LED Lighting: Finally Ready for Primetime?

Let There Be Light

I’m a huge sceptic when it comes to new lighting technologies. Nothing seems to work quite as well as a good old-fashioned incandescent light bulb.  Yes, they are inefficient, they give off large amounts of heat and  yes, they have a short lifespan.  However, they are relatively cheap, provide a nice warm light, they are dimmable and are simple to dispose of.  There is an almost endless variety of incandescent lighting options.   In the Northwest, with our filtered sunshine and 9 months of gray skies, good lighting is vital.

It’s particularly important in our kitchen, which is the hub of our home.  It’s where we cook, eat, entertain, do homework–live.  As in a lot of recently constructed homes, we have standard 6″ can lighting in most of our living areas.  Can lighting generally works well, but requires a fairly bright light, a broad beam, and cans strategically placed to illuminate a room. This usually means a light with at least 65 Watts.  In our Kitchen alone we have 10 can lights.

For the past 5 years, we’ve been replacing the contractor installed, 65W incandescent bulbs, with 75W GE Edison Halogen PAR36 bulbs.  After a bit of experimentation, I found these did a much better job of providing a warm and pleasing light source.  They are more expensive than standard bulbs, they run about $8 each, but claim to have a life span approximately double that of a standard incandescent bulb.  The light output is far superior to a standard incandescent bulb, but they produce a lot of heat.  This is particularly a problem in the summer when our grossly underpowered Northwest A/C unit is struggling to keep us all from melting.  After 10+ years living here, we have a pretty low melting point.

CFL (not the Canadian Football League)

Until very recently, the only commercially available option has been the Compact Fluorescent bulb or CFL, which is manufactured in a variety of forms and which allows it to replace many incandescent lights.  I hate CFLs.  They produce terrible light, they flicker, they are noisy, and they are dangerous.  Given that there has been a concerted effort by the global environment movement to push governments to outlaw incandescent bulbs and force the use of CFLs, I quickly joined the resistance movement.

Added to the CFLs list of sins are high cost and mercury, about 4 to 5 mg per bulb.   Used CFLs need to be disposed at a toxic waste depot rather than tossed out with the ordinary household trash. Because mercury is cumulative, this poisonous element would add up if all the spent bulbs went into a landfill. Instead, the mercury in dead bulbs is reclaimed at such depots and recycled.  A broken CFL requires special cleanup.  According to the EPA, if a CFL breaks in your home you should follow the following cleanup procedures:

1. Before cleanup
   • Have people and pets leave the room.
   • Air out the room for 5-10 minutes by opening a window or door to the outdoor environment.
   • Shut off the central forced air heating/air-conditioning system, if you have one.
   • Collect materials needed to clean up broken bulb.
2. During cleanup
   • Be thorough in collecting broken glass and visible powder.
   • Place cleanup materials in a sealable container.
3. After cleanup
   • Promptly place all bulb debris and cleanup materials outdoors in a trash container or protected area until materials can be disposed of properly. Avoid leaving any bulb fragments or cleanup materials indoors.
   • If practical, continue to air out the room where the bulb was broken and leave the heating/air conditioning system shut off for several hours.

For a look at the detailed cleanup recommendation, see the EPA website.  I refuse to use CFLs.  I refuse to allow environmentalist whackos to dictate which products will be available to consumers and which won’t.  If there is a need to replace the good old incandescent light bulb, I have faith the free market will provide.

Enter LED

LED which stands for Light Emitting Diode is not a new technology, it’s been around for several years, 1962 to be exact.  The first LEDs were relatively low power and emitted a red light.  Today LEDs can emit light across the visible, infrared and ultraviolet electromagnetic spectrum.

LED usage in commercial and residential lighting is just now taking off.  Previously, LED lights that could replicate the warm light of an incandescent light, or even the blue/white light of a CFL were prohibitively expensive and therefore commercially inviable.  In early 2010, I experimented with a Philips AmbientLED™ PAR30L Indoor Flood.  It was $59 at Home Depot.  It claimed to give off the light of a 50W incandescent bulb, but at only 11W.  At the time, the Philips bulb was the best LED lighting I’d ever seen.  It was relatively bright, instant on, very well-built and came with a 15-year lifetime.  It had some downsides.  The light was not very bright (it couldn’t replace a 40w bulb, in my opinion) and it was not dimmable.  Because of its high price and low light output, I decided against purchasing it as a replacement bulb for the kitchen and I continued to buy the GE Edison Halogens.

Last week while at Home Depot, a helpful employee saw that I was purchasing some replacement bulbs and he asked if I had seen the latest in LED lighting.  I told him about my experience with the Philips AmbientLED™ PAR30L and he said, “no, you’ve got to see the latest from EcoSmart”.

EcoSmart LED

The EcoSmart E26 10.5-Watt (65W) LED Down light Light Bulb produces 575 lumens with 10.5 watts of power and can last for up to 35,000 hours. The LED bulb features Cree TrueWhite technology for efficiency and color accuracy and can be used to replace a standard 65-watt bulb.  This thing is amazing. Here’s a quick demo.  Impressive huh?  Now since this unit replaces more than just the bulb, the installation is a bit more complicated.  I found the installation took me about 5 minutes, most of that time was getting a ladder from the garage and reading through the provided instructions. After installation, I went to YouTube and found a number of great installation videos, so I decided not to make one myself. Here’s the best one I found.

Here’s some quick stats:

• Light output: 575 lumens
• 90 CRI
• 2700K
• Dimmable to 5%
• Energy used: 10.5 watts
• Life hours: 35,000 hours
• Cree TrueWhite® Technology delivers high efficiency and color accuracy
• Energy Star qualified to meet or exceed federal guidelines for energy efficiency for year-round energy and money savings
• Uses up to 85% less energy than comparable incandescent down lights
• Uses up to 50% less energy than comparable fluorescent down lights
• Reduces cooling costs by producing little heat

I hope this was interesting and helpful.  The Home Depot employee told me he’s had a couple of customers try these and replace every can light in their homes all at once.  One customer spent almost $1500, but reported his power bill had gone down by 70%.  I’m going to take take a different approach.  I plan to replace my incandescent fixtures as the bulbs die, rather than a wholesale replacement.   As with any new technology, things change rapidly and I expect this lighting to get better and less expensive.  Once again, the power of free-market capitalism.