Florida company makes price breakthrough for LED light bulbs, $18 60W equivalent

Info from the video at http://www.energynow.com/ --"Battle of the Bulbs - 6.12.11"

The Florida company, Lighting Science Group, is one of the competitors featured on the video from EnergyNOW on the Bloomberg channel today. They are showcasing their LED light bulb that replaces 60 watt incandescent light bulbs, lasts 23 years and costs only $18 -- it will pay for itself in the first couple of years.

A recent post of mine touted the money savings from the Philips LED bulb which is $40 at box stores and homedepot/lowes/etc. I compared that $40 bulb to a $1 incandescent bulb I found online that claimed a 2000 hour lifetime and found that even at $40 a bulb the LED light bulb saves you money after just a few years:

@8 cents/kWh, $40 LED takes 7.29 years to pay for itself in energy savings
@8 cents/kWh, $18 LED takes 3.28 years
@11 cents/kWh, $40 LED takes 5.30 years to pay for itself in energy savings
@11 cents/kWh, $40 LED takes 2.38 years

If your electricity rates are higher (mine is 11.9 cents per kWh) then the LED light bulbs will pay for themselves faster. If you have solar panels or a home wind turbine, then LED lights will pay for themselves even faster.

I know LED's last a long time, but how do they really know?

The MTBF is the time at which 50% of them will fail.

Failure curves for LED's tend to look like this on a log-time axis:



If you have a sample of them, and you figure out the time for a fraction of a percent of them to fail, then you can determine the MTBF, without having to wait 23 years.

After 1,000 hours of testing a large sample, for instance, you can see where the curve is going to go based on the proportion that have failed at 1,000 hours.

They still pay for themselves.

We pay a lot for electricity, so they pay off sooner.

And as important to me is the fact that for the same number of hours of light one LED lamp does the work of 4.5 CFLs and 30 or more incandescents.

I really like the quality of the light the Philips LED puts out and I'm in the (slow) process of replacing all the bulbs in my house with LED light bulbs.

Most of my light fixtures have CFLs in them, most are on dimmers so I paid extra for the "dimmable" CFL bulbs ($20 for a pack of 3 as I recall). They take a long time to come up to full brightness and the light they put out is always "yellow-ish" and the light output never equals the incandescents they replaced. Although I do like the lower energy bills, I gave up on buying any new CFLs and just let the bulbs stay dark when they go out. Then I'll replace with LED dimmable bulbs as I am able.

skip the heat spewing rectifiers and inverters and you could see some real High Dollar savings - QUICKLY

Lots of household electronics can and should run on DC. No more wall-warts!

But if you have off-grid solar you can use lighting and equipment meant for autos and RVs so you don't have to become a DC electrical engineer. You are right that skipping the step of converting to AC would save energy.

I've looked at the LED wholesalers and just can't make head nor tails of the offerings there. I'd probably end up purchasing 12v products.

Halogen and LED light sources could satisfy 100% of your needs - so who needs AC lighting at all

I agree with your point about DC lighting being adequate (although some halogens take a LOT of energy and put out a LOT of heat).

Having to run two completely separate sets of wiring, however, may pose a complexity challenge for some (the lights in your kitchen being run off the DC wiring but the receptacles and appliances connect to AC wiring). To bounce off the earlier point another poster made, "say goodbye to wall warts," you'd also need to run DC wiring along side the AC wiring for certain (perhaps most or all) your receptacles.

That would add significant cost unless you're doing your own wiring (which most states will allow you to do - as long as a certified electrician makes the actual connection to switches, receptacles, and light fixtures, and of course the breaker panel). But if you're handy and get the right kind of wire then there is a definite efficiency boost (or a lack of efficiency loss?) to be had by keeping DC things DC and not switching from one to the other as in the case of someone who has solar panels or wind turbines designed to put out DC current (some wind turbines put our AC now so you can't generalise).

All that being said, the light bulbs in the OP from GE, Sylvania, NEC, Philips, Lighting Science, etc., are all AC. I didn't want anyone to get that mixed up in their minds. Every house in America can use these bulbs and they will work exactly the same as the "old" incandescent bulbs -- just unscrew the old bulb and screw in the LED replacement bulb and you're done: money savings begin the second you turn on the light.

@11 cents/kWh, $40 LED takes 5.30 years to pay for itself in energy savings
@11 cents/kWh, $40 LED takes 2.38 years

Thanks for catching that! :hi:

How many lumens do the LED bulbs output and at what wattage input ?

CFLs deteriorate with on-off cycles and require warmup to reach full brightness -- so they're not the best choice for bathrooms or closets, where the light is regularly turned on briefly and then turned off again

LEDs deteriorate with heat -- so the brighter ones are not the best choice for closed fixtures. The dimmer LEDs, on the other hand, don't give much light and may not give an attractive light -- so they're best used where not much light is needed: I use one outside to enable me to see just well enough to get to and unlock a door; I use another dim one in a recessed shower fixture. Also, many LEDs give a very focused directional beam: if not used for accent lighting, the beam might best be bounced off a wall or ceiling to obtain a more diffused indirect illumination

Halogens give a very nice light but run hot-- so again the brighter ones might not be the best choice for closed fixtures. I've put several in semi-open bathroom fixtures and another in an open workroom socket -- places where the light gets used quite regularly, for very short periods. In hot weather, especially, you won't want a bunch of halogens on for very long, because they are warm

Depending on your habits, incandescents may not be a bad choice for some locations, such as attics and crawl spaces where the light is used briefly and infrequently. My crawl space bulb probably gets turned on three times a year for a grand total of an hour a year: I probably don't spend a penny a year running it, so why would I put an expensive bulb there?

I have no plans to put an expensive bulb in the attic (unfinished) since, like you, I use that bulb at most 2 hours a year and that is only to retrieve or store the holiday decorations or other stuff in storage up there. When that bulb burns out I'll probably have several unused CFLs that I can place into attic service.

I've had the same problem with CFL bulbs dying too soon, some after just 1 month of use because of frequent on-off cycling, etc.

The issue with LEDs and heat, however, is the reason why all of the LED light bulbs look so darn weird - heat sinks built into the bulb so heat is dissipated to protect the life of the bulb.

The older model LED light bulbs were pretty anemic, I agree, as far as their light output. But I bought a few 3 years ago and they're still functioning in a hallway connecting the garage, laundry and living area, as well as a seldom used lamp. But the new ones that are just coming out now are light years ahead, especially the ones from "big name" companies in the lighting industry.

not a hotbed of entrepreneurial enterprise. home to surfers and retirees, mostly.

very cool company.

I was pleasantly surprised to hear that they are a Florida company. Checking their website, they have a full line of LED lighting products and will probably be a big player in the future. I have to admit, I hadn't heard of them before watching the video.

that is one of the problems with LED is that they haven't been able to give off enough light.

GE, Sylvania, Toshiba, NEC, Philips, etc., are all revving up their mass production lines for LED lighting products. Costs are going to start to drop as production volume rises. Lighting Science Group is a lesser known company but the specs of their 60W LED bulb are impressive. And when they announced an $18 price target for their bulb it really caught my eye.

See my earlier post showing that this bulb could pay for itself in energy savings in 3 years or less, depending on your local electric rates.

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Omnidirectional light output - puts out light in all different directions. Some bulbs are designed to put out their light in one direction, like those designed for recessed light fixtures.



Apparently, or at least unbeknownst to me, Lighting Science Group is one of the biggest players in the LED lighting industry:Retrofit lamp meaning that you unscrew the old incandescent bulb (watch out, it may burn your fingers!) and screw in the new LED bulb (stays nice and cool).