LEDs (light emitting diodes)--Are They Really Energy Saving??

[Uncle Sam]

I was under the impression that LED lighting was supposed to be very energy efficient and "green" when compared to fluorescent lighting. We can now order the vendors with LED lights, if you want them, but at a considerable premium in price.

Today I used my "Watts-Up" digital meter to check out the LEDs versus the fluorescents in my vendors. What I found really surprised me!! The fluorescents used about 1/2 the power that the LEDs did. The way the LEDs are installed in the vendor utilizes 21 individual LEDs in 2 fixtures versus a 25 watt and a 13 watt fluorescent in 2 fixtures. Each LED consumes about 5 watts (according to my meter) totaling about 100 watts versus the 40-41 watts for the fluorescents. I must say that the LEDs are brighter looking than the fluorescents, but LEDs also cost about 2 times as much initially. I'm told that the working life of LEDs is many times that of fluorescents, but the pay back does not seem that good to me. I have also been told that LEDs do not put out much heat either.

I checked and recehecked my meter readings to make sure I wasn't missing something and I don't think I did. So my question for some LED expert out there in "forum-land": Is LED lighting the "Greener" thing to install or is all this push to use LEDs just "global warming" BS???

Uncle Sam

 

[Indiana Wash]

Do you think if LED's and flourescents with similar light outputs were compared, there would be a difference. In my car, I switched to LED bulbs in my signals and they didn't even pull enough juice to trigger the signal switch.

 

[Uncle Sam]

Indiana Wash,

I don't have a meter that measures light output and I have no doubt that the LEDs are brighter than the fluorescents. If the fluorescents created enough light in the machine for many years, why would the manufacturer put in so many LEDs to brighten things up when everyone is being told to conserve energy? It just does not seem logical to me.

I do know today that the heat output for LEDs is almost nothing when compared to the smaller wattage fluorescents.

Uncle Sam

 

[MEP001]

It's correct that LEDs don't produce much heat at all, and they're not affected by cold which makes them great for lighing a refrigerated compartment. They also produce no UV light at all, so plastics exposed to the light won't get yellowed.

I've also discovered recently that LEDs aren't all that "green" when taking energy consumption into account but also adjusting for the cost of the hardware. A local C-store chain just built a new location and is lighting the gas pumps with LSI LED canopy fixtures. It looks pretty good and does a decent job of lighting, but they're still 100 watts per fixture and only last 60,000 hours. You would need at least four to effectively light a bay (in my opinion), which would cost around $1,600 vs. $400 for two HID. The cost per year to operate them is not so much greater that 15 years later when you need to replace the LEDs you will have saved only $100 in that 15 years, even taking into account the replacement of the bulbs and capacitors in the HID fixtures every two years.

Seems like LEDs have to make some significant advances to really become "better".

 

[Whale of a Wash]

I think the LED's lose efficiency when lots of light are required. They are super in cell-phones.I think HID is a better idea for canopy lighting. I have two vendors with leds and the look they give is awesome. There is no heat from them, so we don't use electricity to cool it again. The advantage over cfl's may be minimal, but large over incandescents. At night the look is awesome. Someday they will probably put in a sensor so they come on when someone approaches like the ones at wal-mart . Then we would save even more. Global warming- I don't know what to say except our winter has been so cold and miserable, It still seems a couple of years away. Our area was covered by a glacier over 100k years ago, so obviously we had some global warming, just due to the earths cycles.

 

[MEP001]

A friend of mine was telling me of an LED lighting system that covered the entire ceiling and had detectors of some sort that had them only come on where a person was standing or walking.