Does anyone have LED lightbulbs? (not Xmas lights)

[hugh]

I'm curious if anyone has LED light bulbs and if so what are they like?

[Alan Bealby]

I have a Sylvania LED floor reading lamp with a sort of bullet style hood. It does not have a bulb though as the LEDs are built into the lamp fixture and cannot be replaced. I believe that LEDs can be found in flashlights, car headlights, traffic lights, Xmas lights, TV back lighting strips (see the postings on the IKEA TRETTIOEN), and other applications. But I have not yet seen any references to LED light bulb replacements for incandescent light bulbs. One of the problems I am sure is that the LEDs give a directed light beam and not the diffuse light of an incandescent bulb. My reading lamp is sure not ideal in that it gives too narrow a light beam that is a bit too weak for my situation.

[hugh]

Interesting. Thanks Alan. I was curious since LED Xmas lights are selling like hotcakes these days.

[Jake]

I looked into LED GU10 bulbs to no avail. Seems popular in Europe tho. I did find some CFLs at Rona for $14 each in a GU10 base instead. Ouch! Finding the lumen rating is hard too for LED lights. I didn't want to replace my recessed lighting and track lighting which uses GU10 bulbs with something that is less bright.

Good lumen info.

LEDs seems to be about 20 lm/w.

[dabell]

Here is a company in California that has some listed, expensive, but the $$ would be made back over time.

http://www.ccrane.com/lights/led-light-bulbs/index.aspx

[Jake]

Not so sure. A $2 23 watt CFL gives 60 lm/w. Whereas a typical LED only gives 30-40 lm/w. Assuming the CFL lasts 5000 hrs and the LED 50000 hrs you would have to pay less than $20 for 1380 LED lumen to break even. Not even close since 200 lumen LED will set you back $60.

[actuator]

Hey,

I am not too sure of the model numbers, but I have LED replacement bulbs for halogen lights, a business partner of mine imports them directly. They are not nearly as bright as halogen however. They do run much cooler and more efficiently though.

dave.

[jnowl]

http://ledkoolight.com/products/GU10.htm

I've been wondering about LED bulbs as well, and found these for Canada.

Not sure if they are dimmable as I'd like to do the same as others and replace some pot light bulbs.

Also would think they would be getting more attention if it was working...

[Maxwedge]

People are trying to do everything with LED in a lighting application and the current technology as far as output is not quite there yet. The same thing happened years ago with the compact fluorescent. Too many "Rube Goldberg" retrofitting into all types of lighting fixtures. Remember seeing pot lights with the tubes sticking out below the ceiling line? The surrounding optics (that were originally designed for incandescent "A" (standard household screw in lamps) and "R" and "Par" (Flood lamps) did not perform well with the screw-in Compact Fluorescent (CF) style lamp and resulted in far less light because of poor fixture optical efficiencies. Same thing for the LED. Manufacturers are tripping over themselves to release current non-LED fixtures jammed full of LED's often with poor output due to both a poor optical design and low lumen/watt LED lamps.
Good Applications of LED:
Traffic Signals (dozens of LED's in a properly designed reflector/retractor system.
Recessed Step Lights - Low illumination Theater aisles, hospital rooms etc.

Bad Applications: Many due to lagging technology.

Future does look "Brighter" while the efficacy is being improved with each new generation of LED design.

[dudler]

just looking at that website with the gu10 led bulbs.....what one is the brightest? see 3 models for the gu10s, two with 48 leds and one with 60. but the 60 led light has less lumens.

i am confused! help! i think i will order some of these to try out, but want some input. i'll email the company, but if any readers can help me out first, let me know!

dude

[Edival]

I've been looking for a dimmable florescent/LED GU10 since I got my new track lights. I saw some in Europe, but not impressed with the dimming feature. Can you let us know if you can dim these ones?

[Jake]

According to the table GK-GU10-3*1W-CW3 costs $91 for a 3W bulb and produce 300 lumens. Your current halogen GU10s cost $2 for a 50W bulb and produce 450 lumens.

Lets assume the halogen last 2000 hours and LED 50000 hours. That is 25:1 ratio. After 50000 hour usage you costs would be (assuming a 1.5 ratio for equivalent lumen out).

LED: 1.5*($91 + 3W * 50kwh * $0.08/kWh) = $154.50

HAL: ($2/bulb * 25 bulbs + 50W * 50kWh *$0.08/kWh) = $250.00

Assuming an average of 4 hours of usage per day it works out to 34 years usage. Or a savings of $2.80 per year per bulb!

Now having said that I know I can find halogens at Costco for less than $2 and are rated for more that 2000 hours. We can also expect LEDs to drop in price and increase in lumen output. Best bet is to wait a few years. These LEDs may be like my Christmas light LEDs, where some only lasted about 2 seasons before dimming significantly.

[PlaceHolder]

I'm curious if anyone on the forum has recent experience with buying and using LED light bulbs for residential use? In particular, I am interested in bulbs that support being dimmed by traditional (but modern) dimmers.

My usage: I have a number of ceiling fans that have attached lights that are switched by a dimmer switch. Right now I have standard 60W incandescent bulbs in these fixtures because I have been unable to find a dimmable CFL that fits in the light fixture. (There is no room for a bulb taking more space than a traditional incandescent bulb.)

I'm feeling guilty for not "greening" these fixtures... but I'm not really feeling guilty enough to buy $100+ LED bulbs... Is there something cheaper or am I a little ahead of the curve yet?

[spensar]

Sounds like a little ahead of the curve. With the CFL disposal issues I hope that LED becomes much more main stream. Right now it is more a niche market.

[hugh]

We redid our kitchen last year and we ran LED lights along the tops of our cabinets. th expectation was they would be left on in the evenings so the kitchen wasn't dark. Truthfully we found the brightness too low so it hasn't met our expectations.