India orders 770 million LED light bulbs, prices drop 83 per cent Shri Piyush Goyal, India's minister of State (IC) for Power, Coal and New & Renewable Energy yesterday celebrated the fact that in just 20 months the price of LED lightbulbs has fallen from 310 rupees (US$4.68) to 54.9 rupees ($0.84), an 83 per cent plunge that is partly India's fault. In early 2015 the nation adopted a policy …
There are quite a few ways of driving LEDs from mains. Are they using ancient technology which generates a ton of heat (wasted electricity)? Or something newer (qr buck?) which is much more efficient? As the LED themselves won't wear out for quite a while, they may have just bought themselves a huge baseload of electricity. Granted, probably less than now, but they could save a while bunch more electricity with something efficient.
Some EE probably has a better description for these new drivers than I used.
Your thinking of old halogen transformers. Most led bulbs generate only a small amount of heat for the rated amount of light. It sounds like these guys know what they are doing and bought quality bulbs at the right price from the success of the program.
Even the cheapest way to connect those LEDs to the mains is a good start, just using a rectifier and many LEDs in series gives you rather good efficiency. That's what is done in those "filament" LEDs.
Using switch mode constant current supplies is hard to get much more efficient than that. Considering that they are also more complex and therefore fail much more often, it might not be worth it energy wise.
I bought some of the Poundland LED lamps. They all failed after just a few weeks.
Like most others, they used a series capacitor to limit the current, followed by a bridge rectifier and electrolytic smoothing capacitor, which is perfectly adequate and pretty efficient at these low powers.
However - instead of using an aluminium backed printed circuit board to take away the heat of the LEDs, they used the lower cost SRBP (Synthetic Resin Bonded Paper) circuit board, which resulted in the LEDs severely overheating.
WhenI converted over to CFL's when they first came out, I kept what I had and bought some more. Then when I went to LED's I bought a case of them. I've sold all the incandescents on Craigslist at a profit in the last couple of months. I'm not sure why someone would want the incandescents but they did.
> I'm not sure why someone would want the incandescents but they did.
For example, for a closet where you'd switch on the light for 30 secs every other day. The incandescent bulb will last 30 years easily. A LED bulb doesn't seem to makes sense here, a CFL would be outright stupid. I absolutely love (good) LED bulbs but still have a few incandescent ones installed for that very reason.
I'm not sure why someone would want the incandescents but they did.
Cost? Just over 15 years ago, we moved into our new home I had spent a very happy 18 months building. Lighting was a mixture of 12 v QH sealed spots, 240 v linear QH, regular 240 v incandescents, and bi-pin 12 V QH.
Half of the conventional 240 v incandescents and all but one of the bi-pin QH have lasted the distance. The replacements for the conventional incandescents have been CFL and have all needed to be replaced several times. They are not as bright, take longer to turn on as well as having a much shorter life. And they cost several times a much to purchase. The first three were north of $AU20 each and the incandescents they replaced cost less than $AU2.00 each.
The sealed spots last from a few weeks to a year at most. The linear halogens last from a few weeks to about 18 months. The transformers for the 12 v globes have a lifespan of about two years.
Last year, I replaced three sealed spots with the brightest LED units I could find. Not only were they much dimmer than the 50W globes they replaced, it took only three weeks for the first one to fail. They cost several times as much. Worse, this bank of three globes lights one of the kitchen worksurfaces where I use very sharp knives and I need more light now for my ageing eyes, not less.
It's a bit hard to see any cost saving when units need constant replacement and those units cost so much more than what they replaced. It's a bit hard to see any energy saving given that the globes and the transformers require energy to manufacture. The cost of the transformers alone likely exceeds the cost in electricity saving; nearly a hundred so far at ~$AU10 purchased locally.
I have been told that the CFLs would last much longer if we left them constantly turned on rather than turning them off when we don't need the light. Also we should purchase a very expensive power conditioner to reduce the swings, sags and spikes in voltage. Our electricity supplier is only required to provide an average voltage of 240 v over a 24 hour period. Several neighbours have installed solar PV in recent years "to save money"* and made the voltage issue much worse: 210 to 260 volts.
I expect to be accused of wearing a tinfoil hat, but it seems to me that the move to make conventional incandescents illegal has more to do with increased revenue for GE, Philips, Sanyo etc than "saving the consumer money and the planet".
* After receiving a quote from a solar PV supplier I questioned their numbers as their claimed cost saving would require the units to supply 140% of their rated output. The supplier either couldn't, or wouldn't respond. My cost estimate was close to that of Choice, Australia's consumer magazine. My estimate of time to payback was 18 years and Choice's was 16 years; different supplier, and presumably different state. There's a reasonable chance of my being dead by then. It's also possible I'll be incapable of finding anything of interest to spend the consequent fairly trivial savings on if I survive.
I have a stockpile of incandescents because I have dimmer switches and most LED and CFL don't like working with dimmers.
I got a bargain on my CFLs as I bought them just as VAT temporarily dropped a few years ago, old VAT inclusive price shown on shelves, adjustment made at checkout. My supermarket were selling CFLs at 50p each or five for a £1 to encourage up-take. Took five to the self-service checkout and I think they subtracted 17.5% of the 50p price times five or something like that because those five CFLs cost me around 25p all-in. Suffice to say I ended up with enough CFLs to last a lifetime.
"I have a stockpile of incandescents because I have dimmer switches and most LED and CFL don't like working with dimmers."
Actually at least the simpler LED lamps should work fine with dimmers. It's just that companies selling such lamps usually don't know to much about electronics, so they assume they don't work with dimmers. Plus there's, in theory, a wide variety of devices called dimmers. Usually you have something that turns on the power for small amounts of time. Those are made with Thyristors. However other dimmers might use a variable transformer as that might have been cheaper at one point in time. So in effect you'd have lots of testing to do for a minority of users.
"There's good news for everyone here, as analyst outfit LEDinside reports that global LED bulb prices remain steady, suggesting that India's big buys aren't necessarily straining the global supply chain and creating shortages"
The good news would be to have seen a decrease in LED bulb prices for everyone.
If more LED bulbs are produced and there's no lack of resources, why isn' t the price going down?
"If more LED bulbs are produced and there's no lack of resources, why isn' t the price going down?"
They are. Certainly in the UK they are less expensive than a few years ago, even if you ignore the unreliable Poundland garbage. I was recently in Indonesia and the manager at the place I was staying said the hotel had recently made the switch to "mostly" LED because it was now economic as they had gotten cheaper.
Thankfully, it's not just India that's enjoying lower LED bulb prices. Here in Thailand prices have nosedived as well during the past few months. I replaced all the interior light bulbs in my house with warm-white LED bulbs. Obviously, the main benefit is operational cost savings, followed by longevity. The new miserly replacement bulbs consume typically only 20-50% of the wattage of the similar E-27 compact fluorescents, which themselves are fairly economical.
One of the best features of LEDs is, for me, instead of 'operating room' stark grayish-white glare of fluorescents, LEDs give off the warm yellowish-white glow similar to incandescent bulbs. You can opt for cool-white LEDs if you have to do a heart transplant, though. Haha!
I'm still waiting for cheap LED replacements to swap out the long fluorescent tubes in the carport and covered patio but confess that's not a big deal. And my electric bill has been laughably small the past few months! It's all good and you should take the plunge if you haven't done it yet. ;^)
Incandescent bulbs are still the most effective space heaters you can buy - over 95% of the energy is transformed into heat...
I'm still in the process of phasing out of using halogen and fluorescents and into using LEDs. (Great believer in the don't-fix-if-not-broken approach.) Any burned out or obsolete light source gets replaced by LED. LED replacements for the long fluorescent tubes have just become cheap enough.
The white LED lights are quite good for lighting pictures without colour distortion. The "warm white" make for a cozier atmosphere though - must be genetic memory passed on from the ancestors sitting around their fires...
The white LED lights are quite good for lighting pictures without colour distortion. The "warm white" make for a cozier atmosphere though - must be genetic memory passed on from the ancestors sitting around their fires...
I found they're not great for lighting fast video, though. I was experimenting with the 100/200 fps mode on my camera and came up with the bright (haha) idea to use an LED light, which resulted in a recording where some frames were lit, and others were dark. It was funny, but also a hint that I need to think about how to light any fast video. Probably add a couple of big capacitors that are rated to the high voltage this stuff runs on..
Many "white" LEDs are no better than the "white" CFLs they replace. "white" LEDs are actually ultraviolet LEDS with a blob of fluourescent material on top. It's the fluourescent stuff that makes the light.
Unfortunately, as with conventional fluorescent bulbs, the quality of the light is critically dependent on the number and type of phosphors used in the coating. Cheap LEDs use a small number of phoshors, and so you get a discontinuous spectrum, which make some coloured things look odd, and plays merry hell with digital photography.
Real halogens are unfortunately still the most cost-effective way to light indoors for colour fidelity.
Re: greyish-white glare:
Most compact fluorescent bulbs are (and have been for a long time) available in warm white too. In fact as most white LEDs are in fact blue LEDs pumping a phosphor coating your colour range should be pretty close between the two technologies.
In an area of France which I regularly visit, the sodium street lamps in towns and villages have been replaced with LEDs, and this in a country where most electricity is generated by nuclear power stations. Contrast that with the UK, where all subsidies for energy saving have been cut, while fracking is heavily promoted. It's hard not to make the obvious connection.
The only reason to replace sodium lamps with LEDs is significantly better color rendition and slightly more longevity.
The luminous efficacy of a white LED ranges from 1 to 20% (typically about 12% for street lamps).
Contrast with low pressure sodium lamps (orange), the efficacy of which ranges from 15 to 29%. High pressure sodium lamps (white-ish) is 12-22%, so still potentially better than LEDs.
There are some advantages, however. LEDs are directed down and slightly outwards and don't require reflectors. It's somewhat easier to shape the light cone of LEDs, and you need to do it to avoid glare. Omnidirectional sodium lamps need reflectors, but due to their orange monochromatic light, they don't cause nearly as much glare and shaping the light cone isn't as critical.
The Highways Department changed a street light nearly outside my south facing bedroom window from Sodium orange to "white". It's very effective at lighting the pavements and road at night including the junction to a close opposite it but I cannot leave even a chink open in my fairly thick curtains for the light to intrude. Full Moon only came once a month before this new lamp. I wonder where the yellow went!
It's more of a blackin than blackout and yet we are rightfully told that sleeping in utter darkness is good for our circadian rhythms. I know that Summer is coming and the dawn chorus will move nearer to 03.45BST [to be followed by the bird scaring guns in not-so-nearby fields] so any sleep time has to be husbanded and any sunshine to be welcomed.
The "white" bulbs may not be LEDs, yet.
It's the same here. The new ( 2/3 year old? ) LED streetlight outside my bedroom window means I had to buy blackout curtains and in summer when the windows are opened, a gust of wind often dislodges the curtains enough to make my bedroom look like the set of an alien abduction film.
"The new ( 2/3 year old? ) LED streetlight outside my bedroom window means I had to buy blackout curtains"
We got our new street lamps before the LED ones became cheap enough to be an option so the low pressure sodium (orange) lights were replaced with high pressure sodium (white) lights. Much better, brighter, more directed and from the attic we get a much better view of the night sky, ie above the street lights which offer up much less light pollution. In fact, the reduction in light pollution is very noticeable as I come over the hill on the way home in the dark, especially if there's low cloud. The orange glow from the neighbouring town now stands out like a sore thumb.
Thumbs up for India though, that's a decent saving in power across the country. Here in the UK, considering that being "green" is supposed be the big thing, it's interesting that there are no schemes to offer free LED bulbs to householders the way they did with the CFLs.
No LED street lights around here but almost all the pedestrian crossing now use them for the lights the cars see, the green/red cross now/don't cross and the button LED the pedestrians press, they are all very bright in particular the red LED in the button the pedestrians press I find quite a glaring distraction as a motorist or cyclist.
"very bright in particular the red LED in the button the pedestrians press I find quite a glaring distraction as a motorist or cyclist."
Not half as distracting as LED daylight running lights which can be dazzling in lower light conditions when they suddenly flash in your rear view mirror as the car goes over even a slight bump or if the car just has a heavy load in the back. And don't even get me started on HID headlights, especially LED ones!!!
Here in Cambridgeshire, UK, there's been an extensive program to replace sodium street lighting with LED. The white light is much more pleasant than the horrible sodium orange, but the light source is slightly more dazzling.
I get the impression that the illumination is slightly more localised, with dark patches midway between lamps. Personally, I find this effect pleasant. It reminds me of the charm of gas-lit streets. (Yes, I am that old, though I was reacquainted with it recently in The Park, a private estate in central Nottingham that retains its gas street lighting.)
Round my way, they replaced a lot of street lamps with higher efficiency ones. A combination of fitment design that puts more light down rather than sideways or up, and shorter posts (lower maintenance cost apparently because they can use a smaller vehicle to service them) gives darker gaps between the posts. But still enough to see and be seen.
My GF used to like it when we drove through the tunnel under Rugby railway station, because the sodium lamps gave her the appearance of having a good tan "like an Essex Girl". She's not so keen now they have been replaced with LEDs, as they make her appear pasty white instead :-(
I wonder if filtering out white led light would be as successful?
It will be much more difficult. Sodium lighting was chosen because the eye is relatively more sensitive to the orange / yellow spectrum and the eye can switch to monochrome. The big problem in the UK is that the lights are generally open at the top which gives you your light pollution.
Most LED systems have been doped to give a much fuller spectrum so that if you start filtering this, you'll be filtering most visible light. So, LED street lights really ought to come with a cover so that they only illuminate down.
Quote: "So, LED street lights really ought to come with a cover so that they only illuminate down."
The LEDs that were fitted on the road outside my place (about 3 years ago), are like an array of spot lights, (GU10 like) all pointing downwards, splaying out towards the edge. So no light at all going upwards (other than reflected light of course).
They are also lower than the older sodium fittings, so are at about the same hight as the bottom of the 1st floor windows sills (the older lights were around the height of the top of the 1st floor windows), which means little of the LED light hits the bedroom windows.
So overall, much better visibility outside, whilst at the same time, reducing both internal and external light pollution.
I have used track lights meant for 50w MR16 halogens that I hoped would be perfect for MR16-style led's. But my electrician son-in-law advised me against the led's, saying the starting current would lead to early burnout of the 120v AC to 12v DC units. There are track light systems such as those that suspend on two current-carrying bare wires, that use a large master 12v psu. Perhaps one of those would fare better.
It is difficult to diagnose a situation from afar but I think that the current rating of the PSU is unlikely to be a direct problem. What is likely to have happened is that the PSU has been designed to a price (i.e. cheaply) and provides the specified output voltage at a particular current. The regulation of the output voltage may be poor and so, with the reduced load of the LED bulbs, will output a higher voltage than the LEDs can comfortably handle. The LEDs would have taken too much current, been very bright then overheated and eventually failed.
So the problem may well be that there is a mismatch between the PSU and the LED needs.
For most of the year the "waste heat" of incandescents is quite beneficial. In that small Summer window when the warmth from the lights is not needed, the evenings are light until fairly late anyway so little need for lighting.
As we have transitioned to low energy lights I have noticed the wife making more frequent use of quick bursts of fan heater to top up the temperature in rooms where previously the bulbs helped keep the room warm. So electricity usage savings have not been hugely significant as bulb savings partially offset by increased portable heater use.
Obviously in somewhere like India that is a significantly warmer a lot of the time the heat is mostly waste.
Most people I know don't complain about this in LEDs, but I can clearly see it if anything moves. Even the more expensive LEDs fitted with a rectifier still annoy me. And don't even get me started on the cheap ones where the LEDs themselves are arranged in two series (opposite directions) in parallel, which flicker like crazy.
Then again, I also notice RGB ghosting in DLP projectors and it's another thing that annoys me, whereas most people can't see the phenomenon even when it's pointed out to them.
My issue is most of my lighting is dimmable, and despite specifically paying extra for dimmable LED bulbs, I get a quiet but noticeable buzz from them when they're on anything but 100%. I also get some flicker when they're like this too, but again nothing when they're at full.
I too have one (Philips, non-dimmable) LED GU10 lamp - and it has 100% depth 100Hz modulation (flicker). You are not alone. I see this too. It makes my stairs and banisters strobe horribly.
Unfortunately neither the packaging or the manufacturers' websites tell you anything about flicker before you buy...
It doesn't exist in most incandescent lights I know of. The light is blackbody emission of the hot metal filament and it doesn't cool down rapidly enough to become black between cycles.
You might be confusing it with fluorescent bulbs which used to carry warnings that they must be installed in threes to three-phase power if providing light for a workplace with exposed running motors, saws, etc. Incandescent bulbs never carried those warnings.
Strobing RGB projectors are horrible. And LED rear lights on cars drive me nuts the way they flicker. My kids see it too, but most people I mention it to don't know what I'm talking about. I wonder if it's a genetic thing?
Oh yeah, rear LED lights. Makes me wonder how you can screw that up if you have a frigging 12 V direct current power supply that you can just connect to those LEDs directly. To make matters worse, some models have it, some don't, and sometimes it's within the same make.
"Makes me wonder how you can screw that up if you have a frigging 12 V direct current power supply that you can just connect to those LEDs directly."
Because running them with more current at a low duty cycle generates less heat for the same subjective brightness, which means you can use cheaper LEDs (and also consume less power).
"To make matters worse, some models have it, some don't, and sometimes it's within the same make."
Running at different frequencies I guess. The higher the frequency the greater the switching losses, i.e. heat generated in the driver circuit. Driver circuitry has become more efficient over the years.
LEDs don't run on voltage - they run on current. I wish I had a whiteboard and ten minutes to explain.
But you need a driver between the (fluctuating) voltage source and the LED that wants a constant current. The design of the driver has everything to do with the flicker. One can design a nice smooth constant current driver, but it will probably use a more expensive storage inductor. Or, you can use a resistor and string a lot of LEDs in series, which will only conduct on the voltage peaks, creating a power mains frequency flicker. That is a lot cheaper, but runs a lot of peak current through your LEDs. Also, the current regulation vs. voltage input is not good.
Yes, incandescents were easier to shop for. Don't get me started on reliability claims.
Don't get me started on reliability claims.
Hopefully this won't, but crunching the numbers on The House of Steel's consumption of light globes and fittings reminded me of the following:
The Git's best friend, sadly deceased now, purchased a large box of industrial quality light globes back in 1971, or '72. When he died about 5 years ago, the number remaining in the carton was remarkably similar to the number that were there ~30 years ago when he proudly told me he had replaced his last standard hardware store light globe. Neither of us was a fan of planned obsolescence.
Oh and thanks for the reminder re LEDs requiring constant current while QH require a constant voltage and more current.
It seems to me (or maybe I just wasn't paying attention during ECON 101) that all things being equal, increasing demand should increase prices, not decrease them.
I suspect that prices are falling because technology is improving, more producers are jumping in, and economies of scale are kicking in. Or maybe even that the LED bulbs subsidized by the Indian government are finding their way back into the market and competing with non-subsidized sales.
You answered your own question. "All things" are not equal over the medium or even short term. As production capacity ramps and becomes more efficient, and new technology comes on stream, prices fall. LEDs will become the new incandescents, i.e. cheap and ubiquitous.
China thought the same way when they strangled rare earths' supply, 80% of the world's capacity IIRC, to drive up prices. It failed because new sources were found and industry switched technology.
Don't tussle with Keynes, or Schumpeter, you will fail. [flame on economics haters]
Quote: "Meanwhile all the supermarkets and DIY centres in Britain continue to charge £10 (949.93 INR)."
I suggest you try a different store!
Even B&Q, which tends to be the most expensive of the DIY stores, sells LED bulbs starting at £2 each, the £10 ones are either specialist units, or multi-packs.
And there are far cheaper stores out there.
The problem would be how would you switch them on? You couldn't use the switch on the wall because you wouldn't be opening/closing a circuit because it's open at the main source. The best you could do is have the lights stay on after power is cut, but then they would also stay on after you switched them off as they would see the switch as a power cut. Otherwise you would need a separate switching mechanism that didn't rely on the wall switch and the mains, wifi perhaps?
A better solution is to just buy a bunch of cheap LED torches from Ebay and leave them in various places around the house in case of a power cut. You can get aluminium AA Cree LED torches very cheap now.
"I wonder how easy it would be now to have a UPS style "battery backup" in LED lightbulbs, so that if you had a power cut/breaker trip you could still switch them on for an hour or so."
Certainly here in the UK where it's normally a separate ring for the lights I wonder if it would not make more sense to stick a 12v transformer in at the consumer unit and just run the whole ring at 12v, maybe via smallish UPS without the 240v step-up from the battery. I'd think one of those cheap ones for a single PC or server would probably power an average sized homes lighting system for a few hours at least. Would the existing twin'n'earth be a problem with low voltage?
I wonder if it would not make more sense to stick a 12v transformer in at the consumer unit and just run the whole ring at 12v, maybe via smallish UPS without the 240v step-up from the battery.
Probably not. The lighting wiring is designed to run low current/high voltage. At 12 V, current needs to be much higher than at 240 V. Here we have 8 A lighting circuits and at 12 V one of my 50 W QH globes would need ~ 4 A. This doesn't take into account any voltage loss in the wiring due to resistance. The further from the source, the higher the losses are going to be so a 12 V source isn't going to provide anywhere near 12 V at the sink (globe) over any significant distance.
There's a reason we have high voltage, low current electricity supplies. The much heavier, lower resistance cabling needed for 12 V would be far too expensive.
What is a "normal" light bulb? Incandescent is distinctly retro even now. But even more retro are clear glass LED filament lamps, which bear a passable resemblance to incandescent filaments but consist of hundreds of tiny LEDs in series in a common phoshor-impregnated silicone rubber coating.
With all the LEDs going into India does that mean that the lighting designers there will finally come up with designs that actually use the flexibility and other benefits of LED. or will they just keep producing lighting solutions based on hot wire bulbs, but replacing them with a group of LEDs.
I mean rather than having a "bulb" or two, or three.... in the middle of the room hanging from the ceiling, run a strip of LEDs round the edges of the ceiling. Its a simple enough idea, I came up with it so it must be simple, but try going in the B&Q to find it, you'll find loads of hang in middle of ceiling options, but nothing really designed, from the start, for LED's just some lights that have LED "bulbs"
I replaced the unreliable G4 halogen lights under my kitchen cabinets with self-adhesive LED strip. The existing transformers, with the addition of bridge rectifiers, provide a suitable power supply. Being waterproof, they're resistant to many of the problems that bedevil kitchen cabinet lights.
Wilkinsons/Wilko sell 22W bayonet LED (100W equivalent) which I find are okay but they aren't cheap.
I have been on the lookout for those bakelite Y-adapters my grandparents used to use to run irons, toasters, hoovers and everything else from the lighting circuit so I can double-up bulbs to get desired brightness but they are hard to find for bayonet fitting these days.
There are such things out there (certainly to put multiple Edison screw into bayonet )
http://www.amazon.co.uk/VANKER-Extend-Holder-Adapter-Converter/dp/B0140SDR2A
http://www.amazon.co.uk/ELINKUME-Lamp-Socket-Converter-into/dp/B00WDZJFQK/
But quality might be suspect, the closeup views on Amazon can be quite revealing.
There is a standard for bayonet connectors BS EN 61184
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