Ever Forward

The Advantages

LEDs offer three crucial advantages aside from energy reduction and color temperature range:

• A good 7-Watt LED can generally replace a 60-watt incandescent or a 13-watt CFL.
• LEDs contain no mercury.
• LEDs should typically last 25,000 hours (18-20 years @ 4 hours per day). Many of us will retire before we replace these bulbs.

Additionally…

• The plastic part of LED Bulbs from EarthLED don’t get hot (but the metal heatsink does)
• LED bulbs from EarthLED also are nigh impossible to break – safe for children & pets!

What to look for in LED technology

• You need to know the color temperature of LEDs.
  • A ‘warm white’ (2700 Kelvin) is yellowish, like a candle.
  • A ‘neutral white’ (4000 Kelvin) is the midway mark.
  • A ‘cool white’ (5000 Kelvin) is more blue-ish, like natural daylight.

• The light color temperature should be stated on the package or website product description
• Check the watt-rating – what is the bulb designed to replace? How many watts does it actually use?
• Lumens (how much light reaches the intended object) – Multiply the Lumen output of an LED by a factor of roughly 2.2 to find the equivalent for an incandescent bulb or CFL.
• Make sure you are buying a bulb designed to replace a standard light bulb. Many LEDs are directional and designed for specific uses.

There are dimmable LEDs on the market.  I have no personal experience with these, so I’d be interested to hear yours, if you use or try out these lights.

What are the best opportunities?

• Any situation where you still have an incandescent bulb. When it dies, just go ahead and replace it with a appropriate LED bulb.
• 60-Watt replacement LEDs are sufficient for most lighting situations – I used to use 75-Watt incandescent bulbs & 18-Watt CFLs.
• LEDs are designed to fit a variety of applications, from decorative lighting to floodlights to track lighting and standard fixtures. There are even LEDs that can replace fluorescent tubes.

Making the switch from incandescent to CFL and then to LED is effectively pointless by now.  Just go ahead and replace dead incandescents with LED bulbs.  Your savings will be far greater than you can realize.  If you’re already using CFLs, you can wait till these burn out (by which time prices should be even lower) or you can pass on the CFL to a low-income neighbor or charity.

Where to find LED Bulbs?

You can find LED bulbs at EarthLED.com, 1000bulbs.com, Lowes, Home Depot, Bed, Bath & Beyond, and other places. Be careful to compare – not all LEDs are created equal!

Note:  If you really must know more about the lumens issue, check out the 2nd comment below this article.   I know someone out there is kind of geeky & curious and just dying to find out more…

In 2008 I began sharing information about how to switch from the old incandescent bulbs to Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFL).  Recently, Duke Energy began to offer CFLs for free to encourage people to leave the old incandescent bulbs behind.  Since 2008, though, the R&D folks have been working hard developing the latest LED bulbs.  Now, stores like Lowe’s, Home Depot and Bed Bath & Beyond are starting to carry the newer LED bulbs that can replace standard light bulbs in our homes – offering the potential to reduce energy use by yet another 40-60%.  Before you jump, I’d like to share my experience.

I have already converted my home to LED bulbs, all from EarthLED.com.  Our bathroom’s ‘decorative’ fixture, intended to hold four 40-watt incandescent globes now holds just two 7-watt, ‘cool white’ LED bulbs that provide probably the best light quality I’ve seen in years in a bathroom.  It’s like the sun shines in, even though our bathroom has no windows.  I have one ‘warm white’ (more like the light from a candle) LED that I use in my floor lamp in the living room.  My wife actually prefers the LED light quality over that of the CFL it replaced.

I based my 60% savings figure above on switching from an 18-watt CFL to a 7-watt LED, as I had used 18-watt CFLs to replace my 75-watt incandescent bulbs.  Prices for LEDs are still high, but dropping.  The EarthLED ZetaLux 2 Pro bulbs (what I own) that normally cost $30-$35 is currently running $20-$30 on-sale.  Even at these high prices, you’ll be saving money over the long haul, in terms of energy savings and the number of bulbs you have to buy.

I’ll post a quick howto guide subsequent to this post.  In the meantime, here’s a little something to keep your interest…

Some major advantages of LED lights:

• LEDs use approximately 40% less energy than equivalent CFLs and should last up to 20 years (as opposed to 7-10 for CFLs)
• LEDs are ‘instant on’ – no warm-up period necessary to reach full brightness
• LEDs contain no mercury & are recyclable
• LEDs don’t have the ‘flicker’ problem that early CFLs did
• LEDs are safer than incandescent bulbs and CFLs for use as spotlights for paintings & photographs
• LEDs offer a greater range of light color temperatures
• LEDs offer better light quality than CFLs – not the ‘harsh’ yellow light you may have seen with CFLs
• LEDs don’t get as hot as other bulbs (the plastic parts can be handled, but be careful about the heat sink)

Note: Not all LEDs are equal.  The 60-watt replacement models I’ve seen from Phillips at Lowe’s or Home Depot don’t offer much energy savings – if any – over a typical CFL.  I saw some at Bed Bath & Beyond that appear to be more sensible, but I still like the ones from EarthLED.com the best.  After posting my experience at work, a co-worker responded to say he can’t find anything that matches the cost vs brightness of the ZetaLux 2 line from EarthLED.

My howto guide offers more details on selecting LED bulbs to replace your standard incandescent bulbs and CFLs.

I can see!  I can see!  Well, you might understand my excitement better if you ever sat at my dining room table.  The conical fixture that hangs over my dining table tends to drown most of the light from a normal Compact Fluorescent Lamp (CFL) before it gets anywhere.  The result is an almost romantically dim dining area at all times.  Well, now I can actually see what I’m eating.  I’ve just installed EarthLED‘s 7-Watt, cool white (5000 Kelvin) Zetalux 2 PRO bulb.  And to think I was such a skeptic!

Granted, given my cooking skills, it’s probably best not to see what I am eating.  Throw in the fact that I typically inhale my food, and I rarely actually see it anyway.  Even so, the difference the new LED is making on its inaugural installation leads me to think I’m going to want to replace the ones in my bathroom and kitchen, too.  I may actually want to see what I’m shaving (maybe that explains the hair missing from the top of my head).  Anyway, here’s the “after” shot showing the Zetalux bulb:

Dining area with EarthLED Zetalux 2 PRO cool white bulb

So… what did it look like before, with the 13-Watt CFL?  How does this strike you?

Dining area with standard 13-Watt CFL

Both (the CFL & the LED) are replacements for 60-Watt incandescent light bulbs. I was honestly quite skeptical, as I have found it difficult to compare LEDs with other bulbs, since the technical information isn’t all that helpful for the layman.  Lighting engineers understand all about various degrees of light, Kelvin temperatures, etc.  The average person doesn’t.  Even experienced facility managers rarely have more than a basic grasp of this subject.  I simply had to test it for myself.  And you see the result right here.  This is the difference a good LED can make.

The dining area is fairly well lit in the mornings, but by early afternoon it’s time to turn on a light.  The kitchen is totally in the dark.  One thing that did throw me for a loop is the heat the LED core generates.  I was under the impression that LED bulbs would generate little or no heat.  Well, the bulb itself may not, but the core certainly does.  I suggest that, assuming your hands aren’t slippery, you should be able to grab the bulb to unscrew it from the fixture if need be.  Mind you, I shouldn’t need to worry about that for another 10 years or so.

While these LED bulbs are far more expensive ($35.00 for 1), they will use nearly half the energy and last at least 3 years longer than most CFLs.  The greatest cost savings is for those who have yet to switch from incandescent bulbs to CFLs.  Also, I did drop the bulb on my tile floor from about knee-high and it just bounces.  The EarthLED video shows them dropping from a ladder.  Definitely don’t do that with your CFLs!

Going forward, I would like to replace my bathroom lights for sure.  I currently have 5 13-Watt CFLs over my bathroom mirror.  If I put 5 Zetalux standard (40-Watt replacement) cool white bulbs in my bathroom, at a cost of roughly $25.00 per bulb, that will come to $125 total.  Still, at roughly 54% of the energy use, I should earn that money back fairly quickly.  Considering the lights I use the most are the ones in the bathroom, dining room and kitchen, that’s where I should invest my efforts.  I already use LED lamps in my bedroom and at my front door.  So this is, for me, just a logical progression toward a more efficient home.

Now let’s give it a little time and see what happens over the longer haul.  Still, I am very excited about the future of LEDs.

Update:

I just tried the Zetalux in my bathroom.  I’m only going to need two – at most, three – LED bulbs.  Period.  Can you imagine two 7-Watt LED bulbs replacing five 13-Watt CFLs?  That means eliminating 51 Watts altogether.  Maybe I need to post another pair of photos.