There is a new/old color for the Christmas tree. We have come a long way from the red eye LED lights of the 1980's. Soft white has joined the ranks of the dazzling array of LED colors that have up until now not provided a light soft enough to be a replacement for a classic warm filament bulb.
I plugged them in, nice color, but they still have that strange high cycle flutter that when I stare at them makes me want to go into convulsions.
The sales pitch is that the bulb will pay for itself in a few years because it uses about 88% less power than a traditional filament bulb and lasts over 10 times longer making up for the price surcharge which can be 5 times a filament set. This is indeed great news for reducing energy consumption. They are also more sturdy than glass tubes.
However, holiday lighting manufacturers tell people to change the light sets every few years. This contradictory pile of information would lead one to believe that they will never pay for themselves.
My conclusion is that even if you never realize a spread sheet cost advantage, it is a holiday message of cheer against the gloom of global warming. Just the fact that holiday lights remind people of energy consumption is a plus. No doubt the price of LED's will drop and the cost of electricity will increase in coming years.
Light emitting diodes are tiny semi-conductors (or gates) with a specific purpose for electrons that fit into an electrical circuit. Unlike incandescent bulbs, they don't have a filament that generates light by the resistance of electrons pushed amass over a narrow gateway.
In a traditional filament bulb, energy is lost due to heat and a spectrum of light we cannot see. While passing through the LED, the electron is specifically “told" how to release its energy in a specific wavelength without the inefficiencies of loss due to heat and random wavelengths that we cannot see or aren’t the color we want to see.
Previous blog entry about Christmas LED lights at Rocky Ridge (12/2006)
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