# indoor led lighting



## flyingcow (Sep 9, 2010)

Tried searching this site, but i was doing something wrong.

But, curious if anyone has tried led's for indoor lighting? never have liked CFL's, but seeing the incadecents(sp?) are going away, would like try LED's. They are high priced, but also tout that they are lower in watts than CFL's. My house was designed for old style lighting, and the CFL's aren't doing the job. 

I use LED's on my trucks backup lights and like 'em. And yes, those are high priced. But lifetime warranty.

Any thoughts? Might be a day or so before i get back to check the responses. Thanks.


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## begreen (Sep 10, 2010)

I have looked into them, but am not convinced yet. They are very expensive and a lot of them have odd color indexes or high color temps that make everything look a sickly blue. Still, they are progressing and the latest generation are getting better in a warmer light. We have friends that illuminate their yurt with strings of warm white led Christmas lights strung around the interior perimeter of the yurt. The effect is really nice and the light quite pleasing. At a cost of about $5 a string, it's a viable alternative.


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## midwestcoast (Sep 10, 2010)

If CFLs "aren't doing the job" then LEDs won't either; NOt yet at least.
I put one in my fridge where CFLs aren't happy & incandescents create unwanted heat; it's worked very well. I also put one on the range-hood light that my wife loves to leave on  it's been good as well.  As for general lighting I agree with all BeGreen posted and will add that I haven't seen one bright enough to replace a 60 or even 40 watt with just one bulb.  Try to at least see one lit-up before you buy it. As with early CFLs the light color and quality vary greatly from one brand/type to another right now.


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## peakbagger (Sep 10, 2010)

I had the same thought and bought a known brand of LED's for some accent lighting. The fixtures are similiar to the undercabinet lights used in kitchens. They were going to be mounted semipermanently behind the some long trim boards so the concept of long life was a big driver. Luckilly I didnt get around to installing them, but I do use one in my office. So far, I have gone through seven of them in 2 years. These were manufactured by Osram Sylvania and they wont stand behind the product. When I cut one open to diagnose, I found out that they are wired  in series like the old christmas tree strings. If one LED burns out, the whole fixture stops working. Most of the LED lights and fixtures come from China and the qulaity control is lousy. Some of the products have a lifetime warranty, but good luck getting a new one if it fails as the shipping and handling costs will probalby be more than you paid for the light. 

I just dont think the 120 volt LEDs and fixtures are ready for primetime yet, despite what "This Old House" is plugging.


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## Cowboy Billy (Sep 10, 2010)

I've tired a few at best they are so so. I don't have any power in my barn so I am going to try taking a led trailer brake light I smashed and If I can get the red lens off hook it up to a spare batter and see how it does.

Billy


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## flyingcow (Sep 10, 2010)

Cowboy Billy said:
			
		

> I've tired a few at best they are so so. I don't have any power in my barn so I am going to try taking a led trailer brake light I smashed and If I can get the red lens off hook it up to a spare batter and see how it does.
> 
> Billy



You  can buy clear led's now, fairy reasonable. I use them on my truck ad they work very well, and have about a 1/3 of the draw on a battery, good bright light.

Thanks for the responses. If i had a camp or anything that relies on batteries for power, the 12 volt led's would work well, i think. 

Wait and see what happens....


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## begreen (Sep 10, 2010)

That's my thought. These are getting very common in the auto and trucking industry which is helping drive down prices. I may experiment a bit with some automotive leds this winter.


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## jharkin (Sep 10, 2010)

Ive seen them in the big box but not tried yet.  One thing that I find odd is the the 60 watt replacement LED has almost the same watt rating as a CFL (10~ 12).  LED's should be only a fraction of that. Also had a big metal heatsink base. An LED shouldn't be putting out enough heat to need a sink...


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## flyingcow (Sep 11, 2010)

jharkin said:
			
		

> Ive seen them in the big box but not tried yet.  One thing that I find odd is the the 60 watt replacement LED has almost the same watt rating as a CFL (10~ 12).  LED's should be only a fraction of that. Also had a big metal heatsink base. An LED shouldn't be putting out enough heat to need a sink...



A few I've found have a "fan" in the base.  Users can hear the fan, if it's quiet.  Got to wonder....


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## DaveH9 (Sep 14, 2010)

I'm getting there on led's. The 40 watt florescent tube replacement is the best so far, it's over the kitchen sink. At 16 watts it Cost $80, 1.8 years to return  "investment". try to get that kind of return at your bank. They only seem expensive, actually they are a good deal in many ways. Hurray for early adopters, they are driving the price down. We are now at 8kwh day in usage Once we hit 6Kwh a day , then we can take out the entire bill with a 2.5 kw pv system (solar electric). LEd's are much more cost effective when used to reduce future PV size. We have 22 led lights installed. some have been a little challenging as far as brightness, but nothing that can't be fixed by just using more.


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## nihil (Sep 14, 2010)

We used LED Christmas lights on the house last year and were very happy with the look and the cost savings.  I don't have hard numbers to compare but there wasn't the holiday spike in electricity usage.  

If you look for "warm" LED lights you can find them in the traditional yellow/white (ie approx 3200k color temp) rather than the blue/white we expect from LEDs.

LED Christmas Lights @ Bronners

I've also had excellent luck at 1000bulbs.com for odd/interesting bulbs and fixtures 

1000Bulbs.com LED lights


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## jharkin (Sep 14, 2010)

This is what I still dont get... using 1000bulbs data, 40 watt incandescent equivalents:

40 watt incandescent  lumens 280-375  1k-10k hours $0.50-$2
http://www.1000bulbs.com/category/40-watt-standard-shape-light-bulbs/

9 watt CFL  450-600 lumens life 8k-10k hours  $2-$6  
http://www.1000bulbs.com/category/9-watt-cfl-compact-fluorescents-2700k/

7 watt LED  350 lumens  50k hours  $39
http://www.1000bulbs.com/product/8112/ELED-ZETA7WW.html


I don't see the benefit of the LED other than the lifetime.  25% less watts, but at least 30% less light output (lumens) . So its practically a wash in terms of lumens per watt.  For over 10x the price?  

What am I not getting?

I know from the small LEDs in flashlights that the battery life is like 10x or better compared to an incandescent, and they give off practically no heat. So I beleive  they SHOULD be able to do better than these 7 watt units I think.  A 40watt equivalent LED could be only 4 or 5 watts.  


-Jeremy


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## Cowboy Billy (Sep 14, 2010)

The talk about 110v led's making heat got me thinking. Led's can only handle a few volts so they must be using resistors to drop the voltage. The resistors make heat wasting electricity. I don't know if using a transformer to drop the voltage would be more efficient or less. Hooking a few in series and running 12v may be a better way to run them. I got some 12v led marker lights I didn't use I'll try to replace my travel trailer interior light with two of them and see how it works out.

Billy


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## DaveH9 (Sep 14, 2010)

most of them run off 12v, so a lot of the "drivers" convert 120v to 12v, losing efficiency and creating heat. The under counter ones have a wall transformer but bulbs with serious light need internal drivers and thus heat sinks or even fans. i think Leds themselves run cool. I'm getting a led tube with an external driver, and a 7 yr warranty. I just got a dim able led from HD for $20 it was 420 lumens, I think it uses 9watts


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## flyingcow (Sep 15, 2010)

Cowboy Billy said:
			
		

> The talk about 110v led's making heat got me thinking. Led's can only handle a few volts so they must be using resistors to drop the voltage. The resistors make heat wasting electricity. I don't know if using a transformer to drop the voltage would be more efficient or less. Hooking a few in series and running 12v may be a better way to run them. I got some 12v led marker lights I didn't use I'll try to replace my travel trailer interior light with two of them and see how it works out.
> 
> Billy



Should work very well. I don't have the numbers in front of me, buta rule of thumb is 12v LED's use about 1/3 of the draw as a regular tail light. Guys that love to put lights on their big rig loves LEDs'. You can easily double the amount of lights and the altenator will handle it.

 I've got a AC to DC converter I used to hook up old radios with. Just for the heck of it, I might hook up a couple and put a watt hour meter on the converter.


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## woodgeek (Sep 15, 2010)

jharkin said:
			
		

> I don't see the benefit of the LED other than the lifetime.  25% less watts, but at least 30% less light output (lumens) . So its practically a wash in terms of lumens per watt.  For over 10x the price?
> 
> What am I not getting?
> 
> -Jeremy



Current technology warm-white LEDs and CFLs have nearly identical total lumens per watt, so in most applications the energy cost to run is a toss-up.  (Cool-white LEDs and CFLs are both 15-25% better lumens/watt than their warm white counterparts). With the longer life, one might make the case that LEDs are a better deal (over a 10 year period), but this assumes that the lifetimes are realized.  As with early CFLs (e.g. 10 years ago), the market if filled with low quality units that can fail prematurely or rapidly fade to a unusable level of brightness.

Techies and investors are excited about LEDs because they have a _theoretical_ potential for much higher lumens/watt than CFL, that has been largely realized in the lab, but not yet translated to production-scale long-life commercial products.  As CFL is a mature technology, no one expects much future improvement there, so LEDs will eventually 'win the race'.  IMO it took, what, 50 years for fluorescents to get to the current point of displacing Edison bulbs, due to color/function/form factor reasons.  Will LEDs take 50 years to knock out CFLs?

Some niche markets exist, such as when the application favors a very small unit or power (auto/decoration/night light), or directionality (task/flood/display lighting) or dimming.  Optical inefficiencies in CFL 'flood' bulbs give them a disappointing lumen or lux/watt--if you ever tried them, you probably noticed that.  For all these applications, current LEDs from quality vendors are the way to go over mini-incandescents/halogens or CFL floods.

Both CFLs and LEDs need to convert 120 to their operating voltage--so that is a cost/ineff hit to both.  IIRC, all current lighting technology in the labs are running no better than 30% efficiency turning electrical energy to white light, so there will be plenty of heat generation from these bulbs.  CFLs do get warm, but are naturally large and so dissipate heat readily.  LEDs are going to produce a similar waste heat/lumen, but their small size means a separate heat sink if required so they don't fry.  Indeed, heat management is a major difference b/w quality and cheap products--poor heat sinking leads to thermal shutdown/dimming, faster output fade and premature failure (again, much like early CFLs used in can lights).


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