More and more bars and restaurants are illuminated by old-fashioned clear glass long-filament bulbs, running at low temperature. That's horrendously inefficient.
--
John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc picosecond timing laser drivers and controllers
jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
I still use an ancient 50 watt desk lamp on my kitchen table because I don't like white LED light or CFLs. It amounts to about 3kwH per month or maybe 33 cents. Using an LED light might save 2/3 of that or 22 cents.
--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: snipped-for-privacy@netfront.net ---
Depends on how you define efficiency.
Many casinos are COVERED in silly lights -- that do nothing besides attract attention to the establishment. Is *that* "efficient"?
We run 130V incandescents, here. Last *forever*. An "efficient" CFL's seem to go out every month or so despite the same usage patterns.
Sure, but it also saves on the heating bill during winter. A dozen
100 watt incandescent lights has the same heating value as a small electric heater. For summer, they can switch to natural lighting, or LED mood lighting.-- Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
** But highly efficient at getting male patrons to fill women with alcohol.
... Phil
I think part of is that nobody understands what color temperature is - they install LEDs or CFLs, the lighting "looks weird", so they go back to incandescents. I think the color temperature should be printed in big letters on the front of the package, like the lumens, watts, and hours are now.
Maybe it would also help if the lamp manufacturers, lamp suppliers, power company, CARB, or somebody would put on a road show for bar and restaurant owners - "how to pick efficient lamps without making your place look weird".
I ate at a barbecue place here that was completely illuminated by LED lamps - the "incandescent replacement" kind with a screw base, like a CFL. They must have bought them the day that they came on the market, because there was a weird blue cast to the light. It produced an odd effect in the restaurant. The food was just fine but it felt a little strange in there.
I have been in other public places that used CFLs, but obviously not all the same part number; some were blue-y and some were yellow-y. The overall effect is usually not as bad as the above BBQ place, though.
Sometimes you even see different colors with large installations of linear fluorescent lamps, but I don't see that as often. I think such places tend to have a facilities person that always orders the same lamp part number.
For a while, Home Depot and Lowe's would have one of those "dressing room" type three-lamp fixtures wired up near the CFL display, with three different color temperature CFLs in it, and a sign explaining which was which. I haven't seen that as much lately. Downstairs at Ikea, where you can grab lamps off the shelf, they have regular incandescent, halogen incandescent, CFL, and LED lamps lit up side by side, so you can see the difference. Since the lamps are in little plexiglass boxes, they don't have the higher-wattage halogens lit up. Some of the displays have dimmers that you can play with.
Some places might want the ability to dim the lamps. You can get CFLs that will dim, but the range isn't as good as incandescent. I think I've seen dimmable LEDs, and I would expect them to work better than CFLs, but I've never tried one.
One thing I think I know is that California now requires weird sockets (bi-pin twist-lock) in light fixtures, at least for residential. The idea is to prevent anyone ever installing an incandescent. In theory, only CFLs or LEDs are available with the weird base. In practice, I suspect adapters are readily available, or people just replace the weird sockets with normal ones. (They even sell the weird-base CFLs around here, with lower selection and higher prices as compared to normal ones.) I don't know if this affects commercial or not; part of the argument might be that the fixtures that match the decor only come with screw-base sockets.
Some people may be afraid of the mercury in a CFL. LED lights might solve that objection.
Matt Roberds
Not only color temperature but also the light intensity matters how you feel about it. You need at least 300 -1000 lx in order to feel comfortable with any color temperature. Going to lower intensities, reddish colors are more preferable
A couple of pubs nearby have recently re-opened after a refit. They're festooned with these - long filaments, some straight, some twisted and all running orange.
Like this...
They seem to be mainly supplemental lighting.
Maybe there's a law of conservation of luminous efficiency - as LEDs and CFLs become more widespread, these 'vintage' lamps must be used to maintain an average.
Cheers
-- Syd
+1
Even so, folks have a hard time trying to understand what a particular lighting effect will look like in *their* home. Esp when seen in the context of all the "ambient" flourescent lighting in most commercial establishments.
A friend gave me a case of bluish LED lamps some time ago. I tried them in the kitchen. They were fine during daylight hours (where the yellow from daylight could help wash them out a bit).
But, as evening approached, they made the food look really "odd". Unappetizing. It was actually hard to prepare some of the meals as the cues you were used to receiving from color (e.g., cooking meat) were terribly distorted.
This is our problem, here. Currently, the only lamps that are *not* on a dimmer are the bulk of the kitchen area (as I tend to want them "all on" when preparing food and "all off" when no longer present in the kitchen). We tried some dimmable CFL "flood lamps" but they were lousy! Minimum output is way too bright! We've been waiting for them to fail so we can once again replace them with incandescents (which have a delightful range of output intensities!)
I tried the aforementioned LED lamps and noticed no difference in output. Obviously, there must be some accommodation made in the lamp (or dimmer) for these to be effective. (and I'm not keen on buying dozens of LED lamps just to "*save* money" -- esp if they end up having the problems that have plagued the CFLs!)
I *may* opt to move them into the garage (no need to dim the lights in there!) but would require replacing the flourescent lamp fixtures there. Not high on my priorities!
We had similar in UK for a while. It simply became standard practice to ins tall new builds with the special lampholders then take them out once the pa perwork was done. It achieved nothing but waste time & money. The authoriti es saw sense in the end & they're no longer required.
NT
On a sunny day (Mon, 26 Jan 2015 08:04:20 +0000 (UTC)) it happened snipped-for-privacy@att.net wrote in :
I have RGB LED strips and made my own controller:
Put those behind the white curtains and the lighting is perfect. Set to slightly orange in the evening, better than them glow bulbs:
So, in short, you can make any color you want, just use some diffuser, here the curtains, to get rid of the individual RGB spots. Ethernet controlled from all over the globe...
LEDs are cool, here my clock:
it can show airplanes in the vicinity too:
Black helies are displayed with black LEDs
That is a (blue) Raspberry Pi up there doing the hard work.
Are you sure they're not LEDs? Some styles have an internal glass/plastic s tructure that is made to look like a long filament, it's certainly the case with the decorative clear glass types like candelabra. They look much bett er than a comparable incandescent but the efficiency is slightly down, like only 40 lumens/Watt, which is low for LEDs, like 50% of other packages.
Replacing cheap natural gas for expensive electricity? At a paltry 100% efficiency?!
If you're going to spend on electricity, you want to do it with a heat pump, and get more like 200-300% efficiency. Sadly, they're always ridiculously expensive, so unless you don't mind the many years before ROI...
Tim
-- Seven Transistor Labs Electrical Engineering Consultation Website: http://seventransistorlabs.com
My wife showed voice her disappointment when I grabbed 0.9 cent T shirt bag rather than a wrapper that some noodles came in to take out the garbage last night. Just to show there's frugal and there's clamped tight. Mikek
-- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. http://www.avast.com
That's the ones. But I see places lit entirely by them.
There's one theory that people spend a fixed fraction of their income on lighting. More efficient lights result in more light.
Our lawmakers can't put down simple rules without pasting them with loopholes. Ordinary incandescents are outlawed, but the loopholes allow for "specials" like oddball voltages (ie, 130, less efficient), decorative, industrial, all sorts of things. So the unintended consequence is that people buy less efficient incandescents.
We need warm colored, broad-spectrum LED lights that shift reddish when dimmed.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc picosecond timing laser drivers and controllers jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com http://www.highlandtechnology.com
It's just a designer "fashion" and will be gone in a few years
Well, yes. The incandescent lamp is going to burn the electricity anyway. Might as well use it for something useful. No modifications required to the restaurant as the wall thermostat will automagically reduce the gas needed to heat the rooms. What could be better?
Ground source heat pump in the summer and air source in the winter. Restaurant on the top floor of a skyscraper. Walk in freezer is a bit much for a heat pump. Of course, the cost factor. Kinda looks like a heat pump might not be "financially efficient".
-- Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
The ones that I see mostly look like this:
Seem to mostly be 60 watts, 130 volts.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc picosecond timing laser drivers and controllers jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com http://www.highlandtechnology.com
c structure that is made to look like a long filament, it's certainly the c ase with the decorative clear glass types like candelabra. They look much b etter than a comparable incandescent but the efficiency is slightly down, l ike only 40 lumens/Watt, which is low for LEDs, like 50% of other packages.
Adjustable color (RGB) LED's have been around for about 2 years. They're not quite as bright as I would like for whole room lighting. Some form of control (Zigbee, Wi-Fi, X10, etc) is needed. However, they do solve the color problem at $60 each (ouch) for about 600 lumens. I don't know yet if these are going to be the next big thing, or just an expensive toy.
3 Routes to Color-Adjustable Home LightingPhilips Hue 40 and 60 watts equivalents: I got to play with a Philips Hue for a few days (until the owner installed it at his house). A really nice feature is that it's easily controlled from a web interface or faked from the command line: http://IP_Address/api/lamp_ID/ (menu interface) curl -X PUT -d '{"on":false}' (lamp on) There's quite a bit of useful detail in the user forums:
LIFX on Kickstarter:
-- Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.