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Another LED replacement bulb for your consideration

By | May 23, 2010, 9:38am PDT

Since GreenTech Pastures readers seem especially interested in the various LED retrofit options becoming available to replace incandescent light bulbs, here’s another set of products that offer dimming capabilities.

The Pharox series includes the Pharox 500, a 500 lumens product that the maker, Lemnis Lighting, bills as the brightest dimmable LED bulb available. It uses 7 watts of power and is intended to last for 25 years. Lemnis will sell the bulb off its Web site. The company didn’t provide pricing, but it says it will come in under 10 cents per lumen (so it seems to be in the magic $50 range that many other companies are targeting. As far as I can tell, the entire line will be available by the third quarter of 2010.

The new series comprises six different products, including the Pharox 800, an 800 lumen model that can last up to 17 years, saving about 85 percent of the energy it would take to illuminate an incandescent version.

Here’s some more background on LED and CFL options:

More oh-so-efficient green lighting tech: LED and dimmable CFL

GE brings LED to light with new replacement bulb

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Light-emitting Diode, Replacement, Consideration, Engineering, Heather Clancy

Heather Clancy is an award-winning business journalist with a passion for green technology and corporate sustainability issues.

Disclosure

Heather Clancy

Writing publicly about what the high-tech industry is actually doing to help itself and the world get greener or more sustainable is one way I figure I can contribute more meaningfully to said effort. I am also a big OMG-kind-of-fan of smart leadership, which is why the goodly folks who publish this blog let me go on about this topic and why I am always on the hunt for forward-looking business management ideas.

My daily writing is focused on looking for topics for my blogs, GreenTech Pastures and Business Brains. I also write often about emerging technology trends such as mobile computing, unified communications and cloud computing. Occasionally, I will pop up at an industry conference in some sort of speaking capacity. In cases where a speaking engagement involves a sponsor that may be covered in this blog, that fact will be disclosed in coverage as appropriate.

My corporate writing work usually consists of crafting research white papers about some aspect of technology. In the event that my commentary (in written, audio or video form) mentions a company for which I have provided consulting advice, I will disclose that fact. However, there is no connection between these projects and the topics that I am covering in my blog.

Biography

Heather Clancy

Heather Clancy is an award-winning business journalist with a passion for green technology and corporate sustainability issues. Her articles have appeared in Entrepreneur, Fortune Small Business, The International Herald Tribune and The New York Times. In a past corporate life, Heather was editor of Computer Reseller News, where she was a featured speaker about everything from software as a service to IT security to mobile computing.

Heather started her journalism life as a business writer with United Press International in New York. She holds a B.A. in English literature from McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, and has a thing for Lewis Carroll.

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RE: Another LED replacement bulb for your consideration
rasmasyean Updated - 24th May 2010
I have had a Panasonic CFL that lasted for about 10 years for a "guest/storage room". Most of the GE incans that I've used in that room didn't last that long and I always had to change it. Maybe because of the frequency of switching on and off? I dunno. But most other CFLs for me last over a year, maybe a couple...less in the bathroom. My guess is moisture and the electronics. It's a card draw...but all last A LOT longer than a GE incan.
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I do not see these as being viable at all, given the price of compact
DonnieBoy 23rd May 2010
fluorescent, especially for those that already have converted to compact fluorescent. The difference in savings is just not enough. I might buy one for experimentation for one of my most used lights, but, that is about it.
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RE: Another LED replacement bulb for your consideration
jrp@... 23rd May 2010
LEDs have the benefit of better color quality, longer life span (you have to consider the future value of money in these things), and downlights like LLF's LR6-DR1000 produce 80 lumens per watt. It's a long term investment, but I really like the way they look as well as how they sip power.
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Only if the total cost is worth the investment
wackoae 23rd May 2010
Let me see .... CFL at $1 each for a 7 year lifespan. LED at $40 each with a 10 year lifespan. Add the cost of energy savings and you still paid about triple with an LED.
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Color quality is THE major problem with LED lighting
Ewald64 23rd May 2010
@jrp@... I don't understand why you believe that LEDs have better color quality, because they don't.
Check out the Spec Sheets on the Pharox site: they all have not too good CRIs (Color Rendering Indexes), well below the 95 where things get interesting.
And CRI isn't even a good measure for color quality, as it can seem good, when color rendering is not too well.

It's probably no coincidence that Lemnis does not have spectral graphs in the spec sheets. They don't like to admit that there's quite a lot of blue at 450 nm, very little color around that (no violet, no blue-green), and probably just a little red.

I have some of these Pharox lamps. You don't want to live with light like they provide for 25 years.
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I will most likely buy ONE LED light to try, but, that is about it until
DonnieBoy 23rd May 2010
the prices come down. I think the lumens per wat is not much better for LED than for compact fluorescent, the biggest advantage is that they last longer, but, for 50x the price.
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RE: Another LED replacement bulb for your consideration
rasmasyean Updated - 24th May 2010
People are creatures of habit. Whatever the CRI it won't matter unless you use it for special professional installations. We lived for way too long under the "yellow" incan Edison filament. And flourescent in the house was made to be "soft white" to try to match that "homey" feel some ppl feel they need. Personally, I've went to daylight and I think yellow is pretty ugly. I guess I'm an office drone type. And I don't care about spending a couple of extra $ if it means I don't ever have to change the bulbs until the "new lighting source" comes out...and it will be less than 25 years from now. I personally don't give a crap about a few # of eletricity saved either or carbon footprints as I think ant light bulb is just a small fry. So who cares about all these "analysys of saving, carbon, etc." Just give me something I don't have to keep replacing and going to the store to buy more and make sure I don't break it transporting it.
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RE: Another LED replacement bulb for your consideration
Tony R. 24th May 2010
@wackoae@... I have yet to see a CFL bulb that lasts anywhere close to the claimed 7-year lifetime, especially the ones from China. They're a fraud and a rip-off, in addition to an environmental disaster in the making.
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RE: Another LED replacement bulb for your consideration
rasmasyean Updated - 24th May 2010
I have had a Panasonic CFL that lasted for about 10 years for a "guest/storage room". Most of the GE incans that I've used in that room didn't last that long and I always had to change it. Maybe because of the frequency of switching on and off? I dunno. But most other CFLs for me last over a year, maybe a couple...less in the bathroom. My guess is moisture and the electronics. It's a card draw...but all last A LOT longer than a GE incan.
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CFL=TOXIC Do not buy a house that has had CFLs in it
Johnny Vegas 23rd May 2010
If a CFL has been broken in it the nuero toxins from the mercury remain and are a danger to the health of you and your children and pets.

CFLs should be banned in the USA.
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Only if you aren't smart enough to screw a light bulb without breaking it.
wackoae Updated - 23rd May 2010
Mercury only leaks when you are to dumb or too clumsy to handle the basic act of screwing a light bulb once every seven (7) years.
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RE: Another LED replacement bulb for your consideration
mrlinux 24th May 2010
@wackoae
Maybe you should think about the disposal of said bulbs, also
if you have children or pets they can have accidents !!!!
Not to mention earthquakes.
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Too Expensive!
HooNoze 23rd May 2010
The chandelier in my dining room requires 5 bulbs and dimming. They will have to do way better than $50 a bulb before I would consider changing them. With the tech changing so fast, if one of them failed earlier than expected or acceptable, I might have to replace all of them in order to have all the same type of bulbs. $250 for replacement bulbs is just too mu
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RE: Another LED replacement bulb for your consideration
USArcher 23rd May 2010
@HooNoze, I agree, LED Candelabra bulbs for both indoor/outdoor use needs to get down to about $10 bulb before I consider changing all of them. Right now, the best price is about $20 for decent color quality and dimmable.
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Msg for mod
HooNoze 23rd May 2010
If I click 'Special Coverage' on the red banner and select 'Green Tech', everything linked to on the page is between 1 and 3 years old including the articles under 'Todays Must Reads'. The most recent article is 2009-10-13?
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Try REFRESH.
wackoae 23rd May 2010
You are probably loading data from the cache.

Try:
#1- Delete your cache, including cookies.
#2- Refresh the page.
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Is it viable without built-in obsolescence?
Rick_R Updated - 23rd May 2010
My mother told me years ago that around the 1940's a few companies put out women's stockings made of fine-mesh steel . That was before pantyhose and before women routinely wore slacks. She said the great thing for the buyers was that unlike nylon or silk stockings they were extremely run-resistant. But a major problem was that once the customer bought 2-3 pairs they basically stopped buying stockings.

The same with disposable razors. A number of years ago major manufacturers actually had to decrease the number of shaves their product could provide because they weren't selling enough product to make a decent profit long-term.

How do these companies think they can stay in business long-term with low-cost products (cost-per-year) having an estimated life exceeding 10 years? Obviously the entire electrical grid is not going to be replaced with something incompatible within the next 15 years. And no one is going to come up with a light source that is so much more efficient that most people will replace their working LED bulbs. So selling an LED bulb is like selling a lamp socket--once the customer has satisfied his initial needs basically he won't come back.
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RE: Another LED replacement bulb for your consideration
rasmasyean Updated - 23rd May 2010
@Rick_R Nice conspiracy theory. If businesses never change and people are only born to be a robot capable of making one single item for their whole life...then you're claims might actually be true.
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RE: Another LED replacement bulb for your consideration
Tony R. 24th May 2010
@Rick_R Some people will buy new stuff simply because they've gotten bored with their old stuff. The entire automobile industry counts on it.
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RE: Another LED replacement bulb for your consideration
rasmasyean Updated - 23rd May 2010
I don't think the "25 years" makes that much of a difference. Before that time it's sheet OLED's you paste on the ceiling or something. The real value is that you never have to change it until you want "yet another new bulb". You can't look at the "bottom $ number" and make a decision based on that. That's a very impractical way of looking at it.

Even with CFL's, the "electricity saved" is a minor factor considering how many times you would have had to go to the store and buy and get on a ladder to chance an incandescent. It's much safer also, especially since some ppl might risk falling the more times they step on the ladder / chair to change a bulb. The LED one would make it even longer in between.
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RE: Another LED replacement bulb for your consideration
Tony R. 24th May 2010
@rasmasyean I have incandescents that have outlasted CFLs and LEDs by years (yes, YEARS). Most of the alternatives to incandescents now on the market are crap, especially if they're made in China. Improvements continue in incandescent lighting, and some of the latest innovations will push back widespread adoption of LEDs and CFLs by decades.
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RE: Another LED replacement bulb for your consideration
rasmasyean 24th May 2010
@Tony R. Well that certainly is not my experience with incandescents. If you're talking about expensive high-tolerance incadescents, most ppl will not buy those. They go for the GE ones in home depot...that last a couple of months.

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