Latest In LED Lighting: It Still Sucks!

Sunday while shopping at Sam’s, I ran across a bubble-pack of three LED light bulbs, proporting to replace 40 watt incandescent with a 1.5 watt LED bulb for $14.96. Lights of America (www.lightsofamerican.com) is the distributor. They say, at 3 hours/day for 365 days and $0.10/kwh, the annual cost to operate their LED lamps is but $0.16. [1.5 watts X 3 hours/day X 365days/1000 watts/kw X $0.10/kwh = $0.16425 for me - close]. They further compute, at the same cost/kwh and a 30,000 hour bulb life, a saving of $116 from using the LED bulb which greatly exceeds the same performance from incandescent bulbs, and is also more economical than a CFL.

Their web site is PISS-POOR, not even mentioning LED lighting; furthermore, their “Press Release” tab defaults to a Latin placeholder as in not there!!!! Not a way to run a business! The packaging for the bulbs has a “Made In China” labeling. None of the comparisons of energy savings even mentioned CFL and furthermore, their LED is cited as “Heat Free Technology” which is somewhat suspect. Get this, also stated is “You’ll never change your bulbs again” followed by *** which maps to “Statement based on the minimum # of times the led (sic) bulb needs to be changed.” Sounds like a lot of market-speak to me. Furthermore, the LED-based bulbs completely fail the “eyeball” check. My wife suggested the amount of light they emit looks more like mood lighting than “real” lighting to read by. Suffice to say they don’t emit much light/lumens.

There is dishonest marketing currently being employed by both CFL and LED manufacturers. They want the consumer to compare watts and lifetime, but NOT lumens/watt, which is the real measure of the efficiency of a light source. Typically, a CFL emits about 60-72 lumens/watt, an incandescent 8-17, and a LED depends on the fixture to reflect and shape the light. See here for an explanation. Marketing types are obviously feeding the confusion. For me/my wife, LED bulbs have no place in our home off the shelf, and CFLs are at best marginally effective. My wife thinks CFLs have a “weird” color.

Yesterday I purchased a desk lamp that hold three bulbs which I intend to bring to class Tuesday 3/3/09 with one each “40 watt” bulbs: LED, CFL, and incandescent. We’ll “vote” on their efficacy and you can make you own informed decision. See below for pics of the LED packaging.

Hank

Embedr Is Cool

Embedr is a new site (Dec 08) that supports building of widgets to support videos of your choosing. An example starring Spuds-McKenzie is embedded below. Could see this used in a presentation for instance….. Work in Moodle…..This video thing is really getting legs! Hank

Purdue Food Entrepreneur: Chicago Soydairy.

Vegans form a market niche that in general is not well served by main stream food producers. Enter Chicago Soydairy, a  business co-founded in a basement in 2001 (not a garage ) by Purdue graduate and food process engineer Ryan Howard. Their business is a vegetarian food manufacturer plain and simple. According to their web site:

 Over 14 years ago, when the founders of this company, Ryan Howard and Dan Ziegler, became strict vegan vegetarians and interested in health foods, they both knew they wanted to start a company that promotes animal rights and fosters environmental responsibility… but before that, it was in their blood. Ryan Howard’s grandmother in Indianapolis, Indiana had taught him the family’s secret cookie recipe, sparking his interest in foods, while Dan’s father owned a machine shop in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin and passed on the entrepreneurial spirit. Today, We Love Soy is a dream on the verge of realization for everyone involved… and we couldn’t be happier.

The Chicago Soydairy started in November of 2001 when Ryan began to question buying soymilk from California when the soybeans came from the Midwest. Finding out that there were no local organic soydairies in the Midwest, Ryan started planning to fill the void. With the business plan written, he started looking for help and investors. The business officially got started with the aid of a long-time friend Dan Ziegler. They both held full-time jobs in the beginning and would work for We Love Soy on the weekends, with Dan driving 120 miles each way from Indianapolis (incredible commitment, by the way). A year later, the Chicago Soydairy was ready for startup.

Today (3/1/09), Journal & Courier’s writer Eric Weddle has an article about the company here: I’ve embedded a YouTube video about them below. Do a Google on them and you will find accolades from many directions. Hank