Sam's Club Carries LED's!!!

Praise the Lord, the LED's have made it to the mainstream market. Sam's now has them on the lightbulb aisle. I only show one kind here, but there are other ones, including flood style lights.

Here's a closeup of the bulb. These are candle style bulbs, the kind all our ceiling fans take.

They do not have the all around brightness that incandescents or CFL's have, they are directional.

That means as you can see here, relatively little of the light needs to be reflected off the ceiling.

A closeup of the bulb in action. Most of the light here is being directed out the center of the bulb and not radially into the camera lens.

This is what it looks like when you are more in the direction of the beam.

Super closeup lit.

I hope most of you know what LEDs are all about by now, but if you don't here's the skinny. LEDs use less energy than CFLs and last ten times longer. Until recently, that has meant that they cost ten times as much, but three of these candle bulbs cost about $15 which is around two to three times the cost of CFLs. They are directional which means they waste less light, but it also means that you'll have to change your way of thinking about lightbulbs because these won't flood your world like other bulbs. I like them because our ceiling fan is in the center of the room and our old bulbs caused a glare off the TV. These ones don't.

Because of the directionality, you can live with much lower wattage. The ceiling fan in the living room is made for four 75 watt candle style bulbs. I have been using two 9 watt CFLs. I now use three (four one day) 1.5 watt LED bulbs. That means I'm using 6% of what incandescents would use. When I add the fourth bulb some day, I'll still only be using a grand ol' 6 watts of power to light the living room. The problem is, I'm still a stickler for turning the lights off.

These LED's are supposed to last 100,000 hours. That's 11.4 years straight through. If I use the bulb 5 hours a day (could be typical in the winter) conceivably, I won't have to change the bulb until I'm 80 years old.

I think that's enough info for now, my brain just blew a fuse.

WiredForStereo

Sweet Light Bulbs

I've been listening to the debate about light bulbs recently, and I think I need to insert some hardcore-ness into the conversation. A lot of people really like CFL's, and I would agree, but there is that mercury problem and all that, but let's see where we can go with this.

Incandescent bulbs are outmoded, that much is sure. Think about this, you live in an average house, you have air conditioning. When you use a regular 100W incandescent bulb, a good majority of the energy that bulb is using is being converted directly to heat. Where does that heat go? It must be removed by your air conditioner, and that costs money. For every 100 watts of power you use in your house that doesn't get washed down the drain, you use another one third as many watts to remove the left over heat from the house, so suddenly now instead of using a 100W bulb, you are using a 133W bulb.

Enter compact fluorescent bulbs CFL's. They use one fourth the power of an incandescent bulb for the same light production. That means one fourth the heat because remember, for every watt you use, it gets turned into heat somewhere in the process due to the law of conservation of energy. So for the same amount of light, you have to remove from the house one fourth the heat. A 100W equivalent bulb is now 25 watts, which due to air conditioning is now about 33 watts. Unfortunately, with CFL's comes mercury, a highly poisonous vaporous or liquid metal. If you were to break a CFL in your house, it would expose you to somewhere in the range of six times the recommended dosage of mercury. On the flip side of that same arguemtn is the mercury created by the generation of electricity from coal power plants. Each CFL saves far more mercury from being dumped into the environment than would be released if it were improperly disposed of. So the conclusion here is, use them, but just don't break them.

Enter light emitting diodes, LED's. LED's are to CFL's as CFL's are to incandescents. LED's use in the range (wide range) of one fourth or less power for the same amount of light as does a CFL. Congruently, they cost in ratio to CFL's as CFL's cost to incandescents, but the price will come down. LEDs on the other hand produce virtually no heat, they operate at quite a low temperature, and to think that they use only a couple of watts, it's no wonder. I have LED taillights in my little pickup, and they replace 23 watt incandescents while using only about 4 watts and they are so much more intense than the originals. I can look in the rear view mirror and see intense red light reflected all over the place.

More and more house style LED's are coming on the market, and all you need to do to find them is just do a search. Also, if you get creative, you can make your own fixtures with LED's because they run at very low voltage. I know of a guy who made custom LED taillights for his electric car that tell him when it's plugged in, or charged. Like I said before, the price will come down, there is alot of research going into LEDs right now, jumbo trons, LED computer monitors, and a great new idea, LED head lights for cars.

Conclusion here, push for LED's, they are the sustainable solution for lighting.
WiredForStereo