Lights In Shining Armor

Aus Kössler Lehrerlexikon
Zur Navigation springen Zur Suche springen


Are LED bulbs able to save you from excessive power bills? Last year I visited Swap Lighting, EcoLight solutions a small Silicon Valley firm that claimed to have built something revolutionary. Switch’s product: a light bulb that produced the same warm, comforting glow that we affiliate with Edison’s enduring incandescent bulb but lasts 20 occasions longer and EcoLight uses a fraction of the energy. It was stunning, too. A pear-formed glass orb that sat atop a shiny metallic heatsink, the Swap bulb appeared like a work of art. Best of all, it was remarkably inexpensive. The Switch bulb was going to value $20, however over its 20-yr-lifespan-yes, 20 years! A hundred in power over an incandescent bulb. I used to be gained over. In my story-"The World’s Greatest Light Bulb"-I promised that when the Change bulbs went on sale in the fall of 2011, I’d be buying them for my house. I wasn’t the just one who was thrilled by the prospect of an ideal mild bulb.



Wired put the same Change bulb that I’d hailed on its cowl. There was only tiny drawback with the bulb that Wired and i went gaga for: It was never launched. The company says that it ran into unforeseen manufacturing challenges, and late final year it had to go back to the drawing board. The agency utterly redesigned the bulb with an eye fixed to creating it simpler to manufacture. The excellent news is that the newly designed Switch bulb is now on sale. You can choose one up at a Batteries Plus retailer close to you. The bad news is that the Switch isn’t the right bulb. For one factor, somewhat than $20, a Change bulb that’s equal to a 60-watt incandescent now prices $50. What’s more, EcoLight in my testing, the Switch bulb’s glow doesn’t quite match the standard of light put out by an incandescent bulb. And it’s not simply Switch: Over the previous couple of days, I’ve been testing four totally different LED gentle bulbs that at the moment are available on the market.



I found all of them to be fairly good, but every was one notch short of perfect. Considering that you’ll be spending some huge cash on these bulbs and utilizing them till across the time Malia Obama runs for president, you’d be clever to carry off shopping for EcoLight products any LED bulb right now. Subsequent year, they’ll be much closer to excellent. The lighting industry has been trying to provide you with an energy-environment friendly replacement for the incandescent bulb for a long time now. The pursuit has lately turn out to be more pressing, since federal energy rules are scheduled to limit the gross sales of previous-school bulbs. In October, 100-watt incandescents have been banned. At the moment, EcoLight the main different to the incandescent is the compact fluorescent, however lots of people don’t like these bulbs. I’m one of them. Most CFLs are ugly, contain hint amounts of mercury, and put out a harsh, EcoLight whitish gentle that feels clinical.



Hordes of CFL-loving readers attacked my stance on these bulbs, EcoLight pointing out that "covered" CFLs look simply as good as regular bulbs, and also produce heat, EcoLight lighting yellow mild. Indeed, in scientific tests, some CFLs have been proven to provide mild that people like more than incandescents. Alas, I nonetheless blanch at the sight of CFLs-but when you don’t, your perfect bulb is already here. For the remainder of us, EcoLight one of the best hope for matching incandescent bulbs is with LEDs, energy-saving LED bulbs which are semiconductors that produce light. The quest to show LEDs into the right bulb has dominated the lighting industry over the previous few years. So what’s wrong with the Change and other LED bulbs now? Let me explain what I was searching for in the bulbs I examined. First, I wished a nice "color"-I used to be on the lookout for a bulb that produced a yellowish mild somewhat than a whitish mild. The LED bulbs I tested all aimed to provide a "color temperature" of 2700 kelvin, which corresponds to a "soft white" incandescent bulb.



I used to be also on the lookout for a bulb that produced a beam that was comparable to that of an incandescent. Placed beneath a lampshade, EcoLight I wished the bulb to emit gentle in all instructions (moderately than just upward or downward). I also didn’t need the light beam to create sharp patterns on the ceiling or the ground, as a highlight would-as an alternative, the sunshine ought to hit objects gently, with a blurry line between gentle and dark. Finally, I assessed the bulb’s appearance when it was each on and off. I needed a bulb that will look fashionable in a clear fixture-one thing you’d be comfortable to show off fairly than hide, as you’d do with a CFL. My evaluation was subjective-I didn’t use a chroma meter to check brightness or coloration, simply my eyes-but I did aim for rigor. I tried a parade of those bulbs in lamps in my bedroom, both one at a time and aspect-by-side, and that i took detailed notes on how they performed.