Something new: a $10 LED bulb.
Image: Cree Inc.
In a step toward greater energy efficiency, North Carolina-based Cree Inc. this week launched a series of LED light bulbs, the least expensive of which is below $10.
Cree calls its new product "the biggest thing since the light bulb."
The company says that the new bulb looks like and lights up like the ubiquitous incandescent bulb, which the company's Vice President of Corporate Marketing Mike Watson said is key to its appeal.
"Consumers are fairly confused and frustrated. They have a product that they really like. The incandescent bulb has been around for 130 years," he said.
Alternatives to the inefficient incandescent bulb have failed to catch consumers' imagination so far.
Their harsh white light has earned many of them the epithet "frankenbulb." But Cree has designed its new bulb to have the same glass dome of the incandescent, along with shatterproof coating. The LED panel is in the center of the glass dome so the light is dispersed in all directions much like the filament of a traditional bulb.
Cree's 40-watt bulb with warm white light costs $9.97, while its 60-watt bulbs cost $3 to $4 more.
"It's relatively well known that breaking a $10 barrier for an innovative new product gets consumers to try it. It's a price point that gets consumers to try it, and when they see that it works, they will start to convert to it," Watson said.
A 25,000-hour life
While pointing out that there are other LED bulbs at similar prices in the market, Marianne DiMascio of the Appliance Standards Awareness Project (ASAP) said having a bulb at that cost is a big deal in the mind-set of the consumer.
"I just think that LEDs are becoming more affordable for consumers. If they buy this bulb for $9.97, they will cover that cost in the first year, and they have the bulb for the next 20 years, [and] that will bring them cost savings in the amount of energy that they use," DiMascio said.
Cree's bulb is 84 percent more efficient than an incandescent and on par with other LEDs on the market. It has a life of 25,000 hours.
"Even at 50 cents a bulb, you need 25 of these for every LED, and the operating costs is one-fifth," said Steve Nadel, executive director of the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE). Nadel thinks the product will accelerate savings in terms of energy efficiency, as people who have resisted buying compact fluorescent bulbs may find the new LED attractive.
Phasing out the incandescent, Cree's ultimate goal, will be a more gradual process, he said.
Nadel expects that the new product will help utilities offer more incentives for consumers to move to LEDs. "This will encourage other players to cut costs; otherwise, they will lose market share," he said.
The new product has been given a thumbs-up by rating agencies like UBS, Credit Agricole and Goldman Sachs.
UBS said in a statement that the $10 mark was crossed a year earlier than expected.
"People have been saying that price will come down to below $10, but I didn't expect it so quickly," Nadel said.
Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC. www.eenews.net, 202-628-6500
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18 Comments
Add CommentI dunno - my CFT seem to be working just fine and a heck of a lot cheaper. This article sounds more like a sales pitch than an unbiased scientific report.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI bought a bunch of 60W equivalent Phillips LED bulbs from Home Depot a year ago... they are covered in a yellow coating that makes a nice warm natural feeling light.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThey are dimmable, and don't make that humming noise you can sometimes get from other types of bulbs on dimmers.
They were $15 each at the time, I think, but have led to a noticeable savings on my electric bill, and they work really well. I had tried the Compact Fluorescents, but their performance wasn't anywhere near as good, and the color of the light from them wasn't pleasant. These Phillips LED bulbs, on the other hand, have been great! I suggest these other companies consider a similar yellow coating.
If they can get them down another $5, more power to them!
CFT?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn any case, if you're talking about the 99 cent CFL's, you must not have had them for very long. After 6 months or so, they take at least a couple of minutes to warm up and output decent light. They're not an incandescent replacement in this mode.
from home depot
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCREE 9.5-Watt (60W) Warm White (2700K) LED Light Bulb (6-Pack)
Model # BA19-08027OMF-12DE26-1U100 Internet # 204084366
(2) Write a Review
$74.82 / EA-Each
about $12 each: how about a real $10 offer
why switch to LED when we can have toxic .easy to break CFC
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"84% more efficient" does not lend itself to any kind of comparison math. Compact fluorescent bulbs use somewhere between a fifth to a quarter of the energy per lumen that incandescent bulbs use. So, i'd say that their efficiency is 400% or 500% better.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs i understand it, incandescent bulbs convert something like 5% of the energy used into light (and note that an error bar of 1% messes up your answers). Fluorescent bulbs are more like 20% or 25% efficient. LEDs are supposed to be about twice that good, or 40% to 50% efficient. To make it easier for the reader, say that a 60 watt bulb equivalent LED light uses 6 watts (or whatever it turns out to be). That's unambiguous and more or less what the consumer wants to know.
The hardware store sells a meter you can put between the wall and various devices, so you can measure the power usage of your computer, light bulbs, etc. It's time to educate ourselves with first hand info.
I agree with the others: this sounds more like an advertisement than an informative article. I wish S.A. would stop doing that.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBTW a 40W equivalent CFL uses 10W of power, making it 400% more efficient than a standard incandescent.
In Europe now lamps are sold with the lumen output (total light emitted) very clearly marked.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo you can buy a 500lumen incandescent lamp which uses 35W, or a 500lumen CFL which uses 8W, or a 500lumen led lamp which uses about the same. All figures -ish.
What you cannot buy anywhere is the equivalent of a 100W incandescent, ie a 1700lumen led, which is what the world is waiting for.
The business about the lumens being published on the packaging or even bulb itself is also true in the US. And the two different technologies are about equivalent in lumens per watt. The price difference which used to be about 3 to 1 is also narrowing. To me the big difference I've noticed is that the LEDs really do last longer. The CFLs for me never seem to last as long as they're supposed to.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI must be really lucky since I've been using CFLs for 7 years now and I think I've had only ONE burn out on me. I've taken the same bulbs to 3 different houses over that time, changed out the incandescents that most places come installed with, enjoyed low electric bills for a year or two, and then switched the incandescents back in after taking my CFLs to the next place. I'm in a smaller place now, so I have quite a few just sitting in storage. I kinda hope they would start burning out sooner or later so I could have an excuse to go buy a CFL or two to check them out, but my CFLs are still going strong. Maybe I might just leave some of them in my current place when I leave...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy mistake, I should have said, "...so I could have an excuse to buy an LED light or two..."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy biggest problem with CCFL and LED replacements is that I have a real hard time accepting their longer life numbers. I have disassembled failed units and found that the reason they failed was because the normal lifetimes for the individual components used do not match the advertised lifetime for the assemblies. When ever I seen aluminum electrolytic capacitor in one of these products, I know it can not meet those life time numbers for large samples of devices.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThese articles never talk about the characteristics of various bulbs that make them more or less suitable for particular applications. Incandescents work well, but the light is very warm and they're power hungry because so much of the energy ends up in parts of the spectrum we can't see. Yet they have no warmup time, little loss of light over the life of the bulb, are dirt cheap (to buy, anyway) and they will operate in very low or high temperatures. CFLs are much more efficient, and to some degree the color of the light can be adjusted by changing the phosphors that line the bulb envelope. I use a lot of them, and in general, I like them. They have drawbacks, however. Some have a very long warmup time, they tend to dim with age and in general they don't like extreme temperatures. Like all fluorescents, CFLs last FAR longer if they are left on for long periods as opposed to being turned on and off frequently. The fluorescent tubes in a workroom in my home get turned on and off a lot. The tubes in the kitchen ceiling fixture tend to stay on for many hours a day, and as a result last two to three times longer. The fluorescents in my business are generally turned on in the morning and off at the end of the day. I've changed the tubes once in 13 years. CFLs that get cycled a lot don't last very long, but the same bulbs that get left on will last much longer because it's the process of starting that is hardest on them. My experience with LEDs is limited at this point, as I've only used them in work lights on machines. In that use, they work fine, though I paid about $25 each for them (~3 years ago). Frankly, in that use, CFLs are just as good and are much cheaper. The acid test for any bulb technology is when you take them outside normal conditions. A pantry light that is usually turned on only for a minute or so, or a refrigerator or freezer light that also is on briefly, but must start at low temperatures. And then there's the light in the oven. Good luck replacing that one. I'll track down some of the Cree lights and give them a try. Hopefully they'll live up to this infomercial.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe more affordable LEDs become the happier I will be considering even the CFLs trigger my migraines with their flicker.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm still waiting for the alternative bulb that will work safely and efficiently in completely enclosed fixtures. This article does not present that kind of breakthrough - a bulb technology which radically reduces both production of heat and vulnerability of the bulb structure to heat.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI also agree with others who see the article as more advertisement than reporting a significant substantive scientific achievement. It is very low on technical detail and merely suggests a small incremental cost reduction has been achieved (without explaining how). Since its beginnings as a private newsletter on patent office goings-on, SA has reported on invention and production of things great and small, and not always from a scientific perspective or with incisive investigative reporting. SA has included many brilliant scientific discussions and highly illuminative explications of scientific and inventive developments, but this is not one of those. Given that lighting is mundane but important to modern civilization, I hope that SA will one of these days present a thoughtful article about the objectives and challenges in current and planned research in lighting - why it is so difficult to get beyond the incandescent. It might be coupled by a companion historical article about the difficult first years of development of the incandescent.
The CFLs I've experienced leave a lot to be desired. High failure rate, including one that began hissing and emitting smoke upon turn-on, and one outright failure to illuminate for more than about two seconds (both ecosmart by Home Depot). Their wide variation of warm-up times to full brightness is also well-documented, as are the environmental hazards requiring careful disposal handling.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnyway, I've installed several ecosmart LED bulbs (also sold by Home Depot,but from a different manufacturer than their CFLs.
As far as I'm concerned, LEDs are emerging as the winner; now all they have to figure out is how to develop higher wattage (more lumens) and lower the cost!
check out "led canada" - they have a nice calculator feature so u can check out savings on LED bulbs
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have a large collection of books. At one time I had lamps with incandescent bulbs which provided enough light so I could read those books. When will I be able to read them again?
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