LED Light Bulbs : What To Consider When Buying

Because of their many advantages over traditional incandescent and fluorescent light bulbs, LED lights are poised to transform all forms of lighting. Selecting and purchasing LED lights requires buyers to learn new terminology.

LED stands for light-emitting diode. LEDs are actually semiconductors which produce light more efficiently than traditional light sources. When electricity is passed through them, they emit energy in the form of light. These semiconductors are injected with chemicals which determine their light color. 

LEDs convert the majority of energy passed through them to light, as compared to traditional incandescent bulbs which produce light as a by-product of being heated. For this reason, LED light bulb can be up to 90% more efficient than traditional filament light bulbs.

Although the cost per bulb initially is still a bit expensive, the total lifetime cost of a LED light bulb is actually lesser than that of equivalent traditional and CFL light bulbs. Taking into consideration energy costs as well as time and resources required to replace incandescent and CFL bulbs, a LED light bulb which lasts 80,000 hours has a lower lifetime cost.

LED lights do generate heat, and this heat is actually the biggest problem that manufacturers face developing LED lighting applications. Manufacturers can now produce individual LED chips that are as bright as a 100-watt incandescent light bulb, however these LEDs are practically useless for general lighting because installing them in a fixture creates ventilation problems which have not yet been solved. 

LED lights installed in fixtures and light bulbs must be ventilated properly, and the better the chip, the more difficult it is to properly cool. There are many LED lights on the market which do not take this into consideration and either use cheap chips so they do not have to ventilate them, or do not ventilate their chips properly, significantly reducing its lifespan. While the typical LED light bulb is barely warm to the touch, if the chip is not properly ventilated, it can fail prematurely.

While LED light bulbs last longer than traditional light bulbs, you have to take a closer look at manufacturer claims for bulb life. The life-span of a LED bulb should be its "half-life." In fact LED light bulbs do not burn out; rather, they slowly fade out. When a supplier says a LED bulb will last 80,000 hours, they mean that at that point, the chips will have reach 50% efficiency level, and the light bulb will need to to be replaced. 

So, the light bulb might last 100,000 hours or even more, but its efficiency will have degraded a lot by that point. Although LED lights does not last forever, they surely will last about 50-75 times longer than a traditional incandescent bulb and 6-8 times longer than a CFL.

Both colour temperature and beam spread are measured in degrees. The colour temperature refers to the color of the light emitted. Generally, 3000 Kelvin is warm white and 5000 Kelvin is cool white. Cool white is brighter because it is the natural color of LED light, whereas chips that emit a warm white light require a phosphorous "filter" to "warm" the color temperature, as such reducing the chip's brightness. The beam spread is the angle of the light that which is being emitted. The lesser the number, the more like a "spot" the light is.



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