I am not sure I agree with CCFL putting out more lumens than LED, my house is 100% LED from downlights to the regular globe replacements, personally I prefer the output (look and instant 100%) to CCFL but either way the lumens IME are slightly higher per watt with LED and figures I can find seem to back that up...
| Incandescent Watts | CFL Watts | LED Watts | Lumens (Brightness) |
| 40 | 8 - 12 | 6 - 9 | 400 - 500 |
| 60 | 13 - 18 | 8 - 12.5 | 650 - 900 |
| 75 - 100 | 18 - 22 | 13+ | 1100 - 1750 |
| 100 | 23 -30 | 16 - 20 | 1800+ |
| 150 | 30 - 55 | 25 - 28 | 2780 |
http://eartheasy.com/live_energyeff_lighting.htm
You should have seen the original lighting we had in the lounge when we moved in, they had these huge downlights, each one was one of those outdoor 200W flood lights.. Hilarious as lounge had 4 of them and no dimmer, so 800W, replaced with 6 x 9.5W LEDs on dimmers, plenty bright enough (before it was a joke) and drastic power saving...
As to solar we were lucky to get it in time for the higher rate so we make more during the day (when no one home) than we pay for at night, at 8c I don't know if I would have bothered though, takes much longer to pay it off..
Yeh.. I wouldn't take the figures for LED too literally. Often they quote the LED power rating not the package consumption.. for instance a bulb consisting of 16 X 1.1W LEDs will in fact require 20W +/-10% of power.. its light output will be 1000 Lumens per metre.. a CCFL at 20W will only require a straight 20W and its light output is some 1540 Lumens per metre. But.. if someone has a vested interest in selling you expensive LED bulbs then they are not going to tell you that all CCFL is now tri phosphor and has a much greater light output than standard phosphor... it is also a fraction of the cost. Investment in LED is a misnomer as any marginal saving you may perceive is grossly out weighed by the inflated costs... it wont last 50,000 hrs.. or 20,000 or even 10,000... in fact its light will diminish as the phosphors die or individual LEDs drop out..
Heres a picture of a standard LED power supply ( SMPS).. you can see that it requires 0.95A @ 170V to produce 100W of 12V supply, so it requires 161W to produce 100W... not so efficient all of a sudden, and youll be interested to know that the current input has been removed from the labelling now... can you guess why?
LED is exactly what you want if your house supply is 12VDC.. but its not, its 240V AC and its the conversion that kills the deal..
