[skimoose]

There have been some great posts here and there have been a lot of less than informed posts as well.

First, I've seen several posts reporting a price of $25/bulb when FIRST's suggested retail price is $19.99/bulb. The "wholesale" price to teams is about $6/bulb. I see nothing forcing teams to sell at $20/bulb. A team appears to be free to set the price as they see fit. I believe teams are free to offer extra savings for quantity orders. If I can sell a case of bulbs at $10/bulb to a single customer, I'm still realizing $120 profit/case. FIRST was clear that they were not expecting teams to sell door to door to residential customers. A team's best strategy would be to approach commercial customers and offer a bulk discount on quantity orders. Think of all those restaurants that have pendant (hanging fixtures) lights over booths or dining tables. There are still a large number running incandescent bulbs, and even if using CFLs there is still 10-20% energy savings switching to LEDs. The penetration of LED technology into the lighting arena is almost barely measurable at this point so there is a lot of room for sales.

There has been a lot of bad information on fluorescent lighting here. Even conventional fluorescent tubes have seen major improvements in efficiency. The old standard T12 is being replaced by T8 and now T5 high efficiency models. Someone asked about replacing fluorescent tubes with LED technology. It does exist, but is still prohibitively expensive. The retro fit kit requires the fluorescent tubes and ballast be removed, a LED driver be installed and then wired into LED arrays that are mount where the tubes used to be. The old tube sockets are not used at all, they are abandon in place. A two element LED retro fit kit for a standard 2'x4' T8 or T5 troffer fixture (the 2'x4' fixtures used in drop ceilings) cost about $150-250 currently. Also, since the technology is still in its infancy, there are no standards yet. Installing one of these retro fit kits or replacing a fluorescent fixture with a LED unit means you need to go back to that manufacturer for replacements when they're needed. No telling if they'll still be in business when you need replacements. I'd wait to replace or retro fit standard tube fluorescent lights until there are some industry standards.

CFLs are a different issue altogether. They are and always have been a stop gap solution until LED technology matured. They are almost exclusively manufactured overseas and in locations that don't have a good handle on QC. Art04 mentioned that newer CFLs are manufactured with less mercury than earlier models, but I'd take that with a grain of salt based on those QC issues. My utility offers fluorescent disposal to our customers because of the issues with mercury. We've also seen some nasty failures with CFLs from customers. Several near fires due to failures of the ballast on a CFL. If you're paying $2 for a CFL, you're getting what you paid for. A good quality CFL should still be around $5/bulb.

Light output is diminished with decreased ambient temperatures with all fluorescent fixtures. Some improvements have been made, but fluorescent bulbs are slow to reach maximum lumen output in lower temperatures. The biggest problem with fluorescent lights, especially in residential applications, is that life expectancy and light output is measurably reduced by the number of on-off cycles. Fluorescent lights are designed to be turned on and left on for long periods of time (8+ hours). In a home where we are always turning lights on and off fluorescent lights will perform worse than their published specs. Fluorescent lights can not be used with dimmers unless they have dimmable ballasts.

LED lighting technology has two major components that are not readily perceived in these bulb style packages. There is the circuit that transforms and rectifies the AC to DC at a voltage usable by the LED itself. These circuits are becoming known as the LED Driver. Then there is the actual LED or array of LEDs which are becoming known as Light Engines. What tends to fail on LED lighting is the driver circuit and these can be susceptible to lightning damage. Incandescent and to some degree fluorescent bulbs are more robust when it comes to lightning surges. We'll have to see how LED technology handles surges.

LED lighting provides better lumen output over life of the bulb. Incandescent, fluorescent, and HID high intensity discharge (metal halide, sodium, and mercury vapor) lose as much as 50% of their lumen output by 50% of their life expectancy. Tests so far have shown that LEDs tend to maintain 80-90% of their lumen output through about 90% of their life span. The problem with LED light output is that the output tends to be very directional. That explains why some people who have seen these lights displayed by Dean reported them being blinding, but the lumen output is less than a 60W incandescent. The reported lumen output is an average lumen/meter output. Lenses improve the light spread, but there is still work to be done in this area. As a task light these LEDs should be great. For general area lighting they will be a little weaker than the equivalent incandescent or fluorescent bulbs.

Like any electronic component, life span is affected by heat. Good heat sinking is necessary. In a standard Edison Base bulb there isn't a lot of room for the heat sinks. On the high output LED street lights that I've inspected so far, they have several pounds worth of cast aluminum heat sink on the LED driver. A very good LED light can have a life span of up to 50,000 hours so I'm a little disappointed by the e-saver's published life expectancy which is on par with typical CFLs. I'm also disappointed that these are non-dimmable LED bulbs. I'm sure that has to do with how the driver circuit is designed and keeping the price point down. Most LEDs should be dimmable to about 10% lumen output. I'm also not a fan of the warm light color temperature of 2700K. I prefer natural or daylight color temperature which is around 5000K. That's just personal preference, but the higher color temps cost more money too.

Other than these minor issues, I think the bulb offer is competitive for teams. The equivalent price in Home Depot or Lowes is about $23-25/bulb currently. When those prices go down, teams are free to reduce their offering price to stay ahead of the retailers and still make a decent profit margin. Will teams make thousands selling these bulbs, some might if they work hard at it, but I see this as just another source of revenue for teams.

Ether joked (I think) about using incandescent bulbs to augment his heat in the winter. Well those bulbs are inefficient lighting devices and even more inefficient heating devices. I'll stick with my heating plant that is designed to heat my living space, not use light bulbs. I don't like CFLs and have always planned to stop using them as soon as LED technology matured. I think that technology is getting to the point where it makes sense now. I'll be buying these bulbs and I expect that my team will make some money selling bulbs as well.