LED recessed downlights - retro fitting

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#1821752 13-Jul-2017 11:57

tdgeek:

How is the flicker issue with LED these days?

Wife got a pamphlet that us getting an LED upgrade has saved some people 50% on their power bill. Have no idea how that could be the case, but am interested to see where LED is these days, price wise and flicker wise. Are they the same wattages as CFL equivalents? And hence same power usage?

I'm not noticing any flicker. The spec says these are 15W max and they're nice and bright - would guess they're roughly equivalent to 80W-100W incandescent but don't know about CFL. In the past I've found both CFL and LED to be on the dim side. LED have certainly improved.

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#1821753 13-Jul-2017 11:58

richms:

tdgeek:

How is the flicker issue with LED these days?

Got worse with the demand for cheap crap from the typical masses who dont like to spend on quality.

Hard to find details and I'm sick of people saying dumb crap like "you cant see 100Hz flicker" and "its not a problem" when it is.

Yep, I'd hate to spend good money on an upgrade then be pi$$ed every time I switched them on. This pamphlet is from the guys that installed the alarm system and the cabinet in the garage that has the panel for the coax, fibre and ethernet distribution, so that makes me a bit more comfortable

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#1821764 13-Jul-2017 12:14

One oddity I notice (and it might just be in the rooms that have dimmers) is that when you switch on the lights they sometimes come on one by one instead of all instantly like you would expect. The delay for 4 of them to light up in the bedroom is maybe a second or less.

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#1821770 13-Jul-2017 12:25

Yeah, thats called popcorning by the lighting guys. Just a side effect of reducing the power into an appliance inorder to control its output. One day domestic wiring will move on from its archaic ways and hopefully get proper control of the drivers so they are all the same output and come on at the same time. Till then you either have to power on at full brightness or put up with it.

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clive100

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#1821811 13-Jul-2017 13:06

tdgeek:

How is the flicker issue with LED these days?

Wife got a pamphlet that us getting an LED upgrade has saved some people 50% on their power bill. Have no idea how that could be the case, but am interested to see where LED is these days, price wise and flicker wise. Are they the same wattages as CFL equivalents? And hence same power usage?

We don't notice any flicker with any of the LED lamps we have. That's some Panasonics & Philips even some cheap chinese ones although the latter are not up to the lumen claims. LEDs consumer typically half as much power as the CFL lamps so a 20W cfl = 10W led. Or about an 1/8 of the power compared to the old incadescent lamps. I think it would be very very few that could save 50% of their power bill just by changing lighting.

Fred99

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#1821824 13-Jul-2017 13:15

richms:

Yeah, thats called popcorning by the lighting guys. Just a side effect of reducing the power into an appliance inorder to control its output. One day domestic wiring will move on from its archaic ways and hopefully get proper control of the drivers so they are all the same output and come on at the same time. Till then you either have to power on at full brightness or put up with it.

I don't seem to get "popcorning" with Philips dimmable LED, nor LED Lux, all used with LEDLux LED dimmers.

That dimmer however has a trimpot on the side to set minimum brightness according to load / load type. I set them so that when set at minimum brightness, then when turned on, all the LEDs come on. With the Philips dimmable "filament type" LEDs - that's at a very very low level. The LEDLux dimmable LEDs, still need to have minimum level set reasonably bright to dim smoothly and evenly - they're okay for purpose where they are (over a kitchen bench) but could be better.

As I've mentioned before, there's a flaw with that when setting them up - unless you want to disconnect power when making adjustments, adjust, check, re-adjust unto you get it right, you're kind of committed to adjusting them while working live. It would be much nicer if they'd make them with the trimpot in a different position, ideally remove the dimmer knob and have it hidden there. Whether a sparky is going to understand how and why this needs to be set is one thing, then presumably if the owner changes the bulbs to a different type, the trimpot would almost certainly need to be reset for optimal performance.

I note that for flicker, comments seem to be that "acceptable" level for LEDs (50Hz) should be <8%. Looking at some tests, I note that all the Philips dimmable LEDs test in the 1 or 2% range. OTOH some GE LEDs - also dimmable - are ~ 23%. Some of the Philips non-dimmable are also quite high - around 15%. That may simply be because they're older design - perhaps some newer good quality non-dimmable LED do have low flicker.

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#1821955 13-Jul-2017 15:10

clive100:

tdgeek:

How is the flicker issue with LED these days?

Wife got a pamphlet that us getting an LED upgrade has saved some people 50% on their power bill. Have no idea how that could be the case, but am interested to see where LED is these days, price wise and flicker wise. Are they the same wattages as CFL equivalents? And hence same power usage?

We don't notice any flicker with any of the LED lamps we have. That's some Panasonics & Philips even some cheap chinese ones although the latter are not up to the lumen claims. LEDs consumer typically half as much power as the CFL lamps so a 20W cfl = 10W led. Or about an 1/8 of the power compared to the old incadescent lamps. I think it would be very very few that could save 50% of their power bill just by changing lighting.

Bordering on misleading, but my wife would lap it up. If you had solar this and gas that, and had multi lights in every room (which we have) and all incandescent, and its winter, then maybe. I'll read the thing tonight.

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#1821960 13-Jul-2017 15:20

People that only own a toaster as their only other appliance perhaps. Or one of those mystical $70 powerbill people?

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#1822020 13-Jul-2017 16:21

richms:

People that only own a toaster as their only other appliance perhaps. Or one of those mystical $70 powerbill people?

Ok, Ive read the pamphlets. Its focussed on LED, which are 90% less power, last 30-50 times longer than incandescent, and saves up to 75% on your heating cost. This is under the heading LED Downlights. How can they save 75% on heating costs? Do they emit heat? And a good amount?

Over the page is another offer, Solar. On the LED Lighting page it does really focus on LED, with a smaller font Two Great Opportunities to SAVE

In shorts its LED and Solar

So, a bit annoying as while even the letter talks mainly about LED, it also throws in "systems" which is clearly the Solar side.

I have no idea on LED costs, and all I know about solar is that our Solar HW cost $8000 when installed in this house when it was built 6 years ago. And daughters Nana paid $10000 for Solar PV with no batteries, 3 years ago with an EQC rebuild.

Im not that keen on LED due to the hugh initial cost and we have CFL downlights which are lower wattage. Seems a lot to pay to get the light we already have?

Happy to be convinced though.

BUT, I love our Solar HW, and I am really keen on Solar PV without batteries. Especially if I can easily had a power bank at any time, or get panels added easily at any time.

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#1822023 13-Jul-2017 16:26

tdgeek:

Ok, Ive read the pamphlets. Its focussed on LED, which are 90% less power, last 30-50 times longer than incandescent, and saves up to 75% on your heating cost. This is under the heading LED Downlights. How can they save 75% on heating costs? Do they emit heat? And a good amount?

Not an open hole to the cieling like most incandesent downlights are. Some have a good 12-14mm gap around the lamp. One I had even had part of the lamp above the reflector so that it lit the cieling space up when on. Swapped out for sealed LEDs and killed the draught coming into the room.

Richard rich.ms

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#1822027 13-Jul-2017 16:28

richms:

tdgeek:

Ok, Ive read the pamphlets. Its focussed on LED, which are 90% less power, last 30-50 times longer than incandescent, and saves up to 75% on your heating cost. This is under the heading LED Downlights. How can they save 75% on heating costs? Do they emit heat? And a good amount?

Not an open hole to the cieling like most incandesent downlights are. Some have a good 12-14mm gap around the lamp. One I had even had part of the lamp above the reflector so that it lit the cieling space up when on. Swapped out for sealed LEDs and killed the draught coming into the room.

Ah, makes sense, tks for that

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#1822030 13-Jul-2017 16:34

I don't notice any flicker with mine, however when you use a camera in a room with LED, you can see a flicker on that. Think it is worse with cheap bulbs.

kryptonjohn

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#1822031 13-Jul-2017 16:38

Yep - we just refurbed our house - part of it was replacing all the downlights that were effectively high power heat transfer portals into the ceiling, with LEDs that seal in the ceiling.

The other thing that amazed me was how porous this 2 story house was. The first story is brick over timber framing and 2nd story weatherboard. We pulled off most of the drywall - and unsurprisingly there's no insulation in the cavities nor building paper of any sort. What did surprise me was how much daylight you could see through the bricks, weatherboards and around the windows and doorframes, and the lack of flashings around anything. Despite this the house was dry apart from a subfloor drainage defect in the basement. I guess all the drafts dried out any water that got in there.

So now there's building paper and insulation everywhere and the place is so much warmer than last winter.

One issue now is the condensation on windows and running the DVS. Winter time the ceiling space at night is cold so so you don't want that cold air being pumped in. I think it needs to have a good cycle during the day when the ceiling's warm and shut down at night and hopefully that's going to be dehumidified enough to last the night. Still experimenting with the 'heat retention' settings for that.

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#1822032 13-Jul-2017 16:39

mattwnz:

I don't notice any flicker with mine, however when you use a camera in a room with LED, you can see a flicker on that. Think it is worse with cheap bulbs.

That's the easiest way to see if they flicker. Jelous of people that dont get bothered by it since every second resturant seems to be deploying those craphouse dimmable filament LED lamps over tables it seems.

Richard rich.ms

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#1822050 13-Jul-2017 17:13

richms:

mattwnz:

I don't notice any flicker with mine, however when you use a camera in a room with LED, you can see a flicker on that. Think it is worse with cheap bulbs.

That's the easiest way to see if they flicker. Jelous of people that dont get bothered by it since every second resturant seems to be deploying those craphouse dimmable filament LED lamps over tables it seems.

Quick check using that test around our house, none of the filament style LED here show any flicker. One set did a while ago - but that was due to the dimmer used. All are Philips. A couple of conventional non-dimmable LEDs did have severe flicker though - I hadn't noticed, but it's quite obvious with the "camera test". They are several years old though.

I might see what I can do for a more accurate test method.

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