The most efficient, poweful & portable LED light bulb

Hello guys,

I don't know if you have already seen it but while I was searching for efficient light bulbs I came by
this one. The NanoLight / NanoLeaf.




http://nanoleaf.me/products/nanoleaf
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nanoleaf/nanolight-the-worlds-most-energy-efficient-lightbu

They claim 1600 lumens (100 Watt equivalent) from 12W AC and without any heatsinking! :huh:
I don't know how they do it, but if this is true, its amazing! Have you seen anything else
like that?

I would like to make a DIY lantern style lamp and thinking of using this light bulb with a 12V 7Ah SLA
battery and a small 100W inverter. It will be recharged during the morning from a 500mA solar panel.

I have not yet bought it because the only thing that is bothering me is a review made by extremetech.com
in which they say that the bulb has a low CRI. They show two photos, one of the nanoleaf and the other
of a cree bulb. The nano leaf has a very strong green tint which I really don't like in any kind of light.
Of course you cannot trust these pictures as they don't provide in the frame a control color scaled image
for comparisons...

With a 54mA @ 220V consumption you should have a runtime of at least 20 hours of 100watts
portable lighting! (most of the energy will be dissipated by the inverter... :-- )

The thing is that inverters are not really that efficient. Any other solutions powering this lamp?
Do you thing that the bulb could be modified and be powered from DC directly?
If not, any suggestions for a very efficient low power inverter?

Thank you.
George.

It is very likely that you can rip the end off the bulb and rewire it. The LEDs run on DC power. Using it as is would be really inefficient because of the DC to AC back to DC conversion. If you modify it then you only need a DC-DC conversion which can be very efficient. Having said that, if you are going to put all new electronics anyway, you might as well start from scratch with higher quality LEDs in the colour temperature you want.

spencer said:

It is very likely that you can rip the end off the bulb and rewire it. The LEDs run on DC power. Using it as is would be really inefficient because of the DC to AC back to DC conversion. If you modify it then you only need a DC-DC conversion which can be very efficient. Having said that, if you are going to put all new electronics anyway, you might as well start from scratch with higher quality LEDs in the colour temperature you want.

Click to expand...

Spencer thank you for your reply.
A DC-DC conversion would be indeed more efficient, but what about if they are using the LEDS in series?
You would need a very high 220V voltage from a 12V battery.

In case I try and use other LEDs can you suggest any efficient and bright ones with a warm colour temperature? The nanoleaf LEDs claim an 133 lumen per watt figure which pretty high.

Thank you.
George.

Take a look at this project I did. Obviously you want to do something completely different but all of the basic concepts are the same regarding mounting of LEDs, heatsinking, driver, etc. The basic concepts can be applied to any form factor. In your case a lantern. There are tons of build threads like mine.

Basically you need:
- heatsink
- good thermal connection between the heatsink and the LED
- driver
- power source (battery)

I used XPG2 leds in mine. They aren't real warm (neutral) but you can get them warmer than what I used. I think they are still top of the pack (or close) in regards to efficiency but I haven't been around here very much lately so there might be better options.