Are there any LED replacements for ordinary house lamps? I expect initial cost to be higher but expect to recover that with lower energy cost and longer life. There would be other advantages as well.
Bill
-- Ferme le Bush
The amortization calculation should be fairly straightforward. Currently the cost for LED fixtures around 100 Watt (equivalent) is ~1$/Watt. If you do the economic calculation, let's us know at what time the LED solution would break even with an incandescent bulb and with a compact fluorescent bulb. The environmental impact should be put into the equation too, but that would be more difficult to assess. Gene
Heard about "someone" who is selling LED-based Christmas Tree lights. Whites (and probably the other colors) must be garrish. Recall, the initial cost was very high.
Wayne
I "looked at" the LED Christmas lights. One of many fun things about the season is checking out the new "stuf" and seeing what's happening to the prices of the "old" stuff.
This past season, the "NEW" included those giant inflated outdoor displays (many of some kind of motion.) The LEDs were also "new" and were reasonable in price to the point where I almost bought a set just for fun. (I only put up about 10% of our lights.)
I noted that the "bubble lights" were VERY expensive this year.
The LED strings, I recall were on the order of $8. Throw in the hope that they will not burn out and that's not bad at all.
Of course, the convention lights are so cheap that some folks don't bother to put them away but just buy new each year.
There's a good chance that next year the LEDs will be competitive with the incadescent and within a few years they will compeltely replace them. Note that many kids' toys tha have lighting now used LEDs.
This is like watching the transistors push out the vacumn tubes all over again! Your basic less than $0.02 Chirstmas bulb is quite sophiscated in that if the main filiament burns out, it shorts itself out to keep the string lighted. Given a year to work out the details it should be cheapter to make an LED than one of these tiny series bulbs.
Rouse
After Christmas sale here at Wal-Mart. Picked up two 50-LED strings for $9. I will try them out next year to see what they look like (all Christmas displays were gone, being replaced by Valentines day already)
daestrom
I have been using them outdoors for two years - the ones I have are about the diameter of a mini-light and are a bit longer. They look just as good or better than the regular mini lights and are not garish. I have a newer string of the "white" (actually blue-white) bulbs and they are quite different from the clear incandescent minis- and may be considered by some to be garish. Replacement of a dead lamp (can occur but probably early enough to go back to the store and yell) is not built into the string design but there is , at least, a warranty on the string and loose "bulbs" dont seem to be a problem. A friend has some of leds in a larger package- similar to the larger outdoor lights- these were also satisfactory except that the outside plastic shells did collect water when out for a year- a small hole at the tip would deal with this and some design change would also do this.
Personally, I will be replacing all my mini bulbs (already got rid of the larger bulbs) -either piecemeal or all at once.
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