Average cost: $2 – $10
Average wattage: 40 – 150 watts
Average life expectancy: 1,000 hours
When I tell you to picture a light bulb, chances are good that you're envisioning an incandescent. This is the classic bulb of Thomas Edison: a tungsten filament trapped within a glass enclosure. Electricity heats the filament to a point where it glows, and voila, you have light.
Aren't incandescents banned?
As a matter of fact, they aren't. EISA doesn't actually ban anything, at least not directly. What EISA does do is raise efficiency standards — specifically, the minimum acceptable ratio of lumens (light) per watt (electricity). Incandescents aren't banned; they simply have to become more efficient. Also, keep in mind that appliance lights and other specialty classes of incandescents are exempt from the new standards, so they aren't going anywhere.
It's true that traditional incandescents unable to keep up with the times will be phased out. However, the door is still wide open for nontraditional incandescents to take their place, and we're already seeing some manufacturers rise to the challenge, with high-efficiency incandescent bulbs that manage to meet the new standards. Key among these high-efficiency bulbs is yet another lighting option you'll want to consider:
Average cost: $3 – $15
Average wattage: 29 – 72 watts
Average life expectancy: 1,000 hours
Halogens are just incandescent bulbs with a bit of halogen gas trapped inside with the filament. This gas helps "recycle" the burned-up tungsten gas back onto the filament, making for a slightly more efficient light. Unlike the mercury in CFLs, this gas isn't anything that could be classified as hazardous waste.
Due to their relative similarity to classic incandescents — both in light quality and in cost — halogens can work as a good compromise bulb for consumers who need to replace their incandescents, but who also aren't ready to commit to CFLs or LEDs quite yet.
What information should I be looking for?
You want to be sure that you'll enjoy living with whatever light bulb you purchase, especially if you're choosing a long-lasting bulb that you'll live with for years. Fortunately, the Federal Trade Commission now requires light bulb manufacturers to put a "Lighting Facts" label onto their products' packaging, not unlike the Nutrition Facts label that you'll find on packaged food.
These Lighting Facts include everything from the estimated yearly cost of using the bulb to more obscure figures, like lumens and color temperature. If you want to shop smart, it will help to understand as much of that terminology as you can.
If you're buying a bulb these days, you'll be left in the dark if you don't know what a lumen is. The actual definition gets a bit complicated, involving things like steradians and candela, but don't worry, because all that you really need to know is that lumens are units of brightness. The more lumens a bulb boasts, the brighter it will be. So, how does this information help you?
Let me give you an example. If you look at CFL or LED bulbs, you'll see that most all of them are marketed as "replacements" for incandescent bulbs of specific wattages. You'll probably see the word "equivalent" used, too, as in "60-watt equivalent." This can be frustratingly misleading, with "equivalent" often meaning something closer to "equivalent…ish." Relying on these wattage equivalencies can lead you to buy a bulb that ends up being far too dim or too bright for your needs, and this is where understanding lumens really comes in handy. With lumens listed on each and every bulb, you'll always have a concrete comparison of how bright any two bulbs actually are. The bigger the number, the brighter the bulb — easy enough, right?
How many lumens do I need?
Over the last century, we've been trained to think about light purely in terms of wattages, so it isn't surprising that most people really have no idea of how many lumens they actually need in a bulb. Until you form an idea of how bright is bright enough for your tastes, stick with these figures:
Replacing a 40-watt bulb: look for at least 450 lumens
Replacing a 60-watt bulb: look for at least 800 lumens
Replacing a 75-watt bulb: look for at least 1,100 lumens
Replacing a 100-watt bulb: look for at least 1,600 lumens
After lumens, the next concept you'll want to be sure to understand is color temperature. Measured on the Kelvin scale, color temperature isn't really a measure of heat. Instead, it's a measure of the color that a light source produces, ranging from yellow on the low end of the scale to bluish on the high end, with whitish light in the middle. An easy way to keep track of color temperature is to think of a flame: it starts out yellow and orange, but when it gets reallyhot, it turns blue.
Generally speaking, incandescents sit at the bottom of the scale with their yellow light, while CFLs and LEDs have long been thought to tend toward the high, bluish end of the spectrum. This has been a steady complaint about new lighting alternatives, as many people prefer the warm, familiar, low color temperature of incandescents. Manufacturers are listening, though, and in this case they heard consumers loud and clear, with more and more low-color-temperature CFL and LED options hitting the shelves. Don't believe me? Take a look at those two paper lamps in the picture above, because they're both CFL bulbs — from the same manufacturer, no less.
These days, bulb shoppers will find so many color temperature options that some lighting companies have cleverly begun color-coding their packaging: blue for high-color-temperature bulbs, yellow for low-color-temperature ones, and white for bulbs that fall in between. With so many choices available, the notion that the phase-out of incandescents is taking warm, cozy lighting with it is a complete myth at this point.
Unless you live in a disco, you probably want the colors in your home to look somewhat traditional. This is where the color rendering index, or CRI, comes in. The CRI is a score from 1 to 100 that rates a bulb's ability to accurately illuminate colors. You can think of the CRI as a light bulb's GPA for colors, as it actually averages multiple scores for multiple shades. Manufacturers aren't required to list the bulb's CRI number on the packaging, but many of them choose to do so anyway, so you'll want to know what it means.
To understand CRI a little better, let's imagine a basketball game played outdoors on a sunny day between a team in red jerseys and a team in green jerseys. Daylight is the ideal for making colors look the way they should, so it gets a CRI of 100. Most people watching this game would have no problem telling the teams apart, because red would appear clearly red and green would look green.
Now let's imagine that same basketball game — except now played inside that disco I mentioned. We're indoors, it's a little dim, and we're stuck with multicolored spotlights as the only light source. A purple one shines down on a very confused point guard as he takes a shot. Can you tell if he's on the green team or the red one? I wouldn't be surprised if you couldn't, because the CRI of lights like those is abysmal.
Now here's the rub: the CRI is highly imperfect and not always helpful (the reasons why are mind-numbing, but you can read more here if you're curious/masochistic). The important takeaway is that CRI scores are really only helpful if you're talking about bulbs that sit in the middle of the color temperature spectrum. You'll probably see references to "white" or "natural" light on bulbs like these. In these cases, the CRI score can be a great way to tell a good bulb from a great bulb.
Anything over 80 is probably decent enough for your home, but we're starting to see CRI scores creeping up into the nineties on some very affordable bulbs. If accurate color rendering is important to you, hold out for lights like these. And if you're buying bulbs on the high (blue) or low (yellow) end of the spectrum, take any and all CRI claims with a grain of salt.
Ref: CNET
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With strict new standards, the landscape of lighting is rapidly changing. Here's everything you'll need to know to keep up.
When Congress passed the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA), the incandescent bulb's days officially became numbered. The law mandated strict new energy standards for lighting designed to kick-start a new era of greener, longer-lasting, more cost-efficient light bulbs — and this meant kicking outdated, inefficient bulbs to the curb. The rising standards have already rendered 100- and 75-watt incandescents obsolete, and on January 1, 2014, their 60- and 40-watt cousins will meet the same fate.
Like it or not, the arrival of this new era means that replacing your lights will never be quite the same. With all of the new options out there (not to mention the disappearance of some important old ones), finding the perfect bulb can seem pretty daunting. New lights that promise to last 20 years and save you hundreds of dollars might sound good in theory, but how do you know which one is the right one for you? How do you know the bulb you're buying is going to be bright enough? And what if you're just not ready to say goodbye to your incandescents?
Well, fear not, because we've got you covered with a handy guide that's chock-full of all the information you'll need to make sure that your next light bulb is the right bulb.
We've all gotten to know incandescents quite well over the past 134 years, but times are changing. These days, you've got some new lighting categories to familiarize yourself with, and doing so is the first, most obvious step toward buying the right bulb.
Average cost: $10 – $25
Average wattage: 4 – 22 watts
Average life expectancy: 20,000 hours
Light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, are the new rock stars of the bulb world. When an LED is switched on, electrons and electron holes come together (don't worry, I'm not completely sure I fully understand what a "hole" is in this context, either). The result of this process is a release of energy in the form of photons, or light.
A typical LED uses a fraction of the wattage required to power a bright incandescent bulb, and this makes LEDs dramatically more cost-effective over the long run. A 12-watt LED that puts out 800 lumens of light (lumens are units of brightness for a light source, more on that in just a bit) will add about a buck and a half per year to your power bill if you're using it for 3 hours a day at an energy rate of 11 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh). Under those same parameters, a 60-watt incandescent bulb that puts out 880 lumens will cost about seven and a half bucks per year.
LEDs are also rated to last for tens of thousands of hours, which can translate to decades of use. Compare that with the year or so you typically get out of an incandescent, and you can begin to see why so many people find these bulbs appealing. At a price of about $15, that 12-watt LED would pay for itself in 2.5 years, then keep on saving you money for years to come.
Decades? Really?
Yes, really — at least, according to Energy Star and the Illuminating Engineering Society (IES), the independent organization that created the testing procedures manufacturers use to rate LED lights. Most LED bulbs have only been commercially available for a few years now, not nearly long enough to see direct proof of their longevity claims. Fortunately, there's enough transparency with LED testing that we're able to dig a little deeper into what these claims are actually saying.
First, it's important to understand that LED lights don't "burn out," the way that incandescents do. Instead, they undergo "lumen depreciation," gradually growing dimmer and dimmer over time. The test that the IES uses to determine a bulb's longevity is known as the LM80, and it calculates how long it will take for an LED to fade noticeably. Engineers run the bulb for nine months in order to get an accurate read of the light's rate of decay, and using those figures, they can calculate the point at which the light will have faded to 70 percent of its original brightness. This point, known as "L70," is the current standard in LED longevity. If an LED says it'll last 25,000 hours, it's really saying that it will take the bulb 25,000 hours to fade down to 70 percent brightness.
This isn't to say that LEDs don't fail. They definitely do. As with any device relying on tiny, delicate electrical components, things can always go wrong. Fortunately, more and more LED bulbs come with multiyear warranties for cases of mechanical failure. One manufacturer, Cree, even goes as far as to offer a 10-year warranty for its highly rated TW Series 40- and 60-watt replacement bulbs, both of which cost less than $20. Consumers with a healthy dose of skepticism regarding LED longevity claims should look for bulbs like these, by manufacturers willing to put their money where their mouth is.
Average cost: $5 – $20
Average wattage: 9 – 52 watts
Average life expectancy: 10,000 hours
Before LEDs exploded into the lighting scene, compact fluorescent lights (CFLs to you and me) were seen by many as the heir apparent to incandescent lighting. Despite the fact that CFLs use between one-fifth and one-third the energy of incandescents, and typically save one to five times their purchase price over the course of their lifetime, many people weren't thrilled at the idea of switching over. Some find the whitish light output of CFL bulbs less aesthetically pleasing than the warm, yellow tone of most incandescents. Others are quick to point out that CFL bulbs that regularly get powered on and off for short periods of time tend to see a significant decrease in life expectancy. There's also the common complaint that most CFLs aren't dimmable, and that they often take a second or two after being switched on in order to fully light up.
The good news here is that CFL technology has improved a lot since EISA was signed into law in 2007. Today, you'll find a greater variety of color options, including bulbs rated at the low, yellow end of the Kelvin scale, and you'll have an easier time finding dimmable CFLs, too. There are even "instant-on" CFL bulbs designed to eliminate that annoying delay between flipping the switch and seeing the light. The bad news is that in spite of these improvements, CFLs remain somewhat flawed. They're still prone to decreased life expectancy when you use them in short increments, so ideally you'll want to save them for lighting that you're going to keep on for longer periods of time. Additionally, most CFLs aren't intended for outdoor use, and some will fail to turn on in colder temperatures — although you can find cold-cathode CFL bulbs rated for temperatures as low as -10 degrees Fahrenheit.
Aren't CFL bulbs dangerous?
Like all fluorescents, CFLs contain trace amounts of mercury — typically 3 to 5 milligrams (mg), although some contain less. This creates the potential for pollution when CFL bulbs are improperly disposed of, something that led to a unique environmental argument against the phasing out of incandescents (although, to be fair, this was before LEDs were seen as such a viable option).
The amount of mercury vapor in a standard CFL bulb is about one-hundredth of what you'd find in an old-fashioned thermometer. Even in such a small amount, mercury merits a degree of caution, as direct exposure can cause damage to the brain, lungs, and kidneys. That said, if a CFL shatters on your kitchen floor, you don't need to panic or evacuate your home. Just be sure to open a window and let the room air out for 10 minutes, then carefully transfer the glass and dust into a sealable container (and don't use a vacuum cleaner — you don't want to kick those chemicals up into the air). If you can take the broken bulb to a recycling center for proper disposal, great. (For more info on CFLs and mercury, click here.)
Ref: CNET
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With temperatures hovering near a sweaty 100 degrees in recent weeks, the nation’s electric utilities have been taking to Facebook and Twitter, urging customers to conserve energy in the hopes of avoiding blackouts and other strains on the system.
At Duke Energy, the country’s largest utility after its merger with Progress Energy, the effort has included something beyond the usual messages to turn down the air-conditioner. The company is promoting a series of Web videos featuring a fictitious girl named Shannon who appears with her family, the Powers, to dispense energy-saving advice.
“This summer, why not use a clothesline to dry your clothes instead of a dryer?” Shannon, also known as Bossy Pants, suggests while pinning up the family wash in a clip promoted recently on Youtility, Duke’s Facebook page for energy efficiency. “You’ll save a lot on your energy bill and your clothes will come out nice and fresh.”
The series, started last summer, is just one way that Duke and other electric companies across the country are trying to use social media, competitive games and Big Brotherish data analysis to push customers to buy less of the electricity they sell.
While it seems counterintuitive for utilities to discourage use of their product, it actually makes financial sense as they face government mandates to encourage more energy conservation and deal with the rising cost and difficulty of building power plants and distribution systems.
So in Chicago, a household that uses a lot of electricity might receive a mailing showing that more energy-efficient neighbors wash their clothes in cold water, along with a coupon for Tide Coldwater detergent. In Texas, customers can compete to be named the Biggest Energy Saver and get a shot at winning new appliances, home improvement gift cards or $5,000 to put toward a wind turbine. And outside Boston, customers earn points for saving energy that they can redeem for meals at local restaurants or a $10 discount at Whole Foods.
Motivating people to save energy isn’t really about the money, behavior experts say. Successful programs foster a sense of achievement and identity. And competing to beat your friends and neighbors at the savings game doesn’t hurt.
Many of these programs are still in their infancy, and it remains to be seen whether a significant number of customers want to work with their utility companies over energy savings; most customers become interested in their electricity only when it doesn’t work, executives and experts say. The Duke Youtility page, for instance, has fewer than 3,300 “likes,” and most of the recent comments complain about power failures, rate increases and the company’s troubled merger with Progress Energy.
But utilities hope to tap into the same dynamic that works for video games and applications like Foursquare, where users compete against one another to earn bragging rights, like becoming “mayor” of a favorite restaurant.
Opower, a leading home energy management company, has shown promising results with its keeping-up-with-the-Joneses approach, sending people reports on how their electricity use compares with households in their neighborhoods — complete with a smiley face, or two, depending on how they stack up. The company has created an app with Facebook and the Natural Resources Defense Council that can load a user’s energy data and allow people to compete with their friends and family.
Soon, said Daniel Yates, a co-founder of Opower, customers of the roughly 75 utilities he works with will be able to earn electronic badges saying things like “Congratulations: You are an energy saver” for cutting their bills.
States and utilities have run conservation programs for decades, with some success. Many households have compact fluorescent bulbs, Energy Star-rated appliances and even programmable thermostats.
But the current efforts are aimed at helping customers to change their habits as well.
“I think we’ve transcended the equipment and the shell of the house, and now we’re talking about the how,” said Tom Baron, senior program manager for residential energy efficiency at National Grid, an electric and gas utility in the Northeast. “Not, ‘What in my house uses energy?’ but, ‘How do I use it?’ ”
The need to find ways to encourage long-term conservation is ever more critical, utility executives and efficiency experts say. At least 25 states have set specific goals for reductions in energy use that in many cases will continue to increase even as electrical demands and the grid’s complexity keep growing.
In 2010, the total budget for utility customer energy efficiency programs was $4.6 billion, up more than four times from the $1.1 billion spent on such programs a decade earlier, according to the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. The vast potential of the energy efficiency market has spurred interest in home energy management from major companies like Verizon and Comcast as well as a fleet of start-ups.
But getting people to care about their electricity and work with their utilities is a battle. Electricity is “boring and it’s cheap,” said Alex Laskey, an Opower co-founder. Many efforts have already foundered: Microsoft, Google and Cisco Systems have pulled back from their ventures, and Tendril, a start-up that works with utilities including Southern California Edison and Con Ed, lost two executives and cut its staff in May, as it raised money to finance its operations.
Part of the challenge is that while most people see saving money as a good thing, it is not enough by itself to change habits in the long term. The average household spends about 2 percent of its income on electricity, so a 10 percent reduction in power use doesn’t add up to much, Mr. Laskey said.
Instead, people can be motivated by more emotional factors, like the sense of achievement that comes from setting and reaching goals or one-upping a neighbor, or the sense of belonging that comes from mimicking friends or participating in a communitywide challenge.
Nonetheless, a little financial reward, coupled with a clear display of energy savings, can be just the nudge customers need.
One program managed by C3, a company that contracts with utilities to run loyalty programs, awards participants two points for every kilowatt-hour less in electricity they use each month compared with the year before they joined. Customers can redeem the points for gift cards or discounts at places like Staples and Amazon.com, or local restaurants and shops. The company uses demographic and behavioral information to present specific offers to customers — discounts on school supplies in the fall to households with children, for instance, said Tom Scaramellino, senior vice president and general manager of C3.
Mark Lattanzi, who has been in the program for about a year through the Western Massachusetts Electric Company, said he had shaved about a third off his bill, through replacing his old electric water heater and a range of small behavior changes like turning off the lights and using the clothesline. It helps, he said, to receive an automatic monthly e-mail that shows how his electricity use compares with the same month in his baseline year.
And the rewards points are an incentive, too. Mr. Lattanzi has already earned a $10 gift card for Whole Foods and is waiting to use the rest at restaurants that are joining the program.
“Restaurants that I already go to are giving me discounts and gift cards because I saved a little money on my electric bill?” he said. “That’s a win-win.”
Ref: The New York Times
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Light-emitting diodes are tiny electronic devices that emit far more light per unit of electricity than incandescent lamps or even compact fluorescents. But in the move to replace energy-gobbling incandescents, LEDs face a steeper climb in the marketplace than compact fluorescents do because they are more expensive.
Ikea, not known as a retailer of pricey products, announced that beginning in 2016 all of the lighting products it sells will be LEDs, as will all of the lighting in its stores. The company phased out incandescents in 2010 (and plastic bags in 2007).
Congress passed a law in 2007 that mandates a phaseout of traditional incandescents, although House Republicans have intermittently sought to repeal it. The national phaseout begins with the larger-wattage bulbs, starting with the 100-watt variety this year.
Some of Ikea’s floor lamps and table lamps will be of a type that only accepts LED bulbs; others will have standard screw-base sockets that can accommodate compact fluorescents or incandescents.
Ikea said it had undertaken a global study and found that 43 percent of Americans have at least one LED lamp in their homes. In China, the figure is 80 percent, in Russia 65 percent, and in Sweden, 61 percent, the company said.
Willingness to spend at least $10 on a bulb hinges on consumers’ perceptions of energy costs. An Ikea survey found that 69 percent of Americans believe that “lighting accounts for up to 40 percent of their electric bill,” the company said. But according to the Energy Information Administration, lighting consumes about 18 percent of the energy used in the residential and commercial sectors, and 13 percent of total national electricity consumption.
At a national residential average price of 11 cents per kilowatt-hour, a 60-watt incandescent that burns for six hours a day would cost about $14.50 a year in consumed energy. LED manufacturers say they can produce the same amount of light for 9 watts. That would amount to savings of $12.20 a year.
“People need to understand what they’re buying,” said Mike Ward, the chief executive of Ikea in the United States. And prices will come down further, he predicted. The company now sells a lamp that is the equivalent of a 40-watt incandescent for $12.99, but “I wouldn’t be surprised to cut that in half in the next four years,” he said. Soon it will introduce an equivalent to the 60-watt incandescent, he said.
In switching to compact fluorescents, some consumers found that those bulbs did not always give good light or could not be used with a dimmer. “That kind of mind-set gets transferred automatically to another technology,” Mr. Ward said of the LEDs. But LEDs do not have those shortcomings, he said, and unlike compact fluorescents, they do not contain harmful mercury.
Ikea claims a 20-year lifetime for the LEDs, far longer than that of an incandescent or a compact fluorescent, although some people who have bought the lamps have reported that the bulbs did not always live up to that claim.
Ref: The New York Times
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As the phaseout of incandescent bulbs takes effect, more efficient substitutes are coming to market. Osram Sylvania has announced that it is now selling a light-emitting-diode bulb that emits light equivalent to a 100-watt incandescent. While 100-watt-equivalent L.E.D. spotlights have already been introduced, this is apparently the first bulb-shaped omnidirectional light to enter American stores.
The bulb joins a line of L.E.D. lamps that are meant to replace 40-, 60- and 75-watt incandescents.
Sales volume may not be high at first, though: the suggested retail price is $49.98.
Osram Sylvania, based in Danvers, Mass., says the bulb will save $220 over its life by comparison with an incandescent. But the main competition is probably not an incandescent but a compact fluorescent, which Sylvania itself sells for a little over $3.
To make the same light as a 100-watt incandescent, a compact fluorescent uses 23 watts and an L.E.D. uses 20. But the L.E.D. has a longer life — around 25,000 hours — meaning businesses will that have to spend less money on dispatching workers with ladders to change bulbs. That may make it attractive in commercial use. It works well in the cold, so it is suitable for an outdoor fixture. It can work on a dimmer, and its bulbous shape may give it consumer appeal.
The light color is closer to incandescent, too. And all fluorescent bulbs use at least some mercury, which is toxic. L.E.D.s do not.
A ban on the manufacture of 100-watt incandescent bulbs was supposed to take effect at the beginning of this year, but Congress passed a six-month measure to forbid the Energy Department from enforcing it. The measure was recently renewed and now runs until March 2013, although as a practical matter nearly all such manufacturing has stopped anyway.
The manufacture of 75-watt lamps is supposed to end at the end of this year, followed by 60 watts a year after that.
Ikea said a month ago that it would sell only L.E.D.’s and drop compact fluorescents, beginning in 2016. But for now, most of the L.E.D.’s are 40-watt-equivalent or less.
On another front, L.E.D.’s got a foot in the door of tens of thousands of American homes in Sandy’s path in recent weeks in the form of battery-powered lanterns and flashlights.
Ref: The New York Times
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Although priced at around 20 times more than the old-fashioned incandescents, bulbs based on LEDs, or light-emitting diodes, last much longer and use far less electricity, a saving that homeowners are beginning to recognize. Prices for the bulbs are falling steadily.
And because the light in LED bulbs comes from chips, companies have been able to develop software applications that let users control the bulbs, even change the color of the light, with tablets and smartphones. Apple sells a three-pack of such bulbs, made by Philips, with the hardware to operate them for about $200.
Last year, LED sales, though small at about 3 percent of the residential market by some estimates, grew faster than those of any other lighting technology, according to retailers and analysts.
Among A-type bulbs, the most common, LEDs will outsell incandescents in North America in 2014, according to projections by IMS Research, an electronics research firm that is now part of IHS Inc. And LEDs will become the most popular A-type technology by 2016, with North American shipments reaching almost 370 million, a more than tenfold increase from the roughly 33 million shipped last year, the firm estimates.
Already at Philips, LEDs were responsible for 20 percent of lighting sales last year, according to Ed Crawford, general manager of the lamps division.
Incandescent bulbs, while cheap, are very inefficient, wasting most of their energy as heat as they pump electricity into filaments to make them glow. The government has been pushing consumers to other technologies for several years, in part by phasing out the manufacture or import of the least efficient bulbs.
The first big alternative to emerge, compact fluorescent bulbs, has left many consumers dissatisfied. The light quality is seen as harsher, the bulbs can be slow to warm up and difficult to dim, and they contain toxic materials.
LEDs are more expensive, but offer better light quality and more flexibility. And thanks to heavy marketing by retailers, customers are beginning to discover their appeal. Bulb manufacturers are rushing into the market, sending prices falling.
For the manufacturers, LEDs pose a new challenge. They offer higher profit margins, but because they can last for decades, people will be buying fewer bulbs — of any sort. The Energy Information Administration estimates that total light bulb sales will fall by almost 40 percent by 2015, to just under a billion from 1.52 billion bulbs, and continue their decline to about 530 million by 2035, with LEDs making up a steadily increasing portion of the market. As a result, many companies are competing to establish themselves as popular brands.
With demand growing for LEDs in other uses — like backlighted phone and computer screens, automotive lights and street lamps — manufacturers have been able to develop their technologies and benefit from economies of scale to help bring the price down.
In the commercial and industrial sector, use of LEDs is more common than in homes, analysts say, because companies are more likely to do the long-term cost-benefit analysis of buying lighting than homeowners, who are still largely driven by the upfront price.
Goldman Sachs estimates that in the residential sector, penetration of LEDs will rise from 3 percent last year to 16 percent in 2015, still lagging the commercial and industrial sector as well as outdoor applications like parking lots and billboards.
At the same time, in an effort to transform light bulbs from a cheap, disposable product into something that consumers might show off to their friends, manufacturers have been adding functions that could ultimately fit into a larger home automation system. Often Bluetooth- or Wi-Fi-enabled, a new generation of LED bulbs offers all manner of new remote controls and automatic responses. The Philips Hue, sold exclusively at Apple stores for the next month, can change colors along a broad spectrum and offers settings that can mimic sunrise in the morning or use a special “light recipe” intended to raise energy levels. The bulb has been a big hit, executives say, attracting a host of software developers who have created free apps for new features, like making it respond to voices or music. The bulb can also tie into the Nest thermostat, a so-called smart device from Apple alumni who helped develop the iPod, that learns consumer heating and cooling patterns and adjusts to them automatically.
Today the average person can get a hint of the lifestyle of people like Bill Gates of Microsoft, who lives in a house loaded with high-tech conveniences.
LEDs are more expensive, but offer better light quality and more flexibility. And thanks to heavy marketing by retailers, customers are beginning to discover their appeal. Bulb manufacturers are rushing into the market, sending prices falling.
For the manufacturers, LEDs pose a new challenge. They offer higher profit margins, but because they can last for decades, people will be buying fewer bulbs — of any sort. The Energy Information Administration estimates that total light bulb sales will fall by almost 40 percent by 2015, to just under a billion from 1.52 billion bulbs, and continue their decline to about 530 million by 2035, with LEDs making up a steadily increasing portion of the market. As a result, many companies are competing to establish themselves as popular brands.
With demand growing for LEDs in other uses — like backlighted phone and computer screens, automotive lights and street lamps — manufacturers have been able to develop their technologies and benefit from economies of scale to help bring the price down.
In the commercial and industrial sector, use of LEDs is more common than in homes, analysts say, because companies are more likely to do the long-term cost-benefit analysis of buying lighting than homeowners, who are still largely driven by the upfront price.
Goldman Sachs estimates that in the residential sector, penetration of LEDs will rise from 3 percent last year to 16 percent in 2015, still lagging the commercial and industrial sector as well as outdoor applications like parking lots and billboards.
At the same time, in an effort to transform light bulbs from a cheap, disposable product into something that consumers might show off to their friends, manufacturers have been adding functions that could ultimately fit into a larger home automation system. Often Bluetooth- or Wi-Fi-enabled, a new generation of LED bulbs offers all manner of new remote controls and automatic responses. The Philips Hue, sold exclusively at Apple stores for the next month, can change colors along a broad spectrum and offers settings that can mimic sunrise in the morning or use a special “light recipe” intended to raise energy levels. The bulb has been a big hit, executives say, attracting a host of software developers who have created free apps for new features, like making it respond to voices or music. The bulb can also tie into the Nest thermostat, a so-called smart device from Apple alumni who helped develop the iPod, that learns consumer heating and cooling patterns and adjusts to them automatically.
Today the average person can get a hint of the lifestyle of people like Bill Gates of Microsoft, who lives in a house loaded with high-tech conveniences.
Ref: The New York Times
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PHILIPS HUE For $200, you get a box with three flat-top bulbs and a round plastic transmitter, which plugs into your network router. At that point, you can control both the brightness and colors of these lights using an iPhone or Android phone app, either in your home or from across the Internet, manually or on a schedule.
LED bulbs on the market include those made by, left to right, GreenWave, Philips and TorchStar.
It offers icons for predefined combinations like Sunset (all three bulbs are orange) and Deep Sea (each bulb is a different underwaterish color). You can also create your own color schemes — by choosing a photo whose tones you want reproduced. You can dim any bulb, or turn them all off at once from your phone. (Additional bulbs, up to 500, are $60 each.)
Philips gets credit for doing something fresh with LED technology; the white color is pure and bright; and it’s a blast to show them off for visitors. Still, alas, the novelty wears off fairly quickly.
INSTEON This kit ($130 for the transmitter, $30 for each 60-watt-equivalent bulb) is a lot like Philips’s, except that there’s no color-changing; you just use the phone app to control the white lights, individually or en masse. Impressively, each bulb consumes only 8 watts. You can expand the system up to 1,000 bulbs, if you’re insane.
Unfortunately, the prerelease version I tested was a disaster. Setup was a headache. You had to sign up for an account. The instructions referred to buttons that didn’t exist. You had to “pair” each bulb with the transmitter individually. Once paired, the bulbs frequently fell off the network entirely. Bleah.
GREENWAVE SOLUTION This control-your-LED-lights kit doesn’t change colors, but you get four bulbs, not three, in the $200 kit. You get both a network transmitter and a remote control that requires neither network nor smartphone. Up to 500 bulbs (a reasonable $20 each) can respond. Setting up remote control over the Internet is easy.
The app is elegant and powerful. It has presets like Home, Away and Night, which turns off all lights in the house with one tap. You can also program your own schedules, light-bulb groups and dimming levels.
Unfortunately, these are only “40-watt” bulbs. Worse, each has a weird cap on its dome; in other words, light comes out only in a band around the equator of each bulb. They’re not omnidirectional.
The bottom line: Choose the Cree bulbs for their superior design and low price, Philips Hue to startle houseguests, or the GreenWave system for remote control of all the lights in your house.
By setting new brightness-per-watt standards that the 135-year-old incandescent technology can’t meet, the federal government has already effectively banned incandescent bulbs.
LED bulbs last decades, save electricity, don’t shatter, don’t burn you, save hundreds of dollars, and now offer plummeting prices and blossoming features. What’s not to like? You’d have to be a pretty dim bulb not to realize that LED light is the future.
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People sometimes have trouble making small sacrifices now that will reward them handsomely later. How often do we ignore the advice to make a few diet and exercise changes to live a longer, healthier life? Or to put some money aside to grow into a nest egg? Intellectually, we get it — but instant gratification is a powerful force.
You don’t have to be one of those self-defeating rubes. Start buying LED light bulbs.
You’ve probably seen LED flashlights, the LED “flash” on phone cameras and LED indicator lights on electronics. But LED bulbs, for use in the lamps and light sockets of your home, have been slow to arrive, mainly because of their high price: their electronics and heat-management features have made them much, much more expensive than other kinds of bulbs.
That’s a pity, because LED bulbs are a gigantic improvement over incandescent bulbs and even the compact fluorescents, or CFLs, that the world spent several years telling us to buy.
LEDs last about 25 times as long as incandescents and three times as long as CFLs; we’re talking maybe 25,000 hours of light. Install one today, and you may not own your house, or even live, long enough to see it burn out. (Actually, LED bulbs generally don’t burn out at all; they just get dimmer.)
You know how hot incandescent bulbs become. That’s because they convert only 5 to 10 percent of your electricity into light; they waste the rest as heat. LED bulbs are far more efficient. They convert 60 percent of their electricity into light, so they consume far less electricity. You pay less, you pollute less.
But wait, there’s more: LED bulbs also turn on to full brightness instantly. They’re dimmable. The light color is wonderful; you can choose whiter or warmer bulbs. They’re rugged, too. It’s hard to break an LED bulb, but if the worst should come to pass, a special coating prevents flying shards.
Yet despite all of these advantages, few people install LED lights. They never get farther than: “$30 for a light bulb? That’s nuts!” Never mind that they will save about $200 in replacement bulbs and electricity over 25 years. (More, if your electric company offers LED-lighting rebates.)
Surely there’s some price, though, where that math isn’t so off-putting. What if each bulb were only $15? Or $10?
Well, guess what? We’re there. LED bulbs now cost less than $10.
Nor is that the only recent LED breakthrough. The light from an LED bulb doesn’t have to be white. Several companies make bulbs that can be any color you want.
I tried out a whole Times Square’s worth of LED bulbs and kits from six manufacturers. May these capsule reviews shed some light on the latest in home illumination.
3M ADVANCED LED BULBS On most LED bulbs, heat-dissipating fins adorn the stem. (The glass of an LED bulb never gets hot, but the circuitry does. And the cooler the bulb, the better its efficiency.) As a result, light shines out only from the top of the bulb.
But the 3M bulbs’ fins are low enough that you get lovely, omnidirectional light.
These are weird-looking, though, with a strange reflective material in the glass and odd slots on top. You won’t care about aesthetics if the bulb is hidden in a lamp, but $25 each is unnecessarily expensive; read on.
CREE LED BULBS The great thing about these bulbs is that they look almost exactly like incandescent bulbs. Cree says that its bulbs are extraordinarily efficient; its “60-watt” daylight bulb consumes only nine watts of juice (compared with 13 watts on the 3M, for example). As a result, this bulb runs cooler, so its heat sink can be much smaller and nicer looking.
TORCHSTAR
Each comes with a flat, plastic remote control that can be used to dim the lights, turn them on and off, or change their color (the remote has 15 color buttons). You can also make them pulse, flash or strobe, which is totally annoying.
The TorchStars never get totally white — only a feeble blue — and they’re not very bright. But you get the point: LED bulbs can do more than just turn on and be white.
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Small amounts of mercury can be released into the environment when CFLs break, or if they are improperly disposed of at the end of their useful lives. Despite these emissions, the use of CFLs actually helps reduce total mercury emissions in the U.S. because of their significant energy savings. Using energy-saving CFLs reduces demand for electricity, which in turn reduces the amount of coal burned by power plants, which reduces emissions of mercury when the coal is burned.
Saving energy helps you save money on utility bills. You can learn more about CFLs, and CFLs and mercury, from EnergyStar.gov.
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In the debate over the merits of incandescent light bulbs versus compact fluorescent lamps, LED bulbs have become a viable alternative. Switch Lighting is hoping to ride the wave of rising consumer interest with its own series of LED bulbs.
Switch assembled a team of engineers and physicists in its Silicon Valley headquarters in 2007, and produced a bulb last year with distinct design that has won several innovation awards.
The bulb incorporates technology that Switch calls a LQD cooling system, a patented design that bathes the LED with a coolant made of liquid silicone. The liquid diffuses the light over the surface of the bulb, producing light that is omnidirectional and illuminating a room similar to the way an incandescent does. The shape is similar, too, for those who prefer traditional A-series light bulbs.
The Switch bulbs turn on instantly, unlike fluorescent lighting, and are compatible with standard dimmers. Their durable design makes them much harder to break than incandescent or fluorescent bulbs.
Make the investment now, Switch says, and you will be rewarded with lower electric bills for years to come. According to Switch, the bulbs have a lifespan of 25,000 hours, 25 times longer than an incandescent. They come in wattage equivalents of their incandescent counterparts; for instance, the Switch60 bulb emits 800 lumens, about the same as a 60-watt incandescent bulb.
Switch says its bulbs can be used in any fixture, even enclosed, recessed or outdoors.
The light was warm, reminiscent of the incandescent bulbs I used to use, and not as white as the light from the CFL. Switch bulbs probably won’t appeal to everyone, but those who value good design from a premium product will appreciate them.
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