LED lamps are now available to replace incandescent bulbs and mercury-laden CFL’s. But they ain’t cheap. this one, suitable for replacing a 100-watt floodlight, sells for a whopping $90. Based on the reduced power consumption (11 watts instead of the comparable incandescent’s 100 watts), they claim a payback period of 5 years.
So why is this thing so expensive? Do they actually cost that much to manufacture, or are they just extremely popular, and “green” homeowners are willing to accept a 5-year payback for the benefit of being “green?” (I recognize that the former does not rule out the latter.)
Sure - judging from the pics at my link, there are 9 high-power LED’s there, and you’ll need electronics to fiddle with the voltage, and wires and/or a circuit board to connect it all - but that much more? We’re talking about a $6 incandescent floodlight versus a $90 LED lamp.
They’re costly mostly because the technology is still fairly new. There’s nothing inherently expensive about their manufacture (like rare raw materials or extreme energy requirements), but they’re still developing more efficient manufacturing techniques, and the companies are still paying off their R&D costs.
LED technology in itself is fairly old. But, coming up with a proper white light is a different thing entirely. There are plenty of high-power, low-cost, “white” LEDs out there but their color temperature (the actual color of white) is not very pleasing for people especially for reading and “desk” work. Think long the lines of HID lamps from a nice car. That’s the color.
The reason for this is that LEDs have a fairly narrow spectral emission. Which is what makes them really efficient. A red LED produces a lot of red light for the power applied as it only produces a narrow band of red. An actual incandescent bulb has a huge spectral emission in comparison but is less efficient because of this. However, a more pleasing color is produced and tailoring it is fairly easy.
So, back to a LED bulb again, it’s a lot harder to make a LED that has the larger spectral emission and in doing so it starts to loose its efficiency which is what makes LEDs worth it. I am pretty sure, that if you were to actually make a 100W LED bulb that produced the same amount and quality of light as an incandescent bulb it would not be as efficient.
The ones that I have seen are best for short-range spot lights. I have not seen one that was able to light up a room the way a normal bulb can.
The white LED’s that produce the warmer tones of white, which is more
You betcha! I needed a new desk lamp, and after reading user reviews on Amazon for a bunch of them, settled on one that most people seemed to like. Cost $49. and had a gooseneck which I wanted. When it came, I was astonished at how dim it was, and it only covered a small circle.
I have a very small LED flashlight, which I pulled out to compare. Guess what, it was about twice as bright. Weird.
On a related note, the city recently replaced the sodium vapor street lamps in my neighborhood with white LED street lamps. They are excessively bright, to the point that looking at them directly hurts the eyes.
They’re having problems using led stoplights here because of the lack of heat they emit. Typical lights were self defrosting and immune to snow/ice build up.
The new leds don’t heat up. The city is now shelling out money for crews to clean the snow and ice off of them until they figure out a solution.
I bought a LED “40 watt replacement” bulb, but it’s actually only about as bright as a nightlight - maybe less. Luckily I bought it for the litterbox room and cats have good night vision.