I think it's going to be at least 5 to 10 years before LED goes anywhere close to mainstream. People have been taking about "1 to 2 years" for the past 5 years. At that time I told them it would be 10-15 years.

The prices are just far too high at the moment and most people will never amortize the price of the bulb with savings in electricity. They might work for some high-demand installations, but not for the typical household. Some of the current LED stuff also generate too much heat and require ungodly sized heat syncs.

I have LED under the kitchen cabinets, CFL in all ceiling fixtures except the dining room and master bedroom (on dimmers) and two halogens in my range hood. I've tried some dimmable CFLs in the dining room with a brand new CFL-safe dimmer and the produced way too much audible buzz, so they're out until I can find something better.

CFLs are awful in so many different ways: buzzing, slow to reach full brightness, crappy transformers that burn out too early, etc.

I installed a bunch of LED replacements for 60W halogen reflector downlights (Cree LR6's). At $70/ea, they were unquestionably pricey. The rationale for the expenditure was that we hated CFLs and halogen bulbs were putting out so damn much heat that it was uncomfortable to sit under them. That problem is now completely solved for me, but I imagine the price needs to be more like $30 before most consumers will take the plunge.

Similarly, current-gen brand-name MR16 LED lights are $25/ea (and the uber-awesome ones are $70/ea) versus $4/ea for brand-name halogen MR16's. If they can get the price down to, say, $16/ea (4x the cost of a regular bulb with easily 10x the service lifetime and 10% the power consumption), and they make them compatible with electronic power supplies and dimmers, then I expect they'll go flying off the shelves.

EDIT: when in doubt, find the appropriate nerdy lighting forum's thread on the new Cree LED. The new Cree LED module, all by itself, is $18.67/ea, quantity one, down to $9.30/ea, quantity 5000+. Sounds like they're targeting $30-40 per finished bulb.

None of my CFLs have an audible buzz. The only time I've had buzzing was with the dimmable ones I mentioned previously. They all reach full brightness relatively quickly - which I don't mind at all. Every product has duds and I've experienced some early failures, with other bulbs already in service over 5 years. Ikea, Walmart, Home Depot and other places take back CFLs for proper disposal and recycling. Lastly, the price is right.



I think you're off here by about a factor of 10. At $3 we're in business. Maybe even at $4-5. At $30 they might as well be $300 - they will not sell in any meaningful quantity. Maybe if they were absolutely designed and advertised (heavily) to last multiple lifetimes (take them with you when you move, pass them on to your kids etc). They'll remain at the slimmest of niche markets while they're in double-digit prices.




I did some quick looks yesterday and even today's announcement of some Philips LED bulb claims only 80% energy reduction and 20% increase in lamp life. In other words, 20% consumption with 0.2x lamp life. Which are still good stats. Until you look at the price of the lamps.

Three years ago, I did a big, bulk buy of CFLs to replace all the incandescent bulbs in my house, all at once. Roughly 10% of the bulbs were DOA. Now, three years later, I've seen maybe 10% that have burned out or died under modest load (1-2 hrs/day). I'm not really all that impressed with CFLs.

However, you're absolutely right on LED pricing. The initial market is the commercial world, not the home. When you're running a light 24/7, longer operating life and lower power consumption is a big deal. Also, consider the heat output. A typical small retail store could easily have 40 MR16 halogen bulbs. At 50W each, that's 2KW of power consumed, and then you need to run an air conditioner to remove all that heat (perhaps another 4KW). If the retail outlet is paying $0.10 per KWH and turns the lights off at night, then that's ballpark $6/day or $2200/year. If LED replacement bulbs are $40/ea ($1600 for the whole store), consume 10% of the power (200W vs. 2KW), and allow the air conditioning to run at half its previous duty cycle, then the LED replacement becomes cash positive in just over a year.

CFLs aren't currently available in the MR16 form factor, so they're not an option in a case like this...

Yeah, I have to say that CFLs are pretty good. My family had a very early model in a lamp in our living room for what had to be eight years or more. It didn't buzz and the light it gave off was pretty good. It was also relatively cool, which is good too. It wasn't dimmable, though.

I can't wait for the LED bulbs to get cheaper, though (and the light quality is still a little...off).

I'm liking those Android-controlled LED bulbs they showed off at Google IO. But they're still so expensive...

At $30, I'd replace the 6 recessed lighting floods in our kitchen, but everything else can stay CFL. We're currently stock-piling incandescents, because we haven't found a CFL that will last longer than 6 months in our kitchen. Of the last batch we tried, two burned out (literally -- there were scorch marks around where the tubes entered the transformer) within two weeks. If I were replacing bulbs every 6 months at a buck a bulb, I wouldn't care so much. But CFL floods are already over double your $3 target price-point for LED bulbs.

The CFL bulbs in common and regular use are those with a standard E26 (Edison screw) base.

I have a number of CFL recessed fixtures in my family room which were installed a few months ago. They don't get very high usage, but I'm planning on installing the same fixtures in my kitchen around the counter edges, 4 in total. They're 4" recessed fixtures using GU-24 pin bases with 18w bulbs. $20 retail gets you the fixture including bulb, which is a lot more expensive than GU-10 halogens where you can buy a six-pack for $36. I can get a better price, but they're still on the high side IMO. That's about the most I'm willing to spend at the moment though.

These lights are not popular at all. I only know of one local chain that carries them and I have never heard of anyone else installing them. My brother installs lighting as part of his business and has never had anyone request them. Usually customers simply go for GU-10 MR16 halogens when doing recessed. They're by far the most common and have been for a long time.

Something appears to be very wrong with your electrical wiring. You might want to borrow an oscilloscope.

There shouldn't be anything wrong with our wiring -- the house is brand new.

Good wiring doesn't go bad, so "brand new" is precisely when any problems should be identified.

I'd spend the next two weeks writing about all the issues with "brand new" houses on my street alone.

True enough. It's something we can check into, but FWIW, we have CFLs in every other non-dimming light fixture in the house, with nary a problem.

The way I cut down on my electric bill was to lose the roommate It dropped by more than half.

Of course... there is a corresponding increase in rent payments that prevent such a solution from being fiscally rewarding in the long run.

Maybe something's up with the fixture. All of our ceiling fixtures have a thermal sensor and shut themselves off if they get too hot. If one of those malfunctioned, it could muck up the power.

And, never underestimate the ability of an electrician to do something stupid. My father had some flakey ceiling lights in their new condo (built in the early 80's, renovated at least once since then). After much debugging, it turns out that some earlier electrician needed to extend a wire so just taped the splices without so much as twisting them, much less using wire nuts. Redoing the wiring fixed the problem.

(And the breaker box had evidence of a history of sparking, based on the charred bits within.)

Yeah, the way they manufacture homes in the US today, I'd be surprised if there weren't problems in new construction.

I am in the same mode but Doug sounded desperate

I am no expert on these but am interested as I plan to rewire my new old boat and replace all 12-volt lights with LEDs. The market for 12-volt LED bulbs seems to have exploded and most bulb types are available from local chandleries.

In the AC world, it did look a little dicier, but searching on "LED halogen replacement bulbs" turns up items on Amazon and elsewhere that don't seem overpriced and which (to the extent they are not shilled) have gotten some decent reviews. Like:

http://www.amazon.com/LED-MR16-Spotlight-3-8W-Lumen/dp/tech-data/B003Y24V38

But caveat emptor. I'll be interested to hear other people's experiences with these.

Are they designed to be used in kitchens? Perhaps they aren't steam-proof.

Peter

Nope, it'll be sooner than you think - really it takes a killer product to make it happen. The same way the original iPhone was a killer product which got every smartphone manufacturer to wake up, it will take a killer LED product to bring LED lighting to the mainstream.

For me, the killer LED product is nearly here. There are a bunch of rebranded EPISTAR Chip based GU10 LED Lamps flooding the market - these are fairly cheap (£12 retail) and in my opinion are excellent. 4W is the ideal lamp, the higher wattages cost more and give very little more light output. They are long lasting and give around the same amount of light as a 35W GU10 Halogen in a variety of different colour temperatures. They are even exactly the same size as a Halogen GU10 lamp. The reflector is not bad, the beam is pretty even with no bright spots, they are excellent value for money.

Another great lamp is the Toshiba E-Core 8.5W GU10 LED. 40,000hr rated, nice comfortable 3000K warm white colour, temperature controlled (overheat protection), and the killer feature: smooth, silent dimming with a good quality trailing edge dimmer. They are relatively new, and I've already done a few projects with these (sold about 300 in the past couple of months) - a really excellent lamp, paired with the correct dimmer I have some very happy customers. I'd say it was good value at £21 retail for a lamp that is easily 50W Halogen equivalent. It is the same cost as 14 Halogen lamps, but it lasts as long as 14 Halogen lamps. The peace of mind of not changing them 14 times, and also the 83% energy saving on top makes them an easy sell.

I have seen many lamps of this type and don't really recommend them as I have always found such AC 12V LED lamps to be unreliable. Do you have a battery on the boat? DC 12V LED Strip is reliable, bright, neat and good value.

Also, that particular MR16 is 4000K, which would appear blueish at night. You ideally want 2700K (halogen's native white point) with a high CRI. Even 3000K is a bit on the odd side. For example, I replaced some T4 halogen bulbs in our landscape lighting with these things, in "warm white" (which they define as 3000K-3500K), and they do the job but aren't nearly as pleasant as the original halogens.

Of you could just get a plain clamp ammeter, which usually have a "regular" multimeter built in as well.

I've not yet seen a CFL packaged in a way to signify a particular use, other than "outdoor". If it were steam related, I'd expect the bulbs with problems to be over the stove and sink, but that's not the case.

Which ones are the best ones? I've been through a few types of the $35 in my kitchen, but the best warm white ones seem to be 3x2W CREE and not really quite the match of a 50W halogen...

(though they do work with the electronic transformers I have pretty much ok)

I haven't seen these in person, but I'm definitely impressed by CRS electronics' bulbs. I believe they want $70/ea. One sign of quality: note how precise they are about the color temperature and the high CRI. LED manufacturers do all kinds of binning, so I'm assuming that CRS is buying from the more expensive bins.

Given all the new LED products coming out, like the aforementioned new Cree module, I expect there to be a number of additional choices "coming soon."

I happened to wander into a Lowes today and saw a lot of name-brand LED lamps like Sylvania selling in the $30-$40 range, so it looks like things are getting "mainstream" (if not good).

For me, *all* of the lighting on the boat with 1-2 exceptions will be 12V DC, so I hope it will be less fraught with uncertainty. I still need to figure out some of the color temperature stuff before spending $$$.

Right now my house bank is 2 6V 230Ah in series but hope to expand that to six of the 6V AGM batteries. Reading light

In case anybody is still interested, I have done a lot of research in the past few days.

First, the idea of putting up a kilowatt of PVs for $20,000 pesos (about $1700 USD) was a pipe dream. I can do it for a about 89K pesos, $7500 USD. And guess what! With CFE's convoluted and very pricey to the heavy user billing, it makes total sense to do it.

Some of the information I posted earlier is wrong because I misunderstood how the billing works. In much simplified form, it goes like this: up to 150 KWH/month is at the basic rate. The next 100 KWH (up to 250) is at the intermediate rate. Anything above 250 is at the excess rate. If your 12-month average is above the intermediate cutoff, you are then into DAC, in which your ENTIRE bill is at the excess rate, rather than tiered. Because (contrary to what I said before) the billing IS tiered unless you are on DAC, the curve of billing as usage increases is much smoother than I showed previously.

I said before that there was no air conditioning. That is going to change. I can tolerate the heat quite well, but SWMBO is absolutely miserable whenever the temperature inside climbs above 85 degrees. So, a power-hungry 12,000 BTU air conditioner is in the plans. I'm figuring that with A/C there is no conceivable way I can get out of DAC where I will pay on a six-year average about 36 cents for every KWH I consume. Unless I put those PVs on the roof.

So... the PVs will save me more than $17,000 pesos per year on my electric bill, factoring in historically-anticipated rate increases, the increased consumption due to air conditioning, and the loss of income from the money put into the solar array. Another way to look at it it: My electric bill will change from the anticipated $132 USD per month (on DAC with A/C) to $11 USD per month with the PVs. It will take 5.78 years for the electric bill savings to pay for the cost of the system, after that it is pure savings.

I wrote an Excel spreadsheet attached to this post where you can play with the parameters and see how they affect savings and amortization time. Not only is it comprehensive, it's reely purty, too! Highly recommended.

tanstaafl.

Maybe you could sell the company selling the panels your spreadsheet

You will have to let us know if the math was right after you get it all installed.

The guy running the company is an Excel nerd, just like me. He had his own spreadsheet, approaching the data from a different direction. The key number is the Years to Amortization, we differ by about half a year. He says 5.22 years, I say 5.78 years. He does not factor in the capital gains loss on the investment, preferring to look at the electric bill savings as a return on investment, which is probably a more correct way of doing it. I dunno, I'm not an accountant, but looking at it his way the return is something like 15% annual. Anyway, if I set my capital gains loss to zero, my amortization time changes to 5.23 years against his 5.22, so I'd say we're on the same page there, less than .2% difference.

tanstaafl.