LED Lighting - Use More Electricity?

BoilerMan said:

On topic: I actually prefer the orange-yellow light of the HPS (high pressure sodium) lights, much easier on the eyes at night, especially with snow on the ground.

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My opinion is split between high pressure sodium or 4000K LED's in full-cutoff fixtures. I don't think they are using full-cutoff fixtures in my area - all of the LED streetlights I'm seeing cause a moderate amount of glare, so I'm finding them more obnoxious than the HPS lights, even though the latter illuminate most colors poorly.

I'd love it if they would use 2500-3000K LED's for the streetlights. We'd get better illumination than equivalent lumens in HPS, but less glare than the current LED's.

I wonder how much cost is driving the 4000K choice versus city engineer's reading the spec sheets and choosing the highest efficiency while ignoring lighting quality. 4000K LED's can get slightly higher efficiency than lower color temps, although with the other factors considered, they could probably get away with slightly lower brightness at lower color temps, making it a wash.

But as I understand it, the manufacturers don't have perfect control over the color temperature of the LED's they produce, so they test and sort them coming off the production line. The large numbers of low color temperature LED's being used for household lighting probably leaves a lot of excess high color temperature LED's to sell. I'm sure they could tighten up the variation with better process control, but that would increase costs a bit.

Just confirming that the craftsman garage door openers eat bulbs. Same thing, I switched over to using CFL's which haven't burned out on the unit yet. Maybe this is the best use for a CFL anymore.

Garage door openers are one of the places rough service bulbs are recommended. The repetitive vibrations can shake the filaments of regular bulbs to pieces relatively quickly.

Flourescents and LED's both seem to be acceptable alternatives to a rough service incandescent, based on my very limited experience in that regards.

Our eyes obviously adjust to differences in color temp, as you can see by staring a single color for a long time and seeing the complement, etc.

One factor is simple contrast. In a house full on incandescents, where someone buys a couple daylight CFLs or LEDs, they look glaringly wrong.

Another factor is the limitation of color temp as a descriptor....CRI = 80 is really not that great for color rendering and making things look ok, but it is a de facto standard on the cheap end. I think CRI80 in a warm white bulb is 'ok' for most people in terms of color rendering, but CRI80 for daylight bulbs is simply terrible. I suspect a 'daylight' bulb that actually emitted a solar spectrum (CRI=100) would be perfectly acceptable, or even preferable to most people.

I stumbled upon an LED tri-lite bulb in a store today. Didn't know there was such a thing - then I saw them in 2 more stores after that. It was kinda pricey at $25 but I brought one home with me. We have a tri-light lamp in a corner of our living room that is on all the time in the evenings, and I had kind of accepted that it would be incandescent forever. Even had two colour choices - warm (2500+/-) or daylite (5000+/-). I went with warm. I just put it in, now we'll see if my better half notices the difference when she gets home.

$25.

(As posted )

Snagdaddy said:

Just confirming that the craftsman garage door openers eat bulbs. Same thing, I switched over to using CFL's which haven't burned out on the unit yet. Maybe this is the best use for a CFL anymore.

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Interesting... It just did it on one unit for me, but it consumed two in quick succession.

Looks like you did ok, these two are $19 for 100W equivalent max or $30 for 150W equivalent max:

40W/60W/100W:
http://www.amazon.com/Philips-45334...qid=1452127937&sr=1-1&keywords=3-way+led+bulb

50/100/150W:
http://www.amazon.com/GE-Lighting-9...qid=1452127937&sr=1-2&keywords=3-way+led+bulb

Both would pay for themselves in ~2000 hours of runtime, or maybe 1.5 years.

The one I got was a GE, but a 30/70/100.

Light is still on, and no comments on it yet. I think its close enough to the old incandescent that there isn't a noticeable difference, actually.

velvetfoot said:

Funny you should say that. I've gone through two led bulbs on one of my three openers. Have no idea why.

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The led frequency interferes with the garage door opener. LED'S are not good for garage door openers.

ECSEfficiency said:

The led frequency interferes with the garage door opener. LED'S are not good for garage door openers.

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Finally, a good use for all the CFLs I have. Too bad I don't have a garage door opener.

ECSEfficiency said:

The led frequency interferes with the garage door opener. LED'S are not good for garage door openers.

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Interfer how? Does it effect the range of the remote?

ECSEfficiency said:

The led frequency interferes with the garage door opener. LED'S are not good for garage door openers.

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The lower prices brands of LEDs will cause interference, have had problems with Utilitech (lowes), Great value brand (walmart), SOME of the Ecosmart (home depot) and SOME of the lower priced Phillips lamps. Have had good results with the higher prices Phillips, name brand CREE and TCP lamps.

If you install led lamps on garage lights or a motion sensor or the garage door opener it self and your garage door stops working you might have to swap them out with another brand. We had problem with Phillips Par 38 lamps about 4 generations ago causing problems with WIFI when we put them in some recessed cans in a conference room, when we replaced them with the newest generation we had no interference issues.

jebatty said:

Work just fine in my two garage door openers.

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me too.