Refrigerators a good LED application?

[IlluminatingBikr]

I opened the refrigerator today, and the incandescent light bulb was a little bit hot. I was thinking about a compact flourescent for that socket, but they have warm up time, and on average the fridge is only open for a few seconds.

So how do you think an LED bulb would do in this application? Are there any LED 120VAC products on the market right now, that can compete with a 40W incandescent?

[Lurker]

40 W sounds excessive in a referigerator. I put a single 15W in mine and there is plenty of light. I am not familiar with LED replacement bulbs for 120V, but that would be interesting.

[jtr1962]

I think putting LEDs in refrigerators is a great idea. A 40W appliance bulb only puts out maybe 400 lumens at best, and the way the bulbs are usually mounted blocks out at least half the light, if not more, and yet there is still more than adequate light. In fact, I'd say a single Luxeon 3 would be more than capable of adequating lighting a refrigerator, and putting another in the freezer is a good idea also. Perhaps even an array of 20 or 30 5mm LEDs will do the trick.

LEDs are ideally suited to refrigerator duty whereas CFLs are not. The frequent starts would burn them out very quickly, and they would take too long to come up to full brightness at the low temperatures. LEDs on the other hand are immune to frequent starts and actually work better at colder temperatures.

[yuandrew]

LEDs should work in a refrigerator as a light. You just need to find the right spots to put them which should be easy if you have a small refrigerator but a side by side like the one we have has a lot of lights (2 in the fridge and 2 more in the freezer plus a 4 watt nightlight in the ice dispenser that comes on when you use it)
Since a refrigerator door isn't going to be opened too often; I think it will make more sense to put one in the dispenser for a night light. I remember seeing at Sears that Kenmore has a new model with white LEDs in the dispenser but most cheap ones just use bulbs.
I tried putting CFLS in my refrigerator and freezer as an experiment to see which one works best in cold weather. They work fine in the fridge and some even warm up fast but in the freezer, all of them had trouble starting at -5 degrees.
You may however need to note that some refrigerator light sockets are in a pretty narrow spot!