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L.E.D. Lighting (residential and commercial)

2K views 20 replies 15 participants last post by  eleventhtruck 
#1 ·
anybody have thoughts on this? i was approached on an investment deal to distribute/sell these in residential and commercial indoor/outdoor applications. The cost comparison is STEEP!! $3-5 for an indoor 6" flood and $65 for the same bulb in L.E.D. (dimmable prices vary). But with L.E.D. you get a bulb that will last a minimum of 5 years , easily 10 i think, huge (90%) power use reduction from a standard flourescent.

My question is what do you guys know about these, as this is very new to me. I do believe i will like the light output of an L.E.D. vs a soft white.
 
#3 ·
We have used these in some of our big custom homes and also the new strand led lights.....expensive and the customers dont like the light output...looks too halogen for alot of customers.
 
#4 ·
LED's depend greatly on the bulb quality. Do alot of research before you get into it Mike.

Especially with the floods. Some look like the blue headlights. Some look halogen like. And then there are the good ones. We used to sell the good ones for a hundred bucks a pop at work.

But If they went dead within 3 years we also replaced them free of charge
 
#5 ·
The biggest advantage to an LED bulb is it will literally cut your electric bill down by at least a third. At least thats the results we see
 
#6 ·
lighting makes up very little of the electric bill for most commercial and residential properties.. the initial cost is too much for most to justify.. however the retail market may bite because lighting is very important in their market.
 
#7 ·
The city here is replacing some of the street lights with LED units. I think they are doing it on an as-failed basis. They really are nice. The light is not quite as spread out on the street as the old lights, but it is not bad at all.
It seems like less of the light goes back into the yards and more onto the street. But, that may be just a difference in design and aiming.

There is a gas station (BP I think) just north of my work that went through a HUGE renovation a few years ago. They put in 100% LED lights over the pumps. It was for the energy savings they did it. I think they said in the paper they expected it to take 3-5 years to recoop the cost through energy savings, neglecting any replacement costs.

with the LED technology moving as it is now, I think we are going to see more LED fixtures. The technology is just not ready to directly replace incandescent bulbs in fixtures made for incandescent bulbs, but I suspect in 8-12 years it will. For new construction though, and remodeling projects, the LED fixtures will go up in demand I believe.
 
#9 ·
The base is doing the same thing with replacing as-failed streetlights with LED's and I like 'em. They are definitely more towards the blue end of the spectrum from the orange-ish streetlights they're replacing and I'm not sure if it's from the LED's or a different reflector design, but they don't seem to scatter the light up into the sky as much as the sodium streetlights.
 
#10 ·
I don't mind them. The buildings i have we pud LEDS in. On the low voltage mr-16 fixtures they take the transformer out. Can't figure out why so far they have only lasted 1 year if that. The mr-16's last min 10k hours, if you dim them i have seen them last 8 years and still going.
 
#11 ·
We have been retrofitting a lot of site lighting at work with LED lighting, there are definitely a range of quality with most of them. I have been building some small ones with cree mc-e emitters for my barn lighting and dusk to dawn lighting around my place. There is going to be a future in them, and yeah the lower power consumption, less electrical noise, less flicker, more color availability it will be really nice.
 
#17 ·
I think the price is going to go down on these things in the next few years, as the demand goes up. I would hate to invest the money now, and in five years, I could get the same thing for half the price.
 
#18 ·
Pictures. Sorry the cellphone does not do it justice, but it should give you a good idea.







You can kind of see in the ghost image (or what ever you call it) that there appear to be two rows of light sources in each fixture. The pictures do not show it at all, but each row is actully a row of LED pairs. So in reality there are four rows of leds in each fixture.
 
#20 ·
Pictures. Sorry the cellphone does not do it justice, but it should give you a good idea.

You can kind of see in the ghost image (or what ever you call it) that there appear to be two rows of light sources in each fixture. The pictures do not show it at all, but each row is actully a row of LED pairs. So in reality there are four rows of leds in each fixture.
that's pretty cool..
 
#19 ·
Mike, I have done quite a bit with LEDs at work. Most was said above. LEDs have an average life of 50K to 100K hours so the 5-10 years of continuous 24/7 lighting is true. In residential, life would be 20-40 years LOL. The light is a much whiter to blue/white at 5500-6000*K color, in general, but some mfgs are putting filters on them to warm them up - but this also cuts light output.
 
#21 ·
I have been reading up on CFL's and LED through on line links from electrical design publications that I get through work. Right now there is lifespan differences due to failures in the power components and not the diodes, or phosphor lamps themselves. There is talk of more stringent regulations for advertised lifespan to weed out substandard manufactures. There is no beating LED's in the lumens per watt category. The field of LED lighting should improve tremendously in the near future as there have been many breakthroughs in the diode construction and composition in the last five or so years. I think it's a bull market, but I would be concerned with warranty costs. I don't think you can go wrong with energy conservation or production right now.
 
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