This is an unplanned blog post, but I just had to add this immediately — in part to let off some steam, in part to give a more “balanced” view on LED lighting.
In February 4th and February 8th postings, I practically waxed poetic the wonders of LED lighting, based on “reliable” research I found. Well, the long-awaited light bulbs arrived and we’ve just installed them. The good news, is that LEDs, unlike compact fluorescent lights do not take several seconds or minutes to reach their maximum brightness.
As for the rest of the news: Our previously bright and workable kitchen is now … well, it has “ambiance.”
The side of the kitchen where we do most of our chopping, mincing and cooking, had previously been drawing a huge 150 Watts. We purchased LED light bulbs that all together would put out an equivalent of 180 Watts, while drawing only approx. 8 Watts. Cool, huh? The actual lighting results? Disappointing at best. The light quality seems similar to that which one can expect with CFLs (compact florescent lighting) — which I’m not crazy about — and my estimate is that the light appears equivalent to more along the lines of 80 Watts. 80 Watts isn’t insignificant, but remember that this is ceiling lighting and we have 3 meter, 60 centimeter high ceilings. Believe me when I say that 80 Watts to work by is “romantic.”
The real problem is the other side of the kitchen. There, we have a chandelier which was drawing a gargantuan 240 Watts. We knew we had to do something. What we purchased were enough LED bulbs that would put out an equivalent light of 170 Watts, but only draw approx. 10 Watts. What used to be the cheerful side of the kitchen now has the mood of what I imagine the depression era had.
So, I hope my previous enthusiasm for what I had read about LEDs didn’t have too many folks to go out and buy a lot of LED light bulbs. If so, my apologies. If it’s any consolation, we’re poorer for this project too.
Now, keep in mind, I’m referring only to overhead lighting. In fact, LED for ambiance lighting, i.e., table lamp lighting in the living room or lighting over decorative pieces, could work very nicely. But, if you need bright light for work, or generally have failing eyesight, I’m afraid I’d recommend you wait a bit longer for further technological developments before you invest in LED lighting.
We’ll be reporting in on this week’s Impact event in a couple of days. In the meantime, we’re heading to the kitchen to go chop a finger or two.
I found that if you are an embroiderer or a reader, LED’s were useless in terms of light quality, requiring the purchase and running of an additional side or work-light . . . defeats the purpose of the exercise.
Just as well our power is from a renewable resource. Our state, Tasmania, is run entirely on hydro-power!
Seems every week I read about some cool eco-friendly initiative that’s in Australia. As for the additional side light, this is exactly what we’re now doing in our kitchen. We use our very bright under cabinet lighting (which we never had to use before). So, how much energy we’re actually saving is debatable.
Sorry about your disappointing results with the LEDs in your chandelier, but thanks for running the experiment and getting back to us. While on the subject of lighting and energy efficiency, I can recommend a lamp that I bought a few years back. It was developed by scientists at the Lawrence-Berkeley lab, and it produces amazingly clear ambient as well as task-lighting, while being energy efficient. It is (not surprisingly) called the Berkeley Lamp, and it’s not cheap, (~ $280) but it is the best lamp we have. Here’s a link to Full Spectrum Solutions, the company that sells the lamp
http://www.fullspectrumsolutions.com/berkeley_lamp_ii_89_ctg.htm
I’ll look forward to the next generation of LEDs that can be used for overhead lighting.
Two thumbs up for the Berkeley Lamp. Nice looking and gives off really good reading light!
I think there’s more to the story than what is being told here.
LED lighting can be worth waxing poetic about. However, LEDs have a property that makes them VERY different for installation than most incandescent or fluorescent bulbs. LEDs are by definition highly directional light sources. Some LEDs have lenses on them that diffuse their light over as much as 120º, but, that diffusion comes at a cost in light intensity.
If you’re retrofitting existing fixtures, especially fixtures where the bulbs screw downwards into the base of the fixture, you’re going to face the problem that most of the light coming out of most of the LED bulbs tends to go UP. In a chandelier, that means you do a great job of lighting the ceiling and don’t get much back into the rest of the room. Especially if you have dark walls.
In my kitchen, I have recessed “can” lighting (spotlights point down from cans recessed into the ceiling). Replacing one of the 5 bulbs with an LED bulb from Home Depot (EcoSmart brand) produces more light than the incandescents or CFs ever did and it’s got much better dimmer response than the CFs.
There are solutions being developed for deploying LED lighting where omnidirectional lighting (like you get from CFs and bulb incandescents) can be better achieved, but, the technology for these retrofits hasn’t quite caught up.
For overhead and task lighting, I think LEDs are fantastic and I highly recommend them. They can also be good in lamps like Torchieres where the light is expected to be going mostly in one direction.
Finally, if you have fluorescent tubes, LED replacements for these are starting to hit the market. The good ones require removing the ballast and starter from the equation, but, that also provides better efficiency. There is one company now producing LED-oriented fluorescent fixtures. Hopefully there will be more soon. The process of converting an existing fixture to LED is not complicated. If you don’t want to rewire the fixture yourself, you should figure on paying someone for about a quarter to a half hour of labor per fixture for the conversion. Any electrician or handy-man should be able to handle the conversion. There’s pretty good instructions available on line.
I hope this helps people who are considering LED lighting. It is fantastic if deployed with a good understanding of what it can and can’t do.
Owen, Thanks for your comment and information. And, your timing is good. Nils has been seeing a lot of potentially interesting LED products on the market and we were talking about doing an update on LED lighting. We so WANT to love it and anything that helps us and followers understand how we can use it properly, and what we need to do to make it work is most welcome. Corinne p.s. – I may take the liberty of getting in touch with you when we get around to doing another posting on lighting.
Corinne,
Thanks for the kind words. I’m actually pretty happy with my LED lights so far and I plan to purchase more. I’m going to convert the rest of the incandescent spots in my kitchen ($160 later) next.
I’m also looking at replacing the tubes in one of my 48″ fluorescent fixtures in the garage (I’m not afraid of the required rewiring of the fixture, I do lots of my own electrical work). I’m hoping to find a cost-effective ready-made surface mount overhead lighting solution based on LEDs, but, the search continues.
What I have found is that the EcoSmart product line being offered by Home Depot does seem to offer superior performance over the competitors I have tried. They also seem to be carefully targeting bulbs that fit well in the role of LEDs so that they release products people will most likely love.
I have tried a few of the attempts at omnidirectional LED-based lighting and found them wanting. Usually they have enough LEDs to produce strong enough directional light and nobody bothered with the inverse square law calculation to realize that they need much greater density of LEDs when spreading the beam out that wide.
In short, the ≤11 watt screw-in bulb replacements currently on the market work out more like 25 watt incandescents than the 40s-60s they claim to replace. The do offer a nicer daylight-like light than the incandescents. I suspect that when we start seeing 15-20W LED screw-in replacements for 60W bulbs, we’ll start seeing omni-lights that are more feasible.
Again, the key to loving any technology is to understand its strengths and weaknesses and deploy it where those are a good match for the application. LEDs in the right place are easy to love.
Please do feel free to get in touch with me for the next round. Especially if you want to send me products to eval.
Owen, some Great information here! Thank you! I absolutely agree with you on LED being great for task lighting. On overhead lighting, however, … Meh, we haven’t had great experience (at rather high cost to the pocketbook). HOWEVER, we haven’t researched this in many months and I know the industry is moving forward fast and furiously. I hope that there will be continued in-roads made in omni-directional lighting!!!
I’ll be in touch in the future!