No more twisty bulbs for me! I’ve installed a new LED lighting system for my home that beats twisty bulbs in every way. It has been awhile since I discussed technology here, so this will be an interesting diversion for many readers.
I’ve always been a fan of alternate energy and improved energy efficiency, and I don’t just write about it like some people we know, I do things about it. I try out new things, I do the work. Longtime readers of my blog know that I’ve done two solar power projects, drive an electric car for my local short distance jaunts (I have two now, a really sharp new model, but that’s another story). I’ve put a 10KW solar array on my home, plus a 125 KW solar array on one of our local schools when I was a school trustee. I’ve retrofitted my home with CFL’s in some places, as well as installed timer switches on many of our most commonly used lights. I live in an an Energy Star rated home. However, I’ve not been all that pleased with the lighting that came with the house. Now I’ve changed the largest wattage draw of lighting in my house from incandescent to LED lighting.
No matter what you think about the veracity of global warming claims, there’s really not much of an argument anyone can make against improved energy efficiency as a way of reducing all emissions, not just CO2. Literally, CO2 sucks all the oxygen out of the energy efficiency issue. The goals of full spectrum pollutant reduction can also be accomplished via improved energy efficiency, and with much less rancor, in my opinion.
I’ve never liked the twisty fluorescent bulbs, even when practically given away. They are slow to illuminate, don’t live up to manufacturer’s lifetime claims, and contain toxic mercury making them a disposal hazard. Watts to like?
Up until now, I hadn’t liked the color temperature of the light that LED bulbs had put out. They were mostly a harsh blue-white. Now, that’s been solved.
So that was my weekend project, improving my energy efficiency. It was painless, fast, and the result was fantastic.
The problem: 5 recessed incandescent lighting fixtures each with a 65 watt bulb for a total draw of 325 watts. My kids leave the hallway lights on constantly as it is the most trafficked area of the house.
The solution: swap in LED recessed lighting fixtures at 12 watts each for a total draw of 60 watts
A liberal professor friend in the bay area (who also happened to be best man at my wedding) turned me on to these new recessed incandescent fixture replacements from a company called CREE Lighting. I was impressed the first moment I saw the light they produced. It was warm, not harsh, and even better, it worked on a dimmer control.
The neatest trick with these lights is that they combine yellow and white LED’s in a matrix to get a color temperature that is 2700K or 3500K (your choice) which makes them give similar light to incandescents. Here’s what they look like inside:
Besides making less heat through lower power consumption, They also seal against the ceiling better than incandescent recessed lighting fixtures which are essentially open to the attic.
Here is what it looks like outside:
I bought one for my office immediately, to put directly over my desk, replacing a 75 watt flood in a recessed fixture. It worked out great, so I decided to do my entire house hallway of 5 fixtures.
Here’s the details on this new technology:
Product Description
The LR6 is a downlight module for new construction and retrofit that installs easily in most standard six inch recessed IC or non-IC housings. The LR6 generates white light with LED’s in a new way that enables an unprecedented combination of light output, high efficacy, beautiful color, and affordability. U.S. Patent # 7,213,940 issued. Numerous patents pending.
Performance Summary
• Utilizes Cree TrueWhite™ technology
• Nominal delivered light output = 650 lumens
• Nominal input power = 10.5 Watts
• CRI = 90
• CCT = 2700K or 3500K
• Dimmable to 20%
• Three Year Warranty
Cree TrueWhite™ Technology
• A better way to generate white light that utilizes a patented mixture of unsaturated yellow and saturated red LEDs.
• Tuned to optimal color point before shipment.
• Color management system maintains color consistency over time and temperature.
• Designed to last 50,000 hours and maintain at least 70%
of initial lumen output.
Construction
• Durable die-cast aluminum upper housing, lower housing, and upper cover.
• Integrated thermal management system conducts heat away from LED’s and transfers it to the surrounding environment. LED junction temperatures stay below specified maximums even when installed in attic insulation with temperatures exceeding 60 degrees Celsius.
Optical System
• Proprietary optical system utilizes a unique combination of reflective and refractive optical components to achieve a uniform, comfortable appearance. Pixelation and direct view of unshielded LED’s is eliminated.
• White Lower Reflector balances brightness of refractor with the ceiling to create comfortable high-angle appearance. Works with refractor to deliver an optimized distribution that illuminates walls and vertical surfaces increasing the perception of spaciousness.
Electrical System
• Integral, high efficiency driver and power supply. Power factor > 0.9 Input voltage = 120V, 60Hz
• Dimmable to 20% with certain incandescent dimmers (reference www.CreeLEDLighting.com for recommended dimmers)
Regulatory and Voluntary Qualifications
• Tested and certified to UL standards. Suitable for damp locations.
• Utilize GU-24 base for new construction projects in California or other areas where high efficacy line voltage sockets are required.
• Exceeds California Title-24 high efficacy luminaire requirements.
• ENERGY STAR® qualified Solid-State Lighting Luminaire.
Full Spec sheet here
The company has a savings calculator here
Installation was easy. I’ve photo documented it below. If you are interested in reading how, here is the installation manual in PDF form, and more info here.
FIRST and most importantly: turn off your a/c circuit breaker that supplies power to the lights.
The box:
The contents:
The top with special socket:
One of the five incandescent flood lights to be replaced:
Beginning disassembly, take out the bulb, pull down the trim ring:
Squeeze the spring clips and pop them off:
Cut the wires off the existing socket:
Install the wire splice block:
Add the new socket and crimp the splice block:
Socket installed:
Final step, all it takes is two twists. I couldn’t hold the camera and do this so I’m relying on diagrams. Twist the socket onto the fixture, push the fixture into the hole and twist until it locks into place:
New LED fixture installed:
Can you tell which ones are the incandescent floods and which one is the LED light?
The one in the foreground is the LED lighting. It puts out more light than the floods it replaced, and uses 1/5th the energy.
All done, three in the main hall, one in each side hallway are not shown:
Want one? Get them here from a company that operates in my town, called Lighting Direct:
UPDATE: I got called away before I could finish this post, so here’s a few more points on why I’ve done this swap.
1) I’m usually an early adopter of technology, this is something I’ve been looking forward to. But it is not for everybody yet.
2) I bought a 5 pack, so I got 20% off. You can call the company at the link listed above and ask for similar discounts. There’s also other sources online: here, here. Some commenters have asked about screw in LED models, here’s one also based on CREE’s patented LED illumination engine.
3) In California, I won’t be able to buy incandescent bulbs soon. This was my way of beating the state mandate on my own terms.
4) These have an advertised life of 50,000 hours. I figure if they log 8 hours per day, I’ll get 17 years out of them. They’ll pay back long before that.
5) CFL floods aren’t that cheap either, and from experience I only get 2 years out of them. For example I can buy a CFL flood at my local ACE Hardware for $14.99 plus tax. If I have to replace it every 2 years, I’m into some significant cash and significant disposal issues in a few years. Even with the higher cost of the LED units, I see myself as still being ahead in the long run and I’m not generating mercury toxic waste.
6) These lights are sealed, so there’s no air leakage to/from the attic. This should help on heating/cooling issues since when the wind blew above 15mph I could feel air being blown into the old recessed lighting fixtures. Not anymore. It will keep dust and attic insulation fibers out of the house also.
On account of a highly capacitive load they present perhaps; this should offset some of those highly inductive motor loads though, e.g. pumps, A/C compressors et al however.
There is another aspect though: with a peak-detect rectifier (series or diode bridge directly into a capacitor) the highest voltage of the applied line voltage is ‘routed’, detected or ‘peak’ rectified into said capacitor and therefore current only flows when the AC line shows above 150 or 160 V peak (120 V RMS line voltage yields 1.414*RMS = 170 V pk). These peak detect/rectified voltages then drive an electronic ballast circuit that will partially discharge the capacitor, which will then be ‘recharged’ on the peak of the next incoming 1/2 cycle of the line voltage.
For an absolute unity power factor any ‘loads’ on the AC power line should strive for utilization of the EMF over the entire cycle of the applied sinusoidal 50 or 60 Hz cycle. Think about the generator on the far end generating the electric current: the torque applied by the prime mover (be it steam turbine or water wheel) would like to see an evenly applied ‘load’ around the entire 360 degree movement of the drive shaft, not a pull or a tug just at two points 180 degrees apart. Three phase AC circuits come close to providing a uniform load to the entire 360 degrees of shaft rotation, but, there are still areas where the torque ‘drops off’ because the power factor is not ‘unity’ because the load is not uniform over the entire cycle.
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Think: square wave generated by fact-switching FET switch in the electronic ballast; there is noise from some of those ‘bulbs’ into the shortwave bands … given the size of the noise maker itself, it must be present differentially on the two-conductor line cord … a really GOOD sq wave will have odd harmonics quite a ways above the fundamental ‘switching frequency’.
Also, make note that some of the smaller, more efficient switching power supplies today run at 100’s of kHz up into the MHz range (really small, light-weight magnetics can be had in the MHz range).
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Wait until you see how fast these burn out.
Apply that same question to industrial apps where the bulb mounts in a ceramic high-temperature base and is enclosed in a thick protective glass enclosure which is then surrounded by metal grille-work; they have NO air circulation about them and furthermore mount base-up!!
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Have you felt, seen or measured it?
Do recall there is a steady 1/2 Gauss field present at most points around on the earth due to a moving molten core as well (it is what makes a magnetic compass work) …
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This is easily measurable and so should be put to bed …
Bear in mind, IF they work out to be highly capacitive THAT sort of reactive power is already placed at various points by the powerco for the matter of correcting for the large inductive (and opposite) power factor ‘motor’ loads e.g. as A/C compressors …
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_Jim (13:19:17) : RFI/EMI
True, but any device that uses “digital techniques” above 15 kHz has to meet FCC Class B requirements for residential use. Which are quite strict. I have CFL’s and e-ballast T8’s in my shop, and the spectrum analyzer hasn’t thrown up yet. As others have pointed out, LED’s are current mode devices. Their power supplies must also have HF switching circuits to control and drop line voltage down to what the array needs. Similar power levels.
Most of the problems I have seen with CFL’s are in the drive circuit. Flicker (faulty switch or dimmer) kills the circuit before the bulb. Not sure why LED’s wouldn’t have the same problem. It’s not like they use JAN-TXV qualified semiconductors.
Those puppies are pretty expensive, so it looks like I have to wait until the price comes down or I win the lottery. Until then I’ll use the CFLs, where they work. The corkscrew CFLs produce 800 lumens and consume 13 watts so the lumen per watt ratio is the same as the LED (650 lumens and 10.5 watts).
Shame they don’t seem to have made it to the UK yet – and still very expensive. I’m looking for a replacement for a small halogen track in the middle of a room – could accommodate a 2x3ft heatsink, but everything I can find is still using standard GU10 fittings.
A “Class B” requirement is not all that strict; there is also ‘product’ out there that does not meet spec at all (think: black-market imported stuff; see Chinese-made batt charger story below this post). And the number is anything over 9 kHz BTW. What are you looking at with your HP 8595E or a Rhode FSEB series Spec An that it isn’t “throwing up”? Let’s perform a test on a level playing ground with a LISN and see what the CFL is really generating.
Some product makes to attempt to comply whatsoever, witness: RFI “Front loading washers” … The Whirlpool Duet seems to be a front-runner in this category …
Then there are the Low voltage quartz halogen lights that use so-called “electronic transformers” that have been documented to produce ‘noise’.
A few years ago I tracked a Chinese-made 12V battery charger which was tearing up (for me) 20 Meters from half a block away … NO FCC sticker/Part 15 compliance noted whatsoever … guy was also wondering why his TV was occasionally being ‘torn up’ and it turned out to be this 12V China-made batt charger …
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Vigilantfish Wrote:
Martin Hale,
You should go into a side business making LED fixtures for amateur home indoor gardeners like myself who are electronically challenged. Reading about your experience has given me the idea that I may soon be able to afford a proper indoor herb garden, currently impossible due to lack of windows facing south and the expense of running grow-lights. I just need to find a source. On the other hand, hope dope growers are too stupid to catch on to this! Great post!
________________________
The fellow from whom I bought my kits is no longer making them. He used to sell a package with the circuit board, the LEDs, the resistors and capacitors for $40. Half an hour with a solder gun and you had a completed unit. Too bad he’s moved on to bigger, more powerful lights.
OK – with regard to a source for LED plant lights, go to your favourite search engine and enter “LED plant light”. You’ll be rewarded with a long list of companies which sell a variety of products. There are a bunch of round fixtures which are known collectively as UFOs. They usually describe themselves as 90 watts but, owing to the way LEDs create light, they’re really only 70-ish watts. These UFO-type lights tend to cost $150 – $200. They’d be adequate for the kind of little herbs garden you mention.
The next group up are the 100-125 watt fixtures. Procyon 100 is one brand name that’s common. It’s American made and is a very decent fixture. It has 56 CREE LEDs and is maybe 15″ by 7″, give or take a bit. The downside is that it’ll set you back at least $400. Of course, it’s rated at 50,000 hours, so you’d get 5 years, 9 months continuous use out of it.
Above these lights are the 300w class. Most of these use very high power LEDs which actually need cooling. Very high-tech and futuristic looking; very expensive. Plan on dropping at least a kilobuck, if not $1300 for one.
Oh, and about the pot growers – when your hobby is hydroponics, you get used to rubbing elbows with the pot crowd – it’s just a fact of life.
Maybe; IFF (if and only iff) you can switch them on during the zero-crossing portion of the incoming AC voltage …
I have a hall light with an incandescent that I can’t remember when I changed it last: that bulb is controlled by a BSR X10 wall-switch (which turns on at the zero-line voltage crossing point) … by contrast the bathroom light fixtures veritably eats incandescent bulbs, no zero-crossing switching with a regular switch and the filament resistance REALLY allows a lot of current to flow if the switch makes contact WHEN the line voltage is at its peak of about 170 Volts (for a nominal 120 V RMS circuit) …
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I think that a Baysian pattern of red-green-green-blue should work fairly well. Nearly all camera CCDs and CMOS have that pattern of receptors.
I do wonder a little, though. These presumably put out specific frequencies of light, whereas our eyes see a whole range. Surely that is going to have some effect.
My only experience with an LED lightbulb saw it last about a month, instead of the 7-10 years it was supposed to last.
CFLs induce migraines and epileptic seizures.
“”” Spector (11:48:50) :
I see that Amazon.com has the following listing:
“LED 60 Watt Incandescent Replacement: Cree Super Bright LED Light Bulb- Natural White” $58.99, ships and sold by EagleLight LEDs.
This appears to be the highest replacement wattage available. Pricing seems to be about one dollar per replacement wattage. I believe they need to reduce the cost by an order of magnitude (10) before these will become popular. “””
Well that isn’t too likely to happen. Anybody who thinks that a light bulb that lasts about 700 hours max, if you are lucky, and puts out a lot less light in the process, should sell for the same price, as one that lasts tens of thousands of hours, just isn’t buying on value.
If the government was to apply the same “subsidy” concept that they apply to solar cell power sources, to cut the price of LED bulbs, they would get a lot more action.
But then I am not in favor of the taxpayers being asked to subsidze anything; including solar cell energy. If iyt is going to replace squished dinosaurs, it will have to do it on its own merits.
I was recently, within the last couple of years, medically retired from the military thanks to some Chinese made mortar fragments.
What does a broken retiree do in his spare time?
He renovates his home, a little bit at a time. In regards to this post, the up front costs for installing this kind of lighting where I currently have IC housings is prohibitively expensive, in fact, ludicrously so.
For those with incomes to spare, good for you!
My only question is how do they do when it’s cold?
Like below freezing to -40C cold?
I have outdoor lights and an unheated garage and if they aren’t incandescent they don’t work worth a hot damn as soon as the temperature gets colder.
The fluorescents just sit and weakly glow. I can’t use my flashlight to test because the batteries freeze and if I keep the seperately they move heat when I drop them in.
Anyone know?
Martin Hale:
Thanks for the extra info. I’ll be looking into this!
Don Shaw (14:56:11) wrote:
“As an Engineer, another question comes to mind re the claimed economic benefits. Aren’t the benefits exaggerated for those of us that live in locations that need to heat our homes a large percentage of the year?
“Doesn’t the energy “wasted” from the heat from conventional bulbs really replace the fuel we have to burn to heat the home? Of course the summer time is different when we use the AC but that is the period when we use our lighting demand is less.”
Good point. Politically incorrect incandescent bulbs do have a Wintertime role to play. If you live in a climate that’s too cold for an above-ground heat pump to work efficiently, and if a geothermal system is not feasible for some reason, and if you don’t have access to natural gas, you may be stuck with old-fashioned electric heating. If so, incandescent hall lights should be as energy-efficient as the old-fashioned electric heating. (Obviously they’re going to supplement the heating system, rather than supplanting it.). Most of the energy output of an incandescent light bulb is the IR (heat). The small portion that’s in the visible range is absorbed by the walls and carpeting, and then re-emitted as IR.
The upshot: Incandescent bulbs in the hall can be a dual-use technology during the Winter. In the Summer, it’d be prudent to switch over to the twisty CFLs, so that the air conditioning is not fighting with the lighting. 🙂
The living room and bedrooms are a different story. A significant fraction of the radiant energy from an incandescent bulb goes straight out the window. In terms of energy efficiency, CFLs would be better in these rooms–even during the Winter.
My brother sends this link:
http://www.ledlight.com/
Looks like all sorts of LEDs, including some that fit in standard lamps and fixtures. Not cheap, but if we can keep the damned government out of it, the market should bring the prices down soon.
/Mr Lynn
“”” Fred2 (16:03:57) :
My only question is how do they do when it’s cold?
Like below freezing to -40C cold?
I have outdoor lights and an unheated garage and if they aren’t incandescent they don’t work worth a hot damn as soon as the temperature gets colder.
The fluorescents just sit and weakly glow. I can’t use my flashlight to test because the batteries freeze and if I keep the seperately they move heat when I drop them in.
Anyone know? “””
Well the LEDs themselves, just eat up all the cold they can muster. The efficiency of light outpur goes up as the temperature goes down. Now the driving circuitry can mess that all up of course.
One of the biggest problems of large arrays of high power LEDs is getting their self heat out of the middle of the array; in simple arrangements, the surrounding LEDs can lower the efficiency due to heating.
But when they are in relativley large assemlied devices like Anthony show here, that effect is minimised.
When we demonstrated out first vanilla red GaAsP LEDs in 1970 at the LA Wescon show, we had a set up to actually dip the lighted LED into liquid Nitrogen to show how bright they got. The amazing thing was that they didn’t just shatter due to differential thermal expansion problems. suffice it to say, that that is not the recommended operating conditions; but the LED die itself just loves low temperatures.
Forward Voltage typically drops about 2 mV per deg C at a fixed current; per junction, so sometimes it is necessary to temperature compensate driving circuits; but the lighting systems designers are all up on that.
Of course if you lower the temperature a lot, the band gap tends to increase, so the wavelength will shift to shorter wavelength.
That can be a big problem for yellow lights since the eye only recognizes about 5 nm wavelength range as yellow, as distinct from “Gold” or “Grellow”.
MrLynn(17:22:26)
Thanks for the link. However, they seem to be confused as to how much light a 60w incadescent bulb puts out:
Uses only 6 watts comparable to a 60 watt light bulb… up to 340 lumen output.
vs. (from Sylvania website, Halogen bulb listing)
43W – direct replacement for 60W incandescent…785 lumens
.and.
35W – direct replacement for 45W incandescent…310 lumens
vs. (from GE website, CFL bulb)
Wattage 9…Equivalent Wattage 40 W…Mean Lumens 360
.and.
Wattage 13…Equivalent Wattage 60 W…Mean Lumens 750
(I could not find technical specifications on incadescent bulbs, I guess nobody wants to admit to making them anymore!)
Obviously, their 6w LED bulb is nowhere near as bright as a 60w incandescent bulb or their “energy saver” equivilents. They are closer to the output of a 40w bulb. And in terms of lumens per watt, not even as efficient at the 9w GE CFL!
Folks,
This high tech stuff is very sexy but-
The SUN is free and… you can not buy that much power anywhere.
Think of all the fun with optical tricks you can do to get that light exactly where you want it and how you want it to look.
Should keep you physics types happy for a while-
Hint- Keep it very simple –
I have found white stucco walls, white gravel, and white painted reflectors to be quite effective.
Anthony – your 2″ foam on your whole house fan does not go above R-13 – should be R-53 in Chico
Stack ventilation works better, faster, and its free! – the keys are 4:1 ratio – intake to exhaust and a height differential of 14′ plus depending upon air density (yes those pesky clouds need more punch)-
BTW – if you google (Bing?) – Stack ventilation you may find some weakly researched master thesis work that states it does not work in 8′ – duh! – does your fireplace/woodstove work without a chimney?
Have fun and you will be amazed about the results.
Lots of LED bulbs that fit existing fixtures (from candelbra bases to floodlights) on Amazon, just search for “led bulb”. The problem is that you can’t see a spectrum on them so you have to take their output on faith. I’m glad you raised the color issue Anthony.
I’ll be ordering some more LED bulbs to replace the outside security lights (currently CFLs) since they’re on so much. I probably have a 10 year supply of incandescents for inside since I don’t use the lights much (computer monitor and TV provide most of the light I need at night except when I’m puttering about in the kitchen or reading a book).
If this has already been said, my apologies.
Personally, I would avoid using a crimp splice… Those things are known to get hot and fail for many reasons. Judging from the size of the heat sink I am guessing the fixture gets rather toasty, so a marrette (wire nut) might be a better choice if possible. Soldering is even better, but I can see the DIY problems with that. Regardless, if it were my home I would not use a crimp connection of any kind anywhere in the wiring. Too great a fire risk IMHO.
Thanks for the review! Very good read.
Nice light, but maybe it would be better to donate the $98 to conservative candidates who pledge to roll back crazy laws — like the ban on Edison lamps — before over regulation ruins California and the rest of the United States. You can buy a lot of Edison lamps for $98 and the peace of mind that comes with knowing that you’re driving the wacko environmentalists crazy. Don’t go along to get along. Fight back. Screw in a light bulb today!