Most energy-efficient' LED light revealed by Philips

[haikuman]

Lighting company Philips has developed an LED lamp that it describes as "the world's most energy-efficient".

It said the prototype tube lighting LED is twice as efficient as those currently used in offices and industry around the world but offers the same amount of light.

Being able to halve the amount of energy used could bring huge cost and energy savings.

Lighting accounts for more than 19% of global electricity consumption.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22106718

[decay]

I wonder what PCs take up...

[JPK]

Call me when it is cost effective.

JPK

PS a 22 year ROI is not cost effective.

[davester]

JPK wrote:
Call me when it is cost effective.

JPK

PS a 22 year ROI is not cost effective.

Where do you get this from? The only mention of cost in the article is "The company has not yet published prices but a spokesperson told the BBC that the cost would not be significantly more than current LED tube lights." In fact, most energy efficient lights have typical ROIs on the order of a couple of years or less, not decades.

[haikuman]

davester wrote:
[quote=JPK]
Call me when it is cost effective.

JPK

PS a 22 year ROI is not cost effective.

Where do you get this from? The only mention of cost in the article is "The company has not yet published prices but a spokesperson told the BBC that the cost would not be significantly more than current LED tube lights." In fact, most energy efficient lights have typical ROIs on the order of a couple of years or less, not decades.
Nice pick up davester . . .

[Black]

davester wrote:
[quote=JPK]
Call me when it is cost effective.

JPK

PS a 22 year ROI is not cost effective.

Where do you get this from? .

[OWC Jamie]

Most offices already have energy efficient florescent lamps.
and they are rather cheap to buy

[davester]

billb wrote:
Most offices already have energy efficient florescent lamps.
and they are rather cheap to buy

True, but the claim is that this lighting has double the efficiency. Given the heavy use that office lighting gets, this could lead to substantial overall energy savings.

[Gareth]

davester wrote:
[quote=JPK]
Call me when it is cost effective.

JPK

PS a 22 year ROI is not cost effective.

Where do you get this from? The only mention of cost in the article is "The company has not yet published prices but a spokesperson told the BBC that the cost would not be significantly more than current LED tube lights." In fact, most energy efficient lights have typical ROIs on the order of a couple of years or less, not decades.
You need to extend the bold on that quote to LED tube lights. I spent $45 on my LED tube to replace a 3' T8 fluorescent tube, plus a few dollars to replace the starter switch with a regular one and I re-wired it myself (to bypass the ballest). And $45 was cheap from what I could find (ok, there might have been some cheaper ones out there, but I wanted one that claimed to be UL listed). A regular T8 fluorescent tube is a few dollars? So my LED tube was 10x more expensive, plus the time to rewire. Now, imagine doing that across an entire office or factory (I just did the one at my desk as an experiment)...

[davester]

Gareth wrote:
You need to extend the bold on that quote to LED tube lights. I spent $45 on my LED tube to replace a 3' T8 fluorescent tube, plus a few dollars to replace the starter switch with a regular one and I re-wired it myself (to bypass the ballest). And $45 was cheap from what I could find (ok, there might have been some cheaper ones out there, but I wanted one that claimed to be UL listed). A regular T8 fluorescent tube is a few dollars? So my LED tube was 10x more expensive, plus the time to rewire. Now, imagine doing that across an entire office or factory (I just did the one at my desk as an experiment)...

1. The biggest costs for commercial lighting are the electricity cost and the tube replacement labor, not the capital cost. By that measure, $40 or so per tube will likely get you a very reasonable ROI for a typical commercial/industrial lamp that will be burning for 12+ hours a day.

2. Retrofit is a completely different scenario from new installations and costs need to be weighed for each situation. That said, I work on an installation that has 4,000 employees, and we have a full time staff who do nothing but change out fluorescent lights, at a much higher rate than would be needed for LEDs due to the much lower fluorescent tube lifetime. It can be quite expensive to change out tubes, especially in high bay areas. The savings in reduced changeout would likely pay for any retrofit costs. Probably the most likely scenario to play out on an installation like ours is that a retrofit would be phased in as fluorescent bulbs burned out and were due for replacement. After all, it doesn't take much more effort to wire around a ballast than it does to just change the bulb.