Difference between Halogen & LED Low Watt downlights ?
- Thread starter Furkin
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If you have the money to spend on decent quality LED lights then I would suggest you go that route. We've been waiting a while for usable LED products to come onto the market for a while, and up until very recently they were only really suitable for decorative/accent lighting. However, if you're willing to spend £15-£20 per lamp then you can now buy products with equivalent light output to 50w halogen lamps. Don't confuse these with the cheap £2 jobbies available on DIY sheds, there really is no comparison.
Although it may take a while to make your money back in energy savings, there are other advantages such as no warmup time and low heat output. Not to mention that an LED GU10 can be manufactured to the same size as a halogen equivalent, unlike their CFL partners. Then there's also less worry about leaving lights on around the house, as power consumption is on the order of 1/10th of that of traditional incandescent lamps.
You also don't need to worry about harsh light output any more, as there are many colour variants available, one of those being warm white which fairly closely resembles the colour temperature one would expect from a traditional light source.
If you want to spend a little less, GU10 CFLs can be had for around £8-£10 a pop for good quality, branded lamps.
Although it may take a while to make your money back in energy savings, there are other advantages such as no warmup time and low heat output. Not to mention that an LED GU10 can be manufactured to the same size as a halogen equivalent, unlike their CFL partners. Then there's also less worry about leaving lights on around the house, as power consumption is on the order of 1/10th of that of traditional incandescent lamps.
You also don't need to worry about harsh light output any more, as there are many colour variants available, one of those being warm white which fairly closely resembles the colour temperature one would expect from a traditional light source.
If you want to spend a little less, GU10 CFLs can be had for around £8-£10 a pop for good quality, branded lamps.
Any links, Mathew?
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In general tungsten lamps produce light and heat and LED plus discharge lamps (Cold cathode, florescent etc) produce mainly light.
With the small spot lights the tungsten tend to produce a more defined narrow beam then the discharge type which can be both an advantage and a disadvantage according to what they are used for.
The main point with spot lights is the word "Spot" they are primary designed to light from a distance a particular area for example shop window displays and pictures on a wall.
The larger types are also used in food cabinets and in this case the heat is very much a wanted part of the lamps output. Also colour is important.
In living areas using tungsten lamps can supplement the central heating and allow energy saving by reducing the air temperature required for comfort due to the radiated heat from the lamps.
However in a kitchen the reverse is often true where there is far too much heat produced and anything which can be done to reduce the heat released into the kitchen will make the kitchen nicer to work in.
So next is discharge vs LED lighting. In the main the florescent tube is cheaper and brighter than the LED and the main use of LED lighting is where discharge lighting can't be used as with extra low voltage lighting (SELV) but also the LED lamps do seem to have a better beam of light to the discharge types so where small spots are used they do have a place. Plus the cold cathode lamps tend to be longer so often will not fit in holders designed for tungsten lamps.
So there is no best lamp only a best lamp for a particular job. With mood lighting often the light output is unimportant so covering the ceiling with little spot lights as in a planetarium seems to be popular. Personally I don't want to live in a planetarium.
However using spots for kitchen counters also seems popular and really tungsten lighting is unsuitable for this as far too hot. In my kitchen I replaced the old ceramic hob for a new induction ceramic hob which has reduced the heat in the kitchen to make it far more pleasant to cook in the summer. The last thing I would do is to replace that heat with little spot lamps. Florescent lighting for me. In the same way as I would never consider gas in a domestic kitchen. Makes the room too hot and damp.
With the small spot lights the tungsten tend to produce a more defined narrow beam then the discharge type which can be both an advantage and a disadvantage according to what they are used for.
The main point with spot lights is the word "Spot" they are primary designed to light from a distance a particular area for example shop window displays and pictures on a wall.
The larger types are also used in food cabinets and in this case the heat is very much a wanted part of the lamps output. Also colour is important.
In living areas using tungsten lamps can supplement the central heating and allow energy saving by reducing the air temperature required for comfort due to the radiated heat from the lamps.
However in a kitchen the reverse is often true where there is far too much heat produced and anything which can be done to reduce the heat released into the kitchen will make the kitchen nicer to work in.
So next is discharge vs LED lighting. In the main the florescent tube is cheaper and brighter than the LED and the main use of LED lighting is where discharge lighting can't be used as with extra low voltage lighting (SELV) but also the LED lamps do seem to have a better beam of light to the discharge types so where small spots are used they do have a place. Plus the cold cathode lamps tend to be longer so often will not fit in holders designed for tungsten lamps.
So there is no best lamp only a best lamp for a particular job. With mood lighting often the light output is unimportant so covering the ceiling with little spot lights as in a planetarium seems to be popular. Personally I don't want to live in a planetarium.
However using spots for kitchen counters also seems popular and really tungsten lighting is unsuitable for this as far too hot. In my kitchen I replaced the old ceramic hob for a new induction ceramic hob which has reduced the heat in the kitchen to make it far more pleasant to cook in the summer. The last thing I would do is to replace that heat with little spot lamps. Florescent lighting for me. In the same way as I would never consider gas in a domestic kitchen. Makes the room too hot and damp.
Could not agree more on all points.
Do you have dimmer switches? If so then you then need to consider dimmable LED lamps which are quite expensive and of variable performance at the lower price range (but still more than £20 each)
Dimmable mains voltage LED lamps have additional electronics in the base which converts the varied AC (phase angle switched) into a variable current which drives the LED bright or dim. It is this electronics conversion which varies in quality considerably.
Dimmable mains voltage LED lamps have additional electronics in the base which converts the varied AC (phase angle switched) into a variable current which drives the LED bright or dim. It is this electronics conversion which varies in quality considerably.
I would never consider a planing machine, or a thicknesser, or any sort of power saw, in a woodworking shop - makes the room too noisy and dusty.
LED does not save most of its energy. When forward biased the PN junction generates light (photons) as a function of electrons recombining with vacant lower energy bands. The energy released during recombination takes the form of a photon with wavelength (colour) determined mostly by the band-gap created by the semiconductor substrate material and it's dopant's. Most of the forward biased current does not contribute to usable emitted light. So an LED is not that efficient at producing light in absolute terms but is vastly more efficient than incandescent lamps etc. An academic point admittedly.
I wonder why ledslightmarket deleted his post?
One would hope that he sorted this out by now
Oh dear, I really need to pay attention to the original post dates
Hmmm - some pretty fundamental laws of physics are at risk of being violated here
If most of the energy utilised does not end up as light or heat (and I don't think LEDs are very noisy, or do any mechanical work) ...... ????Given that they certainly don't seem to produce much heat, I had always assumed that they were pretty efficient in terms of converting electrity into light.
Kind Regards, John.
LEDs do generate heat. Photons that do not escape the structure strike all sorts of things including rest state electrons and elevate some of them up into the lower part of the conduction band. Then they indirectly recombine (in indirect band-gap materials such as GaAs) and emit photons (sometimes called phonons) of much lower energy (longer wavelength) often in the IR or longer wavelength range (thermal, heat)
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