LED bulb replacements vie for spotlight at lighting show

By | May 23, 2011, 7:36am PDT

Lot of intelligent and energy efficient technology news out of Philadelphia last week, the location for the annual LIGHTFAIR International show. Since this continues to be one of the least intrusive ways that many companies — consumers — are reducing their energy consumption, here are a few quick highlights of new technologies that got some attention during the conference.

It seems like I receive press releases about new “firsts” in the LED technology arena every week, let alone last week. But here are few of the notable developments timed around LIghtfair.

  • Royal Philips Electronics has introduced the Philips EnduraLED A21 17-watt bulb, which is intended to replace a 75-watt incandescent bulb. The bulb (pictured to the right) is supposed to reduce energy consumption by up to 80 percent while lasting about 25 times longer than your traditional product. The estimated savings over the lifetime of the bulb would be about $160, which is important to know because LED replacements continue to carry a higher price tag than what you and I are used to seeing. Although the price for this bulb, due to ship in the fourth quarter of 2011, isn’t set, it is expected to be between $40 and $45 per bulb.
  • Another LED player, Lighting Science Group, has been showcasing the latest additions to its DEFINITY LED product line, which include floodlights and equivalents for 60-watt and 40-watt incandescent bulbs. This technology is approximately as energy-efficient as the Philips bulbs, and they are also dimmable, which is a big deal for those of us who appreciate mood lighting. You may not have heard of this company (yet), but it just got a big boost in the form of a partnership with Google for an Android-controlled LED bulb. In other words, it will be Internet-connected via Android devices.
  • Another company, Switch Lighting, has come out with what it calls the first 100 watt-equivalent LED bulb. What makes this possible is a “self-cooling environment” that allows the bulb to be brighter. The technology, which is an A19 lamp, is designed to produce 1700 lumens in neutral white (the same as you would get from halogen track lighting). I’m kind of wondering how Osram Sylvania feels about that “first” label, since it also is introducing a 100-watt replacement product (a 14-watt LED) that is dimmable and produces about 1500 lumens.

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

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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.

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RE: LED bulb replacements vie for spotlight at lighting show
NZJester 12th Jun
@tkejlboom
Your lucky you only have to cut it down from 110V. Most of the world uses 220 to 240V for there home power supply. We get 230V from our power sockets here in New Zealand. So power transformers to cut down to lower voltages tend to be bigger in size here than the ones use to cut down from 110V.
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Meaningless comparisons
Economister 23rd May 2011
Why is it that LED bulbs are being compared to incandescent bulbs, when the real and established alternative is compact fluorescent?

Is looks deliberately misleading
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Not meaningless at all!
bigsibling 23rd May 2011
@Economister Because that's what the majority of consumers grew up with. We all know about how much light a 60 watt incandescent bulb produces, same with 100 and 75 and 40 watt bulbs. That's our point of reference. I couldn't tell you off-hand how a 15 watt CFB compares to a 60 watt regular bulb.
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I do not know where you live, but....
Economister 23rd May 2011
@bigsibling

around here the majority of consumers use CFLs for most uses, which means they are familiar with them, but more importantly, the energy savings will be negative, because the equivalent CFLs currently seem to use less energy than the LCD variety. Hence the numbers in the blog are meaningless (or misleading if you prefer).
@Economister Your argument about where bigsibling lives versus where you life validates his point as much as it does yours. Where you live the majority use CFLs but not where I live and apparently not where he lives the numbers are not meaningless to us.
@Economister The "real and established alternative" isnt much of an alternative when you think about the health impacts. LED's use less energy and do NOT contain mercury (great for households with pets, children, and elderly). CFL's need to go as they are more hazerdous to the environment than a regular incandecent, LED, or Halogen replacement.
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Missing the point
Economister 23rd May 2011
@JT82

The point is that consumers are currently using CFLs, so the claimed energy savings are bogus. If you want to discuss health and environmental impacts, fine, but that is NOT what the blog is about.
Lightfair is "... the world?s largest annual architectural and commercial lighting trade show and conference"...

The article properly notes this, a fact which was not lost on my obviously superior reading comprehension.

Hard to say what facts there are on commericial adoption of CFLs in the commercial marketplace, but LEDs make a lot more sense from a procurement perspective, since they last longer, and can be tossed in a land fill.

The argument for stated energy savings to an enterprise are valid, , you silly angry troll.
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@wzs5011 commercial lighting is different to domestic lighting in a number of ways (I know you know, but I'm saying it anyway)
1- the lights are left on for much longer periods of time, so energy use makes a big difference and switching on and off makes less difference
2- the main cost of replacing a bulb isn't the cost of the bulb, it's the cost of a maintenance person, scaffold, cones and warnng notices, etc. Longer life is really really important
3- quality of light is important. In a house you just move to another seat to read a book - in the office you have a legal liability if someone's eyesight deteriorates because the lighting wasn't good where you told them to sit. Generally CFLs (all FLs) don't have as many options for high quality light
4- questions about landfill are important
5- there's a value in doing something for your brand ("we're green, we even pay more for LEDs instead of those mercury based lights or the energy wasting ones") which can be quantified and put into the business case
@HugoM

Actually, CFLs have been moving away from "white" light, as defined by proximity to sunlight on the spectrum and closer to Tungsten's "soft white" which is marketing BS for "from an engineering perspective we can't make tungsten appear natural." They are doing so despite studies linking "soft white" light to eye strain due to reduced contrast, because people are accustomed the skew induced by tungsten.
@wzs5011

I'd beg to differ. Most of the enterprises that I have been around are already using fluorescent lamps and have been doing so for years. Not the compact version but the 4 foot or 8 foot units with the latest ballasts and lamps to improve efficiency. The extended life of the LED lamps may be of interest here but the electrical efficiency is not going to make much of a difference.

As for the environmental impact? There seems to be quite a bit of research going on into mercury free fluorescent lamps. Nothing commercial that I know of but some promising publications that suggest not that long before they can go commercial.
@Economister Why do we still compare car engines to horses? DUH
@Economister

Actually, CFLs are also an absurd basis for comparison. Wattage is a great metric for power consumption, but it's a stupid one for light emission. Frankly, you shouldn't purchase anything that isn't measuring output in lumens, but pretty much the entire market has abandoned objective measurements.

It would also be nice if we could get away from 110 for lighting. The cost isn't in the LEDs, which many are probably accustomed to picking up for pennies at radio shack. The problem is the cost of the electronics to go from 110 AC to 1.5 DC.
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Thanks
Economister 24th May 2011
@tkejlboom

My point was (possibly not well articulated) that switching to LEDs will NOT give the savings indicated in the blog because most installations already use fluorescent of some type. That part of the blog is therefore meaningless or misleading. This fact is still lost on some of the less bright bulbs here.

I do agree with your "measurement" comment, but industry does not like objective measures, because it makes if harder to mislead consumers. Regarding power supply voltages, the complexity in the wiring, especially in existing structures, would probably make this a non starter.
@tkejlboom
Your lucky you only have to cut it down from 110V. Most of the world uses 220 to 240V for there home power supply. We get 230V from our power sockets here in New Zealand. So power transformers to cut down to lower voltages tend to be bigger in size here than the ones use to cut down from 110V.
@Economister
LED bulbs are more energy efficient than Compact fluorescent Bulbs. A 6 Watt LED bulb puts out about the same amount of light as the 12 Watt florescent Bulb and a 60 Watt incandescent bulb. LED bulbs tend to last longer than both florescent and incandescent bulbs also! So no matter how you look at it LED bulbs are superior!
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I get that this tech will eventually mature and become more cost competitive. As an occasional early adopter, I'll probably buy 2 or 3 of these bulbs for the first-hand experience. BUT, I still don't like how any of these bulbs are tested for lifespan.

Don't tell me this bulb is good for 25,000 hours if I can only turn it on and off 800 times. I'm sorry, but many of my bulbs are turned on and off 1 or 2 times per day. Others even more. With incandescent, I *never* even pause to think about turning one on or off. With CFLs, I've been told that if you'll need it again within 15 minutes, leave it on. I suspect that's too short, but once I start leaving bulbs on for 1 or 2 or 3 hours because I *might* need it again, the long-term savings go away.

Let's develop a rigorous standard test series to help us choose wisely. A closet light might be better incandescent, a porch light fluorescent, etc. based on usage patterns.

If my $40 LED bulb is dead in 2 years, I'm betting I won't be buying more!
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Worst Person in the World
Robert Hahn 23rd May 2011
If my $40 LED bulb is dead in 2 years, I'm betting I won't be buying more! You just don't care if every living thing on the planet dies.
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Huh?
Economister 23rd May 2011
@Robert Hahn

He also said "As an occasional early adopter...", which at least indicates that he is open to new and improved technologies.

I do not know whether your post was just a poor attempt at humor, but it sure came right out of the left field, with no justification whatsoever.
@Robert Hahn We all got to die some time (Red)... whether you want to or not happy
@Robert Hahn
I also "early adopted" on LED bulbs and they died like flies. No wait! Flies live a few weeks and the LED bulbs didn't. How many living things are going to die if we fill our landfills with dead LED bulbs and mercury from CFLs?
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I agree - the analysis is very lacking
Takalok Updated - 23rd May 2011
All the analysis I've read compare the bulbs in a steady state condition - ie. turn them on and leave them on.

A true comparison would be to turn the bulbs on and off periodically to account for not only the resultant reduced lifespan but also the increased energy used to start a CFC.

In addition, let's say I'm going in an out of a closet. So I turn the incandescent on and off for brief periods, say less than a minute. I have to leave the CFC on, however, for at least 15 minutes. If I use the same erroneous analysis methods that are typically used, I could say the the CFC is using as much as 15 times as much energy as the incandescent (60 watts for 30 seconds versus 15 watts for 15 minutes)

But it just goes to show, the real goal has nothing to do with reducing energy. It's about making money and exercising control.
@Takalok
There was an episode of Mythbusters a few years ago where they tested different types of bulbs by turning them on and off every two minutes to see how long they lasted:

"They tested one final element of this myth: frequently turning lights on and off decreases their life span, thus leading to greater costs. Grant setup a timer and relay to turn the bulbs on and off repeatedly every 2 minutes. After six weeks, only the LED bulb was still working. Based on this test, they extrapolated that it would take five years of ordinary usage to cause the bulbs to burn out."

They also tested energy use to turn them on vs. leaving them on:

"Based on the amount of energy consumed turning on the bulb, they were able calculated how long the bulb would have to be turned off in order to make it worth the energy savings, i.e. "It's best to turn off the bulb if you are leaving the room for":
?Incandescent: 0.36 seconds
?CFL: 0.015 seconds
?Halogen: .51 seconds
?LED: 1.28 seconds
?Fluorescent: 23.3 seconds
In other words, its almost always best to turn the bulb off."

http://kwc.org/mythbusters/2006/12/episode_69_22000_foot_fall_lig.html
@bmgoodman

Interesting. The limitations would have to be based upon the electronics people are using to convert from 110 AC, because there isn't a built in limitation on the fundamental tech with either LED or flourescent to the best of my knowledge. In fact, I've multiple LEDs which I've programmed to flash very quickly, one flashes with traffic on a 10Gig port to indicate activity several times per second. Over the last several years it has therefore flashed somewhere on the order of BILLION times.

I admit, I have no idea what kind of electronics these guys are using, though to get to the tiny DC voltages the actual LEDs are using.
LED light manufacturers should be required to provide accurate information, in a clear way, so that we can compare and choose. E.g. intensity in lumens, colour temperature in Kelvins, etc. When I don't see this kind of information, I don't buy. I have a drawer full of "white light" LEDs, which are in fact a shade of blue. Or LED bulbs which are so dim, that you would need 4 or 5 to do the job of a single incandescent bulb. Pay more for energy savings is OK, but being taken for a ride by vague information is not OK.
@mainvision You are quite right. I have CFLs from various manufacturers and the one thing they have in common is that they claim equivalence to far more powerful incandescents that they achieve. I have a table of actual outputs which revealed that the CFLs claiming 100W equivalent gave less output than 75W incandescents. I have yet to see a CFL that gives anything like the white light I need for some work.
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CFLs? Not for me.
Hameiri 23rd May 2011
CFLs have mercury, are slow to turn on, historically have been accused of having bad human reactions to the light and now we learn that they don't last long if you turn them on and off.

LEDs are the future, and I'm going to buy a few to see how they are also.

Another point is that when you buy a lamp, it usually says what wattage it can take, and if you have been putting incandescents into it, you would want to get as close to the light output as you can.
@Hameiri
LEDs are touted as the next generation of lighting. But as we try to find better products that do not deplete energy resources or contribute to global warming, we have to be vigilant about the toxicity hazards of those marketed as replacements,? said Oladele Ogunseitan, chair of UC Irvine?s Department of Population Health & Disease Prevention, who led the study.
The university states that lead, arsenic and many additional metals discovered in the bulbs or their related parts have been linked in hundreds of studies to different cancers, neurological damage, kidney disease, hypertension, skin rashes and other illnesses. The copper used in some LEDs also poses an ecological threat to fish, rivers and lakes. While breaking a single light and breathing fumes would not automatically cause cancer, Ogunseitan said it could be a tipping point on top of chronic exposure to another carcinogen.
The study found that risks are present in all parts of the lights and at every stage during production, use and disposal, according to the statement.
One of the motivations for doing this research is the fact that LED?s are used in many household appliances and consumer products, including products aimed at children like LED pacifiers and rubber ducks.
Ogunseitan cautioned consumers, manufacturers and first responders to accident scenes to take care when handling the light bulbs.
@Hameiri "CFLs have mercury" So very true. It was one of those "feel good", "get something for nothing and not very well researched ideas that has caused more problems than carbon dioxide.
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Cleaner and faster
oldbaritone 23rd May 2011
LED's don't need mercury inside them to work. They start and come to full brightness much faster than CFLs too.

Those are two HUGE advantages to LED's. I've replaced a dozen CFL bulbs with LED equivalents, and love them.

It's a major savings when the kids leave lights on too - even more than CFLs. Of course, kids ALWAYS turn the lights off when they leave the room...

happy
@oldbaritone

LEDs are touted as the next generation of lighting. But as we try to find better products that do not deplete energy resources or contribute to global warming, we have to be vigilant about the toxicity hazards of those marketed as replacements,? said Oladele Ogunseitan, chair of UC Irvine?s Department of Population Health & Disease Prevention, who led the study.
The university states that lead, arsenic and many additional metals discovered in the bulbs or their related parts have been linked in hundreds of studies to different cancers, neurological damage, kidney disease, hypertension, skin rashes and other illnesses. The copper used in some LEDs also poses an ecological threat to fish, rivers and lakes. While breaking a single light and breathing fumes would not automatically cause cancer, Ogunseitan said it could be a tipping point on top of chronic exposure to another carcinogen.
The study found that risks are present in all parts of the lights and at every stage during production, use and disposal, according to the statement.
One of the motivations for doing this research is the fact that LED?s are used in many household appliances and consumer products, including products aimed at children like LED pacifiers and rubber ducks.
Ogunseitan cautioned consumers, manufacturers and first responders to accident scenes to take care when handling the light bulbs.
For $40-$45 it better come with a lifetime warranty!
From my experience led lights are not lasting as long as they say they are. My same experience is with florescents.
All the science or lack of it aside, you need the correct product for the correct application. I agree with bmgoodman in his use of CFL's. I do the same with mine. My wife likes to leave all the lights on in many of the rooms and in the hallway. So I replaced the incandesent bulbs with CFL's as they are on for sometimes hours. Otherwise I still use incandesents in closets and overhead lighting where the lights are used infrequently. The cost of the CFL's and now LED's could not be justified for lights that are only used sparingly.
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Safety and compensation for pollution.
Jonno-the-First 23rd May 2011
While all lighting will contain some hazardous materials, LED's contain less and that is what it is all about. Unfortunately, gone are the days of scientist like Nicola TESLA who gave huge inventions away as a service to mankind. So this lighting will remain expensive, although the planet is crying out for this new environmentally friendly technology. Philips and others ought to to consider the planet themselves, having causes much previous pollution with their products in the past and be in some sort of a break even financial arrangement to compensate for this past behavior.
I hate reading comments on this web site because everyone has to push their own brand of religion on the rest of us poor stupid slobs. CFL, LED, Tungsten, whatever... the bottom line is to save money and to reduce the electrical load on the grid. Some people don't mind CFLs, other hate the warm-up time and slightly odd color they can have (not all seem to). I prefer LED but I'm not going to tell you you're stupid if you don't. Let the numbers do the arguing for you and figure it out for yourself. You don't mind spending $50 per bulb now? (I don't) Then go for the most recent LED technology if you want to and like the quality of light. Can't justify the initial cost? Go CFL and still save the grid. Please be kind and dispose of properly. Oh and while LEDs don't have mercury, they are E-Waste and as such also need to be disposed of properly.
Well, I do care about the LED/Incandescent comps. I have a daughter with a severe case of Lupus and can't handle sunlight or CFL's. It'll have to be led's or incandescent. .... or candles.
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Happy about LED's
LEDLight 23rd May 2011
We love the fact people are talking about LED's and the technology.
www.theledshow.com
Measure in Lumens - not watts, it is meaningless.
Color temperature - Personal taste.
USA loves 2800k Warm
Europe loves 4100k Neutral
Asia loves the cooler 5000k cooler.
No mercury or disposal issues.
People can relate to a 60 watt lamp and have a general idea of how bright it should be.
Cost coming down on a daily basis. What is the ROI (return on investment) with you big screen TV?
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Happy about LED's
LEDLight 23rd May 2011
We love the fact people are talking about LED's and the technology.
wwwtheledshow(dot)com
Measure in Lumens - not watts, it is meaningless.
Color temperature - Personal taste.
USA loves 2800k Warm
Europe loves 4100k Neutral
Asia loves the cooler 5000k cooler.
No mercury or disposal issues.
People can relate to a 60 watt lamp and have a general idea of how bright it should be.
Cost coming down on a daily basis. What is the ROI (return on investment) with you big screen TV?
The support circuitry; transformers, diodes, capacitors, solder joints etc. fail before the light emitter itself. There's no point in paying $40 for a collection of weak links.
LED manufacturing uses and produces tons of toxins including mercury so saying LEDs do not have mercury is only partially true.
The mercury in a CFL is the same as a bite of tuna.
And little mercury remains in a CFL at end of life due to the phosphor absorbing most of the mercury.
The point I seem to see with all this isn't what's being discussed: The fact that all CFL bulbs (and most all other types, for that matter) are being made in China, often with shoddy QC and employee safety.

Sure, CFL's, fluorescents and LED bulbs save energy (by comparison to incandescent) but the environmental impact of disposal seems lost on too many. CFLs and fluorescents both contain mercury, and still do after burnout. This is an absolute.

I also find the fact that far too many CFLs and fluorescents (never mind the LEDs, which also have this issue) do not show the lumens output in as large a type as the "energy savings". Energy savings without proper light output is useless, IMO.

Finally, I find it disturbing that more and more is made in a country that shows by its actions that it cares nothing about the environment or people... only the money (often American) it pulls in for its manufacturing. Why do corporations and consumers alike continue to deceive themselves in regards China? It's a puzzle to me.

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