LED filament bulbs

'GLS' is the shape and size of the ordinary incandescent bulb, so you can't have a GLS candle - it's a bit like having a 3-wheeled bike! There is a number for the standard size but ICR what it is. Sometimes it's confusing; IIRC, MR16 is a shape, GU10 is a base/cap but is MR16!

I have various one in use. The first were a "distress" purchase of SES candle type to fit some new light fittings, 3 for 2 offer in Tesco, so £4 each. Others have come from Homebase (on offer) or Costco.

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Actual RMS power as shown by my Metrawatt analogue watt meter.

The Asda lamp wasn't as heavy as those early Philips jam jar SL13s of which I presume you speak. The anglepoise seems to handle the weight of the Asda lamp with ease (certainly far better than the Ikea pull down pendant luminaire I'd transplanted it from).

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Well, since it functions quite well as a slightly brighter equivalent to a 60W incandescent light bulb in the anglepoise lamp, I'm not overly bothered about the details. Replacing it with a 150LPW version in a few years time is only going to save a mere 7 watts or so which is neither here nor there in the larger scheme of things anyway. It will eventually be replaced, but only after I've had my money's worth out of it.

I'm looking forward to the more efficient LED GLS lamps *finally* reaching the market not for their reduced running costs so much as for removing the need to stop being so fussy about which of the existing luminaires can safely take a 150W equivalent lamp without risk of premature failure due to overheating. :-)

The slight reduction in the overall electricity bill is a welcome side effect but not enough reason by itself to invest in the improved efficiency of 150 and 200 LPW lamps. The original CFLs grabbed all the low hanging fruit of electric lighting running cost savings over two decades ago, leaving LED GLS lamps to slowly gather the high hanging fruits of energy savings during the past 5 years as an exercise in diminishing returns.

Twenty years ago, it made good financial sense to invest 50 quid in CFLs to knock 250 quid off the annual electricity bill. Today, it would take a

Five years ago (iirc) I thought the 78LPW Asda LED "60 watter" (810Lm at

That's since been replaced with a "10W" (actually 12 watts) 810Lm lamp and my most recent LED GLS purchase a few weeks back from Home & Bargain was a 3 quid 1500Lm 12W (actually a little over 13 watts) "100W equivalent" E27 LED GLS lamp to replace an actual 100W incandescent light bulb in the bathroom ceiling fitting (horizontally mounted lamp). Rather pleasingly, it proved slightly brighter, most likely due to the 5 or 6 year old original bulb having become slightly blackened on its upper surface as mounted in the luminaire.

I didn't bother comparing it against one of the three spare 100W E27 lamps that I'd purchased with the luminaire but I rather doubt I would've been disappointed even if I had compared it to a brand new unused 100W incandescent GLS lamp.

It's only now that we're starting to see 125 and 133 LPW LED GLS lamps appearing on shop shelves despite one of Cree's CEOs promising that the

Up until about 6 months ago, I'd been stewing over this 'broken promise' until I revisited the web page article and spotted, from Cree's very own progress chart, that the historical reality approximated a lead time of ten years[1] rather than the 2 years quoted by the CEO who one might have expected to have checked out his own company's PR materials before shooting his mouth off with unrealistic promises, D'Oh!

I think quite a few (well, me!) got them for a lot less than that. And while there can be some pretty good savings, CFLs had more to them than that - with warm up, slow fade to fail and not always (or often IME) as listed light output/quality. Although personally I quite like the light of some CFLs.

With the exception of a couple of small ES dimmable LEDs, one strip fluorescent in the kitchen, and a couple of multi LED fixtures (which proved better/cheaper than bulbs/shade), I don't think I've spent more than £2 on a bulb (mainly £1), and replaced when CFLs etc failed. Not a single failure (yet), with the oldest at about 10,000 hours. And I tend to keep some lights on, and have a lot of table lamps (not a fan of one main room light most of the time).

So for my use (and maybe that of a few others) it can work out at a decent long term saving, especially if advertised bulb life can be assumed.

It would hopefully have a knock on in the sense of grid capacity requirements, especially as street lights start to be changed to LED

My main criticism, on the loose assumption that they don't all start to fail, is the directional nature of the light. I seem to have got used to that - although whether that's a good thing to get used to or not is an issue.

Yep, that'll probably happen.

BUT watch to around 9 minutes.

LEDs consume more power per lumen than sodium, so while some of the changed over lights save energy, many now consume more energy.

NT

Ah, OK. Hopefully you knew what I meant.

Aaaeeeiiii!!!!

Surely that's a typo 121 !

Are you sure this room isn't a concert hall .

Anyway my proirity is normally to do with the type and amount of light and not how long it lasts. I certanly wouldn;t go out and spend over £200 on these lights unless someone else was paying :)

That means you were consuming something like 250 watts of lighting for

My 'rule of thumb' for electricity costs is that 1 watt continuously for 1 year costs around £1. (8760 hours in a year, so 1 watt is 8760 watt/hours, 8.76kwH at 12p/unit costs £1.05) It's probably a bit more now as electricity costs a bit more but even then your figures seem a bit high unless you have a very big house.

Ye Gods! Just how big a room are you lighting if you're using 121 "40W equivalent" 470 or 510 lumens lamps? By my reckoning that's something like a total of 57,000 to 62,000 lumens' worth of lighting.

I'm forced to conclude that you're using the word "room" in the theatrical sense to refer to a theatre or large hall as "the room".

I like the led tube replacements, but I haven't looked for any yet, do they fit in standard tube setups ?

If you save money, the electric companies will increase the cost to you, they will make sure they don't lose out

I have a very big house.

No, I'm admitting to a typo, should be 12

Or sell you energy monitors and smart gizmos that use electricity :-)

Thanks for the clarification. :-) Mind you, that's still some 6,000 or so lumens' worth of lighting. It's either a very *large* or *bright* room in the context of domestic lighting.

It's a sobering thought that a mere 12 quid's worth of those Poundland

Assuming a price point for those filament type 4W LED "40W GLS equivalent" lamps of circa 3 quid a pop, that represents a break even point of some 4 to 5 years of lamp life. That's a long enough time span to have you thinking of the saying, "I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't." :-(

By "tube" do you men flourescent tube? Aldi had 5' T8 21 W 2000 lm LED tubes in before Christmas. Looks like they didn't sell very well as I picked up two for £4.99 each... They work well, simply take out old tube, fit LED one and change the starter for the "starter" supplied.

I guess there are losses in the ballast that is still in circuit. If one felt inclined you could wire L and N directly to one of the tube holders and have done with the ballast and starter. You'd have to put the LED tube in the right way round and a flory tube wouldn't work. Not sure if the filament in a florry would object to being permenantly connected across the mains.

Big house or silly number of lamps will do it...

This place came with a ridiculous number of GLS lamps[1] - most rooms on the ground floor have multi lamp fittings (tall ceilings etc), so you get to something around 40 bulbs on the ground floor alone. The downstairs was even spread over two circuits (old wylex NN type 1 devices), and one of those would trip after about 10 mins with too many lights on!

So lots of filament LEDs later, I have probably dropped about 6kWh off the daily consumption!

- each of which held a conventional GLS lamp - but collimated such that it just illuminated a relatively small patch of floor directly below it. There was a massive grid switch at the door, to allow fairly granular switching of it. He was quite pleased that you could for example individually switch the lamp cluster that illuminated a large pot plant, or just the coffee table (one he made from an old double bed frame to give concept of the scale of the room!) That was until I did the sums and told him that if he turned all the lights on, they would draw over