60-watt LED bulb to break $15 mark, Lighting Science says

bondr006

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Lighting Science Group and Dixon Technologies India today touted an LED light bulb equivalent to a 60-watt incandescent that they say will hit store shelves with a price below $15.

The omnidirectional LED bulb, in the traditional A19 shape of household incandescent light bulbs, will become available in India by the end of the year and worldwide, including in the U.S., early in 2012, the companies said. It's the first in an expected series of products, including streetlights and industrial fixtures, that Lighting Science and Dixon plan to jointly manufacture and distribute.
 
But that's the same as the Tata Nano, it'll never make its way to the US. They also have some really nice small motorcycles over there with great mpg for less than $1500, again never to be seen on US shores.
 
Wake me up when they make affordable 100W ones.

For now they just made 100W incan disappear from some markets to push people to use 60W instead.

Very bright idea, as now people have to use 2x60W = 120W to produce exactly the same 1600 lumens that they could had with a single 100W bulb.

Overall a 20% increase in energy consumption for producing the same light.

Way to go, the greens!!!!

Nap.
 
It's a 60 watt EQUIVALENT. They say it only consumes about 10 watts. So using 2 will still be less
 
It's a 60 watt EQUIVALENT. They say it only consumes about 10 watts. So using 2 will still be less

Correct. I was doing the math for incandescents.

Now to "equivalent" I believe it's something like this:

40W equiv -> 400 lumens
60W equiv -> 800 lumens
100W equiv > 1600 lumens

The higher powered incandescents are more efficient, i.e. will produce more lumens per Watt.

What I was saying is that, with incandescents, for same light amount, you're better off using a few high powered bulbs than more, less powerful ones.

Yet the greens are fighting the high powerbulbs. Doesn't make any sense. The whole point is increasing efficiency, not staying in the dark to save.

Nap.
 
Yet the greens are fighting the high powerbulbs. Doesn't make any sense. The whole point is increasing efficiency, not staying in the dark to save.

What the heck is a 'green'? I thought it was something Tiger Woods has lately played lousy on.

I'll do the math for everybody again: A 400 lumen, ~120-140degree LED bulb throws as much lux as a 1600 lumen incan, if not a bit more.

Obviously the light bulb has more total lumens, but it radiated in a sphere. The Lightbulb (or spiral CFL) holds it's own if you use it in a lampshade. The LED bulb will win if used in a directional fixture, like recessed lighting.

While I hate recessed lighting the fact is that's where most residential lighting is going. While these LED bulbs are advertised being used in table lamps the fact is that virtually all the posts I see in this forum are recessed lighting, and that's the real world market. Incans, halogens and CFLs are terribly inefficient in recessed lighting.

Remember the token shot in 50's and 60's science journals showing the technician with a pencil for a prop pretending to adjust the gyro on a $100million dollar satellite? This is kind of the same thing as using an LED light bulb with a lamp shade over it on these science web-sites.:shakehead
 
The life may be shorter when mounted horiz. because the convection cooling won't be as good. For insulation each 10C increase halves the lifetime; this may also apply to LEDs.
 
Correct. It really depends on where the engineer who calculated the thermal specs put the 'case temperature' variable and how realistically they calculated it. Obviously a table lamp doesn't have the thermal pool problem that a recessed can does.

The good news is that a 10watt LED bulb doesn't generate a lot of heat in the first place to puddle up in the ceiling.
 
What the heck is a 'green'? I thought it was something Tiger Woods has lately played lousy on. ...
... Remember the token shot in 50's and 60's science journals showing the technician with a pencil for a prop pretending to adjust the gyro on a $100million dollar satellite? This is kind of the same thing as using an LED light bulb with a lamp shade over it on these science web-sites.
:laughing:
The 'greens' in this case are the people who want all the nuclear power plants shut down (radiation is deadly), all the coal power plants shut down (acid rain is deadly), all the natural gas power plants shut down (carbon dioxide causes global warming).
Everybody go solar.
What they don't realize is people turn their lights on after sunset!

While I hate recessed lighting the fact is that's where most residential lighting is going.
In new builds or major retrofits. Lamps with lampshades are still more common. And some lampshades out there are terribly inefficient.
And some LED bulb manufacturers are making bulbs with LEDs pointing sideways. The new liquid filled bulb. And the Philips 'Darth Vader' bulbs.
 
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(nevermind)

You chicken...
smiley_chicken.gif
I got your post in my email and it's pretty darn funny. :laughing:
 
My issue with all the LED bulb offerings is the lumens/watt efficiency is not much (if any) better than decent CFLs. I was at Home Depot and got to estimating lumens/watt and some of the better LED bulbs got close to 65 lumens/watt while some were less than even 50 lumens/watt and the CFLs ranged from 30-55 approximately. I don't think LED bulbs will start taking off till they get them around 90 lumens/watt at perhaps 2x the price of CFLs or about $12-$20. The fact we have LEDs now that are ~160 lumens/watt shows us that either they are using leftover emitters or having circuit and heat issues driving down efficiencies.
 
Commercially-available LED lightbulbs and fixtures generate fewer lumens per watt because the manufacturers are placing a premium on durability vs. cutting-edge performance. Lightbulbs run for hours a day, every day, for years, sometimes running continuously for the entire time they're installed. Older emitter designs have been optimized both for performance (within the envelope of the designs' capabilities) and longevity, making them more suitable for long-term operation; the newer emitters used in intermittent-use devices like flashlights have not yet been optimized, hence why we see new "top bins" coming out every few months.
 
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