Behold, the $15 LED bulb
Lighting Science Group teams up with Indian electronics manufacturer Dixon Technologies to unveil the world's first $15-or-less 60-watt equivalent LED bulb.
Photo courtesy Lighting Science Group/Dixon Technologies 
With 800,000,000 incandescent light bulbs and 300,000,000 CFLs sold in India each year, the market is ripe for these highly efficient, long lasting and nontoxic products. The economic and environmental implications of this partnership are significant: old-style light bulbs use 60 billion units of electricity each year, 7% of India’s total, and our Lighting Science Group Definity® lamps could save over 70% of that, equivalent to 32 coal fired plants with 500MW capacity.
- What's the difference between CFLs, LEDs and incandescents?
- Which bulb is most efficient, and why?
- And learn more about LED bulbs here
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Comments
I live in Europe, where we are also seeing LED lamps coming onto the market.
The thing that strikes me about these debates I read on LED lamps is that the prices you are all quoting are history.
Check out Ebay sometime, and see the prices for LED lamps, it is down to a couple of USD now, putting most of the arguments on price firmly behind us. We now only need to be looking at efficacy, and the options for shapes styles and beam focus is ever expending.
As for me, I am.... More
as it gets hotter and hotter from fossil fuel emissions, I buy CFL because incandescents give off major heat and then you use more a/c to keep cool. negating their initial low cost. CFLs have mercury though so I will gradually switch to LEDs.
however high quality sylvanias of 60 watt equivalency as of yesterday in my local Lowes which apart from HD which has a lower grade LED, cost $39.95 each. it is hard to see big diff. between same wattage CFL I can get for less than ten bucks. maybe.... More
frankly this whole light bulb scam does not pencil out finacially. for fourty cents i can buy a sixty watt incandescent that generally lasts three to five years ( i know because i'm the one who has to replace them). i can control the amount of energy used by turning off the light when not required. i need a better argument to justify the expense. anybody ?
I will do the math for you. A typical incandescent bulb has a 1000 hour life. You say they last 3-5 years in your use, I will average that to 4 years to make things easy - so, 250 hours per year. The average cost of electricity in the US is $0.12 per kiloWatt-hour (higher in some places, lower in others). 250 hours x 60 watts = 15,000 Watt-hours per year or 15 kiloWatt-hours. So, that bulb costs $1.80 per year to operate.
The LED costs more up front, but less per year to operate -.... More
For every minute the light is on you'll use 80% less energy, so if it's a bulb that gets a decent amount of use you would recoup the cost of the bulb in a few months compared to an incandescent. It's easy to do the math and if you want to test it yourself, buy a Kill a Watt meter or Belkin Conserve Insight. I did it and now have CFLs in every socket of my home except for one- where I'm trying out a $10 LED.
I know from past experience quality counts as well.
for CFLs they can wear out if you turn them on and off too much as they have to gradually come on.
LEDs don't have this problem.
if there are LEDs less than twenty bucks, I will immed. change every lightbulb in my house, as after insurance from climate change going up, prop taxes from screwing middle class to pay off national debt keeps going up, next is elec/utility bills once again focusing on middle class.
If.... More
The key is Lumens. How many?
Why don't you guys quit crying... like most Americans do, and just go buy one and see for yourself whether you like it or not. The worst case scenario is it's not bright enough, and you can put it in a room that don't require alot of light. I never knew our country to be so full of winey babies....
I bought 40W dimmable LED bulbs at my local Home Depot for $8 each a few months ago. Granted, it was a sale price, but $8 none the less!
We replaced the CFLs that the developer put in our kitchen - 6 of them in cans which barely lit up the room sufficiently at night. We replaced them with CREE LEDs and it's like the sun is shining into the kitchen, with much less power usage. LED is the way to go.
All it will really take is for one company to come to market with an inexpensive LED bulb (or many different sizes/shapes of bulbs) to corner the market. Current manufacturers are charging a ton for each bulb but if one manufacturer will come out with a cheap bulb they'll get all the business and force the other companies to make theirs more inexpensively.
I bought one at Lowes- it lasted five days on an intermittent light.
Pretty miraculous, given that the bulbs in the article aren't available yet.
It's a Compact Flourescent Light (CFL), not a CLF
It's the year 2011. Shouldn't we have already mastered this technology by now? And where's my flying car!?
It's Fluorescent, not Flourescent.
Remains to be seen if the light quality is acceptible. That's the biggest problem with all of the low cost LED bulb attempts.
Right, 15 bucks for only 8 years, plus the ecological cost which is....well, that's never mentioned, but is undoubtedly much, much higher than a good old tungsten, glass, and steel bulb.
You know what they say about making assumptions...
The environmental impact of 'good old tungsten, glass, and steel bulb' is basically worse.
First, they are worse simply because they use more electricity for the light they produce. Much of that electricity is coming from power plants that burn coal.
Second, the new LED lights are more recyclable. Some will probably turn out to be repairable, so by replacing the LED plate at far lower cost than a new.... More
Lemme guess - you're the guy who complained when they took lead out of gasoline, aren't you? I bet you'd complain even if the LED bulb would cost 10 cents and last forever. I suspect your problem might have little to do with ecological cost and more to do with lack of brightness....
You might want to consider in that impact of that that good old tungsten, glass, and steel bulb(s) over an 8 year time frame requires the power plant to burn about 700 more lbs of petroleum or 1000 more lbs of coal that that LED lamp. (Based on 51 higher watts than LED, 8 hours a day for 8 years = 1191 KWH higher energy of the tungsten bulb; 1KWH requires about .6 lbs petroleum or 1 lb of coal)
Isn't 8 years a pretty brief lifespan for an LED bulb? What gives?
As an engineer I can tell you that trying to estimate the lifespan of a solid state device is very difficult, I think it's fair to say that nobody really knows how long these will last but it will likely be a VERY long time. The estimated lifespan you see printed on the packaging is really just a marketing decision and is meant to reassure the consumer that the product will save money over the long term. I bet the engineers that make these LEDs think it will last for 30+ years but the lawyers.... More
Probably more sloppy reporting.
The company website lists a lifespan of 25,000 hours - typical for LEDs. If left on for an 8 or 9 hour day, this works out to about 8 years.
In real life, the average use in homes is more like 2 to 4 hours per day, so these could last well over a decade under those circumstances.
For indoor LED lighting (much less harsh environment than outdoors) the lifetime is measured by when the total light output has dropped to 50%. Tungsten lights wear out and blow, Indoor LED lights often dim out before total failure (very general statement). There is other electronics e.g. voltage step down electronics which may also be a factor. LED lifetime is very dependent on the LED temperature. The temperature is very dependent on how much was spent on thermal management in the.... More
Thanks! Re: Thermal management- heat sinks can be expensive from what I understand, so that is likely a cost/performance issue. I also hadn't considered that the voltage regulation circuitry might go bad. And I agree that 50% output would be considered a bad bulb by most people.
Picture looks like it has a base for DC power. Is the author talking about a DC bulb or an AC bulb that will be out soon?
Standard holder for AC sockets in India. The one for other countries will have respective holders.
Hey, lot's of people have the equivalent of 60 watt light bulbs. Where is the 100W and beyond ones? In Jan 2012 100W regular bulbs will no longer be on sale. What's going to replace it that fits into existing fixtures. This Congressional law is ridiculous and I expect the public to go into a fit when they find this out!
Halogens exist as do CFLs. Both meet the performance standard. I've got high wattage CFL spirals and floods and they work great. The law sets very modest standards- it should be stricter to drive innovation.
Actually- I've known about the law for some time now and have applauded it every step of the way. Funny thing is, this law was originally proposed by Republicans and now, somehow, it is like kryptonite to them.
A major issue in the LED industry right now is that many companies claim to have a 60 watt equivalence- which is exactly the issue here. Until Lighting Sciences releases the amount of lumens this bulb puts out, I do not believe it is equivalent to 60 watt.
False advertisement by Lighting Sciences, also do more research before you post articles like this.
We've bought a couple of these bulbs and they do not emit a 60 watt amount of light, and it's a weird soft blue light. We also bought some night lights and they are almost as bright as no light at all.
Please tell us what you measured their lumen output to be.
You have a few?? How did you get them when they have not come to America yet? Do you live in India?
lol
"Until Lighting Sciences releases the amount of lumens this bulb puts out, I do not believe it is equivalent to 60 watt."
The Lighting Science website has the lumen output of all of their bulbs available; they are clearly equivalent to corresponding incandescent bulbs. So I guess you'll be forced to believe now.
The Lighting Science website states that their 60W-equivalent bulbs produce 875 lumens. This is, in fact, equivalent to the light output of a 60W incandescent bulb.
There's little reason to believe that any company would engage in fraud that was so simple to debunk. Even without a light meter, the human eye is easily able to detect even small differences in brightness, so trying to pass off a lamp as brighter than it actually is would fail instantly, especially when so many outlets now.... More
Color temps from around 2000Kelvin to 5600K are on the same shelves at the store for both CFL and LED bulbs and as far as that goes in conventional fluorescents and incandescents (halogens for higher K values).
I am a fan of LEDs and have one (40W eq.;currently off) over my left shoulder while typing this. However, at the current price point, I do not expect to buy more any time soon. Another feature about this unit and some larger ones I have that is a deal breaker for me is the radio interference they emit. Weak TV and radio stations are fried. Needs fixed: RFI can mess up a lot of things.
The elephant in the room: WHAT IS THE COLOR TEMPERATURE of these LED lights?
The reason fluorescent bulbs are so unpopular is the cold blue "temperature" of the light they give off - as opposed to the warm temp (2,700–3,300 K) -
yet you morons (journalists) never address that nor even ask the question.
Until LEDs and fluorescent bulbs are manufactured to give off that same comforting light temperature that people with incandescent bulbs have become used to over the.... More
Do some research Techno.
There are lots of LED's with low color temperature. (3000K)
The real question is about Color Rendering Index.
Do you know what that is?
Hardly an elephant. CFLs have been available over a wide range of color temperatures, ranging from 2500K to over 5000K, for several years now. Their color spans a range wider than incandescent bulbs, both warmer and colder.
LEDs currently have a narrower range of colors available, but warm white versions are essentially indistinguishable from ordinary incandescent bulbs and are readily available.
Any lightbulb with toxic mercury and where I have to go through all this if it breaks is not for me and shouldn't even be sold on the market.
Not to spoil the party, but the additional amounts of mercury and other heavy metals emitted by power plants because of inefficient light bulbs and other inefficient appliances far outweigh the trace amounts of mercury found in any CFL.
LEDs don't contain mercury.
And I'd bet good money that on any other topic, you'd consider anything the EPA had to say a crock.
I believe the EPA when they said they found radiation from Japan's nuclear meltdowns in the milk and water in the United States: .... More
Those readings are/were present all over the planet to some extent. Just because one stupid guy made them look like they are associated with japanese reactor, all hell broke loose.
