Right now, I don't think there's that much in the way of choice for domestic interior lighting; it's pretty much CFL all the way.  For domestic exterior light, LEDs might be tolerable, for garden lighting, etc., although there's a lot of useless LED lights for that as well.  The MR11 class spot lighting with a minimum of 12 3528 SMD LEDs seem to work OK.  I still waiting on some wedge base lights for the other garden lights.

One major thing to note is that even the "warm" whites are still on the blue side of warm.

TTFN

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Being an early adopter, I've repeatedly tried LED light bulbs. So far, they've always failed way too early. Based on that experience, I think we should give them a few more years to work the bugs out before trying again.

CFL bulbs are now the default. They're now available for about US$2 or less. Even the monster-sized 45w (150-200 watt equivalent) are as cheap as $10.

They seems to have sorted-out most of the early failures. And the retail prices are so low that we no longer wail-and-weep and hold funeral services for each failed CFL bulb.
 

I have zero CFL bulbs installed and I intend to keep it that way. I have yet to see a decent color rendering or instant on CFL (I live in Michigan and it gets cold in some places). I do have LED bulbs on the other hand. Not all are that great as IRstuff pointed out but if you are willing to pay the extra price then the new Philips and GE bulbs are excellent (in my opinion). The Sylvania bulbs are OK but I don't care for the pinkish 60W equivalent. The 40W non-dimming equivalents were on clearance for $10 and I have those in a location that is difficult to get to.

Harold
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Skogs;  I'm having a hard time fishing a question out of your post.

The only one I see is:

Quote:

Mercury and sodium are for larger areas, I think. But if they are available also for office and homes, why not?

Sodium and Mercury Vapor, while very efficient (hence their heavy application in area illumination), they have absolutely abysmal color rendering or CRI.    Sodium is pretty much one dominant spectral line at 589.3nm bletch yellow.   MV is much better but is still sports a horrid CRI.

For years we've lit our living room with MH which has an excellent CRI over 90.  That burned out a few weeks ago so I just built this:



It's twenty four LEDs run by a current controller.  That shot doesn't begin to convey the photon flux spewing out of that thing.  It's about 4x the impact expressed here in this picture.

 

Keith Cress
kcress - http://www.flaminsystems.com

I've always noticed a significant noise level off the mercury or sodium lights (I'm not sure which).  that is probably limiting for residential applications.  

John D
 

Smoked

As I said, I am probably not putting the question the way it should be put. If there is any.

The background is that a company has invited me to buy shares in a field emission type of lamp. I have told them that they probably won't be able to compete with LED and that their timing is bad. Their market window is closed and they should have moved a lot faster. They started the development back in 1996 when they took over a Russian patent. They have then consumed around 30 MUSD to develop that technology into a marketable device. They have, as of now, mot even been able to publish test data that are on par with LED fixtures. All they can say is that their DESIGN GOAL is better than what can be done with LEDs today.

I think that company is a scam and I have told them so. They were not a scam from the beginning, but now when they probably understand that they can never reach their design goals, it has turned into a scam.

So, I thought that it would be good to have your opinion. If you had mentioned Field Emission, that would perhaps have been a support for that company. But you didn't. And that supports my thinking.

Gunnar Englund
www.gke.org
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Ah.  There are a few oddballs out there and your assessment is correct.  They are too little, tooooo late.  It's my prediction none of them will amount to a hillah beans.  There are so many aspects to lighting beyond just - light.  Trust and perceptions of the buyers is really important.  Going in to an architect with some off base lighting methodology is just not going to fly these days.  LEDs have had a long slow acceptance and they're way more approachable than Field Emission or any of those other odd balls.

I think you made a wise decision.

Keith Cress
kcress - http://www.flaminsystems.com

I wondered if that is who you were wondering about, Gunnar.

FWIW - it got some mention somewhere here a few months back.  I bought some shares of stock on spec., and a month or so later the share price bounced to roughly twice what I'd bought it for, and I sold it, making about $500 for my retirement plan.

It's since dropped back to its historical level as a penny stock ($.50 per share, US), so I bought another few $100 worth to hold, just as a "what the heck" move.  Represents way less than 1% of my retirement fund, so I can afford to lose it...and you can't win big if you don't bet on a few long shots...

The technology might find a niche, I figure, if they can price it somewhere close to LED's.  The directionality and color temperature should compare favorably to LED fixtures, which are too much like spotlights for my taste.  CFL's are going to become a nightmare soon, given that nobody (even here in tree-hugging Seattle) has really figured out how to keep them out of the landfills.  The total mercury content in them is low, but somebody soon is going to start complaining about it, and the real costs of CFL's (in terms of fuss and bother and media hype) is going to climb again.

Then again, I need to start looking into who is doing tallow rendering, as candles may start to compete again too.  Oh, and find out who owns those Japanese whaling trawlers, whale oil lamps used to be hot sellers...

Not sure if the Field Effect Emision lamp is the same as the Electron Stimulated Luminescence lamp that I saw some info on last month from VU1.  Looked interesting.  This one was basically a small CRT without the bad sitcoms broadcast on it.

In the commercial US field of lighting, we're probably going to have linear and compact fluorescents for a long while for the majority of indoor general lighting.  Seeing LEDs used commercially for accent or decorative fixtures.

Residentially it's hard to get the masses away from thinking that all light sources have to be a medium screw base (yes I know bayonet is used in Europe).  When most people hear "fluorescent", they imagine the old "cool white" or "daylight" lamps of 30 years ago.  ("Daylight" was an awful color).