Summer is coming, another reason to switch to LED lighting

Did you hear the true story happened in Europe after they banned selling of incandescent light bulb?    One guy put out ads to sell 100 Watt incandescent bulb and it was completely legal. How come? His ads reads "Electrical Heating Device". The Ads can't be more true, traditional incandescent bulb converts 5% energy into light; and 95% of energy into heat, quite a efficiency heating device.  
You may or may not know this: all your lighting device has a common byproduct that is heat.
At winter time, that's not a problem at all. just burning a little bit more electricity. At summer time, the heat can be quite annoying.
For example, My kitchen was using 4 T8 tubes in ceiling light, that's 140 watt of heat and light in total; but ultimately everything would come down to heat.  Later on I convert the light using 4 LED modules and that was 60 Watt. Weeks later, I feel the light is too much and took out one module and re-arrange the positions and that become 45Watts and I feel the light is just right. By doing so, I also trim off over 90 watt in heat. If we had to move energy using AC, we have to use more energy. That's quite an effort for Air Conditioner to move out during summer time.

LED light not only use less energy to light up, at summer time, it also require less AC effort to remain coolness.  That's double saving.

EasyLEDLighting.com has many LED Lighting products of choice.

Example of convert Fluorescent lamp to LED lamp

Here is an example how I convert a fluorescent ceiling lamp into LED lamp. To decide if a lamp can use Easy LED module for conversion, there are couple of things we should be looking into.
First, Easy LED module is about 9" long and 3 inch wide. We can decide where and how many modules to be fitted into lamp case. Some lamps could use two, some lamps could fit 3 or more modules. In this example, we choose two modules for the size of lamp and light output. The second thing we want to check out is whether it has proper diffuser and the diffuser should be placed at least 4" away from light source.

The lamp of target a 14" square lamp, it uses 2 round fluorescent tubes of 32W and 22W, totally 54W, and the Easy LED kit I use is 30Watt Easy LED kit to replace the light source.

32W + 22W fluorescent tubes

To install, the first step is to remove fluorescent tubes and the ballast, we only need the power feed. The ballast can be removed by losing two screws, and the metal hooks can be removed by moving them back and forth several times then pull off.

Second step is to mount Easy LED modules and driver on the lamp base. I mount the module at symmetric far side location and mount the driver in the middle for balance of weight and light output. Make sure you leave the lamp base mounting screw holes uncovered. The lamp base is clean and smooth, I use attached double sided tape to fasten the modules and driver; however the lamp base is somewhat soft and twist-able (wobble) , so I also use included mounting screw to enforce the mounting (use 7/64" drill bit to drill a pilot hole first, the the screw can be easily screwed in ), I only need one screw per module.


Once modules and driver are mounted, follow the link to connect the wires, put the diffuser cover back on. The conversion is then completed, it took me less than 20 minutes. Now this lamp only cost about half of energy to run and the 30 Watt LED lamp is brighter than existing 54 Watt fluorescent tubes for this lamp. And I don't think I will be needing a ladder for replacing burn tube for a long long time.


30 Watt Easy LED kit is available at www.easyledlighting.com for sale with $39.
Typical LED ceiling Lamp would run at $90.

LED Lighting Product Quality

What's should we be looking at LED lighting product for quality?

* Color Temperature and Color Rendering Index (Quality of light)
    Like CFL/Fluorescent light, LED light is not a full spectrum light (vs incandescent light). Early LED light products usually look bluish at around 6500K, for its high lumen efficacy number. Recent years there are more day light white (5500K) and warm white (below 3000K) products which are more suitable to human visible range.
    Color Rendering Index (CRI) is the number in percentage to measure how good the ability of light to bring out true color of objects, Incandescent light bulb is highest as 100. Usually you want the number to be greater than 70 for most applications, professional who works with color would require 90 or higher CRI.
* Heat Handling (Quality for product life time)
   Almost all electronic parts emits some heat, that is especially true for LED products. Lighting grade LED converts about less than 33% of energy into light; the rest would become heat. Driver does better that has only less than 20% of energy become heat. The number is better than traditional light source such as incandescent, fluorescent or HID. However, traditional light sources work at much higher temperature above 400F(200C) or higher; on this end, electronic parts usually won't be able to sustain more than 250F(120C). That's why LED lighting is more sensitive to heat. Heat can damage LED, shorten their life span, decrease light output and ruin their CRI.  Similar effect applies to driver, too.
    Thermo design is big topic in LED lighting since beginning. It's complicated and no fixed rule for user to exam products. One general rule is metal conduct heat better than most of other materials; the other rule is size counts. lots of heat trap in a small space isn't a good thing.
* Energy efficiency
    There are some room of difference in energy conversion rate among various LED products. Since lumen is measured as energy, blue light has higher lumen number than other light. LED working temperature also plays a role, too. Cooler LED does better work to convert electricity into light. Of course, circuit efficiency made few difference, too.

    All these variance doesn't compare to difference made by basic lamp design. LED by nature is directional light source, while all other light source is omnidirectional. Use LED to make a omnidirectional lamp requires mounting LED at different directions.  On the other hand, use other light sources to make a directional lamp, such as ceiling light/Wall light/ shop light, usually include reflective panel to reflect light to desired direction. But no matter how it does, there is no match to directional lamp that uses LED. in some cases, directional LED lamps use only half of energy as fluorescent ones.

Easy LED Lighting quality

Our LED module uses aluminum plate as mounting bracket, which also makes direct contact with the belly of all LEDs.  The aluminum takes heat away from LED and allow them to work at much cooler temperature.
Our LED kit or lamp uses external driver that has much durable design. It's water and dust proof and doesn't have to be crumble together LED heat source.

Will LED bulb pay for itself?

When we talk about something saves, a common phrase we would often use is: "It will pay for itself.", Can we use the same phrase on LED bulbs? Let's start with the math.

 A 60 watt equivalent LED bulb right now retails for $12.75 and uses about 10W of power.

A common competitor 60 watt equivalent CFL bulb cost much than that (often less than $1 when with rebate) and use about 14W of power.

If we run one light bulb 6 hours a day, for 8 years it would have run for 17520 hours.

 

10 Watt LED bulb would consume totally 175.2 kw-hrs, which cost $29.78

14 watt CFL bulb would consume totally 245.28 kw-hrs, which cost $41.7

            (based on 17 cents per kw-hrs PG&E average residential rate)

The $12 difference in electricity cost would just pay for the LED bulb; but it took 8 years.
Of course, if that light bulb is light up 24/7, it would be faster, but still needs 2 years,

The real energy saving of using LED light is from its directionallight source characteristic when with right application ... 

Eg.  Our world Lamp 30 Watt LED shoplight (uses 32watt power) has light intensity compare to traditional shoplight with two 4' T8 tubes, that's roughly 64 Watt power usage.   Click here to see our shoplight compare to LED bulbs.

For the same case of 8 years.

Traditional shoplight would use 1121.3 kw-hr, that's $190.6 electricity bill

World Lamp LED shoplight would use 560.6 kw-hr, that's $95.3 in electricity bill, 

The cost saving is more than two World Lamps ....

World Lamp LED shop light vs. LED Bulbs

Here is the set up of this comparison: On the left side, there are 4 Cree LED bulbs, each runs 9.5W and cost $12.75. Totally 4 bulbs use 38 watt and cost $50, they are fixed on a board and hang from a horizon pole; on the other side hangs our 30watt World lamp LED shop light ($50 each) at the same height. Right in the middle, I have a vertical board set up to reduce interference between these two.


The result can be seen in this photo as well as on a Lux meter.

As you can see, the 4 bulbs emit light to all direction vs. LED shop light puts most of light at down below. in the end, the Lux meter recorded 406 lux from less powered LED shop light; and the 4 Cree LED bulbs side only recorded 308 lux. It would probably need 22 watt in shop light to get same brightness as LED bulbs with 38Watt.

Get this World Lamp LED shop light today at EasyLEDlighting.com

Does LED bulb really save?

Average California residential users pay about 17 cents per Kilowatt-hour. Electricity rate has became higher at recent years. If that's not enough bad news; the worse news is it would probably only go higher as demand keep increase while Electric vehicles become more and more popular. So, is it a good idea to pay a premium on LED bulbs to save electricity bill?  The answer is Yes, also No.

It's a common false believe that LED saves energy in a great deal than all other light sources. The fact is, LED bulb, while cost many times more,  just do slightly better, in terms of energy efficiency, compare to CFL bulb.  (See below comparison chart)
When compare LED lighting to fluorescent T5 tubes, they have about same energy to lumen ratio.

Minimum light output (lumens)	Electrical power consumption (Watts)
	Incandescent	Compact fluorescent	LED
450	40	9–13	4–9
800	60	13–15	10–15
1,100	75	18–25	17
1,600	100	23–30	22

The real energy saving come from one unique characteristic of LED. In nature, LED is a directional light source; its light come out from a silicon die mounted on base board, and light emits outward. To make a LED light bulb to have light come out 360 degree around, manufacture has to come out special design to ensure omnidirectional light output.

 On the other hand, use omnidirectional light source in a directional lamp application would need reflective panel to put as much as light into use instead of just get wasted. In some application such as ceiling light, street light or shop light could save 50% of energy compare to fluorescent luminary.

Easy LED lighting has just the right products for that kind of work. Check out our links

For energy effective LED lighting Applications.

To purchase Easy LED lighting products.

See 30 watt LED shop light compare to LED bulbs in 38 watt