Panasonic: New LED bulbs shine for 19 years
(Credit:
Panasonic)
Panasonic has launched a new household LED lightbulb in Japan that it says lasts 40 times longer than incandescent bulbs.
The screw-in bulbs are part of the EverLed line, and they're scheduled to hit stores in Japan on October 21, with monthly production at 50,000 units. No changes to lighting equipment used for incandescents are required.
If used an average of five and a half hours per day, the new bulbs can last up to 19 years, according to Panasonic. That's 40 times longer than incandescent bulbs.
The bulbs use only an eighth the power of incandescents. That means a 60-watt-equivalent LED bulb would cost only 300 yen (about $3) a year instead of 2,380 yen ($25.80)--a significant savings over a lifetime.
Panasonic hasn't set a price for the new EverLeds, but Nikkei suggests standard versions will cost about 4,000 yen (about $40).
LED bulbs aren't new. Their relatively high cost is one factor keeping them from gaining popularity, but in Japan at least, Panasonic represents about 50 percent of the domestic bulb market. That means EverLeds should raise the LED profile there considerably.
Panasonic is also doing market research to launch EverLeds in the U.S., Europe, and Southeast Asia.
Crave freelancer Tim Hornyak is the author of "Loving the Machine: The Art and Science of Japanese Robots." He has been writing about Japanese culture and technology for a decade. E-mail Tim. 
Subjectively, I prefer them strongly over incandescent or halogen (and definitely over CFLs), as the light dispersion is also much more uniform. Uneven illumination kind of defeats the CRI -- I find my Crees to be the best lighting I've ever had or even seen.
I have some small floods from GE I use where the small form factor is required -- those are winners, too, though not as dramatically as the Crees.
I have some lights I'd love to replace, if I had a suitable form factor available. I have only a few that these would work for in my house, but my house is unusual. The more types of bulb available, the better.
These bulbs are surprisingly less efficient than I would have guessed (a CLF is just half as efficient with one-quarter of the lifespan). I would have thought LEDs would be an order of magnitude better than CLFs -- but maybe all those lumens add up. Regardless, adoption means we squeeze out more years with fewer new powerplants or emissions, so if the likes of Cree can get these to market sooner, it'll only be a good thing.
There's no need to belittle nicmart. $40 dollars today is still a barrier to entry. You have to have the money all at once rather than more money over time. With your logic, no one would need a mortgage or car loan. Granted, $40 is orders of magnitude smaller, but the principal still applies.
As for your cost comparison, don't forget to include hidden costs. There are certainly costs to manufacture and dispose of each bulb. An incandescent is mostly (all?) recyclable. That's certainly not true of CFLs (which is what I assume you meant by "CLFs" in your post). Beyond that, there's MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure). For CFLs, that's pretty low for many brands, which means the lifecycle cost of such CFLs is quite high due to premature failure. If the LED lights are prone to failure, then the even higher cost of entry makes them an even worse choice.
Incandescents produce warm light, have a low manufacturing cost, are recyclable, and have a low initial cost. Those benefits must be weighed against the ongoing cost to power them. When LEDs produce decently warm light, have less severe initial costs, are recyclable, *and* use less electricity, then they will be easy to justify.
Panasonic LIGHT CAPSULE EFD27LE Warm Color Made in Japan.
The point of this story: a NAME brand such as Panasonic will likely have thoroughly researched their technology, tested it in all directions and at length and not started production of 50,000 units per month to have a bomb on their hands. I suspect these new EverLEds will have long lives and not be duds also.
We also have 2 Panansonic VCRs that are bullet proof and still recording certain TV shows 6 days a week in this household.
I wish I worked for them or had their stock over the years.
I've NOT spent the money to replace my lesser-used downlights with the Crees, despite how much I love the Crees, because I do expect better technology, or at least better pricing, long before they'd pay for themselves.
Still, as has been noted, high price is a barrier to entry. If you KNOW you'll save money -- but don't have the cash -- you're not going to switch.
Also, a lot of the cost stems from the same issue. My Cree lights have HUGE heat sinks to keep the lights cool (they need to run much cooler than even CFLs, and a lot of that is cooling the voltage step-down circuitry). And that both adds to the cost, and limits the applications (by making the whole thing bigger).
@c|net Reader -- LED output color is controllable. There are even types (found in some architectural lighting, but not home lighting) that allow you to vary the color over a huge gamut. LEDs generally produce much better color than CFLs -- and produce better light distribution than CFLs, incandescents, or halogen lights. With their long life and lack of mercury -- they already win on all of your criteria -- except the high initial price.
@eemang -- All I can tell you about reliability is that I have had 21 LED lights installed for nearly a year. No failures -- I'd expect several CFL failures in that time frame. Given how they work and how they fail, I expect to never replace a single LED light indoors. Outdoors? Maybe.
@all: Really, at this point, price and availability (in a full range of form factors and light patterns) are the only reasons I see to not switch. I expect both to improve over time, though much more slowly than I would like.
What will really blow your noodle is that if GE is successful in developing a incandescent bulb that is more efficient it will quickly obsolete CFL bulbs.
Here is why.
1. The true energy cost of a CFL is hidden. It plays a dirty dirty trick by drawing its current out of phase with the voltage on the power line to hide its true power cost. Most modern smart meters will pick up on this when they measure the VA of the light bulb. While it is true a conventional 60 watt equivalent CFL bulb only draws 15 watts. It draws nearly 30-40 VA depending on the manufacturer. Yes it will save you money. But the power company generates VA and only charges you the watts. This is an over simplified explanation. So if GE was to generate a more efficient incandescent then it could easily out perform the CFL in terms of true energy footprint. Remember you have been taught a lot of bad science. Watts is not what is important it is the VA (volt amps, think of the rating of your UPS) of what you use. Theoretically i could develop a light bulb that uses 1 watt of energy, but would draw 200 amps and pop you main breaker in the house. The power company still has to generate that electricity. for all that reactive power that you just threw away.
Remember AC Power = Volts * Current * cos (theta) The problem with CFL is that there is a significant Theta factor that is unaccounted for when your average person buys the bulb. I could provide scope captures of what it really does. So yes it saves you money. But doesn't necessarily save the earth. And it kills me the power company gives these things away. Also they add a lot of Harmonic distortion to the power line. I am not going to explain it here, but you can google it and look it up on wikipedia.
2. The next reason a more efficient incandescent bulb will obsolete cfl is the amount of raw material cost. Go ahead take a screw driver and bust open one of those little cfl "light bulbs" Those things are actually remarkably complex. They have switching power supplies with Semi-conductors, Capacitors, Resistors, inductors and a circuit board in there. All that to retro fit into that old socket. And to make it worse notice that FCC id on your CFL. Thats right your favorite CFL vendor had to pay and file Part 15 paperwork to ensure that electronic device doesn't intefear with the RF spectrum. That certification cost is also passed on in the cost of the bulb. Now crack open an incandescent bulb. Its a tungsten filament and blown glass. Let me say this clearly. There is no way in HELL that manufacturing volumes can beat the price of an incandescent bulb. It is a remarkably simple invention. making the filament more efficient is the cheapest and most cost effective way to build a light bulb. the cost advantages will put LED and CFL out of the market. Oh and it works in dimmers. And doesn't destroy the Grid.
Now admittedly you can solve problem 2 by changing out all the sockets in america and replacing them with the necessary ballast, but tell the home owner he has to change all his lamps to use a special new bulb. Wont go over too well.
I hope GE is successful I am rooting for them. They build a more efficient incandescent and the world will be a brighter place and we can all enjoy cheeper energy costs without having to sacrifice and put up with the disadvantages of CFL.
The have numerous patents and are manufacturing and filling orders now worldwide. Utility companies are buying them up in the droves for their free distribution program. The utility companies love them because it costs them less to deliver the power to these bulbs due to the extremely High Power Factor. ...which means the utility companies charge you less!
The also have a dimmable ballast for linear fluorescents(yes, you will be able to dim fluorescents), also at a fraction of the cost of normal ballast due to the fewer parts that they use in the ballast. This will be huge, imagine a high rise office building in which the fluorescent lights dim with the amount of sunlight coming in,....daylight harvesting at a fraction of the cost...HUGE SAVINGS.
Hopefully the bulbs will be on Home Depot and Wal Mart shelves soon.
Available in either 2800°C or 6700°C. For 6700°C bulb, 82.6 lm/W for 6.9W (60W equivalent) bulb and 85 lm/W for 4W (40W equivalent) bulb. I'm not sure how these numbers translates into CRI.
Why is having a 19 year home lightbulb anything to care about? Who lives in the same place for 19 years, here or in Japan, and would you take your bulbs with you when you moved?
A cheaper 5 year bulb is all the consumer market needs.
And worse, in the USA, short sighted green legislation on the local level is OUTLAWING the installation of standard light sockets in many places anyway, to prevent us from using those cheap and "evil" incandescents. So even if this bulb works in places where low power lighting is required (like kitchens and bathrooms), it can't be installed anyway because code still requires some form of FL or CFL.
Personally, I would go for those bulbs for a very dumb reason: I hate going to turn on a light and have it burn out. That pop and surge of energy when the bulb blows annoys me to no end. There's no way to know when it's going to happen either, so you're never prepared when it does. It really freaks the crap out of me.
How about investing into something that has the possibility of helping make a better world for your children?
Americans like to complain that they're losing jobs to outsourcing, that everything now comes from China, but you forget to look in the mirror and see that it's the "always cheaper" behavior that lead us where we are.
As for the "short sighted" legislation, that's the only practical way to avoid "cheap a$$es" from stopping new technologies from taking over. The sooner these new technologies are in demand, the sooner you will see a cheaper bulb...
You PAY for longevity, and 19 years is actually wasteful and creates a more costly barrier to entry, meaning fewer people will install these bulbs because of cost, just as the early high costs of CFLs were a barrier to entry requiring government subsidies to spur sales.
3 $15 5-year LED bulbs would use less energy than 1 $40 bulb and then leaving in 2 $2 old style bulbs, but at the same cost of installation.
Before you condemn me, you should think about what I was asking logically. Then again, "the world is ending" extremists don't do much critical thinking in my experience...
There is also power savings to consider, in terms of making and shipping the bulbs either once for the 1 LED bulb, or 4 times for the CFL type - and energy savings, which requires use of more raw materials, such as oil from terrorist-sponsoring nations. And of course, monetary savings, once the price of the bulbs comes down, and the cost of power consumption is worked out.
LED tech is far more reliable than incandescent and CFL bulbs. There's no filament to burn out, and no chemicals to deteriorate. It's an entirely different process of generating light.
The high cost is a result of the expense of materials. Up until recently sapphires were required to produce the diode. I read of a recent breakthrough where they developed a synthetic substitute which will lower that cost. But still the components are a lot more expensive than those used in conventional bulbs... not to make them last 19 years but to make them generate light at all.
As such it's not really possible to produce a 5-year bulb unless you intentionally sabotage the product. That's one of the reasons I think manufacturers have been slow to produce LED bulbs, they make a lot more money selling replacements every 6 months than they would selling one set of bulbs every 20 years at a higher cost.
I remember a story that the first design of nylon stockings that were produced NEVER snagged... the way they were manufactured they were basically indestructible. The initial test group reported that they lasted for months. So the manufacturer redesigned them to fall apart when they snag, creating a continuous market for replacement stockings.
My fear is manufacturers somehow do the same with LEDs... drive down production costs but put in some sort of kill switch so you're forced to replace them every year or so. But that will probably prove difficult given the innate stability of the technology. Let's hope, at least.
I'll jump at the chance to get these bulbs at $40 a pop. They can't make it to the USA too soon, IMO.
60W bulbs are useful for general lighting, when used in bunches. For a single bulb in a room, you need 100W minimum, more like 150W.
But you wouldn't like the price -- even though you save money eventually.
Hopefully hotels will see the wisdom of installing better lighting. And while they're at it -- putting in enough outlets so you don't have to unplug your only lights to plug in your phone and laptop!
Making and transporting an incandescent bulb costs much less than the costs for a CFL or LED bulb. Not everyone has $120 to replace three bulbs, but can afford $3 or maybe $45. Yes, if there are no premature failures to mess with the math, the $120 saves a lot over 20 years, but so does buying a house for cash rather than getting a mortgage.
People make it out like the CFL's are the solution for everything including world hunger, but they aren't. If we want/need to pay more for energy so that my wife can function, then it should be an option. We need those incandescent lights.
make your situation better - The migranes are typically excerbated by the strobing cycle of an outdated
technology. Leds are the solution- Speaking as an advocate- my $40. monthly comed bill is better then
$70 - $100 monthly bills( pre SSL days) - Having lights that are contemporary to the century I'm living in
(the 21st century) is better then using decades old solutions. The quality off SSL products improves weekly/ monthly!
Do due diligence, find the appropriate product / solution and improve your situtation Logically.
BTW hoarding incandescent bulbs is short sighted - Finding a more practical solution is better- Think about replacements ( Incans) circa 2013 what then?
The only application I'm aware of that an incandescent light is superior is as a heat source, as in a kid's "Magic Oven" or whatever they were called. If your lighting is what keeps you warm in the winter, well, buy a space heater instead.
LEDs don't flicker, at all (they run on filtered continuous DC power). They also don't produce ultraviolet, which causes some people problems. CFLs are a step back in quality in some ways -- LEDs are a step forward.
Everyone I have seen plugged have either melted their based then die or have short life span perhaps heat related.
Mine in my own bedroom have last less than 9 months used as a normal lighting source.
What kind of fixture? Are these in an enclosed fixture but not designed for that application?
Heat dissipation when converting from 110VAC down to the low voltages used by the LEDs is important. They should run cool. (Long ago I did thermal analysis of lighting control circuits, so this is something I know a bit about).
The Cree lights I mostly use have very large heat sinks for using in an enclosed can.
I hate the lighting CFLs give off. Its my choice if I want to use incandescents because I think they produce a nicer, softer light. CFLs flicker (which probably contributes to your wife's migraines). Most people just don't notice the flickering, but over time it can exhaust you. Never mind CFLs are manufactured with mercury....
Why are we outlawing incandescents for power savings. Why no outlaw SUVs, or have higher governemnt mandates for home insulation...both would actually save more energy than a stupid light bulb law.
I plan to stock up on hundreds of incandescents before they outlaw them too.
You'd save money to buy LEDs, if they're available in the type you need, compared to stocking up on incandescent bulbs. You'd probably save money even if you had to do a bit of rewiring for low voltage lighting!
I have accumulated a huge pile of CFLs that I need to take to dispose of.
Fewer trips up ladders mean fewer trips to the emergency room, too.
Permanent radioactive phosphorescent lighting is also ready and awaiting federal approval.
unleaded gas requiring catalytic converters-:- are examples of the govt taking constructive actions,
and mandating situational improvements. Regarding lighting there is now a Lighting facts label
which has been mandated,this means if your selling a product that is wasteful or has a very limited
lifespan factual info has to be on the box - So if your buying a product - ie comparing SSL to incandescent
COST OF USE can be factored in at purchase. Its like over inflated mileage claims by car makers -
nowadays INFO CAN BE FACT CHECKED the industry can't claim 60 mpg if its not true-
With lights as an example - Bulb lifespans are typically half of produced batches Stated Lifespan
900 hours to 1800 hours- seldom more ( there are exceptions ) - When the general population
becomes aware of inacurate claims/ lumen depreciation/ better technology & approaches and
all of the positves of using SSL - key decision makers at the top levels will make Led lighting the
standard lighting within 60 months.
Which is fine by me I'M A LED Mfg Rep - & I am concerned about my carbon footprint we all should be!
I can't remember changing lights in my basement or living room or closets or ...
I am already saving the difference between incandescents and something better.
But if these were available I would start phasing them in as others failed.
If people were as cheap as some of you think they would never sell Dyson vacuum cleaners - I have one, $400 - and worth every penny.
They would only sell Tata cars instead of $30,000 Kias/Camry/Prius/ ...
http://www.4shared.com/file/133117596/2978b716/Consumer_Reports_vacuums.html
I think CFL's produce poor quality light, and they've sometimes been reported to have short lifespans when they're turned on and off a lot.
I don't think replacing LEDs in the assembly makes sense. Making it replaceable adds to the potential failures -- that is, the socket or whatever will be LESS reliable than the LED. Worse, it will make getting the heat away from that LED much more difficult. It will add to the expense as well.
No, I think the solution is simply to engineer the system properly from a thermal and reliability standpoint. Switching to low-voltage power is a big help, but is rather a chicken-and-egg problem. Until there's a good selection of inexpensive low-voltage LED lighting available, builders won't install low-voltage wiring -- and until lthere's an established market, manufacturers will be reluctant to make them.
LEDs in tail lights and in traffic signals are in a much more difficult environment than in indoor home lighting. But I think those will get better. Those lights were mostly installed over a very short period of time (because of cost savings!) I think a lot of the partial failures you see in traffic lights are from early installations, and have actually been in service for quite some time --- and are still serviceable, unlike their incandescent predecessors, most of which would have been replaced multiple times by now.
I expect newer ones are of higher quality, as manufacturers learn more about how they fail. That process takes time.
BTW, the lifetime stated for the bulbs covers the entire system, not just the LED component. I do suspect that some lifetime claims aren't backed up with adequate testing to be believable. This is part exaggeration to get your money, and part just plain difficulty in measuring the reliability of a new product that lasts a long time. The way that works is to take a whole lot of them, run them a while, and make some statistical assumptions, typically that the failure rate is uniform over the life -- and then make a statistical estimate based on those assumptions. If those assumptions prove to be wrong, so is the estimate. Remember, NONE of these bulbs has ever been tested for 20 years -- not even by the manufacturer. Because none have existed that long.
Statistical techniques are pretty good, and they're all we or the manufacturers have to go on -- but the newer the product, relative to its projected lifespan, the more suspect that lifespan estimate should be.
Still, I do believe that properly-designed LEDs should last a VERY long time. There's really no wear-and-tear -- if they don't overheat and fail in their first year of use, they MAY outlast your house.
* My wife hates the color of CFLs
* Dimmers are really important in several of our rooms - very hard to get CFLs that work on dimmers
* It's difficult to know if a 100-watt equivalent CFL in a store will fit in place of an incandescent in a lamp or fixture. The store should provide cardboard cutouts of the profile of CFLs, so you could take the cardboards home and see which of them will fit in your installation. (much as a hardware store gives away paint sample chips).
* Following from the point above, a lot of CFLs don't fit in place of the incandescent.
- by goecostore October 21, 2009 2:04 PM PDT
- Using <a href=http://www.goecostore.co.uk/led-light-bulbs-1062-0.html>LED light bulbs</a> will save you loads of cash in energy costs
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