The 'speak' might not yet be fully formed but the obfuscation is well on its way. One LED had a lot about the equivalents and comparisons but I had trouble in finding the wattage and output. It's about time that out-of-date comparisons were banned, e.g. LED v incandescent and, in cells, lithium v zinc carbon.
Yes. I spoke with a couple that wanted an LED to replace incandescent. At least the cap was known but they were about to buy a £12 LED - admittedly around 1300lm - to use on a dimmer, so I was able to explain that the dimmer would not do and the lamp wasn't dimmable anyway.
I've set a limit of =>100lm/W; it's good enough for now and I do like the characteristics. The one factor that is restraining me a bit is that, perhaps over-optimistically, whatever I buy now will last for perhaps 10 years or more, so I'm either stuck with it or replace it.
Now this is why I'm careful about the technology. Obviously a good area of LED open to the 'air' will dissipate heat better than one big chip in a plastic diffuser. As I say, the lamps that I have so far get only a little warm. I'm buying fittings that have horizontal holders - keeps the base cool and spreads the light directly and from the ceiling.
If/when you get your shiny 200lm/W LEDs give your 100lm/W ones to a relative who's still using incandescent - my prunts have 8 candle lamps in their lounge/dining room, and they are on for many hours a day.
Don't forget that not only have the super efficient LEDs got to get productised (18-24 months?) they will cost arms and legs when they first become available (I seem to remember the philips LEDs costing north of £50 a couple of years ago) so I don't expect to be justifying replacing early LEDs with better ones for several years yet.
So very true but the dimminishing returns compared to CFLs which made the greatest improvement isn't the whole story. Although the new 200 and 300 L/W lamps will carry an initial price premium compared to the existing stock, they're unlikely to cost much more than the current lamps which, by then will be significantly cheaper.
Once the new designs go into mass production, the reduced materials cost of the heatsinking will ultimately allow even lower production costs which will no doubt initially be used to increase profit margin to help pay for the cost of all the R&D investment before the usual market forces kick in to send the pricing into a downward spiral.
However, getting back to that reduction from 4W to 2W, the most important saving to be made is in the running temperature. If we use the 10W 810L LED as our base example (equivilent to a 60W 120v 750 hour rated American incandescent lamp (rather than the 75W UK equivilent) we can assume an efficiency of 3% equating to 1.8 watts worth of lumen output which in the case of our 10W LED means a waste heat dissipation of 8.2 watts, largely convective, dissipation (about half the waste heat in an incandescent is lost via infrared radiation).
It's this 8.2 watts of waste heat that can be so troublesome to deal with in a poorly ventilated luminaire, notwithstanding that it may happily cope with the heat from a 60W incandescent lamp.
When you can use a 200L/W version of the 810 lumens output lamp, the wattage drops from 10 to a mere 4 watts of which 1.8 are actual light output meaning the waste heat is down to a mere 2.2 watts! If we consider a 300L/W example of an 810L lamp we reduce the waste heat even further to 0.9W out of a total consumption of 2.7 W.
TBH, those figures, especially for the 300L/W example look to be remarkably optimistic (indeed, I had to ammend my initial assumption of 5% efficiency for the incandescent lamp down to 3% in order to avoid a negative dissipation figure for the 300L/W example!).
I suspect that an 810L version of the 300L/W example will have a 3W rating rather than the theoretical 2.7W due to the parasitic losses of the electronic ballast becoming a more significant factor in the total losses (1.2W dissipation total).
However, regardless of the actual figures, you can see why the higher efficiency offers benefits over and above a mere marginal saving on the electricity bill. Existing luminaires that are currently unsuited to the fitting of the current 10 and 12 watt versions of the classic
810L LED ("60W Bulb replacement") will prove entirely suited to the later more efficient lamps. As I've already mentioned, "All Good Things Come To Those That Wait." :-)
I do see your point. Obviously, that shouldn't stop you picking up an existing 81L (or better)/W lamp whenever they appear at a bargain price whille you still have suitable candidate luminaires to install them into whilst you await the arrival of the 200L(or better)/W lamps to complete the relamping exercise.
What I'm suggesting is that it's definitely worth holding back as much as you can in the meantime. I'm not above turning my nose up at the current crop of LEDS when I see remarkably cheap examples. The last such, two or three months back, being a 12W 810L LES LED lamp (a snip at a mere £3.49) which I knew would go just nicely in a pendant luminaire that was currently occupied by a 20W CFL of nominally the same lumen output.
Although not quite as energy efficient as the 15 quid examples a couple of shelves higher (what price efficiency, eh?), it did, nevertheless, reduce consumption by a not insignificant 8 watts whilst providing a just perceptably greater level of illumination. And, of course, it eliminated the half minute run up time, preceded by some 5 or 6 seconds worth of dim and dirty pink startup glow exhibited by the otherwise decent CFL.
The only remaining Tungsten filament lamp left in the house now is a
100W GLS lamp in a ceiling luminaire in the bathroom. This lamp is mounted horizontally so the luminaire may well be suited to a 13W
1080L BC LED (some waste heat will be useful here to eliminate potential condensation issues anyway).
The rest of the lamps are all CFLs with the exception of a 5W 270L BC LED at the foot of the basement stairs. A previous 'bargain purchase' over a year ago for a mere £4.99 (oh, how times have changed) which I'd initially intended for a bedroom wall light which proved to not have enough ventillation for my piece of mind (I had the impression, rightly or wrongly, that it was dimming just ever so slightly after ten or twenty minutes of use suggesting it was running a little on the hot side for best efficacy and endurance life).
Partly because I'm going for luminaires that take multiple lamps (3 or 5, but avoiding the OTT 'swirly-whirly' ones) I use lower wattage (3W & 4W) and won't consider lower than 100lm/W, subject to design, chips (lots of 3014 rather than few 5050).
I've a fitting with an 11W, 600lm CFL that will soon have a 4W, 400lm LED in it. The only reason for having 11W is to get some light when it's switched on! The centre fitting will be 5x4W, 400lm LEDs replacing a 30W, 1900lm CFL - light immediately and 10W less. The LEDs are £4.50 each, so not too bad.
Allelujah brother! Same here.
Mine is an outside bulkhead that has been there for about 48 years and was old then - they made 'em proper then. 60W incandescent, spends ~10 min. pa on, so not worth changing.
Yes, I'm avoiding the higher wattages atm as they're very inefficient.
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