LED as Home lighting replacement?

Hey all, I was directed to your forum from Ars Technica for advice on this subject.

We're about to ratify the Keyoto Accord here in Canada, and in any case I'm a bit of an efficiency nut and a certified technophile. I want to replace the incandescent lighting in my home with LED. I seem to be having trouble finding any products (Lumileds is all I've come up with so far), but I've heard "drop-in" replacements do exist.

I'm hoping therefore you can point me to some companies that market out of the box solutions (work in standard light sockets and on the NA power grid.) I'm looking for lights that can provide 100W equivalant illumination (though I suppose I'd settle for 60-100W.) In lieu of that, I'd be interested in anything I might hack together or other "unconventional" approaches to get where I want to be. Just an aside question: can LED lighting safely, properly and effectively operate on a dimmer switch?

Finally, let me just say you are all complete freaks with this flashlight fetish thing... KIDDING! lol (I hope that joke, made with entirely good will, doesn't cause everyone ignore me. Feel free to slag me if you like. ) Seriously though, I'm a gadget freak myself, I totally dig it. STIA for any and all responses.

Geoffe,

I'm with you all the way. I'm a gadget nut, engineer, do-it-yourselfer and have been thinking of this for some time. About a year or so ago, I started sketching ideas for my house that I want to build one day in the future (depending if I win the lottery or not). I vision some solar cells, inverters (or maybe not) and a bank of gel cells in the basement. All my home lighting needs could be met, and emergency lighting taken care of.

Hopefully someone around here will know. I know of one member here that has a website I visited that did some lighting for an aquarium I believe. Maybe they'll chime in.

Yes we are freaks. Everywhere in the world, there are freaks. It's the normal people you have to worry about.

If you want efficient bulk lighting, then LEDs are _not_ the way to go. The efficiency of the best available LEDs is roughly the same as that of the best available incandescent lamps (in the 20-30 lumen per watt range).

I have seen screw in 'bulbs' with LEDs arranged on a standard edison screw base, usually combined with some BS text that _claims_ much higher efficiency than incandescent. The following search will turn up tons of people selling these items:
http://www.gOogle.com/search?q=led+bulb+edison+screw&btnG=Google+Search

Many of them will claim that the number of LEDs in the cluster is roughly equal to the number of watts that a comparable incandescent light would use. This is _bogus_. A good Nichia 5mm white LED will put out about 1 lumen of light. Take a look at the package for a 100W bulb: 1600 lumen or more

Here is a hint: if you buy _any_ of these products, get _in writing_ a statement of how many lumen the light puts out and how many watts it consumes. Not a fluff statement about ' equivalent to xx watt incandescent', but lumen out at a particular color temperature and watts in at what voltage.

If you want efficient bulk lighting, in your ordinary fixtures, then I'd suggest going with compact florescent lamps. For any situation where you want the light quality of a nice incandescent lamp, go with halogen lamps that use IRC technology, which put the efficiency up in the 25 lumen per watt range.

Also, if you want efficiency _don't_ dim incandescent lamps. These lamps are only efficient when run at full power.

Now, LEDs have their place, most especially wherever you don't need very much light, eg. for night lights and such. The reason is that the itty bitty 0.15W LEDs are as efficient as the 100W halogen lamps (they produce 0.15% of the light with 0.15% of the power). A 1W incandescent lamp is much _less_ efficient than the 100W lamp (they produce 0.1% of the light with 1% of the power). So if you have any _small_ halogen lights, replace them with LEDs.

There is no reason that a LED light could not be made to be dimmable, but this will depend upon the specific design of the circuit feeding the LED. I suspect that most 'light bulb replacing' LED bulbs would not take kindly to dimming.

-Jon