LED light bulbs

Ok a while back I was reading this news article saying California was putting through legislation to ban incandescent bulbs and replace them with fluorescent bulbs. Well I know that LEDs are way more efficient and I check to see their availability. It seems they are in their infancy but I think this is a very promising technology. I know for camping lanterns they have LED lanterns and it can run like 300 hours off of 2 or 3 batteries.

http://www.thinkgeek.com/clearance/7aa8/

I mean just at thinkgeek they outlined some of the benefits of these:


* Long life - up to 10 years
* Low power consumption (about 1/30th of a standard bulb)
* Output: Vivid (31 Lumens), Vivid Plus (60 Lumens), Spotlight (120 Lumens)
* Great in a directional lamp for reading, mood or porch light

I mean if they can get them to get off more light we have a viable solution that can save a ton of energy and cut down greenhouse gases.

What you guys think?

I'm all for LED lights... just waiting for them to show up in numbers and at a reasonable price. Until then, compact florescent FTW.

and LEDs are cheap. I think it's great.

I'm curious to see how they manage an even light spread, that is strong enough to cast light everywhere without being extremely bright if to look at, and to see what the light looks like - i have visions of very bright harsh white light

LED's have two major disadvantages preventing them from becoming mainstream:

- Low power output, or high heat. A LED bulb that outputs as much light as an 18+ Watt fluorescent tube, or a 60 watt incadescent bulb will run incredibly hot, and probably need an active cooling method. The heat produced isn't that much more than of an incandescent bulb, but in a much smaller space, and the LED itself is less capable of sustaining it.

- Aging, a LED, and especially a white one, willover time discolour and turn darker as the phosphor that determines its colour dies.

Those two factors aside (and much improvements have already been seen in both fields) they're indeed a promising alternative to current light sources. One thing that will also hinder their usage in home-environments though is the fact that you can't use a dimmer with them (only way to dim them is pulse modulation, which can easily produce headaches).

And that is also a problem with CF, unfortunately. A possible workaround is using multiple LEDs and set several light levels that turn on only a few LEDs and turn more on when you want more light...

Stoplight maintenance costs are reduced by using LED replacements.
This is being done in the town I live in and many other ones.

Incandescent
Cost for 135-watt bulb - $1
Bulb lifespan - 1 year
Cost to replace - $50
5-year costs - $250

LED
Costs for light $50-$72 (reds, greens $72 and yellows $50)
Bulb lifespan - 5 to 7 years
Cost to replace - $99 to $121
5-year costs - $99 to $121

Efficency for LEDs is 85 to 90 percent better than incandescents.
The initial costs are high for LEDs but the savings come in the form
of reduced labor and energy costs. There is also a benefit in brightness.
LED stoplights are much brighter than incandescent ones.

Think if a large company embraced these. I mean how much they'd save on energy. The initial investment might be a bit more but in the long term there is a huge savings.

Every new streetlight in my area that goes up is full LEDs. My dad's car has LED tail-lights. LEDs are cropping up in more and more applications, and I think that's good. They're good for when you need, strong, bright, efficient light. The softer, room lighting is currently best for fluorescent bulbs.

A few issues that do arise with LED's is the fact that generally they are really not quite as bright as a fluorescent or incandescent light bulb, now that can be made up by using multiple LEDs, but that only increases the costs. In addition there is really no such thing as a white LED, which makes white colored LEDs a bit more complicated to use since it requires the use of at least 3 different colored LEDs in order to achieve the white light that we see, which ultimately is going to make white LED's more expensive overall than a different colored LED.

Now they do save a bunch of money in energy costs, but for many people it may not be a viable idea since the initial cost is so much higher.

A lot of people said the same things about flourescent bulbs.

And yet its only been in the past few years where fluorescents have finally been starting to be integrated into homes. Eventually LEDs will to, its just a matter of waiting for production costs to come down.

I'd buy those fluorescents that look like incandescent bulbs. I can't stand the white/blue color and the maze of tubes look of most of the bulbs.

If LED bulbs are better than the other ones, we should be starting to use them more. Less money spent on any thing is more money saved.