LED-ing the Way

While I'm in no danger of being called a hippie, I do believe in environmental causes and particularly those around energy conservation. Roughly 20% of energy consumed in the United States is for lighting. I have also long believed in the idea of voting with your wallet. So despite my normal skepticism around new years resolutions, I decided to make one this year: Replace every light source in my home with LEDs.

LEDs are very power efficient generally using a fraction of the power required for a compact florescent (which in turn use a fraction of the power of incandescent) and they have extraordinarily long lifetimes - usually above 50,000 hours. When run conservatively LEDs are good for 100,000 hours of operation - that's over 10 years of continuous operation.

So what's the downside? LEDs are expensive, even accounting for the considerable energy savings they cost more than incandescents. LEDs are also a much "cooler" color temperature than incandescent. Light from LEDs can be higher than 6000k versus 5000k for daylight and 2800k for incandescent. This cool light looks sweet in flashlights and headlights but can make skin and food appear creepy.

To begin I took an inventory of all the lights I have:

• 2 Nelson Saucer Pendant lamps with 60 watt incandescent bulbs.


• 5 PAR30 60 watt halogen in the kitchen


• 3 built in lights (entry, pantry, closet) with 60 watt incandescent bulbs.


• 1 IKEA reading lamp with 30 watt halogen bulb


• 2 IKEA torch lamps with unknown wattage halogen bulbs


• Vanity lighting in the bathroom with 5 unknown wattage halogen bulbs


• 1 IKEA table lamp with a 40 watt halogen bulb

Roughly 45 days into 2007 how is it going? Some successes and some failures.

I bought one PAR30 60 LED Bulb for the kitchen. I've been pretty disappointed with this bulb so far. The light color is the typical bluish-white light you get from LEDs and the bulb pales in comparison to the halogens when it comes to brightness. I recently found an warm white version on Amazon, but while the color may be better the customer review leads me to believe that it still won't be bright enough.

The IKEA reading lamp was successfully replaced with a Koncept Technologies IceLight with 60 LEDs. The IceLight has the same problem with color quality as the previous bulb I got, but where 60 LEDs where insufficient to make much of a dent in the kitchen they are more than sufficient for reading and color is simply less of an issue here.

Today I ordered a just released 150 LED warm white frosted bulb. This bulb is rated to be equivalent to an incandescent bulb of roughly 50 watts and could be an ideal replacement for the Nelson lamps and potentially the built-ins. I have concerns about brightness for the Nelsons and size for the built-ins. We'll find out if it works in a week.

Even if the new bulb works for all of the light above there will still be a number of challenges and a lot of expenses ahead. There may be a lot of trial and error (I already have one $60 bulb I don't like). The two torch lamps put out a large amount of light and will be hard to replace. Even harder will be the vanity lamps in the bathroom - they don't use a standard Edison bulb adaptor and are very bright. Finding LEDs bulbs that are both bright enough, small enough, the right color temperature, and fit the fixture may be impossible. I may need to tear out the entire fixture and replace it. Good thing my resolution didn't include a budget.

Comments

[kw]

Thought you might be interested in www.leds4all.org

[Andy Chang]

I understood your situation quite well.
I am from a LED Lighting Fixture Manufacturer in China. To be frank with you, I know LEDs now are not bright enough to replace conventional lighting fixtures; although we have seen high power LEDs, but the heat generation is frustrated.
As tech is growing everyday, I am positive to see the LEDs can be used as regular lighting fixtures at home or in business in 2010 around.

When you want to buy some LEDs fixtures, please note there are warm white (yellowish white), natural white (day light) and cool white (bluish white); you should tell them which type of white you want, then you can get the right color temperature white you want. This is my suggestion.

Any way, LEDs are ideal for decoration lighting currently.
Andy from ATGElectronics.com

[pw]

I'm doing the same with LEDS and have found some good one bad ones. In my opinion, the warm white luxeons are great. I got a ton of these and am overjoyed:
http://www.superbrightleds.com/specs/E27-WLX-3.htm