LED lighting goes mainstream! It's at Wal-Mart!

[Snax]

???

Anyway, I recently purchased 5 of these bulbs from Wal-mart for $5 each. The ones that I bought were to replace my porch/exterior lights, and I think they work perfectly for that. One light stays on 24/7 (mostly because we simply forget or are too lazy to go to the switch) and has been going solid for two months now, but the others are more recent and get switched on and off daily.

They are a "warm white" and I honestly would not know they are LED by the color if I hadn't installed them myself.

We'll see if they last, but compared to the florescent bulbs at 11W each, we could leave them on all day every day and not use as much energy as forgetting to switch the florescent ones off just four times for an entire day. (Not an unusual occurrence for us.) That would still be about 4kWh for the switched ones, but I'd guess we are really closer to 1.5kWh for actual use, 2.5 total, compared to well over 10-20kWh otherwise, saving us $1-2/month.

So if they last 10-20 months, they will produce a positive net savings.

[RobertSmalls]

Originally Posted by Snax

???

Christ was quoting a spambot there, who has since been deleted. The spambot was hawking metal halide (HID) lamps, which produce more lumens per Watt (lm/W) than LED's or CFL's. That's great, but you seldom see HID's smaller than 5000lm, which produces way more light than you need for residential lighting. I find 800lm is plenty to light any room in my house.

I was in Sam's Club last week, checking out the ratings on the bulbs. I was unimpressed. The LED bulbs at Sam's actually produce fewer lm/W than the CFL's, and they're more expensive.

[Christ]

I grabbed some LED candela (small edison base) bulbs from Wally World for $3 each, but they're apparently blue, and I didn't read that part.

O well, I'll find a use for them. Meanwhile, there's 14w of incandescent candela bulbs burning half the night in my living room in my double candle lamp. It gets the job done while I'm on here or watching TV.

[G2TDI]

Has anyone had longer experience with these yet?

[bennelson]

Originally Posted by G2TDI

Has anyone had longer experience with these yet?

Yes, I have had a LED spotlight bulb from the C.Crane catalog running at my house over the kitchen sink for going on 2 years.

Unfortunately, I have "can" fixtures in my house. Almost ALL LED bulbs are marked somewhere on them "not for use in an enclosed fixture."

Apparently, that includes can fixtures. I have had trouble with my bulb slowly dying. A few LEDs at a time just quit working.

On the other hand, I also have a 48" tube LED light, which I really like. It is open mounted under my kitchen cabinet, in a modified fluorescent tube holder (ballast removed - just straight 120V AC)
The length of the tube, and the simple heat sink on the back seems to negate any heat issues. The tube shape also spreads out the light very well - eliminating the "pointy" spot-light feeling of many LED lights.

[bennelson]

They SHOULD last for just about forever, but I think a lot of corners are cut on quality to make it more affordable for mainstream stores like Wal-Mart, where the target audience is budget-minded.

I am very tempted to make my own.

Again, the main disadvantages (besides price) seem to be the innate directional nature of LEDs, which are like little laser beams, and that they seem to overheat and prematurely fail in any kind of enclosed fixture.

[redline5th]

I've seen several of these. Pretty neat technology--little pricey, but it seems it would pay off long term due to the longevity of the bulbs... Wonder how long it will take to get them in headlights for vehicles??

[suspectnumber961]

Another source for LED bulbs....

Heartland America: Miracle LED Bulb Recessed Light - Pair


Heartland America: 2 Pack Miracle LED Grow Lights

[Snax]

LED Bulb Update: Beginning to see sign of failure.

It has now been about 4 months since I installed the first of five LED exterior lamps, and this one lamp that has been on 95% of that time is beginning to dim and blue. It's still a reasonable white color, but it has clearly shifted up the color spectrum and is putting out about 1/2 as much light as the others. This became mildly noticeable about 1-2 weeks ago and is now quite clearly degraded from the performance of the newer lesser used lamps.

In terms of energy use, at 3W, it's a clear winner over the 7W incandescent I had been using in that fixture before (don't really need much light there). On bulb cost however, it's a clear loser at 5-6 times the cost for roughly the same service life. So the question is how much of that bulb cost difference we recouped. My knee jerk reaction is 'not much', but I think it's worth doing the math anyway:

Incandescent - .007kW x 120days x 24hours x $0.09/kWh = $1.81

LED - .003kW x 120d x 24h x $0.09/kWh = $0.78

$1.81 - $0.78 = $1.03 in energy savings (so just call it a single buck given the 95% of use during those hours)

So clearly, our overall cost for this lighting is 2-3 times as much as the 7W incandescent with this kind of bulb life. I'm hoping this one lamp is just an early failure, but I suspect it's going to be the status quo. Regardless, end-user monetary cost obviously can't be the only factor to consider with these things.

The LED lamps still cut our outdoor lighting energy use by more than half - even if in this case, a single bulb has saved barely more than 10 kWh. In the case of the remaining 4 lamps however, the energy savings are likely to be roughly double that for each fixture, having replaced 13W fluorescents - or roughly 90 kWh between the lot of them assuming the same MTBF for all if I replace them at half output (or 270kWh/yr). Regardless, it cannot be ignored that a 13W fluorescent puts out a lot more light than a 3W LED, so our ability to utilize this lower power version is limited to outdoor security/safety.

Edit: Just to be clear, these are the Bulbs that Wal-mart has been selling for just under $6 each. No surprises, but it would seem that one gets what one pays for on these.

[bgd73]

I rent and get charged extra sometimes... after humoring the bill, I have upgraded the fuse box, found some errors, fixed them, changed a real bad wall outlet to all sealed.. and still got a crazy bill by the landlord..completely random.

I am going for 4 of these next
23w flourescent bulbs equaling 100w incandescent. cheap.

that "7000k" or whatver k number is quite odd.. my car is only 5000k, and I could guess you could spot me from outer space (crazy bright)

another option aside from led.