Im looking, just as a fun project to try, to replace the filament in an incandescent bulb with some white LEDs, to cut power useage and to get white light, rather than warm light.

First of all, Im looking at using these LEDs. How many should I use, per bulb, to get around a 60-80w incandescent equivalent?

For driving the LEDs, Ive found a few circuits:
http://www.discovercircuits.com/DJ-C...telednight.jpg
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homep...en/lineled.gif
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homep...en/ledlamp.gif
http://www.discovercircuits.com/Andy/20mALEDballast.pdf
(images taken from respective pages - see url).

Which would be the best (and most cost-effective) to use?

 

You'll need a lot of LEDs to replace a 60W light bulb, you'd be much bettef off using a compact fluroscent tube (energy saving light bulb) than LEDs.

The only time LEDs are useful here is when you're replacing a halogen downlighter.

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Those cheap LEDs are very bright because the beam is focussed into a very narrow angle. My new solar garden lights have an RGB LED that has a good spread of bright light over nearly 180 degrees.

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Souper man

wow 130,000mcd! Thats pretty high. If you watch mythbusters, the one myth about the Lights, is if its better to keep them continually on rather than turning them on and off when you leave, because of startup energy useage. It was false, and the kilowatt hours of the LED's were 1kwh, or somthing like that. Point is, that There are pre-made LED lightbulbs.

 

I didnt like the idea of CFL's because they contain mercury, and arent recycled. This wasn't so much to replace every light in the house, and around the world, just something to try and have fun with.

 

in the "incandescent light bulb" thread, i think hero posted a site about cfl's and incandescent light bulbs, i found it very informative!!!!! but its not just mercury, its all the electronics to drive the cfl's tube

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Compact fluorescent light bulbs are very good but are very inexpensive now.

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ParkinglotLust, flourescent tubes are recycledable 100%. It's not legally required for home owners or companies that use small quantities of bulbs to recycle them but the facilities do exist. If it bothers you so much get out your local phone book and find a recycler to send your spent bulbs to.

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Under "Recycling Services", there is one listing, and it's an auto wrecker. Its really a tradeoff - burn a lot of coal to produce a lot of energy to run the incandescent lights, or burn a small amount of coal to produce a bit of energy to run the CFL's, but leach mercury into the ground in the landfills.

 

Contact Norfolk Waste Services. If they don't accept mercury lamps, I'm sure they'll tell you who will.

I used whitepages.com, and plugged in the word waste and N0E 1Y0.

 

I saw some new White LEDs the other day on ABC 'new inventers' program, they are special technology, they can run directly from the mains AC supply, ie no power supply or rectifiers are needed. (no power supply losses)
There is very little info on them yet as they are not in production as far as I Know.
One would assume they are connected in series to match the input voltage & unlike current LEDs they can tolerate reverse voltage or maybe 2 LED crystals per LED.
I am just rattling here as I know nothing yet of the technology used.

see http://www.abc.net.au/tv/newinventors
Episode 23 July 11, 2007 (clik on the 'Browse all inventions' button to find episode)

In LED lambs we build, we use parallel groups of series strings to optimise efficiency / minimise dark areas due to failed LEDs.
One problem with series strings of LEDs for HV applications is when 1 LED goes open the whole string is out (just look at the traffic lights, some have whole areas dark). one way around this is to fit zener diodes across smaller numbers of series LED groups, this way only a few are dark if 1 is open.

The mains AC has significant voltage transients that will damage LEDs if not managed with some form of protection. Lightning would be a common source for overvoltage damage depending where you live.

 

Check this out
http://www.maxim-ic.com/cookbook/pow...pdfs/CB170.pdf
http://www.powerint.com/applications/ledlighting.htm

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LED lightning isn't as efficient as florescent lighting.

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Read this
http://alt-e.blogspot.com/2005/04/en...lights-to.html

Bye the way LED lighting is the correct term not LED lightening

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As soon as those ultra efficient LED's are both available and cheap let me know.

By the way, I'm also well aware I make a large number of typo's and I don't bother spell and grammer checking all my posts, waste of time.

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