LED Light vs CFL

codyoliver

Banned
Joined
Mar 18, 2010
Messages
1
LED Light or CFL which is the better light?
An LED light uses 50% of the energy of a CFL and that means lower utility bills and fewer carbon emissions. 6 watt LED light produces as much light as 50 watt traditional bulb. The figure for CFL is close to 13 watts. An LED thus uses half the amount of electricity compared to a CFL.
If you want to know more about that, read this article : [link removed - DM51]
 
Last edited by a moderator:
:welcome: codyoliver.

Better for what? Price? CFL is more attractive. For efficiency, LED wins. For sheer amount of light, CFL wins. For runtime? LED. For lumen maintenance when they get hot? CFL I think. For light quality (colour rendering etc), well, I suppose it could go either way. For pollution? You'd need to consider the mercury in CFLs and the embedded energy (the amount of energy it takes to make them, including drivers for LEDs) - I really have no idea how much either takes to make, but I'd like to know.

BTW, I think because we use 230 V instead of 115 V our incandescent bulbs are less efficient, so there's (supposedly) roughly a 5x gain from incan to CFL here.
 
OK, I love LED, but I will say, having now scanned that article, it really isn't exhaustive. Where's an in-depth examination of cost?

"Any cost advantage that the CFL enjoys over LED is wiped out the moment one factors in the need to replace the light sockets and fixtures." What rubbish. I don't have to replace the light sockets and fixtures for CFLs, but I might have to to properly utilise LED lighting, because it's so directional and because of its cooling needs.

They also seem to have a different idea to what "inordinately" means than I do.

What a biased load of crock that article is.
 
I thought spam / advertisements were against the rules? He's just trying to disguise it as a link to (self-serving) info.

The poster owns that commercial site:
[link removed by mike.s]
 
Last edited:
Hey, good spotting. I actually reported it just after I made my second post above, and that's about as good a confirmation as is possible.
 
Thanks for the reports. I'm not 100% sure it's spam, so we'll leave the question here because it is of possible interest. I've removed the link, pending further explanation from the OP.
 
In the good old days when somebody posted these kinds of 'bait' topics in public forums the link was usually connected to some good porn. :crackup:

Now, they're trying to sell some light bulbs. Man how times have changed.
 
The current LEDs are no more efficient than CFLs and cost way more so they remain strictly as a novelty. Would you pay $20 for a 9w (40w equivalent) LED bulb at Home Depot, or $8 for a 4 pack of 9w spiral CFLs? The 9w CFLs are actually slightly more efficient than the 9w LED bulbs they sell. Not a very good investment, and I'm not too much of a CFL fan either.
 
The current LEDs are no more efficient than CFLs and cost way more so they remain strictly as a novelty. Would you pay $20 for a 9w (40w equivalent) LED bulb at Home Depot, or $8 for a 4 pack of 9w spiral CFLs? The 9w CFLs are actually slightly more efficient than the 9w LED bulbs they sell.
Not a very good investment, and I'm not too much of a CFL fan either.

?? Which would you go for?
?? Which not a good investment?
 
The current LEDs are no more efficient than CFLs and cost way more so they remain strictly as a novelty. Would you pay $20 for a 9w (40w equivalent) LED bulb at Home Depot, or $8 for a 4 pack of 9w spiral CFLs? The 9w CFLs are actually slightly more efficient than the 9w LED bulbs they sell. Not a very good investment, and I'm not too much of a CFL fan either.

Actually, some 4W even 3W Led Bulbs could be equvalent to the 40W incandescent. This is a bulb some of friends plan to buy http://www.amazon.de/dp/B002Z2M310/

If we use such Led bulbs, obviously Led bulbs is much more cost saving from the long run.
 
That is a 5 mm LED showerhead enclosed in a heat insulating bubble. In the past those bulbs tend to dim to 1/2 output in 6 months, useless in a year. The bulb replacement costs could be more than the electricity costs saved.
Just buy 1 bulb, run it for a full year 24/7 before deciding to convert.
Actually, some 4W even 3W Led Bulbs could be equvalent to the 40W incandescent. This is a bulb some of friends plan to buy http://www.amazon.de/dp/B002Z2M310/

If we use such Led bulbs, obviously Led bulbs is much more cost saving from the long run.

-

Back to the main topic.

At current availability for globe style bulbs:
2W to 8W LED;
9W to 27W CFL;
over 27W won't fit standard A19/G60 lamps.

LEDs are available at much brighter levels in the PAR style.
CFLs are available with reflectors.
These are used in downlights and recessed ceiling lights.
 
That is a 5 mm LED showerhead enclosed in a heat insulating bubble. In the past those bulbs tend to dim to 1/2 output in 6 months, useless in a year. The bulb replacement costs could be more than the electricity costs saved.
Just buy 1 bulb, run it for a full year 24/7 before deciding to convert.


-

Back to the main topic.

At current availability for globe style bulbs:
2W to 8W LED;
9W to 27W CFL;
over 27W won't fit standard A19/G60 lamps.

LEDs are available at much brighter levels in the PAR style.
CFLs are available with reflectors.
These are used in downlights and recessed ceiling lights.
Icandescent efficienies are pretty much independent of voltage, however they tend to increase with increasing wattage.
For example 10 w standard incandescent is about 75 lumes (7.5 lumens/watt)
40 w standard incandescent is about 400 lumens(10 lumens/watt)
100 w standard incandescent is about 1700 lumens(17 lumens/watt)
200 w standard incandescent is about 3900 lumens (19.5 lumens/watt)
Halogen lamps tend to do a little better

CFL's are on the order 80 lumens/watt at 26 watts, less on smaller wattages.

HID lamps at 150 watts and up are typically right around 100 lumens per watt
LPS lamps can get as high as 200lumens/watt

Fluorsecents also get more efficient at higher output, and vary enormously depending upon the color rendition and spectral characteristics you want (and the prices also vary just as much). The best of these lamps, like the GE SPX series are about 95 lumens per watt, wherease the Chroma 50 series was more like 60 lumens per watt (but very high CRI).
The True efficiency of these lamps tends to be lower because of losses in the ballast, although with newer all electronic ballasts these losses have become very small.

So the bottom line is that isn't very difficult to get more lumens per watt than you can get from most incandescents, but the difference in cost between an incandescent and LED at this point pays for a whole lot of electricity even at 10-12 cents per KwH.
Here is the thumbnail for a 40 watt incandescent versus an LED
Incandescent LED
price .79 $20

$19.00 buys about 160 KwH, or about 4000 hours of operation. The breakeven point is probably around 5000 hours of operation. If it is a lamp that is used 10-12 hours per day it probably makes sense, as the payoff is on the order of 1 year, if it is only 1-2 hours per day, on a net present value basis, it may NEVER pay to use an LED.
The savings in applications using 7.5-10 watt incandescents will on a per centage basis be much higher, but the amount of energy used by these lamps is so low that the payoff is likely to exceed the life of the LED replacement.

If you assume your fluoro is 80 lumens per watt, and the LED 100 lumens per watt, the energy savings is only about 20%, so the payoff on LED vs Fluoresecent (or CFL) is probably the 21st of never at this point. It is longer than the expected life of either lamp.

My advice is that if you cannot show a payback of the extra cost within 10,000 hours of use, in most cases, it is unlikely to save you money.

Generally changing an incandescent for a CFL or Fluoro fixture is a no brainer.
100 watt incancdescent will consume about 100KwH over its life (1000 hours)
26 watt CFL in that same period would consume 26KwH.

74KwH~$9.00, so as long as the CFL lasts at least 1000 hour, and costs less than $9.00 a copy, you are ahead of the game.

My own belief is we are probably still on the order of 5 years away from LED lighting that is an economically viable replacement for CFL or Fluorescent lighting. More like a couple years for Incandescent replacement.
 
CFL's are on the order 80 lumens/watt at 26 watts, less on smaller wattages.

That's......pretty optimistic. Spiral CFLs are often rated in tube lumens rather than their actual out put, and when you wind them into a spiral a good chunk of the light gets wasted bouncing around the inside. That's why you only see linear tubes in commercial applications. Even so, it takes a really, really good fluorescent fixture to put out over 60 lumens per watt. Some of the high end T5 bay lights are over 80, but it requires a hyper efficient reflector.

The advantage with LED is simple directionality. Less mucking around with LEDs putting the light where you want it from an engineering perspective due to native emission patterns.

I really don't get where this mentality comes from that LEDs and solid state lighting are designed to be the mesiah and saviour of energy efficient lighting. Maybe it's because I don't own stock in Cree or something. Both Plasma and Induction lighting seem to offer more potential in terms of larger lighting scale than SSL, and certainly have a better ratio of commercial quality offerings (spartan as they may be). Right now lighting technology is being driven by the retail sector and not so much R&D.
 
Last edited:
For burning your house down from the junk electronics in them, CFL wins. I wouldn't take them if you gave me every flashlight on CPF to do it. :scowl:
 
IMO time to revive this. Has the status of things changed much in the last 4 years other than the Feds have required ending production of a lot of standard incandescent household bulbs?

I have had CFL bulbs smoke but never had one flame. None of mine are in fixtures near flammable materials. For higher Lumens outputs LED bulbs still seem to be overly expensive for 100 Watt incandescent equivalent and greater output. Standard incandescent bulbs are now getting hard to find too. Based on Amazon reviews the current LED bulbs have crappy electronics issues too, like CFLs. Is any one making true high reliability 1600+ Lumens LED bulbs? It seems to me smoking and flaming CFL and LED bulbs are violating UL, CSA and VDE safety standards.
 
The Cree and Philips latest bulbs are pretty good. But so are CFLs. I have a Cree "the bulb" 10-year-warranty over my stove. I'll probably bring it with me when I move. We've had 1 of 14 CFLs fail in two years. That suggests a pretty decent life, too.
 
From the tear downs I've seen Cree and Phillips both seem to be using decent electronics. So far I've stuck with buying those two.
 
LED Light or CFL which is the better light?
There are so many pros and cons, and various different factors, there is no clear answer.

A few points I will briefly comment on:

For multiple reasons I do not have time to get into, LED has a much higher efficiency than CFL when it comes to spot lighting.
(LEDs tend to be inherently directional in nature, and the bulky tubing and diffuse emittance of CFL is difficult to focus in a reflector)

In terms of trying to save money, it depends very much on your cost of electricity. LED can save you more money than CFL, but LED has a longer pay-back time. (And for seldom-used areas like closets, CFL probably will not save you any money over regular incandescent, at least not during your lifetime)

In terms of quality of light, generally CFL is better at higher color temperatures, whereas LED is better at lower color temperatures, but this is not necessarily so, and this is just my opinion. (I do not have time to get into the reasons why this is here)

Also, I have a skin sensitivity to the light given off by CFL, so they are not really an option for me.
They hurt my eyes too. Keep them out of my house!
 
Last edited:

Latest posts

Top