Tell me about your LED light experience

[Baked]

I'm in the process of switching out all the incandescent light bulbs at my business to LED light bulbs. Half will be 65W flood light, and half will be 40W appliance light. The flood light uses 15W, while the appliance light uses 7.5W. The cost is $16/per flood light and $20/3 pack for appliance light. The flood light stays on for 15 hrs. daily as well as half of the appliance lights, while the other half of the appliance get 7-8 hrs. daily. Is there a calculator I can use to determine how much savings I'll get from electricity monthly?

What's your personal experience on switching to LED light at home or work? I'd like to hear it!

Ps. Yes, I'm getting them at Costco. This is the Feit brand LED light bulbs.

 

[deadlyapp]

Just use the watt difference times the hours they are on to get watt-hours, and then based on what you pay for electricity you can find the difference.

 

[shortylickens]

We just did it for our kitchen. Slightly less light than the halogens we had before. But it uses CONSIDERABLY less power. Saved us 20 bucks on our electric bill. At this rate they'll have paid for themselves in a year.

 

[Jeff7]

The cost savings on electricity might not be terribly high; fluorescent can offer some impressive luminous efficacy (lots of lumens per watt), particularly if you're using tubes in conjunction with an efficient ballast. CFLs tend to do worse in that department.
In an effort to reduce costs, a fair number of the power supplies incorporated into LED light bulbs aren't terribly efficient, at least so far as switching power supplies are concerned. If you've got a reasonably-efficient emitter that's being fed by a lousy power supply, the whole system gives you less light per watt.

I think the advantage of LEDs in businesses comes from maintenance costs, specifically the time spent replacing fluorescents versus time spent replacing LEDs, due to the latter's longer (potential) lifespan. Though even then, if you've got a good programmed-start ballast, and the lights are left on continuously for several hours after each time they're turned on, they can still give a pretty good run of life.


And compare lumens when shopping. I've seen that in CFLs: "Replaces a 75W lightbulb!" Right, i it does. If I get the one that says "Replaces a 100W lightbulb," then I'll get something suitably bright, that has a chance of living up to the "75W" promise. I would imagine that LED light bulbs are offered similar "leeway" in their labeling.

 

[Vic Vega]

Does anyone make drop in tube LEDs for use in existing florescent fixtures which don't require modifying the fixture or wiring?

 

[XJustMeX21]

Does anyone make drop in tube LEDs for use in existing florescent fixtures which don't require modifying the fixture or wiring?

Not possible. You will have to change the ballast. If you haven't done this yet it's not hard to do, roughly 5 minutes. Most of the led tube replacements aren't very good though. I have recently started replacing lots of different lights at work to LED if anyone has any questions.

 

[bradley]

The almost negligible amount of dirty EMF radiation for LED (non-dimmable) vs. compact fluorescent makes them worth more to me. Though for total satisfaction, make sure the light is omni-directional for everything other than a flood light.

 

[Mixolydian]

I've been wanting to add an LED street light to my collection, but it is cost-prohibitive at this point. Plus they suck.

I have a few LED's in my home. They are EcoSmart (home depot) brand and are shaped like normal incandescent lamps. They give off good light. Looks like any other kind of light, really. Also have some Cree LED retrofit lamps for recessed cans. They work really well and are fully dimmable.

 

[Baked]

Sorry, turns out the old bulbs are all Incandescent light bulbs, not fluorescent.

So I installed two of them today. One for hallway and one for water cooler. These are natural white light type bulbs, compared to the old yellow light. It's weird and takes getting use to.

 

[Imp]

To get your cost savings, pretty simple calculation. For example, with a 60 W lightbulb:
$0.06 kWh x ($0.10 / kWh) x (8 hours / day) x (365 day / year) = $17.52 / year

For a 60 W lightbulb:
60 W x (1 kW / 1000 W) x 1 hour = 0.06 kWh

Move your numbers and costs around.

I've started buying A19/E26 LED bulbs from Ikea and one from Philips. They're good. No start-up time, most similar to incandescent. Just watch out for color temperature. A 2700k is the warm incandescent you're probably used to. A 4100k is the white-ish CFL. Daylight is 6500k and very blue. I got one years ago and hated it -- too blue.

 

[Baked]

Not possible. You will have to change the ballast. If you haven't done this yet it's not hard to do, roughly 5 minutes. Most of the led tube replacements aren't very good though. I have recently started replacing lots of different lights at work to LED if anyone has any questions.

Really, the contractor I was talking to says you can by pass the ballast with the new type of fluorescent replacement LED lights. Maybe I heard wrong?

 

[mugs]

Sorry, turns out the old bulbs are all Incandescent light bulbs, not fluorescent.

So I installed two of them today. One for hallway and one for water cooler. These are natural white light type bulbs, compared to the old yellow light. It's weird and takes getting use to.

Did you get 2700K lights? Those will be more yellow.

 

[edro]

Really, the contractor I was talking to says you can by pass the ballast with the new type of fluorescent replacement LED lights. Maybe I heard wrong?

You can rewire them to pass the line voltage straight to the lamp sockets.
I have never seen an LED tube that works off a fluorescent ballast.

As for LED lights, I would get the new 40W equiv. ($10) or 60W equiv. ($15) Cree lights from Home Depot.
I trust Cree's quality more than Costco brand.

 

[edro]

Did you get 2700K lights? Those will be more yellow.

Yeah, his new ones are probably 5000K.

 

[Baked]

Let me check... small ones are 3000K, big ones are 2700K. Hmmm... the old incandescent ones I'm replacing are 2900K.

 

[edro]

You shouldn't be able to see a difference between any of those color temperatures,unless they are side by side.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I had a "high efficiency" halogen flood light in my shower, and it seemed to burn about once a year. Since a CFL does not fit in that socket, I decided to go with a LED. It's not as bright but still bright enough, and it's a fairly blue light, but I'd say it's closer to white. Due to the cost and the fact they don't seem to make very bright models (ex: 100w equivalent) I would not change every light in the house to them, but they are pretty good and will get better I'm sure.

I have mostly all CFLs in the house and I'm happy with those. I just have to watch what brand I buy as they don't all have the same color temperature so it will look weird if I end up with multiple brands in the same area.

 

[rayjayturbo]

And compare lumens when shopping. I've seen that in CFLs: "Replaces a 75W lightbulb!" Right, i it does. If I get the one that says "Replaces a 100W lightbulb," then I'll get something suitably bright, that has a chance of living up to the "75W" promise. I would imagine that LED light bulbs are offered similar "leeway" in their labeling.[/QUOTE]

Phillips 60w equivalents are a good example. The "L Prize" bulb was 10w and gave off 960 lumens. The new cheaper model is 12w and 800 lumens. You can still find some of the "L Prize" bulbs at places like Home Depot that carry a subsidized price of $15. I picked up several in Denver.

 

[boomerang]

Does anyone make drop in tube LEDs for use in existing florescent fixtures which don't require modifying the fixture or wiring?

I don't know for certain, but you may want to check out what these folks have to offer.

http://www.lumena-ssl.com/

 

[Mark R]

Bought a bunch off e-bay.

Terrible, uneven light quality. Blue at the center, deep yellow at the edge.
Very dim, nowhere near the 4W (35W halogen equivalent) promised.
Average life span approximately 2 weeks in kitchen duty.
1 bulb caught fire at time of death.


-----

Bought a couple of philips ones:
Even, bright warm light with consistent color
Been lighting my office with these for the last year, at approx 50 hours a week.
Slight flicker when used on unstable or dirty power (My office lights are on a UPS protected circuit shared with my PC; so the lights flicker whenever I turn the PC or monitor on as the UPS voltage sags under the load)

 

[Mark R]

Does anyone make drop in tube LEDs for use in existing florescent fixtures which don't require modifying the fixture or wiring?

In general, no. Virtually all retrofit kits require removal of the ballast. Some kits require an LED driver to be installed in its place, some kits integrate the driver into the retrofit tube.

There is a problem with this, as the fitting will no longer be compatible with fluorescent tubes. In the case of an integrated driver retrofit, the fitting will pose a severe hazard if used with original fluorescent or with an LED tube that requires an outboard driver.

There are very few, low power fully integrated LED retrofits, designed for compact tubes, as might be used in wall lighting. But they are less efficient than a full retrofit kit and only work with conventional magnetic ballasts (not electronic).

I don't know for certain, but you may want to check out what these folks have to offer.

http://www.lumena-ssl.com/

Their retrofit kits require modification of the fixture wiring with removal (or bypass) of the ballast.

 

[BUTCH1]

Much cheaper, work awesome in flashlight applications but somehow the spectrum they give off "gnaws" at my eyeballs, IDK why..

 

[Jeff7]

Much cheaper, work awesome in flashlight applications but somehow the spectrum they give off "gnaws" at my eyeballs, IDK why..

A fair number of them are likely in the "cool" area - 5000K - 6500K color temperature, or even higher, which are bluer.

White LEDs work by generating blue light, and then passing it through a phosphor layer that produces a big mess of yellowish light. That, combined with the blue light that passes through, looks white to our eyes. Since blue is the color of the original emitter, letting more of that light through is an easy way for a manufacturer to put a higher lumens number on the package.

The other problem is the color rendering index, so that colors still look right. An incandescent light is right around 100, as good as you can get - it's a hot object putting off light, just like the Sun is. An LED's light generation process is nothing like that, so it needs to use some tricks to get everything looking right. These tricks cost money though.

But some of the better LED lights can give a color rendering index of 80-90, and also have a color temperature of 2700K or 3000K, which is right around what you'd get out of an incandescent bulb.