addressed, is 10 watts and costs $50. I'm not taking time to do math again. You can do it but off hand I'll bet its more expensive. I'd buy the 60 watt equivalent $10 LED bulb if I knew where to get it.
Slight change in subject but I think home lighting requirements only takes up about 14% of your total electric bill so improved lights are just chasing diminishing return on investment.
The Cree 9.5W/800 lumen (advertised as "60W equivalent" although this seems to be a little reminiscent of CFL advertising where you give up
50-100 lumens relative to a traditional incandescent) ones apparently are readily available in the HD stores that aren't selling the Philips L-Prize bulbs. The Cree ones are $13 in my area and I apparently wouldn't have any trouble getting them. I specifically sought out the Philips bulbs because of the higher CRI and the "made in the USA" factor, and the $2 difference (everywhere that I've actually been able to find them for sale, they're $15 not $50; online at Amazon now, if you're not close to a store selling them, they're about $30 BTW) isn't going to kill me. The higher light output and greater efficiency is nice too.
Not that Cree makes a bad product - as I said in a previous post, there are applications where it might make sense to use them, e.g. where the bulb is exposed and you are trying to maintain the appearance of a traditional frosted bulb. I've got several flashlights using Cree LEDs and they're great; I think I've replaced one pair of batteries in one of three flashlights after several years of ownership and use (and all are still working fine.) If the Philips didn't exist I'd probably be trying a few of the Cree bulbs now.
As an aside, Cree is apparently where it's at for can lights now. They have several models of downlights with a CRI of 90 or greater but for whatever reason their "light bulbs" have a lower CRI. So Philips for bulbs, but Cree for can lights.
I didn't even bother to fact check that statement but keep in mind that going from incandescent to CFL or LED will reduce the heat load on your A/C as well, if you live in an area that requires primarily cooling rather than heating (and I do)
Also, is that 14% assuming incandescents or CFLs? If the latter, then using incandescents would change lighting to a significant fraction of the total power used.
The 7.5W 40W equiv. LG lamps I've been using for about a year. I have absolutely no issues with their light quality. They have two color temp versions available also.
I use a bunch of higher power CFLs, the 23W+ versions. I put them in the cheap clip on reflector fixtures and use them for work lights where I used to use 500W halogen. I don't see any notable warmup times on those unless I'm using them outside in really cold weather. I've also *gasp* used 23W CFLs in enclosed fixtures with no meltdowns and still 4+ years of service life.
The total light output isn't hard to replace with LEDs, but the light distribution from a 4' two tube T8 is difficult to match.
Well, they have two at an HD on the other side of town and none in 5 stores near that other one. For some reason HD thinks I live on the other side of town, even t hough other websites like weather know where I live.
Hmmm. It has 32 in stock at the store nearesst me. Are you saying I should buy some?? I wonder how many would be good.
And out of stock at 4 stores near that one.
After I kept going, I found 4 stores out of agroup of 6 which said Item not sold at this store. Plus about 14 earlier stores which had at least two, 1 that had one, and 10 earlier additional stores that were out of them.
It says 14.99 now.
A store about 50 miles away from me had a stock of them
Utter bullshit. The LEDs themselves, if cooled to the datgasheet numbers (probably 25C) will last 30KPOH but NOT as they're used in crap appliances. Let me know when yours actually last that long.
Nonsense. The pig tails take five minutes, or longer, to come up to full brightness. In cold weather, forget it. Most of my lighs aren't on that long in a day.
Bullshit. It takes energy to make the things (and for me to buy them).
Don't bet on LEDs taking less power. 4' T8s are pretty efficient. The light is also better for such work than anything you're likely to find in a "bulb".
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