
The Future of Light is the LED - dangrossman
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/08/ff_lightbulbs/
======
achille
I'm surprised behind the huge push behind a "soft yellow" colored bulb. The
articles makes a claim that humans prefer the yellow/orange glow due to
prevalence of fire as lighting.

But I don't see a single mention of the color termperature of pure sunshine,
which is much, much closer to pure white (5500K).

Flourescent bulbs that glow at 5500K are considered "pure white" _[0] and seem
to be demonized in the article as too harsh.

I think this is a case of old folks that grew up under incandescents and
prefer them purely because they grew up with it. As Steve Jobs has mentioned
_[1] (about keyboards), we just need to wait for them to die out eventually.

[0]
[http://www.pse.com/savingsandenergycenter/ForHomes/Publishin...](http://www.pse.com/savingsandenergycenter/ForHomes/PublishingImages/CFLchart2_176x208.jpg)

[1] [http://orangejuiceliberationfront.com/theyll-die-out-
eventua...](http://orangejuiceliberationfront.com/theyll-die-out-eventually)

~~~
ntoshev
I think the reason fluorescent lightning looks bad is not the color
temperature, it's the narrow spectrum of emitted light.

~~~
jjtheblunt
And the flicker.

~~~
derobert
Modern "electronic" fluorescent ballasts don't flicker, at least when not
broken. (They use a frequency that is high enough that the phosphors' glow
hasn't stopped before the cycle is over). The old "magnetic" ones did, but
those really ought not be used anymore. They're less efficient and often
flicker and hum.

Bulbs at the end of their life can flicker, but those of course should be
replaced.

------
onemoreact
I often wonder about these types of regulations. I would much rather see a
1$/bulb tax on incandescent bulbs drive people to more efficient solutions
when it's reasonable to do so. So, if I want a 150watt light for my attic that
is on for 15 hours a year then there is no reason to go with LED's at the same
time I am now much better off using an LED for kitchen lighting. Does anyone
know why such things are so rarely used?

~~~
Someone
I do not know whether to remove only the parentheses, or also the text
fragments inside them to get closest to the truth, but I think this changeover
is not (only) optimized for the short-term good of consumers. It (also) is
optimized for the good of lightbulb producers.

They want a fast transition, so that they can scale up production fast.
Regulations that forbid production and/or sale of old-style bulbs make such a
scale up easier for them.

Enforcing a fast change also may have a net positive effect when looking at
the entire transition period.

------
Lagged2Death
I've been as frustrated as anyone with CFL bulbs that die early deaths, but I
think this article is more than a little over-the-top with the CFL bashing.
None of the CFLs in my house are "horrible, flickery, ugly." Many of them have
lasted for years and put out light that's indistinguishable from
incandescents.

Still and all, I'm glad to see something even better on the way.

~~~
ams6110
Since we're offering anecdotes, I spent some significant money (considering
that we're talking about light bulbs here) to switch over to CFLs a few years
ago. It was a disaster. Most lasted less than a year. Two (out of an original
20 or so) are still working.

I'm stockpiling incandescents so I can wait and see if the LED technology
proves itself in the real world.

~~~
atourgates
I don't argue that early CFL's had big problems, but I'd seriously encourage
you to try again.

First, they're quite cheap. Assuming you don't need dimmable CFL's, you can
get them for less than $1/bulb. With my utility's incentive programs (Southern
California Edison), I often see 60W replacements for ~$0.20/bulb.

Second, they've gotten quite a bit better. Less buzzing, less failure and an
overall better quality of light.

~~~
tomjen3
Thing is there is no reason to change lightbulb technology the old bulbs
worked perfectly.

So when new bulbs are put on the market it isn't unrealistic to expect them to
work as least aswell as the ones they are supposed to replace. When they fail
to do that, why should we risk even more money just because thay are supposed
to be less bad now.

~~~
atourgates
No reason? Only if you don't care about your energy bill.

Running a 60W light bulb for 6-hours a day for a year costs - in California -
$18.25. Multiply that by, I donno, 5 bulbs in your house and you're spending
$91.25/yr on your lighting.

If you replace those 5 60W bulbs with 13W CFL's, and your cost is just
$21.90/yr for the same amount of light. Even including the cost of buying 5
new CFL bulbs, and ignoring the cost of replacing your incandescent lights,
you're going to save ~$65 in energy savings just the 1st year.

~~~
tomjen3
Which is shit for nothing when you compare it with the cost of gas, rent or
(and this particulary irks me: food).

I run only the bulb in the room I am in, which means i would save less than
20$/year which is less than my low care limit.

Add the shit lighting early bulb death and possibility of mercury poisoning my
room (you are supposed to leave for half an hour after you drop one, then
clean up with heavy gloves) and replacing the bulb goes from an economically
decent idea to something less than attractive.

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sbierwagen
Oh boy, I do love reading an article in Wired about a field I specialize in.
It just makes me so amazingly happy.

1.) Wired sure does love yellow light! Kinda odd, since this is a magazine
that is, ostensibly, about modern technology; unlike say, Good Old Days.[1]
What they smoothly elide is that the sensitivity of the human eye peaks at 555
nanometers. (green)[2]

The more red you have in your white light spectrum, the less efficient the
lamp is.

This is a hard physical limit. No amount of cleverness will get around it--
the eye just isn't as sensitive to red light. The warmer the light, the less
efficient your bulb will be. 2700K (warm-white) is pretty bad. 5500K (pure
white) is okay. 7000K would be ideal, but I don't think anybody actually makes
lamps with a color temperature[3] that high.

2.)

    
    
      ...Additional colors and increased brightness required more nuanced control 
      of layer composition and depth. Modern LED makers accomplish this by using 
      precise ratios of indium, gallium, aluminum, and nitrogen for the crystal 
      layer, which results in a bluish color.
    
      But on their own, not even advanced LEDs can produce anything suitable for 
      the living room. The blue-tinged illumination is fine for, say, a pen 
      flashlight on a keychain, but it doesn’t come close to the warm light the 
      human eye desires.
    
      So the LEDs found in current household applications are blue diodes daubed 
      with a powdered coating called a phosphor, which includes rare-earth 
      elements that filter blue light.
    

Not _wrong_ so much as massively, massively misleading. Early white LEDs were
also phosphor laminated, because LEDs are monochromatic devices. There's no
way to get broad-spectrum light out of them otherwise. These phosphors, by the
way, are the same coatings that produce the "awful, sickly" light in the CFLs
Dan hates so much. LED phosphors run off of blue light, not ultraviolet, but
the principle is the same.

\---

1: Actual magazine, that actually exists.
<http://www.goodolddaysmagazine.com/>

2:
[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Luminous_effi...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Luminous_efficacy)

3:
[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Color_tempera...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Color_temperature)

~~~
ender7
However, their pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo about "what the eye desires"
aside, Wired is right that people _hate_ non-yellow light.

Hate.

This is a hard psychological limit. No amount of energy efficiency will get
around it. If you make LED lighting, it _must_ reproduce the color profile
that people are used to from incandescent bulbs.

~~~
calloc
I think that this is too broad of a generalisation. I personally, and many of
my friends as well much prefer whiter light. When I go to the store I buy the
bright white CFL's [1] that make the dark go away ... ;-)

I know of many other people, including most of my family that prefer that type
of light over the yellow light that incandescence provide. I grew up on CFL's
though, my grandpa used to work at Phillips and used to get massive discounts
on all of their products.

[1]:
[http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1v/R-100686993/h_d2/Produ...](http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1v/R-100686993/h_d2/ProductDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10055)

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colanderman
The demo as described is kind of silly… it's easy to get two bulbs to appear
to generate the same color white light reflecting off a given background;
there are at most 4-5 variables to adjust (given that humans have 4-5
different classes of light sensors). A group of 5 LEDs (red, yellow, green,
aqua, blue) could be made to pass this test but would render colors terribly.

Color me impressed when participants can't tell the difference between
rainbows generated by each light passing through a prism – that would be a
much better test of color rendering ability.

~~~
spython
To test the color rendering ability just take a CD or a DVD disc, and hold it
to the light. On CFLs you'll often see just a few streaks instead of a
rainbow, while halogen lamps and LEDs are pretty good.

~~~
colanderman
Thanks, that's a good tip. I'm surprised that _all_ my CFLs (even ones with
supposedly good CRI) show up as red, green, and blue blotches...

------
elangoc
Ever since I heard about "dirty energy" emitted from CFL bulbs, I've become
wary of fluorescent bulbs and pro-LCD bulbs. Especially because I'm an
asthmatic: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VS5ogZxoZ2Y>
<http://www.magdahavas.com/2009/12/05/gs-units-explained/>

Can anyone with more knowledge on the subject verify if the dirty energy info
about CFL bulbs is true, and if LCD bulbs will be free from that?

~~~
ugh
I really wouldn’t worry about “dirty energy”. There is likely no effect at
all, any effects you might perceive are probably psychosomatic.

Here is a study looking into health effects of electromagnetic fields:
<http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=5155>

Here is another study looking at people suffering from electromagnetic
sensitivity:
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Cmd=S...](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=9817951&ordinalpos=9&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum)

And another one:
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Cmd=S...](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=15832334&ordinalpos=2&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum)

------
tomjen3
I hope not. I spend a fortune on an led bulb a half or so year ago.

Not only was the light so bad my desk looked like the inside of a morque, but
as the sun went down I discovered that the light it did send out was so weak
that I could't see anything.

One expensive lesson later and I am not going to be using anything like an led
again.

I had planed to stay with the good old fashioned lightbulb (I can afford the
bill) but the ever meddlesome lawmakers made those illegal to import.

------
espressodude
I'm not really that 'light' savvy but this seems good. It's like the
transition from horses to automobiles.

------
torstesu
In countries or areas with a cold climate the argument of energy conversion is
less significant as most of the energy consumption is used for heat anyway.

To those advocating that LED bulbs will last longer, you might find this
interesting: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel>

~~~
ars
Less, maybe. But no place is cold for the entire year, the heat is generated
in poor places (for example if you have cans all the heat is generated above
the insulation, which is pointless). And electric heat is much less efficient
than natural gas.

~~~
sbierwagen

      And electric heat is much less efficient than natural gas.
    

Less efficient _per dollar,_ depending on the cost of electricity and natural
gas. Electric heat is, of course, 100% thermodynamically "efficient", since
all the power eventually ends up as heat. With natural gas, you have to pipe
the exhaust outside, and you lose a small amount of heat that way.

~~~
ars
Is there a reason you are ignoring transmission and generation losses?

By your standard natural gas is also 100% thermodynamically efficient - all of
it ends up as heat. Some of it outdoors, sure, but that is true for electric
heat as well. Those thin electric lines outside your house get pretty hot.

~~~
sbierwagen
Is there a reason you are ignoring transmission and generation losses for
natural gas? Methane isn't a frictionless fluid, it costs real money to pump
it through pipelines. And, of course, you have to dig it out of the ground in
the first place.

