On Apr 26, 3:46*pm, "Pete C." wrote:
wrote:

On Fri, 26 Apr 2013 11:50:48 -0500, "Pete C."
wrote:

wrote:

On Fri, 26 Apr 2013 12:24:54 -0400, Nate Nagel
wrote:

On 04/26/2013 10:45 AM, nestork wrote:
I think the biggest selling point of these LED bulbs is that they're
dimmable, and they're instant-on like incandescents. *You don't have to
wait a minute for the light output to rise.

But, the economics are an uphill battle for them.

Converting to CFL's was a no-brainer when they first came out because
even at their $7 per bulb price tag, they'd save you 80% on your
electricity, and that made them pay for themselves in a relatively short
period of time.

Now, unless there's a government subsidy involved, paying even $15 extra
to save an additional 3 watts is economically difficult. *In a house
with 20 light bulbs, $300 is a lot of money to invest in them, whereas
60 watts isn't a lot of savings to justify the investment. *It's not
even economically attractive to replace incandescents with LED's when
the option of replacing them with CFL's is open to you.

I expect some people will buy these LED bulbs for dining rooms where
they want the dimmability, but other than that the transition from CFL's
to LED's is gonna be a slow one... until the price of LED bulbs drops to
within a buck or two of CFLs. *Unfortunately, the price won't drop until
they start being mass produced, and that's not going to happen until
they're economically competitive with CFL's and, except for a C-change
in technology, that's not going to happen until the price drops.
Your classic Catch-22.

BUT if I needed to purchase some sort of light, any light, with the only
consideration being that it was going to go in an Edison base fixture, I
wouldn't even consider CFLs anymore. *My choice today would be between
an incandescent and these new LEDs. *The price difference between a CFL
and the LEDs (at $15, anyway) is little enough that I'm willing to pay
the extra for the luxury of not being annoyed at the CFL every time I
turn it on.

THe only place I have CFLs is in the unfinished *basement, where
*1) I don't care what how the light looks.
*2) I don't care about the absurdly long warm-up. *Much.
*3) The lights may stay on for more than an hour a day so there might
* * be some energy to save.
*4) Haven't gotten the T8s wired in yet.

#1 was resolved years ago. Current CFLs have good color temp and CRI.

Bull****. Color temp doesn't tell you jack.

Tell that to anyone in the photo/video/film/stage lighting fields...



#2 seems to only apply to encapsulated CFLs, not a single one of the
open spiral CFLs I've used has a warmup time over a second or so after
it's initial couple hours of burn-in.

Nonsense. *The pig tails take five minutes, or longer, to come up to
full brightness. *In cold weather, forget it. *Most of my lighs aren't
on that long in a day.

None of the dozens of CFLs I've used have ever behaved that way. You
must live in the Bermuda triangle for CFLs.


None? Ever? I don't think it's necessarily that all spiral ones take
a considerable time to warm up, but I've sure seen plenty
of them that do take a long time. I have some of them in my garage.
right now. This time of year, they take about 1 min to get near
full brightness. For the first 15 secs, it's dim, but at least you
can
see. In the winter, you could double the time and for the first 30
secs,
you can't see worth a damn. They
are so bad, I switched back to regular bulbs for the most
critical of the 4, so at least I can see something.....

To be fair, these are older ones and I've had newer ones that
are better. But then when I bought these $7 things, they
were supposed to last a very long time so that I would get
the payback right? And one big problem that the industry
fails to address is that there are no STANDARDS. There
should be a spec system where how long they take to get
to say 50%, 75%, 100% output at 65F and 25F is right on the
box. That is one of the frustrations, that even today, you;re buying
a
pig in a poke. And what you bought last year, that gave an
acceptable light quality, warm-up time, etc, is probably no
longer available because now they have some other bulb,
from some other junk Chinese facility.

Oh and then there are other surprises. Like the CFL spiral
ones, at least some of them, say they are not supposed to
be installed upside down. Or the ones that look like reflector/
flood type bulbs. But while having basically the same shape,
the neck is much thicker so that it won't go into my recessed
lights....

The experience with CFL is one reason I'm not real quick
to jump on the LED bandwagon and buy all the marketing BS.
Not at $15 - $25 for sure.





#3 there is energy to save regardless of daily run time. If your sub
hour a day run time saves #0.03 that's still a savings. Total lamp
lifetime savings is still the same, it just takes longer to accumulate..

Bull****. *It takes energy to make the things (and for me to buy
them).

Yep, as it does to make incandescents and for you to buy the 40
incandescents that it will take to cover the service life of one LED
lamp.



If it lasts that long. Based on what I've seen with CFL versus
the claims, I'm skeptical. And just because the typical low power
LED indicator in a stereo or PC lasts a long time, doesn't mean
the LED light will. The light also has a power supply adn those
typically have things like caps in them that fail before the LED.
And with the drive to make these cheap so people will buy them,
I wouldn't be suprised to find out that the PS dies long before
the LED itself. And also, the light LEDs are high power devices,
so I don't think extrapolating the lifespan of an indicator LED is
valid.