for those of us who a concerned about the energy crisis, there are a technical and consumer revolution going on, that is good news.
LED lamps will cut down on electricity usage for lightening usage by aprox 80%.
The waste heat from conventional bulbs is useful in housings in cold parts of the world in the winter, but could be replaced by heating from biofuel.
When buying LED products you will increase the popularity, production rates and lowering the prices of LEDs. In some years time we will se the end of the 100 year old light-bulb... and that is good news
stg wrote:When buying LED products you will increase the popularity, production rates and lowering the prices of LEDs. In some years time we will se the end of the 100 year old light-bulb... and that is good news
I'm contributing! Got some fifty of them around now. Some in combos, some in singles. As on my keyring.
stg wrote:for those of us who a concerned about the energy crisis, there are a technical and consumer revolution going on, that is good news.
LED lamps will cut down on electricity usage for lightening usage by aprox 80%.
The waste heat from conventional bulbs is useful in housings in cold parts of the world in the winter, but could be replaced by heating from biofuel.
When buying LED products you will increase the popularity, production rates and lowering the prices of LEDs. In some years time we will se the end of the 100 year old light-bulb... and that is good news
I can see a place for LEDs in activity lighting, but for general use AFAIK they are pretty weak. I did try and find details when we moved into this house, my idea being to drop the lighting to 12V and run it from Solar / Wind but couldn't find anything that looked like it would provide a good level of room lighting. I settled on a mix of CF and fluorescent tubes in the end, not ideal as a lot of them don't play well with cheap inverters, live and learn I guess.
I would be quite happy to see incandescents bulbs be banned in a similar way that asbestos is banned. There is just no excuse for them, even at 18 pence each a house lit by 100W incandescents which blow every year is more expensive than 20W compact fluorescents which last 5-10 years.
I did some back of the envelope calculations a while ago that showed a complete domestic swap out of incandescents for compact florescent would almost compensate for the decommissioning of the nuclear fleet. It's also totally realistically doable over the same ~10yr period that the decommissioning is taking place over.
Real white light LED discovered . Apparently a very eye pleasing warm white unlike the somewhat unpleasant blue/white currently available in torches and bicycle lamps etc...
..and as reported in this weeks New Scientist print edition.
I got some LED spotlights from here: http://www.ultraleds.co.uk/
I got a 10-pack together with a friend, and I can run them from my 10W solar panel and small lead-acid battery. Five of them output about the same as a 100W incandescent bulb, but only use 5-10W power. This probably isn't a lot better than a low-energy fluorescent, but for me the advantage was that they run directly off 12V, so are ideal for my emergency solar-powered lighting. They also should last a very long time, longer than a fluorescent, which was another of my criteria.
Was it the GU10 ones you got - I picked up one to try at a DIY shop for ?9.50 (as against ?8.20 each in the bulk pack) but was very disappointed with the light output (seemed less than a 15w incandescent oven bulb) and colour (rather an unpleasant blue).
They had them in red yellow green and blue as well as white (pale blue) and were selling them as effect lights rather than for space or spot lighting.
(Incidentally Maplin have also had them at ?7.99 each)
On a different note I understand that it is not so easy to convert domestic lighting wiring to 12v even with low wattage luminaires as the current needed is 20 times bigger per watt (ohms law) so you need thicker wires or you get a big voltage drop on the cable and hot wires
Hence the usual prefered soultion of using an inverter to create 240v ac from the 12v dc and use the existing wiring to feed low energy flourescents
RogerCO
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The time for politics is past - now is the time for action.
mikepepler wrote:
They had them in red yellow green and blue as well as white (pale blue) and were selling them as effect lights rather than for space or spot lighting.
(Incidentally Maplin have also had them at ?7.99 each)
come back in a couple of years time. The new 'quantum dot coating' warm white LEDs should be coming onto the market by then.
The current so called 'white' LEDs (which are actuallymodified blue LED) aren't suitable for domestic lighting. Horrid colour.
RogerCO wrote:
Was it the GU10 ones you got - I picked up one to try at a DIY shop for ?9.50 (as against ?8.20 each in the bulk pack) but was very disappointed with the light output (seemed less than a 15w incandescent oven bulb) and colour (rather an unpleasant blue).
They had them in red yellow green and blue as well as white (pale blue) and were selling them as effect lights rather than for space or spot lighting.
They are white LEDs, and are very bright - it hurts your eyes to look at them. They run directly off 12V - it looks like the GU10 you got is 240V??? I got 12V ones as I wanted to run them off the 12V battery I'm charging with my solar panel
