Would You Pay $39.99 for an Energy-Efficient Light Bulb?

[HYENA 4]

A $40 price tag for a single light bulb may seem ridiculous to most consumers. But the Dutch company Lemnis Lighting hopes people will listen to all the arguments for their high-tech LED bulb, and consider it a bargain. [W]hat if it used 90% less electricity than a standard incandescent bulb, cut greenhouse gas emissions and saved you about $280 over its 25-year life span? [Los Angeles Times].

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/...ent-light-bulb/

pure faggotry

[NickD 203]

Wife an I purchase C-6 LED Christmas bulbs last year when the price was 80% off, she saw those on my sons' tree and loved them. She wanted the multi-colored strings, but those were sold out, so purchased ten sets of a 100 same color set, and rearranged the bulbs in a multi-color order. Ha, that was a thousand bulbs, actually 800, didn't have to remove every fifth bulb from a given set. Full power to the tree was only 60 watts, but way too bright to look at, so added a dimmer to reduce it down to a total of 35 watts total tree consumption. That would be equivalent to using only about five of the old fashion incandescent bulbs, that is quite an energy savings.

Average price for us was 7 cents a bulb that included the lens, LED, LED holder, socket, and wiring. Wondered why anyone would want to manufacture Christmas tree bulbs, seems like a good way to go broke. Was curious about the ballast, typically a power wasting resistor is used, but they were using a capacitive reactive circuit that dissipated practically zero power, clever. No problems using a dimmer.

Saw one of these at my local Fleetfarm store for seven bucks.

You can hand crank it for three minutes to get 30 minutes worth of light. More expensive ones, but this one had the brightest light and has two super bright LED's where you can use the beam, or the flood, or both. Amazingly bright and don't have to worry about batteries going dead. In an emergency, can just crank it for ten seconds and get light.

Curiosity perked my brain so had to peek inside. That crank rotates gears in a plastic box to step up the gear ratio that rotates what looks like a standard permanent magnet DC motor. It acts like a generator that charges a three cell Ni-MH 89mah hour battery with a solid state voltage regulator. Power switch is a four position alternate, beam, flood, both, off. Don't impress easily, this thing impressed me.

LED's are also popping up for tail, brake, and directional signals on vehicles, with an average life of 100,000 hours, should prevent some tail lamp tickets. That is one of the few improvements in new vehicles. May take some time to develop headlamps.

Latest craze is LED large screen HDTV sets, really look nice and operate very cool, LG and Samsung make them so far, but a bit pricey at 2,500 bucks. Full 1080 pixels. This is all printing press automated technology, would be nice to see all these devices MADE IN THE USA. I am all for those pirates robbing container ships, need a lot more of those, we have everything we need to make those things, HERE.

[SMR 368]

A $40 price tag for a single light bulb may seem ridiculous to most consumers. But the Dutch company Lemnis Lighting hopes people will listen to all the arguments for their high-tech LED bulb, and consider it a bargain. [W]hat if it used 90% less electricity than a standard incandescent bulb, cut greenhouse gas emissions and saved you about $280 over its 25-year life span? [Los Angeles Times].

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/...ent-light-bulb/

pure faggotry

I think that the main problem here is that they are comparing it to incandescent. An 18 Watt fluorescent already puts out as much as a 100 Watt incandescent. So that's 82% savings. And as has been pointed out, they don't cost $40.

Also, I'd like to see the spectrum of the LED. A lot of progress has been made in making white LED's, but it's something to look at. You want some normal looking lights (unless you like the blue tint).

Third, it may flicker, depending on the rectification circuitry. I know that LED's take DC. However, depending on the complexity of the attached circuitry, it may have some flicker. You can't exactly see a 60 Hz flicker, but it gives some people headaches.

Fourth, the main energy costs for most people is heating. Even though an incandescent takes more energy, the waste energy is heat. So whatever energy your incandescent is wasting is decreasing your heating bill by an equal amount. I realize this isn't much energy, but that's only because your lighting bill is usually small compared to the heating bill if you break it out. This argument is, of course, null and void if you live somewhere where most of the time you are paying to cool your house.

[Joseph & Ana 0]

I don't mind there being a wide variety to choose from. But when Congress decides to outlaw incandescent, they are going too far. Incandescent bulbs are needed for various reasons. And they are just trying to control everyone. It is not within their authority to outlaw them.

The swirls have mercury in them and have been known to explode and definitely don't last as long as they say (from personal experience). If they explode you need hazmat to detox the scene.

I need them for my turtles to bask under (heat and uvb). Other people need them for other reasons.

[SMR 368]

Wife an I purchase C-6 LED Christmas bulbs last year when the price was 80% off, she saw those on my sons' tree and loved them. She wanted the multi-colored strings, but those were sold out, so purchased ten sets of a 100 same color set, and rearranged the bulbs in a multi-color order. Ha, that was a thousand bulbs, actually 800, didn't have to remove every fifth bulb from a given set. Full power to the tree was only 60 watts, but way too bright to look at, so added a dimmer to reduce it down to a total of 35 watts total tree consumption. That would be equivalent to using only about five of the old fashion incandescent bulbs, that is quite an energy savings.

Average price for us was 7 cents a bulb that included the lens, LED, LED holder, socket, and wiring. Wondered why anyone would want to manufacture Christmas tree bulbs, seems like a good way to go broke. Was curious about the ballast, typically a power wasting resistor is used, but they were using a capacitive reactive circuit that dissipated practically zero power, clever. No problems using a dimmer.

Saw one of these at my local Fleetfarm store for seven bucks.

You can hand crank it for three minutes to get 30 minutes worth of light. More expensive ones, but this one had the brightest light and has two super bright LED's where you can use the beam, or the flood, or both. Amazingly bright and don't have to worry about batteries going dead. In an emergency, can just crank it for ten seconds and get light.

Curiosity perked my brain so had to peek inside. That crank rotates gears in a plastic box to step up the gear ratio that rotates what looks like a standard permanent magnet DC motor. It acts like a generator that charges a three cell Ni-MH 89mah hour battery with a solid state voltage regulator. Power switch is a four position alternate, beam, flood, both, off. Don't impress easily, this thing impressed me.

LED's are also popping up for tail, brake, and directional signals on vehicles, with an average life of 100,000 hours, should prevent some tail lamp tickets. That is one of the few improvements in new vehicles. May take some time to develop headlamps.

Latest craze is LED large screen HDTV sets, really look nice and operate very cool, LG and Samsung make them so far, but a bit pricey at 2,500 bucks. Full 1080 pixels. This is all printing press automated technology, would be nice to see all these devices MADE IN THE USA. I am all for those pirates robbing container ships, need a lot more of those, we have everything we need to make those things, HERE.

Interesting. You might want to read up about storage of Ni-MH batteries. Their capacity gradually decreases and after a couple years, they'll be pretty worthless. Try storing it about half way charged to increase battery life.

[Niels Bohr 72]

Depends really on Ni-MH manufacturers. Some lasts a long time, and some don't. They definitely last longer than Ni-Cd or rechargeable.

As far as LED screens, monitors, etc... are concerned, they drive larger production of semiconductors. Any wafers that are discarded due to the small footprint to etch a small microprocessor or IC could be used to make LEDs.