INTRODUCTION

This blog is about LED lighting.  Where other commonly available and applied mechanical light sources inherently, naturally did not succeed, LED does not fear to tread.  In ‘Fork’s opinion, LED lighting is a keeper.  Two years ago?  Nope.  Now?  Yep.  If you don't stop the clock for sticker shock.

Energy inflation, supply interruptions, government interventions all warrant to ’Fork for a new look at a not very old subject:  LED lighting. 

In ’Fork’s opinion, LED lighting can provide you with better standards of living at your own individual experience and control when it comes to your own personal, physical safety; your own behavioral and energy-efficient convenience; and your own chosen durability of your lighting assets. 

It looks to ’Fork that LED lighting is akin to a gift to you and yours with a way bigger than usual price ante at start up relative to what other lighting options are available to you, and then that gift keeps on giving and giving and giving way, way past the pony-up. 

And it’s not just about the bucks, but it might could be all on it own.  What price better safety?  What price better convenience?  What price better durability of your stuff? 

NOT A DONE DEAL, BUT IT’S GETTING CLOSE ENOUGH FOR ’FORK

Some few remaining problems are getting solved. 

• Thoughts of safety, durability, long-term, energy convenience and efficiency demonstrably abide with LED lighting, and pay-back appears way faster than most newer energy-related technologies; nevertheless, buy-prices at the front end are high.

  • ’Fork’s been told that even the high buy-prices are coming down retail and that wholesale is some lower - they'd better or, in 'Fork's opinion they're gonna be a slow-starter or all but a non-starter furshur.  Inherently high giddy-up costs, a weak economy, a bloated bureaucracy, a getting-on to be a fiat currency bode ill for current sky-high price tags L.E.D. bulb for L.E.D. bulb . . . somethings have gotta give

• Dimming-capable LEDs are just beginning to make their way to America

• Up-pointed table flood and spot lamp receptacles won’t light downwards much until a technical aspect of the conventional, LED table lamp bulb gets fixed (so, perhaps you can use a ‘corn’ bulb version of the LED or else, including leaving the incandescent in place until the electrical engineering wonks work it out) . . . though some manufacturers appear to have overcome others' obstacles with pierced supports or nearly full-faced bulbs

• There may not be a three-way lamp switch capacity to the LEDs, yet, if at all

• There may be major differences in product quality, product line breadth, pricing, etc. between manufacturers and distribution outlets, so buyer beware, e.g., what’s available at big retail outlets is limited in options that are more generally available at wholesalers (if you can find them)

This story narrows LED focus to residential applications mostly in context of safety, durability and convenience, with flights of useful fancy to commercial and industrial applications easily available for cross-application generally and directly referenced specifically here and there.

BEFORE THE ARCHITECT

An affiliated website, Before The Architect (BTA), that presents the principals wares in custom home design and construction has several self-styled custom home design and construction principles and processes.  Among them, one such principle subject and related processes involves interior lighting, or nightlighting, for aging eyes – the eyes of late thirty- or early forty-somethings are the usual suspects.  Ask an aircraft pilot.  Ask a physician.  After a while, ask anyone.  Respecting the BTA’s keynotes of safety, convenience, and durability, home lighting with LED bulbs has come a long way to satisfying all three for aging eyes.

AGING EYES

You know who you are, you with the aging eyes with telltale signs of, among others –

• Needy for more illumination and relieved when you get it

• You’re getting to appreciate qualities of lighting – warmer, a little redder/a little bluer, a little whiter

• Lights should go on when you say so and not delayed until the light’s ready

• Lights that don’t go fully on or on at all in real cold weather

• Silent lighting and not noisy lighting

• Steady light and not flickering light, not wavy light, not snowy light

• Too hot temperature lighting in smaller spaces

• Lighting that doesn’t mess up the pictures on the computer or TV

• Lighting that doesn’t mess up a radio program

• Lights that doesn’t spew toxics when the bulbs break

• Lights that don’t break easily or otherwise quit quickly

• Lights that don’t need fancy receptacles and switches and other special gear

• Lights that don’t cost a lot to operate

• Lights that won’t sear the grandkids when they touch ‘em

• Light bulbs that don’t bring on the bugs

• Lighting that seems way more environmentally green than the trite and oft tried sales pitch

WHAT TO DO ABOUT AGING EYES

BTA attends to some of these aspects of aging eyes by –

• Setting minimum illuminance at 40 foot candles (fc), or 40 lumens/foot squared [lumens being a more and more commonly used measure of illumination from a mechanical lite source, way more useful that working first with watts].  Task lighting takes pretty near double in fc than the minimum ambient 40fc.

• Additionally, BTA suggests different levels of two other key measures of lighting quality: 

o       Correlated Color Temperature (in kelvins, or K), or CCT

§         Conventionally, 5000K and up are recognized as increasingly cooler/bluer-whiter light, and as an approximate, lower-end benchmark of daylight illuminance

§         Conventionally, below 5000K – more often presented in the mid 2000K-lower 3000K – is recognized as warmer/yellower-redder light

o       Color Rendering, or Rendition, Index (where 100 = perfect color rendition in sunlight)

§         Reputedly much the lesser objective relative to CCT, measures in sub-100 integers then the  lesser ‘authentic’ a color’s visual presentation, referencing sunlight as the ultimate at 100 

§         Among further complicating factors is that comparing any two or more CRI’s must be based on exactly the same CCT or fuggedaboutit

BTA’s cut through the CCT/CRI swamp of math and meaning

• Ambient applications shall have CCT </= 3000K and CRI toward the lower end of the 80-90 range

• Task applications shall have CCT >/= 5000K and CRI toward the higher end of the 80-90 range

INCANDESCENTS AND ESPECIALLY  FLUORESECENTS CAN LET YOU DOWN HARD

But BTA’S quest did not succeed in some respects:

• To attain, let alone surpass BTA’s illuminance targets is nigh unto impossible without installing fluorescents – fluorescent tubes and Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFLs) – and not incandescents.  That is, it takes a whopping load of incandescent bulbs to achieve BTA’s illuminance targets, and with fluorescents, lots less.  And fluorescents are more energy [read: cost] efficient than incandescents, lumen for lumen.

• But problems persist with fluorescents, among them –

  • Heat build can end a CFL early (and an incandescent, too) in a high hat and other semi-enclosures and full enclosures – high-heat ambients are better managed than earlier-on, but not swell, in ’Fork’s opinion

  • Mercury’s a toxin and CFLs need mercury to work . . . break one and some laws require a HAZMAT team to clean it up.  Bye-bye green.  Hello yukko.

  • Hummmmm

  • Cold weather can delay start up and dim working fluorescents in, say an unheated garage, or even deny ignition altogether, often offset by pricier, less energy efficient ballasts

  • Talkin’ about breaking easily, you don’t need to drop a fluorescent to end its useful life, just thump it once or get it hard-shipped to you.  (Incandescents seem no less vulnerable to wear and tear.)

  • Flicker.  No, not sorta like the horse, you ninny.  The unstable, inconsistent beaming of light.

  • Some carry-on unhappily about the greenish tint to fluorescent lighting

  • Fluorescents still dip like incandescents when competing for line energy during conditions of high-in-rush, or lock rotor amps, or current, e.g., air conditioner and other refrigeration appliance start ups, maybe a clothes or dishwasher, an electric clothes dryer, etc.

WHASSUP WITH THE NEW ’FORK ON LED LIGHTING?

At the unsolicited introduction of another Graves, Inc. pro, ’Fork met with Jeff Bowen, VP, Graves LED Lighting (jeff@gravesfireplaces.com) to get the geezer up to speed just a tad less than a year-and-a-half since the last time the old boy laid his lamps on the subject of LED lighting.  Back then, LED lighting seemed promising, but impractical.  My oh my, what a couple handfuls of months make.  Graves currently works only with Stirling LED (stirlingled.com).  All hail the Graves’ guys; ’Fork thinks he got this right.

OBSERVABLE, REPRESENTABLE APPEARANCE OF LED BENEFITS

• LED lighting’s a better way to light up BTA’s interiors to its higher level specs for quality and volume of mechanical illumination

  • BTA calls for not less than 40fc of ambient light anywhere and not less than 70fc of task lighting, each at different metrics for CCT and CRI

  • LED lighting can address these variables in-production via distributors, wholesalers, and the like (though probably not yet with facility in retail marketing outlets)

• Green is a natural outcome, not forced, not hyped-, phonied- and fuzzed-up

  • Way less watts [read: electrical energy used up]/lumen than either incandescent or fluorescent

  • No toxic materials to share with your human vulnerabilities, e.g., mercury ingestion, inhalation, or even simple, physical contact

  • Way less energy loss to heat build, sound, etc. than either incandescent or fluorescent

  • No energy loss and potential damage to person and property from harmonic dissonance

  • Way longer expected life in service

• Product development advances are at breakneck pace (for this old goat)

  • Less than 18 months in educational interim and virtually all the walls of LED lighting worry from graybeard have fallen down like Jericho’s

• Then there are the downsides to using incandescent and fluorescent luminaires – bulbs and fixtures – among them, but not to the exclusion of others . . .

  • Unstable illumination across quality metrics

    • LED lighting looks more stable, steadier

  • Background sound pollution

    • LED lighting is not to be heard

  • Startup delays to full illuminance

    • LED lighting goes on, full-value, at the flip of the switch

  • Incapacity to function fully, or even at all, in common, ambient temperature extremes

    • LED lighting seems unaffected by common metrics for cold and heat

  • Standalone transformer dependence

    • Each LED light bulb has its own step-down transformer built-in

  • Switching device dependence

    • LED lighting works off of standard light switch devices (except, for the time-being, dimmer switch devices)

  • Receptacle device dependence

    • LED lighting works off of standard receptacles for both incandescent and fluorescent luminaires, the latter requiring disconnection of single ballasts as observed, and disconnection and subsequent jumper cabling for double ballasts as informed

  • On-off-frequency dependant lifetimes, particularly for fluorescents in ’Fork’s experience

    • Someday, there’ll be reliable lifetime stats for LED lighting, but ’Fork’s told not enough of  ’em have for time in service to be sure.  They say, years and years and years.  A few contend.

  • Lifetimes per se

    • Please see immediately above

  • Physical durability to withstand usual and even unusual physical stresses, e.g., blunt force, drops, rough-transit shipping, etc.

    • Especially with the LED tube, fluorescent lookalikes, go ahead, drop it on solid flooring, hook it up again, and watch it shine, shine, shine

  • Flying and crawly critter attraction

    • ’Fork is advised that flying and crawly critters are attracted to UV emissions in lighting, emissions not inherent in LED lighting

  • The various potentially life- and property-threatening physical hazards arising from harmonic dissonance (of majorly greater importance in commercial and industrial applications)

    • All transformers are isolation transformers, of course when standalone, but also step up or step down

  • Harmonic dissonance distortions in lesser device and appliance conflicts

    • All transformers are isolation transformers

  • Illuminance degradation

    • Apparently minorly contentious data, however seemingly insufficient for LED lighting; no contest for incandescent and fluorescent lighting

  • Substantial heat build leading to misdirected energy loss and shorter lifetimes, etc.

    • LED lighting is observably way less a heat producer than are incandescent bulbs and fluorescent ballasts

  • Biohazard slithers back into its Pandora’s box relative to fluorescent

  • Sequence-dependant, structure-dependent, upgrade-dependent, and fit-and-fixture-dependent real world impositions and imperatives in regard to other luminaire change-outs and new installations are essentially irrelevant

    • LED lighting appears to go virtually anywhere incandescent and fluorescent goes with same fixtures and devices (dimmer switch devices withstanding for mebbe a little while longer)

Even if the data are off by half in field applications, LED technology could still deliver way past common notions of greater marginal benefits to the upside and lesser burdens to the downside. 

. . . . .

CONCLUSION

Whereas, safety, convenience, and durability limitedly share, or intersect, the realm of each of the others in a Venn, or set, diagrammatic sense and can easily get sequestered in benefits and burdens analysis; however, LED application works well, overall in all three realms.  Is this a keeper or what? 

Graybeard’s old man in him warily waits for just one single, big shoe to drop from this new understanding and opinion.  So far, only silence.

. . . . . . .
If you are a first time visitor, please stop by the Site Map for a good look at this contemporary political website, economics, and social website of poor man’s political science theory, satire, and brief studies in economics and global economic development and financial market issues and analyses for insight and entertainment and more, more, more - a miracle, emergency preparedness and survivability, poetry, a futuristic next wave of destiny, key words of irreverence, dupa royalty and wanna be.

Contact: jrp2h2000@yahoo.com • Privacy Policy