Have you seen this: Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Please read about it here: http://news.filehippo.com/2013/02/reinventing-the-lightbulb/ Can this be real? I would appreciate your comments.
Since there isn't any posting as to it actually being shown working I cannot give much of a opinion. Until I can see it work I will be in the dark about this.
That looks like a version of an LED bulb. They have been around for a few years now. I bought one from Lowes last summer and use it every day in my home. I bought some other ones (something like 2 watt, 175 lumen ones) off of Amazon and put one of them in my refrigerator and gave another one to my brother.
Of course it's real. The article describes exactly what it is: a dumb-looking LED bulb. A few points: 1. It is high efficiency for an LED, but not outside of current efficiency envelope. The actual LEDs are, no doubt, just off-the-shelf LEDs. 2. The chalk-talk does the ratios backwards. All-in-all, nothing very impressive, but perhaps some people will dig the way it looks.
By 'real', I meant is it believable. What do you mean the ratios are backwards? And if that is so, is it a scam? Dig the way it looks!? It's hideous!
Er, wait - rereading; the ratios aren't backwards, they just don't match what they are calculating (I thought they were trying to show something about the energy use visually). The ratios are lifespans. Ie, you need 30 incandescents to match the lifespan of one LED. But the math is about energy use/cost. So they are separate issues... ....unless they want to include the cost of all those bulbs in the calculation. Which, of course they don't, since 30indcandescents are cheaper than one LED. If the incandescent costs $1, the CFL costs $5 and the LED $75, what is the payback (in years) on your investment of an LED vs an incandescent? A CFL vs an incandescent? An LED vs a CFL? Is this LED really a good economic choice? Nope, not a scam, Just marketing hype. Then I predict it won't sell well, since its unique look is about all that it has that's unique.
Thirty incandescents are not cheaper than one nanolight. They are $400 and it is $45, plus you would not have the bother of purchasing and installing. However, what is 'nano' about the nanolight. Now, that is hype.
$45 would be unusually cheap for an LED of this type (but not absurd), but you are way, way off on the price of the incandescents. Even after their manufacture being banned and having the secondary market price go up accordingly, they still only cost about $1 each. Prior to banning it was more like $0.50 each. http://www.amazon.com/GE-White-Incandescent-Light-Bulbs/dp/B0055T5VW8 ...and I was high on the CFL price. They are more like $2.50 each: http://www.amazon.com/Watt-Energy-Smart-CFL-Replacement/dp/B000UYF80S So the question isn't whether you save enough energy versus an incandescent to make these viable, it is whether you save enough energy versus a CFL.
This one is 12 watts for the same light output. Higher efficiency = more expensive. I was just looking at this yesterday and I'm not sure what causes the discrepancy but it seems tube-style tends to yeild higher efficiency. Here's one not far off: 1900 lumens at 14.5 Watts (131 lumens/watt) for $27. http://www.bulbs.com/espec.aspx?ID=...g&matchtype=&gclid=CKLJiKmpw70CFVQV7AodWB4AzA I guess I remembered wrong from what I was working on though: $27 is a lot less than $45 each. Still a tough sell over an incandescent or CFL though. I'm not sure if any others at that style and efficiency exist: Home Depot doesn't have any.
I've reviewed the video from the link and it looks like this light does give off as much light as a ordinary light bulb does. However the cost is what I'm concerned with as the more power needed the more money the LED costs. Philips' Energy Saver Mini Twister 13W in Soft White ($8 for four) brightens quickly for a CFL: in 45 seconds. Feit's Soft White Ecobulb Plus 13W ($4) was a crowd favorite, but takes two minutes to warm up. In terms of efficiency, these rated even better on our test than the winning LEDs — 587% and 593% more efficient, respectively, than an incandescent. Claimed life spans: 10,000 and 12,000 hours (about nine and 11 years). This is what I've had for many years.
What people want from a light bulb is power efficiency, and the closest possible approximation to natural sunlight. CFLs give off lots of light, but unfortunately not the kind of light that enables us to see easily. No single bulb does this. The nearest you can get at present is a combination of incandescent bulbs and LED bulbs. Hopefully, LED technology will advance so that a "sunlight" bulb, combining various wavelengths of more powerful LEDs, can be made within the next 10 years.
