The lightbulb I've most recently acquired ...
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4/$2.50 (Score:2)
Granted, it was 4 night light bulbs. But that was better than the name brand pack next to it selling for 2/$2.50.
Otherwise I get CFL bulbs for $.99.
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CFLs are approaching actual retail prices below $2, but as the Marketing Eye of Sauron has fixed its gaze on LED, I wouldn't expect much more investment in CFL technology.
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There's a good reason people are looking so hard at LEDs rather than CFLs; LEDs are simply better technology. The best LEDs have much higher luminous efficacy than any fluorescent. For example, Cree is selling LED fixtures that put out around 125 lumen/watt vs. just under 100 lumen/watt for the best fluorescent lights. It's actually more lopsided than that sounds, because the LED figure includes all the losses, while the fluorescent is for light coming out of the tube, not the entire device, and it ignor
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Here's what I do. Go to the store and pick up a package of 100 W incandescents and look at the output in lumens. Then try to find an LED light that even comes close. The only ones that come close are gigantic and very expensive. They don't even fit in the fixtures.
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Maybe you're not looking very hard. Typical incandescents get 16 lumens per Watt, CFLs get 60 lm/W. That means that your 100W incandescent would generate around 1600lm, and you'd need a 26W CFL for equivalent. That's not a round figure, but 25W is and a 10 second search tells me I can pick up 25W spiral CFLs which are about the same size as an incandescent for around £5.
I was actually a bit surprised by those numbers (maybe Wikipedia is wrong?), because I found that the light level increased whe
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Assuming they fit in the fixture I really like putting 100W equivalent CFLs into fixtures too. I had a bunch of ceiling lights rated at 40W. The room was quite dimly lit with incadenant (more of a mood light than a reading light). Replace those with 25W CFLs and the room is nice and bright, I save power and I'm well within the quoted rating for the fixture (how much of a safety factor that is I don't know but it also helps the fixtures not be so hot to the touch).
Re: 4/$2.50 (Score:3, Interesting)
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I know that I've lost a CFL somewhere else, probably on one of those three-directional pole lights, but I can't place when/where.
Honestly CFLs have been less reliable than incandescents for me.
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I have some LED lights around and they have their place but in my opinion, they are not cost effective yet.
Thankfully, your opinion is unrelated to fact. I've never seen any actual case where LEDs weren't cost effective. The only times I've seen people argue it was when their opinion was used to trump fact. "this light 'seems' better, so I only want this one."
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How long each actually lasts under certain conditions and your opinion of the color or quality of the light are unknowns.
Like MPG in a new car is an "unknown"? They have an inaccurate rating that "should be" comparable for similar lights in similar fixtures. Those are facts too.
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The power factor on cfls is awful. The only reason consumers save is because the utility doesn't charge them for bad power factor. They will though.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... [youtube.com]
Bad power factor isn't a generation expense. It is a distribution one, and one with relatively fixed infrastructure costs. The solution is to put some capacitor banks in each neighborhood. They are pretty small devices [tnmagazine.org] and utility-grade capacitors last a long time. It makes a lot more sense, costwise and environmentally-wise, to install 30-50 year design life capacitors in a neighborhood than to install power factor correcting capacitors in every consumer electronic device.
The cost of installing neig
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Mine was a modern LED bulb. At $4.95 I thought it was rather expensive.
LED Spots (Score:2)
I replaced the kitchen lights with LEDs. About $22 a pop. These are the larger lights, not the incandescent sized bulbs.
[John]
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In my case it was more of a "hmm, would this work better" and then getting the same ones so the kitchen looks right :) The lights are certainly brighter than the incandescent bulbs were and there are 6 of the floods so I'm reasonably sure I'm saving a few bucks on replacing them. $130 worth? That I don't know yet. :)
[John]
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I just got a 60 watt eq. daylight LED bulb at Home Depot for $5.67 IT's a nice flat one to, and it can be dimmed. Phillips was the brand.
"I found $1 dimmable 40-watt equivalent LEDs at Goodwill a few months ago."
sweet.
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Do you have Lidl or Aldi in your country? I bought some 820lm/60W equivalent (more like 80W incandescent really) bulbs for £5 each there, so that's maybe $10 USD. They are dimmable and rated for 20k hours, and put out nice light with no flicker.
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LEDs are dimmable. It is CFLs that are not dimmable. If they don't say dimmable on the package it is because it is redundant, just like they wouldn't say dimmable on an old incandescent bulb.
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Not anymore. Cree recently came out with a design that is a direct replacement for T8 fluorescent tubes [cree.com]; you can plug it into an existing fixture without needing to bypass the ballast. It's supposed to give 100 lumen/watt with a CRI of 90, which is very good, and they're selling for about $30/each.
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As the Queen of England has no real power,
I've been told by a licensed electrician otherwise. Maybe he was just fishing for more work, but the rules he was giving us prohibited high voltage near the low voltage lines. That kind of wiring took down TWA-800.
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Submit a poll idea :) (Score:5, Informative)
Lots of people ask us whether we accept, or where to submit, poll ideas: the answers are a) of course! and b) use our submission form here: http://slashdot.org/submission [slashdot.org]
Just note that it's a poll submission, and include 5-8 options for options :) If we select your poll idea, we may tweak the question, the answers, or both, but the more ideas the better.
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Following on from the current poll: How long did your last energy saving bulb last ? 0-1 months; 2-4; 5-8; 9-14; 15-23; 2 years; 2-3 years; 4+ years
The reason for the question is that they are supposed to last many years of typical usage - I do not get that out of most of them, some only last 6 months. I want to know if others find the same ?
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Between 2 and 3 years but it did not fail, so I don't know how long it would've lasted. I replaced it with a higher wattage "daylight" bulb a few months ago. I really like the much-less-yellow look of the daylight bulbs now and I don't think I'd use any other hue.
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Agreed, I worded it badly. How about: ''How long had the last energy saving bulb that you replaced been working ?'' Even then it is sloppy since some bulbs will be used a lot (eg in the kitchen) whereas others very little (in the garage or spare bedroom). But it is not intended to be a scientific survey.
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The problem is it depends if you are kind of idiot who buys the cheapest, lowest quality bulbs they can find or if you get reasonable quality ones. Most of the people moaning about bulb lifetime seem to have bought cheap rubbish, and probably never spent a penny on their home electrics either.
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There are often good reasons to go cheap. If better technology is waiting in the wings, it doesn't make sense to invest a lot of money in high quality, long lasting implementations of inferior tech. Look at the homes of the rich of the early 20th century and earlier. They have high quality obsolete tech all over the place.
For fluorescent lighting, I replaced magnetic ballasts with electronic ballasts. They are more efficient. I also experimented and replaced a 2x40W fixture with a 2x32W. 32 watt flu
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I have noticed a high failure rate for LED night lights. I don't recall the exact numbers, but out of some 20 purchased, 4 or 5 failed after only a few months.
Another problem is high variability. Even in a package of 4 supposedly identical models, some LED night lights will be much brighter than others.
Perhaps another place to get data is traffic lights. How often do you see LED traffic lights with dead pixels, so to speak? I see that all the time.
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Free Light Bulbs! (Score:2)
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Oddball (Score:3)
Yes, it was an incandescent - this is one situation where energy efficiency in lighting is a rather moot point. Bulbs in refrigerators, on the other hand...
Re:Oddball (Score:4, Informative)
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Just bought a new fridge. It came with LED lighting throughout the fridge. Guess this is the direction Fridge lighting is going. I assume Ovens can do the same?
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Bulbs in refrigerators, on the other hand...
If you keep your refrigerator open for long enough to the incandescent bulb heat the inside, you kept the refrigerator open long enough to heat the entire room...
$1500 light bulb (Score:2)
My dad just had to buy a new light bulb for his very high end home theater projector. He said the bulb was $1,500. I know you could buy a projector for that price, but his particular projector ranges in price from $10,000 to $30,000 depending on model...so it makes sense to buy the replacement bulb.
Free (Score:4, Interesting)
My most recent acquisition was 2 cfl lamps included in a free energy-saver kit from the city. Included was a water saver showerhead, water-saver nozzles for the kitchen & bathroom faucets & 2 cfl lamps. Not bad for free. 'Course if you break down my tax bill I figure those cfl lamps cost about $22.25 each.
I genuinely cannot remember... (Score:3, Funny)
... the last time I bought light bulbs. We're still working through our collection of 100W light bulbs. I'd like to switch to low energy ones, but we have to piss off the climate change liars somehow.
Anyway, when I did buy them, I paid in sterling, not in these dollar thingies being quoted in the vote. It doesn't make it clear if it means Canadian dollars or Australian ones, and that would make the value different.
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"... climate change liars ..."
You're an idiot.
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>It doesn't make it clear if it means Canadian dollars or Australian ones, and that would make the value different.
Actually, it's safest to assume that slashdot thinks in US$ -- like all the ads we Canucks get from below 49. And oddly enough, in the current market, A$, C$, US$ and NZ$ are about as close to each other as I remember ever having seen them. You have to hit the Fijian Dollar, Hong Kong Dollar or Namibian Dollar to get really wild fluctuations.
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He claims to have paid in sterling - they don't use sterling in Europe. Learn your geography, goddamn ignorant Americunt. He's not European, he's a Britfag.
Cree 65W equivalent recessed bulbs (Score:3)
I swear converting from the incandescent to the LED style looks like the difference between the NCC-1701 and the NCC-1701D (reflector dish).
Plus total cost of ownership will be lower (incl. energy used) if it lives anywhere near the quoted lifetime.
Missing Option (Score:2)
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Is it an led monitor?
Trailer clearance lights (Score:2)
CFL (Score:2)
$15 LED 3 years ago, haven't bought any since (Score:2)
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I've had mixed results with LED bulbs. They fall into 3 catagories.
1 Poor lumen maintenance.
They dim over time by a large amount. Most often seen in Christmas Lights. My daughter took a string of blue LED's and used them as a nightlight in her room. about 1/2 were totally dead in 6 months. The remainer were all over the map in brighness, but all were much dimmer compaired to a string stored for Christmas used for comparison. Failure rate of decreased brightness by 1/2 percieved brightness in 6 months i
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"Life: 22.8 years (Based on 3 hrs/day)."
And even that may be an exaggeration, I know CFL's still claim they will last years. Most that I've used last months at most. I recently bought a couple LED flood lights on clearance, when I was looking for some other 40/60 watt bulbs I noticed a flood exactly the same as the one I had grabbed from clearance, same manufacturer, same lumens, same wattage, same packaging. Only difference was the "lasts up to" numbers, half of what they were on the clearance bulb.
LEDs (Score:2)
We renovated last year, and as part of it, we replaced all the light fittings in the house and changed all the globes to LEDs.
The globes may have cost more, but they have a significantly lower energy consumption.
Just after Christmas I went to the $ store (Score:2)
And bought every 100 Watt light bulb they had, a few bags worth.
I felt proud of myself until it dawned on me why the $ would offer them at such a low price, they pop about once a month, but I still have lots left.
Just after Christmas I went to the $ store (Score:2)
why the $ would offer them at such a low price, .
$ = Dollar store (everything's a dollar) 4 bulbs for one buck - my bad.
Cree FTW (Score:2)
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Re:Cree FTW (Score:5, Funny)
We are a polite people here on /. You don't need to ask for advice, we just give it.
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CFL (Score:2)
'twas a CFL, or more specifically a box of six at about $5 each. it took a while before I settled on a brand that lasted longer than six months.
I have bought a few LED ones too - they have good emitters, but the cheap mains capacitors in the ballasts let them down, blowing after a relatively short period.
I would still really like to see CFL and LED bulbs come out with separate ballasts. Then you can just replace the part that's failed.
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Old CFLs (Lights of America) were separate ballast, and the ballast was good enough (if you were lucky) to last through 4 bulbs. They lost in the marketplace because of higher initial cost, and the difficulty in finding replacement bulbs was another disadvantage.
With LEDs, the LEDs and their heatsinks are the expensive part and the part most likely to fail. Separation of ballast from LEDs does not make economic sense.
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My experience with LEDs is the opposite - the diodes outlast the ballast components, in particular the mains voltage capacitor.
Fluorescent striplights (Score:2)
Independent acquisition: free (Score:2)
I bought a used lamp for $25 that came with two bulbs in it. But previous to that, the last time I acquired a light bulb separate from a device, it was free through my local utility's "order a free package of energy efficiency items!" program. It included two standard-base CFL bulbs, two candelabra base bulbs (ironically between ordering and getting delivery, we had replaced the last candelabra-bulb fixture in the house,) plus a low-flow water faucet attachment, and a couple other things I'm forgetting.
I
My experiences with CFL and LED light bulbs (Score:2)
By chance, the last energy-saving light bulb that I've bought turned 1 year yesterday. It's a Philips 1055 lumens/13 watt LED that's roughly equivalent to a 75 watt incandescent. I had prevously been using a 800 lumens/15 watt CFL, but I thought it was too dim, and swapped it to our hallway. We have had mixed experiences with CFLs in our house. We found that in our dining room they would only last a few months, I think that they didn't like being turned on and off all the time and they were right in fro
LED for $18 (Score:2)
I have a vacation rental property, and some of the bulbs are very hard to replace. I'm afraid that a tenant might try to do it and break the fixture. Also, they take R20 bulbs, and they tend to be expensive to begin with. So now I don't have to worry about the bulbs failing when I'm hundreds of miles away.
I also swapped out the ancient dimmer, but I'm not sure if that was necessary.
I'm very happy with the new bulbs. They're a bit whiter than the old ones, but they dim very nicely.
0.5 BTC (Score:2)
Dimmable LED's are still a tad pricey (Score:2)
LED cost (Score:2)
Would like to outfit my home with LED bulbs but the cost of swapping out all the bulbs in my home came in around $2,000.
Could go with CFL for about $300 but they are pretty toxic if they break, causing brain damage and what not, especially for kids, so not ok with that.
Anyone else replaced all their lighting with LED?
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I did it gradually once they wore out. Never looked back. But my tiny flat wasnt that much of an invest.
Blinker Light for Car (Score:2)
$20 (Score:2)
LEDs (Score:2)
I've been mostly buying LED's, expensive as hell ($12 for candelabra, $20 for flood, $7 for 60 watt) but so far so good, haven't had any of them burn out, I imagine they're saving me quite a bit in electricity. IF they last as long as they say they will (10+ years) they'll be well worth it, but we'll see of they live up to their claims better than those no good, useless, short lived, toxic piece of crap CFL bulbs.
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If I need a light bulb, I buy a light bulb. I don't really remember the price (I may have a quick look in the shop to avoid taking one which costs twice as much as the one just next to it, but I definitely forget about the price before leaving the shop. In fact I even often forget that I have to buy a light bulb when I'm at the shop, and I remember it only when I come back home)
A true geek would remember price, wattage, color temperature, luminous flux and .... damn this is screw thread and I needed bayonet
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I wish I knew -- the one I have to replace the most often is the one that I have outside my back door on a motion sensing fixture; I've been using CFLs, but they die in 1-2 years, typically over the winter. ... but the one I last replaced was an 'appliance bulb' in my dryer ... it probably cost me more in gas driving all over the place to find the right bulb. (and the bulb had broken, so I didn't know the exact shape. ... so the first bulb I bought was too big to fit)
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Anyone have a brand they use that performs well in lower temperatures. The suckers just don't work reliably in my basement or garage.
I have seen Megaman bulbs which advertise down to -30C operation [airam.fi].
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Forget about using a CFL in the cold. Go get a LED bulb for that. The one I have in my front steps light (A 22W Feit) actually seems to get brighter the colder it gets.
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Really?
http://www.ikea.com/us/en/cata... [ikea.com]
LED bulbs at less than $5.
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Could be just one of those old wives tales but I've heard DO NOT PUT CFL's into ceiling fans. Something about them being very susceptible to shock/vibration. I've seen people go through a 10 pack of CFL bulbs in a month in those things.
Re: They should be recycled (Score:2)
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Fluorescent bulbs do contain mercury, but coal plants also emit mercury. Using a fluorescent bulb instead of an incandescent may mean less mercury goes into the environment, because it requires less power and therefore less coal needs to be burned to power them. They also don't break often. I've never had one break and I've used perhaps 100 CFL bulbs. They often do take a while to reach full brightness, though.
I've bought some LED bulbs recently and we've been very satisfied with the light. They reach full
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CFLs are the new "Green Run" and the LEDs are only getting better and better, in my insufficiently humble opinion.
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Not in a frequency that is visible to the human eye (typically in the kHz range). Unfortunately, many LED bulbs do flicker visibly (and annoyingly). Maybe you are confusing CFL and LED?
Yep, this is generally true. All the CFLs with electronic ballasts that I have seen use a high frequency. It is typically 14kHz or 20kHz. Combined with the afterglow of a fluorescent tube, it should generate very stable light. Good LED bulbs do not flicker either, and in my opinion should always be driven with DC. However, as you say, there are ones which do flicker. I have some Philips LED bulbs which have extremely stable light output. Then I have a cheap DealExtreme LED, which has a grimy flicker (150 -
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Also, you only use one exclamation point, don't use all caps.
Dammit Jim, brake! It's a 'brake', not a 'break'. Breaks keep your car from working, brakes keep it from breaking.
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Apparently you also have a nation of people who don't understand how the power system works, but can read about it on the internet.