LED light bulbs

LEDlighting

John_3:16 wrote: »

I do have concerns when ording these type of new tech items from HK or China.

Are they regulated and are they safe.

In GB we have the BS system or kite mark, I would think that these type of items will have littlle testing, I would not like to use them if they are likely to catch fire?

You need to check for ROHS and CE certificates on products before purchasing. See below for descriptions of these certificates.

The CE marking certifies that a product has met EU consumer safety, health or environmental requirements.

ROHS - The Directive on the restriction of the use of certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment.

As far as i know, there is only one LED retailer in the UK that has it's own test facilitie and extensively tests all products to make sure that manufacturer claims are backed up. I couldn't possibly say which company that is

mac2008

energysavingled - what I'd really like to know is why can't even LED manufacturers and retailers be honest and publish lumen ratings to allow standardised comparisons? How many lumens does a 50W Halogen GU10 produce and can any GU10 LED currently match this?

As an aside, I see IKEA now sell LED GU10's and SES at a reasonable price - their GU10 is listed as something like 120lm - what Halogen equiv. is that?

Mac

Scoobs72

mac2008 wrote: »

energysavingled - what I'd really like to know is why can't even LED manufacturers and retailers be honest and publish lumen ratings to allow standardised comparisons? How many lumens does a 50W Halogen GU10 produce and can any GU10 LED currently match this?

As an aside, I see IKEA now sell LED GU10's and SES at a reasonable price - their GU10 is listed as something like 120lm - what Halogen equiv. is that?

Mac

imo, one of the best source for this information is the U.S. Department of Energy's Caliper program which evaluates solid state lighting. See http://www1.eere.energy.gov/buildings/ssl/reports.html

They have benchmarked halogen GU10s/MR16s for LED comparison purposes and found a 20 watt gu10/MR16 halogen produces anywhere between 250-300 lumens. Osram's 35w & 50w halogen GU10s output 600 lumen and 900 lumen respectively, in warm white.

EnergysavingLED.com's GU10 LEDs I recognise as Aeon Lighting's Asteria series bulbs, which in my opinon are the best GU10s available, however even their most powerful warm white bulb is 520 lumens which is just short of most 35W halogens. I have one of their earlier V3 series bulbs in my kitchen which has been going strong for the past 18 months, although the output is in the region of 20 watts equivalent....not enough for me and I'm waiting to see the first GU10 that tops 600 lumens before I swap out my 35W halogens. I expect that bulb to come from Aeon, hopefully later this year.

LEDlighting

mac2008 wrote: »

energysavingled - what I'd really like to know is why can't even LED manufacturers and retailers be honest and publish lumen ratings to allow standardised comparisons? How many lumens does a 50W Halogen GU10 produce and can any GU10 LED currently match this?

As an aside, I see IKEA now sell LED GU10's and SES at a reasonable price - their GU10 is listed as something like 120lm - what Halogen equiv. is that?

Mac

Hi Mac

Firstly i had to change my username. Sorry if i offended anyone.

Lumen readings are actually very miss-understood by most. It's not as easy as to simply look at the Lumens to measure how good a bulb will be. Beam angle is one thing that is incredibly important as is the level (or height) where you would need illumination. So one of the most important readings to look at is the Lux. Which is how the brightness or power of light alters depending on how far away from the source you are. So your ceiling height becomes an important factor into what bulbs are best to use.

Put in simple terms, a Halogen spotlight will be very impressive in terms of Lumens but often not impressive at all when it comes to Lux.
LED spots focus the light downwards, so although the lumens may not be as high as the Halogen, the brightness on the floor of your room, or on your work surfaces will be greater with the LED product. Halogen spots look incredibly bright when you look up at them, but the light it produces is going in all sorts of directions, it's not focused at all and a lot of it gets lost. This is why Halogen Spot lights produce so much heat and use such an incredible amount of power. They need to to get a sufficient amount of light down. The amount of money it costs you to run Halogen spots is staggering. Which is why replacing them with LED spots, good ones are expensive, makes complete financial sense.

You buy the best LED Spot at just over £30, it will have paid for itself in 2 years and you'll go on to have 90% savings for 20 years plus. (this calculation applies to a specific product i know of).

The other thing to consider is that when it comes to LED products, we know of many manufacturers that claim to have a 4w bulb, when when you open it up, it's actually a 6w or 8w and we once had a 10w bulb pretending to be a 4w bulb. Companies can also pretty much say what they want for lumens as it's very difficult and expensive to properly asses lumen output. It requires a very expensive piece of kit. It's difficult to prove the readings are wrong. Plus they only need a certain % to reach that level to claim every bulb has that lumen reading. Which is why consistency from the manufacturer is absolutely vital.

LED lighting is a complex world. There are a lot of people out there trying to pass things off as one thing when they are not. This is why you should always deal with a company that specialises in LED. They will have sourced the best products and be able to give you expert advice. If you buy quality LED products and listen to quality advice you will save a huge amount of money, energy, C02 and dramatically reduce your energy bills.

Hope that helps and if you need anymore help, please let me know.

Regards

sunshinetours

LEDlighting - can the 60W replacement bulbs be used with a dimmer? We have two 60W light pendants in our lounge and need to replace some bulbs as one blew this morning so may give LED's a go in warm white but we do have a dimmer currently fitted

Have tried LED's in GU10 format and hated them (very poor light output) but may try again in regular light fitting as these lights are often on a large part of te day and evening

mac2008

LEDlighting wrote: »

Hi Mac

Firstly i had to change my username. Sorry if i offended anyone.

Lumen readings are actually very miss-understood by most. It's not as easy as to simply look at the Lumens to measure how good a bulb will be. Beam angle is one thing that is incredibly important as is the level (or height) where you would need illumination. So one of the most important readings to look at is the Lux. Which is how the brightness or power of light alters depending on how far away from the source you are. So your ceiling height becomes an important factor into what bulbs are best to use.

Put in simple terms, a Halogen spotlight will be very impressive in terms of Lumens but often not impressive at all when it comes to Lux.
LED spots focus the light downwards, so although the lumens may not be as high as the Halogen, the brightness on the floor of your room, or on your work surfaces will be greater with the LED product. Halogen spots look incredibly bright when you look up at them, but the light it produces is going in all sorts of directions, it's not focused at all and a lot of it gets lost. This is why Halogen Spot lights produce so much heat and use such an incredible amount of power. They need to to get a sufficient amount of light down. The amount of money it costs you to run Halogen spots is staggering. Which is why replacing them with LED spots, good ones are expensive, makes complete financial sense.

You buy the best LED Spot at just over £30, it will have paid for itself in 2 years and you'll go on to have 90% savings for 20 years plus. (this calculation applies to a specific product i know of).

The other thing to consider is that when it comes to LED products, we know of many manufacturers that claim to have a 4w bulb, when when you open it up, it's actually a 6w or 8w and we once had a 10w bulb pretending to be a 4w bulb. Companies can also pretty much say what they want for lumens as it's very difficult and expensive to properly asses lumen output. It requires a very expensive piece of kit. It's difficult to prove the readings are wrong. Plus they only need a certain % to reach that level to claim every bulb has that lumen reading. Which is why consistency from the manufacturer is absolutely vital.

LED lighting is a complex world. There are a lot of people out there trying to pass things off as one thing when they are not. This is why you should always deal with a company that specialises in LED. They will have sourced the best products and be able to give you expert advice. If you buy quality LED products and listen to quality advice you will save a huge amount of money, energy, C02 and dramatically reduce your energy bills.

Hope that helps and if you need anymore help, please let me know.

Regards

Thanks - I've now got some envirolight 3W GU10's and do think they are around 35W equiv.

However, whilst I get your point about Halogen beam angles, but I'd argue that a decent beam angle is still important for LEDs, to avoid shadows and dim corners, especially in a kitchen.

Anyway, thanks to you and the previous poster for some very useful info

WestonDave

One of the problems is that at £30 a time, its a lot of money to spend only to find (as I did recently on a £5 one) that it won't fit in the fitting. Also in a lot of cases, MR16's require new transformers fitting (or at least these are recommended) which adds another £6 onto the cost.

I've got a cheapy 3W cool white MR16 in the porch fitting (which is a glass cover fitting) and that is fine - bit dim but its only there to light the steps a bit and make it a bit more welcoming than darkness - its far better than the 50W one that was in there previously.

However the same bulb wouldn't fit in the kitchen fittings which are the spring clip type because the lip around the edge of the bulb is thicker than on halogen bulbs - worth bearing in mind if you are thinking about replacements. Shame because 7 50W bulbs in a kitchen eats some electricity - I'd be happy to spend £20-£30 a time to replace them if I knew that the old transformers weren't going to damage them, and if I knew they would fit in the fittings!

LEDlighting

sunshinetours wrote: »

LEDlighting - can the 60W replacement bulbs be used with a dimmer? We have two 60W light pendants in our lounge and need to replace some bulbs as one blew this morning so may give LED's a go in warm white but we do have a dimmer currently fitted

Have tried LED's in GU10 format and hated them (very poor light output) but may try again in regular light fitting as these lights are often on a large part of te day and evening

Our 60W replacement bulb? Our 7w LED Bulb? No it can't be used with dimmers. Dimming LED bulbs seem to be big news in the market at the moment, but we are being very cautious with this technology at the moment. Especially as most people want to use dimmable LED bulbs with conventional dimmers, which we do not reccommend.

When using an LED with a dimmer consideration must be given to the fact that most existing standard dimmers require a minimum load of some 30w in order to function correctly. Using a lower consumption lamp whether it is a standard incandescent, or specific dimmable LED/fluorescent will not load the dimmer correctly and will cause it to malfunction in a variety of ways.

Effectively if you are using at least 8 off 5w lamps or 6 off 7w lamps on the same circuit there should be no problem and they will all dim as intended (multiples more likely to occur with spots than traditional GLS). Note that 5w and 7w units usually consume less than the power stated.


Which GU10 LED's did you try and hate?

Regards.

sillygoose

biggest problem with LED lighting is its still relatively early days, you could buy the best lamps now at £30 a pop and be sort of stuck with them for 20 years. Of late there has become a huge variety of LED's onto the market which show the factories have a huge interest in this market.

Personally I think those £30 LED's will be far more powerful and only £10 within a couple of years, for now let someone else make the suppliers rich!

buglawton

Moore's law says electronics stuff gets cheaper and better very fast.