LED Lighting Gaining Acceptance (Sort Of)

April 30, 2009, 8:30 am
LED Lighting Gaining Acceptance (Sort Of)
By Eric A. Taub
The recent replacement of the incandescent lamps in Grand Central Terminal in New York with compact fluorescent bulbs notwithstanding, the lighting industry continues to believe that LEDs, not C.F.L.s, will eventually be the technology of choice for many lighting applications.

As I note in an article about the commercial use of LED lighting in today’s Business of Green special section, lighting designers who just one year ago were wary of recommending LED products now are much more confident in doing so.

That’s partly due to the move, spearheaded by the Department of Energy, to set Energy Star guidelines for the next generation of lighting to convince consumers and businesses that LED products will perform as claimed.

But it’s also due to the improvement of the lighting itself. LED lamps are becoming more efficient, producing warmer, more inviting colors at higher brightness levels.

On Tuesday, I was shown a new reflector lamp from Nexxus Lighting, similar to the type installed in many kitchen and office ceilings, that produced a warm, pleasing light. It weighs about one-third of a competing lamp and uses 8 watts to produce the light of a 50-watt bulb.

But how many homes and businesses are satisfied with 50-watt lamps? When the industry starts producing 75- and 100-watt equivalents, LEDs will begin to gain traction. (Cree, a lighting company, has announced a reflector lamp that it says produces a similar look to a halogen lamp, uses 12 watts, and can replace up to a 90-watt incandescent lamp.)

Are LED lamps ready for the consumer? Hardly. Most of the strange-looking LED products sold in home improvement stores remain below par. Many manufacturers make unsubstantiated claims about lamp life and brightness.

But for the well-heeled set, there are plenty of highly regarded products that use a fraction of the power of an incandescent bulb. But they come at a high initial price. I recently visited a home in the tony Brentwood section of Los Angeles that was entirely lit with LED “downlights” made by Cree, and I couldn’t tell the difference between the light from those fixtures and standard bulbs. And Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway scooter, has lighted the home he owns on a small island only with Color Kinetics LED products.

The Department of Energy is conducting a seminar in a few weeks to discuss the state of LED lamps that can replace standard incandescents. And more commercial buildings, including a wing of the Pentagon and even a KFC/Taco Bell restaurant, have switched over to the new technology.

But despite these successes, many engineers remain resistant to using LEDs. A major real estate developer in Los Angeles recently showed me correspondence from his engineering team questioning why anyone in his right mind would use LED lamps in a commercial project, citing high cost as a reason to eschew their use. For now, the lighting industry and the building industry often seem to be speaking different languages.

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11 Comments
1. April 30, 2009
10:14 am

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It is just a matter of time. Taiwanese companies are spending significant sums to manufacture better and less expensive LED lighting. (By the way, I cannot believe that your copy editor let you write LED instead of L.E.D.)

All lighting should be evaluated on a TCO basis. And, for lighting, the equation is:
TCO = Initial cost + electricity costs over the lifetime of the “bulb” + labor to replace the bulb

That is why the first mass application for LED lighting was for traffic lights. The labor cost for replacement is HUGE (specialized truck, crew, length of time on site).

The problem for home use is twofold:
1. Labor cost is usually measured as $zero. The homeowner values his time at $zero and the lights are physically easy to replace.
2. Homeowners are very poor at calculating energy costs over a decade and therefore tend to cost them at near zero.

Once LEDs are 3x and not 7x the cost of halogens, we will see a much larger uptake by homeowners.

— Dave Barnes

2. April 30, 2009
1:27 pm

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the developers will always use the technology with low initial cost and higher lifecycle cost. This is simple economics.

But our society does not allow developers to build physically unsafe buildings and we should not allow them to build environmentally unsafe buildings either.

Mandate LEDs and the costs will fall as volume ramps up

CFLs are a health hazard - mercury, a safety hazard due to low initial lumens and should be banned from residential use

— dave

3. April 30, 2009
1:31 pm

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l. e. d.’s were installed in Portland Oregon traffic lights in furtherance of Portland’s maniacal plunge into assumed energy savings at any cost
During the first substantial snow fall, MOST OF THE TRAFFIC LIGHTS WENT OUT!
Our finest minds ultimately determined that the l. e. d.’s gave out insufficient heat to melt the snow and ice from the lenses.

But we will be alright until next winter..

— donovan Jacobs

4. April 30, 2009
2:32 pm

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I think people need to start buying them now. The initial price is well worth it for many reasons, including, the fact that no mercury is inside them (unlike compact fluorescents). The low wattage and long life is another reason (less power consumed, less in landfills). Also, the fact you are contributing (in a small way admittedly) to the price coming down for everyone by increasing demand. The same logic goes for buying organic cotton products.

— Ken

5. April 30, 2009
3:01 pm

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Luddites Against LED Lights!

— Bill Mahiger

6. April 30, 2009
3:36 pm

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By “warmer” light, do you mean that ugly yellow tinge that comes from incandescent bulbs? The color that made be go out and by compact fluorescents in the first place so that I could have white light? I don’t know why you would want that hideous effect.

— Adam

7. April 30, 2009
3:39 pm

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As an aside, L.E.D. lights are making huge headway in professional film and video applications. They are increasingly brighter, cheaper, and heat free.
I just returned from the NAB conference and was struck by the changes over last year.
Two vendors stand out:
Litepanels
http://www.s131567196.onlinehome.us/
and
Zylights
http://www.zylight.com/servlet/StoreFront
I would suspect the same technology to make inroads in
commercial locations.

— Elliot porter

8. April 30, 2009
5:36 pm

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Please , please , stop bleating about mercury in Compact Fluorescent bulbs. It is a minute amount.
For God”s sake find something worth worrying about.

Swine flu is a candidate.

— Bruce

9. April 30, 2009
5:37 pm

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donovan jacobs, then all Portland has to do is put hoods back on the lights (they shouldn’t have been taken off to begin with) as the older-style traffic lights had. And I’m in no way a ‘green hardliner.’

— Larry

10. April 30, 2009
6:36 pm

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Mandate LEDs? Whilst I sympathise with the intent, it is almost always a bad idea to manadate a particular solution. Instead, require a certain*performance*and allow any solution that meets that goal.
In this case, require a suitable lumens/watt and perhaps include some time-to-full-light and light spectrum benchmarks. If some clever company can produce the same light as a 100W incandescant with 0.1W by using rotating polarisation casimir phased doohickey quantulates why would we want to have a law demanding only LEDs?

— tim Rowledge

11. April 30, 2009
6:46 pm

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LED bulbs are better than CFL spiral fluorescents because:
1) they last 10 times as long before “burning out” (dimming to half brightness)
2) they don’t release mercury and don’t break
3) they take a little bit less energy than CFL and a lot less than regular incandescent.

On the other hand, LED bulbs cost as much as 50x the price of a CFL - literally $50 vs. $1. At that price the only justification is a savings in costly or dangerous labor such as having a union employee climb a tall ladder to replace the bulb.

For normal home lighting, switching from incandescent to fluorescent pays for itself in a month and can save literally hundreds of dollars a year. Switching to LEDs instead essentially takes all that savings and gives it to the LED bulb makers. LED bulbs do pay for themselves over a long enough time frame, but if your goal is saving money the right choice today is CFL.