has anyone found a source yet for afforable LED lighting?

There is a fan at the Home Depot that uses LED lights, and it's relatively affordable and relatively energy efficient, as far as the amount of air that it moves.  We almost got it, but we don't care for the blue color of the LED lights.  They also have some other LED light fixtures there, I know.

Cheers!
Heather W

Chris What type of lights are you looking for?

descott;

looking for LEDs to take place of regular medium based bulbs and floods. any I have found so far have been about $30/ ea. I realize its the last buld i'll ever buy put it would take a lifetime to pay back as well.
They would definitely come with me when I move

I just received a catalog from Cyberguys.com that shows a few LED light bulbs.  They have a 3 watt white bulb for $21.95, a 5 watt bulb for $29.99, and a 9.2 watt for $64.95.

The 3 watt has 30 LEDs, the 5 watt has 60 LEDs and the 9.2 watt has 150 LEDs.

If you're interested, go to LINK

That's too rich for my wallet.

Jay

Have you considered flourescent lighting instead of LED? They are a much more affordable way to reduce energy consumption as a replacement for standard lamp bulbs. Cost can be greatly reduced when purchased in bulk packs of 8-12 count. Though not as energy efficient as LED's, they will use about 1/3 the energy of standard bulbs.

Eric;

Thanks;

I just made the switch to CFL's and also found they now make dimmable lamps, total cost to switch was about $225.00 for whole house

Check out www.candlepowerforums.com They have a section on fixed lighting. The new generation of LEDs are about twice as efficient as the ones that were made a year ago. The older ones are still being used in a lot of products.

I’m in the design stage of building a house and am research technologies that make financial sense. We’ll end up having a mix of lighting types based on do we care about color, usage and difficulty of replacement.
CFL where color isn’t a big deal like the garage and deck
LED where color is a big deal and gets used a lot like the kitchen most of the first floor Halogen for the bedrooms where color is important but usage is low.
I’ve found some led lights that replace 20-65 watt incandescent bulbs in recessed cans, Affordable? ($90-125) in the long term if they average 6 hrs/day Kwh = $0.085 my payback is about 5.5 years.

Most of the money seems to be in the cast aluminum housing that acts as a heat sink, I’m not expecting the price to drop too much since the price aluminum is increasing.

Most of these companies use Cree for their LEDs
http://www.ledcity.org/fixture-contacts.html

http://www.llfinc.com/products.htm
http://www.nexxuslighting.com/
http://www.renaissancelighting.com/ Take a look at their EVO PDA controller, I’m sure I can’t afford it but it would be great to have.

LED's are not yet practical from a financial standpoint, but I expect that the technology is advancing quickly enough that is would make sense in a couple of years when costs become more competitive just like it did with CFLs

What is the quality of the light of LED vs. CFL vs. Incandescent?

The quality is fantastic, they can hit any color shade and they are dim-able and projected to last 50 years

Where are the LED's available? Is there a different price for different colors? As LED's are inherently directional, how can they be made to throw a more diffuse light?
The local lighting consultant tells me to stick with low voltage halogens for pot lights for the moment. He says there is a ballast that will handle the halogens now and LED'd in the future.
Also, how expensive are the dimmable CFL's? Is the color OK? Are there different temperatures? I have also heard that they are electrically very noisy. This could interfere with home automation systems.

Can anyone shed some light on this?

I know, I know...bad pun..... couldn't resist.

bob

Check out that link to the cyberguys site earlier in this thread and you can see pictures of the LED replacement bulbs. They're arranged like dots around a globe - think dimples on a golf ball or whole cloves stuck in an orange...

I haven't bought these yet, but have this site bookmarked

LINK

I think I've seen a company called C.Crane that supplys LED house lights

See:

http://www.superbrightleds.com/led_prods.htm

http://www.joyoceanled.com/

http://www.wattbusters.com/Full_Spectrum_Bulbs-p-1-c-274.html

This local Electrical contractor has focused his whole business on LED technology

http://www.light-emotions.com/home.php

I looked at the earthled.com site after reading about their led lights on this sites main page. Cheaper than LLF lights by 25% but the Color Rendition Index CRI is 60 and 70 vs CFL 82-85 and LLF leds 92. I'd only use their light in hard to reach places where color doesn't matter.

I am working on a large building that I want to go green as possible. One of my ideas is to use LED's for all the general lighting, powered by a 12V PV system. If the PV's power three 4V batteries in series, can I have three separate 4V circuits? My worry is that each circuit will have slightly different power draws. Will the system be self balancing, the battery drawing the most power be fed from the other batteries in the series, or will it disrupt the entire system?