Prospero All American 11662 Posts user info edit post |
Won't invest b/c:
1) I have yet to see an example in real-life room application and does not show how they are adequately diffusing the light w/out losing efficiency.
2) $50 bulb takes forever to pay for itself at a huge upfront cost. At $0.10/kW/hour, with 100W as an example, that's $0.01 per hour of usage. I use my house lights maybe 5-6 hours a day. That's roughly 2,200 hours per year, or about $22/year plus $1.25 per light bulb = $23.25. The LED bulb would use 12W, which would equate to $2.64/year plus $50 per light bulb = $52.64, payback would roughly be ~ 2 years, 4 months, but keep in mind this is a 100W bulb in which one is very unlikely to run for long periods of time, 6 hours a day is a LOT of lit time. At 12 hours/day estimate if I ran it as a front porch light, payback would still be 1 year. At the average (3 hours/day), a conservative estimate is 4 years, 6 months, that's terrible for a light bulb.
3) Not much use for a 75W-100W light bulb except maybe front porch.
4) You can buy a dimmable 22W (100W equivalent, 1780 lumens) on the market today for same price (~$54), which would only be $2.50/year more in operating costs (6 hours/day) than this bulb.
5) You can buy a CFL 22W (100W equivalent, 1600 lumens) on the market today for $11.00, which would only be $2.50/year more in operating costs (6 hours/day) than this bulb and put the payback for this LED at 8 years.
* They should really take this technology to a major lighting manufacturer to get bought out instead of trying to compete, in this scenario it's a better business strategy.
[Edited on January 9, 2013 at 7:18 PM. Reason : .] 1/9/2013 7:09:27 PM |
Prospero All American 11662 Posts user info edit post |
Even by their comparison on the kickstarter page:
Estimate of 30,000 hours (keep in mind that's 30-years at 3 hours/day) the incandescent costs 8x as much and the CFL costs 2x as much. That's still 3.75 years payback over incandescents and 15 years payback over CFL's. LED's dim over time, and in 15 years I'd be willing to bet we have even more efficient LEDs. 1/9/2013 7:24:34 PM |