You probably would not know this just from looking at the picture, but there is actually a bulb in the middle fixture:
Just not a useful bulb.
On a whim, the last time I was at Wal-Mart, I purchased a Feit Electric AccentLED 0.9W 18LED light bulb as a curiosity purchase to see how far along LED bulbs have come in the past few years – after all, my LED flashlights are pretty badass little darksuckers, and I am all about saving money where I can, so why not give them a shot and see if they are worth it?
They are not.
Now, my first warning probably should have been the “For Decorative & Accent Use” line right beneath the name, but since when do people but ‘decorative’ lights in ceiling fans? Anywise, I got home, screwed it into our bathroom fixture along with five other standard 60W incandescent bulbs, threw the switch… and started giggling.
The below images were taken with the same shutter speed, the same aperture, and at about the same distance from the respective bulbs. Can you guess which one was the LED?
That is just gorramed pathetic.
As you can see from the picture to the right, the LED bulb sucks up 0.9W and puts out around 70 lumens of light. On the other hand, a 60W incandescent puts out somewhere around 900 lumens. In order to be even competitive, LED bulb manufacturers are going to have to increase the output of their products by ten times, at least.
Even better, guess what I paid for that stupid thing? $7. For one bulb. Anyone remember how much standard 60W incandescent were before their 100W equivalents were effectively outlawed and prices started inflating? Between $0.50 and $1, depending on quality and features. We pay somewhere around $0.068 per kilowatt-hour – I would have to leave that LED bulb on for 88,000+ hours straight (assuming my drug-addled math is accurate) to make up the price difference between the two, and as its picture shows, its lifespan is maybe 20,000 hours.
And it cannot even light up its own fixture, much less the room it is in.
For the time being, compact fluorescent bulbs suck – they contain unsafe levels of mercury and will unquestionably not be disposed of properly, their color and warm-up time is all wrong, their refresh rate can cause problems anywhere there is moving machinery (said problems include spinning things appearing to be still), and we have not noticed that their lifespans are any longer than a normal incandescent. On the other hand, LEDs may be no healthier, and their output is… well… pathetic.
So here is to the Glorious and All Knowing Federal Government invading our liberties and telling us what we can and cannot buy and use in our own homes. If I have the money to spend on the wattage, I should bloody well be permitted to have whatever the hell kind of bulbs I want burning in whatever sized fixtures I want, wherever I want in my house. Period.
Hell, I might just go buy a horribly inefficient and wasteful Edison Bulb and leave it running until it dies, just to piss off the Greenies…
[Edited To Add] Look, folks, I get that the LED bulb I purchased is not comparable to an average 60W incandescent. I was not trying to compare them. I cannot afford an LED that is equivalent to a 60W incandescent, and that is exactly the point I was trying to make – due to their prices, LED bulbs, as replacement for incandescent bulbs in normal fixtures, simply are not ready for primetime. Trust me, I want them to be, because lighting my entire house off a scant few watts without annoying fluorescents is pretty high on my “shiny” list, but the truth is that most people cannot afford them, and will not bother with them, and, if for no other reason than that, they bloody well should not be being forced down our collective throats by governmental fiat. [/Edited To Add]
Don’t get me started on the low volume flush toilets!
Do we now live in a third world country where electricity, lighting and toilets are a luxury?
Make me emperor for a day and those silly rules would be gone and the congress-idiots would take a hot bath in tar followed by fluffy feathers!
In defense of the bulb/manufacturer, that bulb isn’t meant to replace a 60W bulb.
I have one of the 60W replacement bulbs, and they work pretty well, but the cost is ridiculous – about $40 per bulb – though I have noticed they are slowly going down. The big advantage for me is that they put out significantly less heat. Since my air conditioners are just adequate to keeping the house at a comfortable temperature (to the point that the thermostats register a 1 to 2 degree temperature increase if I’ve been in a room for a couple of hours), I find it a worthwhile trade-off. So far, they’ve lasted longer than any Edison bulbs or CFLs I’ve had.
But, yeah, the cost needs to come down significantly, and they really need to get 100W equivalents out soon.
Oh, yeah, and they really don’t need to be forced on us.
We just dropped the price on these LED bulbs at work. I bought one to try it, put it in a reading lamp, and promptly bought a second one the next day. It’s cool-running, great light quality, and has no warm-up time like the CFL it replaced. They’re not quite ready for mainstream-everywhere lighting, but they’re making huge strides.
@ Braden Lynch: I kind of like the dual-option toilets out there now, I just wish the choices were “regular” and “low-flow” as opposed to the “low-flow” and “no-flow” options they are now…
Sadly, the Greenies are going about all of this the entirely wrong way – people want to save money. They do not give a damn about the environment, by and large, but if you present these features as a way to save money, they might be interested.
These LED lights, though? They do not save money.
@ Jake: In truth, you are right, but that was the most expensive LED bulb I could convince myself to buy as an impulse purchase – I am not even going to try to do the math to figure out the number of hours I would have to have one of the actual 60-watt equivalents in order for it to pay itself. It would be pointless. As the above numbers show, they simply will not last that long.
The heat reduction was one of the reasons I wanted them for the bathroom – shaving under those six lights can get damnably hot with incadescents.
@ ZerCool: I will not deny that LEDs are improving every year, and that their prices are slowly dropping… however, they and CFLs are being forced on us now, and they simply are not ready. Like I said, I love saving money, but these only do that on the back end.
@ Linoge:
Well, another reason I got the LEDs is that the CFLs sometimes put out “noise” on the power lines that can interfere with my home automation setup. It can be annoying, because not all brands do it. The ones in my crawlspace do, and if I accidentally leave those on (like I did the other day after checking the foundation to make sure there was no quake damage) it’s usually the last thing I think to check – if I remember at all.
I do use CFLs in the hallway light, but that’s because I tend to leave it on when I’m home. The kitties need light, and it’s just more convenient for me. But they’re only “saving” me money in the summer. In the winter, Edison bulbs are 100% efficient.
So I do pay more for the convenience (which is offset somewhat by the greater lifespan), but they’re certainly not actually cost effective like they’re advertised to be.
I am typing right now under a 7.5W LED and the light is pretty decent but different (color?)and allegedly equivalent to an old 60W. I did buy the bulb as test and because Home Depot had it on sale for $14.
Not very happy learning about the chemical content though. If they ever get down to $5 and under per unit, I might consider doing a full switch to them. In the meantime, I am running out of space for my regular incandescent 100W bulb stockpile
Why, exactly, won’t CFLs be disposed of properly? Are you breaking them and throwing them in the trash instead of taking them to a local collection site (which in Bay Area, California, is often the local hardware store)? It’s not that difficult. You probably don’t pour used motor oil into the storm drains, so you can probably take care of used CFLs too.
And I’m not sure what definition of “unsafe levels” you’re using, but a CFL contains about as much mercury as a tuna sandwich. And we EAT tuna sandwiches. Of course, this does say something about pollution levels these days…
@ Jake: From my reading, it would appear as though fluorescent lights transmit noise on pretty much the entire spectrum through nothing more than plain air, which would make sense, considering that they are forcing molecules to emit photons. Never heard of it interfering with home automation systems, but it makes sense (and it is the going theory for fluorescent-induced headaches, too).
@ Miguel: LEDs have not really had the same color problems fluorescents have had… more control over the output, I suppose.
We neglected to stockpile, sadly… The good news is you can still get them, but at a price.
Dreaded Claymore wrote:
You and I both know that is exactly what is happening to the overwhelming majority of CFLs – they die, people replace them, and chuck the old one in the trash to be eventually compacted, shattered, and dumped in some landfill somewhere. Sure, the recycling centers are available, but do you really think people use them? Crap on a crutch – the compliance with CRV is only about 75%, and that is only because people are trying to get their money back.
And mercury is kind of like lead – there are “minimum safe levels”, but they are so absurdly low, you are better to avoid it all together.
Not all LEDs are the same, nor are they intended to be.
The run-of-the-mill LEDs that you often see clustered together to make a cheap LED flashlight do cast light and do draw less power than a traditional bulb, but they are not as bright, even when used en masse. The light often has a bluish cast.
But the high-quality LEDs from Luxeon and Cree put out plenty of light (and whiter light) while still drawing less power than a traditional bulb. However, they are more expensive than a traditional bulb or even a bulb that uses a cluster of cheap LEDs. A bulb using these top-quality LEDs is a LOT more expensive than a regular bulb and produces a very useful amount of light. The cost usually restricts them to use in places where changing a lightbulb would be a real hassle.
Wired magazine http://www.wired.com/magazine/ covers bulbs and the development of new lighting tech this month.
[...] A picture, 1,000 words. [...]
Not to be snarky, but isn’t that how any light source works?
Something emits electrical “noise” because it uses AC and some part of its mechanism isn’t properly shielded or isolated or filtered. Fluorescent lights can emit electrical noise because they use high frequency AC to excite the low-pressure mercury gas in the tube and cause it to emit UV, which in turn causes the fluorescent coating inside the tube to emit visible light. Incandescent bulbs don’t emit electrical noise because they use raw line-frequency AC (or DC) to resistively heat the filament hot enough to glow.
If you have a noisy CFL it probably means they didn’t include a ferrite bead in it to filter noise, which probably isn’t surprising as omitting that component would be a way to reduce production costs while only annoying a portion of your customers.
I’m not familiar enough with power electronics to say whether simply putting a ferrite bead on the 120v AC line for a light socket is safe (it might present a fire hazard), but if you’re affected by noisy CFLs that might be an option to consider after doing some research. Of course, it would be better to buy a CFL that has a ferrite bead incorporated into the bulb itself, but I don’t know if there’s any way to tell that from the packaging.
@ Gunnutmegger: I pretty much only carry CREEs in my pockets these days, and those chips seem to run somewhere between $20 and $30 depending on outputs and capacities.
But still, that is part of the problem – those things can comfortably put out up to 500 lumens and beyond, but they are still priced so far above basic incandescent bulbs that there is simply no competition. They are a great concept, but we are being forced to adopt a nowhere-near-prime-time product for the sake of being “green”.
Hell with that.
@ Art: Huh. I might have to snag a copy – thanks for the pointer!
@ John Hardin: Huh. So that is what the little doohickies on power cables are. Learn something new every day!
Like I said, that noise is one of the going theories for fluorescent-induced headaches, but that may be nothing more than trying to weaken the “flickering bulbs makes my head hurt” argument people may or may not use. But with folks blaming CFLs for everything from those pains to ADHD (*.pdf warning), I can understand their being a little… reflexive.
I like Jake’s and Linoge’s sentiments though. Do not force it on me!
Perhaps, I should mention that I originally trained as a chemist, so I have serious gripes with the politicized environmental movement and their so-called solutions.
If technology X is so great than I will do it. Make me pay a premium for inferior products or unnecessary restrictions and I get irked.
For instance, I just bought a “511″ fast recharge flashlight that is expensive, but it runs on capacitors, so no batteries are ever needed. It will last for a long time, too.
Exactly – if this stuff actually saved people money, they would be hardcore marketing it as such and people would be diving into it headfirst.
Instead, they are having to force it on the populace by governmental mandate.
There is something inherently wrong with that, no matter the cause.