Light bulbs

We've been moving from using the incandescent light bulbs to using LED bulbs over the last few months. I was wondering if the socket says to use a 60W bulb, can I replace it with an LED bulb that is technically a replacement for a 75W bulb when in reality it only draws the equivalent of 13.5W?

Or do I need to stick with finding a replacement LED for 60W (specifically) that technically only uses 4W?

There's so many choices of LED bulbs, and then there's soft white, warm light, natural light, etc. It seems the natural LED light bulbs are the hardest to find.

Reply to
Muggles
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Hi, That 75W refers to Lumen 75W bulb will produce, I don't think it refers to power rating in case of LED. I understand it as bright as 75W bulb. You already have answer to your on question. My house is all converted to LED including every thing in the garage. except ones in fridge and oven.

Reply to
Tony Hwang

The 60w is the heat shedding ability of the luminaire. With a 60w, U/L says it should still run at a (fire) safe temperature. You will not burn your house down if you use a 75w equivalent bulb that actually uses 4w or even 40w. If it was close, I would worry a lot more about the longevity of a LED or other electronic bulb running at a "safe" temperature for an incandescent. (perhaps 100-129f) At 4w I see no issue at all.

Reply to
gfretwell

It's not the light output that limits the wattage a lamp is limited to, it's the heat - which is a function of real watts. You could put a blinding 60 watt LED in if you could find one - equivalent to well over 240 watts in light output (;umens)

Reply to
clare

Yes -- with some reservations.

First, of course, if the incandescent is in a dimmable fixture, then you'd need a dimmable LED (or CFL) bulb. At the very least, you will be disappointed if you try to dim a (LED/CFL) bulb that was not designed for this form of operation.

[And, you'll probably also be disappointed if you try to dim a DIMMABLE CFL -- they suck!] *Running* (burning?), an LED (or CFL) bulb draws considerably less power than it's "light equivalent" incandescent counterpart. So, if the light was left on forever, you could conceivably approach the "power rating" of the socket (and CIRCUIT!). Power translates into heat that is primarily dissipated in the socket.

But, lights turn on and off. And, the mechanisms that are used to turn them on/off vary. During these transitions, the electrical behavior of incandescents and LED (or CFL) differ.

There are very large, reactive currents associated with the non-incandescent alternatives. So, when driven by relays, triacs, etc. it is common for these sorts of lights to draw very large currents on startup and/or when abruptly switched off -- considerably higher than the currents that would be required for a "light equivalent" incandescent!

In many applications, the control circuitry for these lights is designed to be pretty marginal (typical "consumer" approach -- save every penny that isn't REQUIRED by the product). E.g., a 60W lamp is a tiny load so the circuitry to drive it wouldn't be as capable as, for example, a "light switch" that can typically handle a 15A (1800W) load!

Using LED/CFL in these places can cause the control circuit to fail such that the light never lights *or* never extinguishes! What's worse, instead of a burnt out bulb, you end up with a burnt out

*appliance*!

Ask yourself why you really "need" more light.

Or, you can buy one of the "programmable" lights that you can change color dynamically: "Hmmm... I feel like RED for dinner, tonight..."

[I'd not recommend that (expensive) option; the bulbs in question are hackable]
Reply to
Don Y

I agree with Don. Also, beware using LEDs as the load on a timer/motion sensor switch which does not use a neutral (white) wire. In this case, the circuit that powers the timer or sensor uses the load as a 'virtual' ground at a current insufficient to light a filament, but enough to light LEDz, albeit intermittently and dim. I did this in my garden shed (motion sensor switch) and needed to put one halogen bulb in the load or else the LEDs all flickered when they were supposed to be "off". Also, CFLs do something that is "sensed" by the motion sensor as motion.

Reply to
Mike Duffy

Oooo! I hadn't thought of that!

Many of our light switches (in the house) are illuminated (I suspect a small neon bulb?). Of course, the bulb is only lit when the switch is OFF (and there is potential across the switch's contacts THROUGH the load -- light bulb!)

So, like your comment (above), current is flowing through the CFL/LED (as it would have been for an incandescent -- but the incandescent won't light, noticeably!)

[Trivia: with these sorts of light switches, the LACK of illumination indicates the bulb(s) are dead (or, power to the circuit is out) -- for obvious reasons!]
Reply to
Don Y

Only in some cases depending on what kinda sensor it is. My GDO lights, entrance hallway lights are LED and they are controlled by motion sensor. No problems. May be one has to know what he is doing?

Reply to
Tony Hwang

As long as the motion detector has a neutral connection (white wire) and a relay it will work with just about anything. The problem is when the power to run it is scavenged through the load (no neutral). Usually they flicker when "off". The small amount of current buffers up in the little switcher power supply capacitor and discharges like a relaxation oscillator. The other thing I have seen is very low current loads may not be enough to reliably cut a solid state switching device off. I have an optical to RCA adapter on my TV that I tried to control with an SSR (off the USB port). Until I put the amplifier in the load path, it was flickering on and off too. It does not take much of an incandescent bulb (11 watts works) or a small transformer wall wart to get these things working right.

Reply to
gfretwell

While what you say is true, you do know that incandescent bulbs ALSO draw a very large current surge at turn on?

Mark

Reply to
makolber

On Tue, 24 Nov 2015 17:59:28 -0600, Muggles wrote in

When the socket limits the bulb used to 60watts, that means the socket itself and the fixture it is in, have been designed to handle a maximum of 60w of thermal load. A CFL or LED that is rated at 13.5w will be fine if it physically fits in the fixture.

Reply to
CRNG

From :

"The first support call came from a customer with thirteen 23-watt CFL bulbs installed in a workspace, as replacements for 60 W incandescent bulbs. He indicated that the lights held in the ON position after only a few actuations of our control relay.

[note that 13*23W = 299W -- the equivalent of *5* 60W bulbs. Hardly anything to "worry" about!]

"We could not believe that, so we replaced the incandescents in our test rig with one CFL bulb. It was true! A relay that would run 100,000 cycles, switching asynchronously on numerous incandescent bulbs ran 10 to 100 cycles with a single CFL. Astonishing.

[asynchronously == no regard for zero-crossings of AC waveform. 1000X *fewer* relay cycles before CFL "wore out" the relay]

"So the race ensued to determine the failure cause. Relays stick closed due to high switching currents, but how can a CFL bulb that draws 23 watts suck that much current, enough to weld the contacts on a 10 amp relay, one rated for incandescent service? We set up a fixture with a current monitor to see.

[10A relay; 299W is < 3A]

"We found that some CFL bulbs draw huge inrush currents, peaking up to 17 amps, for a duration of 300 us or more!"

[half a 60Hz cycle is ~8300 us]

Watch the videos referenced in

-- which essentially restates the issue more graphically.

Reply to
Don Y

That ignores the fact that there is something that turns the lamp on and off.

Do you think you could put **600** of those "60W light equivalent" lamps on a 20A circuit (2400W)?

Reply to
Don Y

Of course most load has reactive inductance. 2*Pi*f is inductive reactance value.

Reply to
Tony Hwang

Well, I recently wanted to replace a bulb in my bathroom. The light socket had been labeled as 60W, so I found a GE bulb LED replacement, bought it, and put it in. I just realized that I bought a 75W replacement LED daylight bulb and says it uses 14W, and it says it's lumens is 1350.

I can take it back and buy the 60W replacement LED bulb, but do I really need to because the 75W replacement says it only uses 14W, which isn't even close to the 60W the socket is labeled as?

Reply to
Muggles

Ahh that's good to know.

ok Thanks!

Reply to
Muggles

Interesting. I would be curious about the relay tho. A lot of "incandescent only" relays look pretty wimpy because they assume that to be purely resistive. That is one problem with "engineering". Instead of "how strong can I make it" the tendency is "how small/cheap can I get away with".

Reply to
gfretwell

I thought I bought the 60W LED replacement bulb, but ended up buying a

75W LED. I guess they were sitting next to each other. Anyway, I ended up buying the 75W when I thought I was buying a 60W. It has 1350 lumens according to the package. So, according to what I've read in a couple other responses, I should be OK using the 75W LED replacement bulb in the 60W socket because the 75W bulb still uses less wattage (14W), right?
Reply to
Muggles

The incandescent bulbs draw a large ammount of startup current because the reistance is very low before the filiment comes up to the operating temperature. Same as with most common conductors except carbon and most simicondcuctors.

Reply to
Ralph Mowery

I am over wintering some plants in the room, so I need some additional light for them.

I did see some of those programmable lights, but they seemed like a bit of overkill for just adding some additional light for plants.

Reply to
Muggles

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