I think I found something that would work for me. I've been waiting quite some time for dimmable par 20 replacement lights. I currently use halogens in my kitchen, and I like using the lights but avoid it due to the power consumption (there are 8 - 50W bulbs). The lumen rating isn't up to what a 50W halogen puts out, but it would probably suffice.

EarthLED LumiSelect Dimmable LED Light Bulbs, Dimmable LED, LED Lamps, Dimming LEDs, Dimmer Compatable LED Lamps

Its very confusing though. The main page lists them as a 6W bulb, when you click the order now button it says it uses 7 watts of power, but in the specs it says 9W... On top of that all, a single bulb costs $90 which is just way too much for me to replace 8 bulbs.

@ 6W you get 99 lm/w which is great!
@ 7W you get 85 lm/w which is still very good
@ 9W you get 66 lm/w which isn't bad, but pretty close to a CFL

Of course, I haven't found any dimmable par 20 CFLs...

Task, Fill & Passage Lighting...
 

WD_40,

Thanks for the info.

I'm in the process of switching over too, but I'm moving much slower than you did.

I'm posting my thinking process on the matter, as I am curious if your considerations were similar.

I have categorized my lighting into:

• task lighting
• fill lighting
• accent lighting

and I have recently added a third category:

• passage lighting

Task Lighting is for doing a specific task that requires the best visual clarity I can obtain. Examples of tasks are writing, drawing, machining, using any power tool, and reading (sometimes even cooking). I 've had a strong preference for halogen lighting for task lighting, since it is bright, contrasty, and has a full color spectrum. The recent crop of high-power LED, like the kind you found at the big-box stores works very well for task lighting. In some cases even better than halogen, because the color balance is good, and the point-source gives excellent contrast, making it my preferred light for machining, where I want to be able to see every nick and.scratch.



Fill Lighting is used to illuminate the volume of a room, and the contrast is not so important. I have also concluded that the level of light can be much lower than I used to use. I find that CFL is great for this. If I'm not mistaken, CFL gives more light per watt than LED, but the light from CFL radiates in all directions, making it really good for fill and less efficient for task lighting. I'm very selective what I watch in TV, but when I do, I like it to be a good experience. I have two strings of white xmas tree lights fastened to the upper edge of the wall behind my couch to provide low-level fill for watching TV. They provide just enough fill light so the TV does not seem overly contrasty, and because of their location, they don't distract the eye from the TV image. I have them on a dimmer, so I can get the exact level I want (and even save a bit of power).


Accent Lighting is for lighting an object or area of interest. The light intensity level is also somewhere between task and fill. This is a way to use light that I am just beginning to explore and I find it to be very interesting. I'm realizing that the proper use of accent lighting can make a small space feel much larger and more interesting.



Passage Lighting for me, this is a recently added category. Passage lighting would be lighting used to provide a minimum light level in a hallway or the route to the garage, or a staircase. Night lights are also passage lights. I have found that the illumination level and quality required of passage lighting is so low that it is the perfect place to use my first generation LED lights that I still have laying around. My son uses thrift-store LED xmas tree lights for passage lighting. They pull little power and also add a festive note.

Overall, I want a fairly high level of lumens per square foot in task lighting, a low to moderate level in fill lighting, and a low level in passage lighting.

I have had to really search out the right CFL for fill lighting, because for my preferences, they're just too bright. I have found some that are about 5 watts (equivalent to 40 watt incandescent) that I like. I have found that I prefer to have several small fill lights than one large fill light. I also want to experiment with very small 12v halogen bulbs, run at 5 to 7 volts. I have collected some cell-phone chargers for this purpose.


Please don't misread these photographs, they are strictly for making a point about different types of lighting. My own digs are very humble, however I'm still using these techniques.

Regards,

-AC_Hacker

I was at Home Depot today looking at their LED lights and noticed that 57 Lumins per watt was about the best of anything that they sold for LEDs and it was two of their 850 lumin lights at around 16 watts each that seemed like the best deal at 53 lumins per watt.
Then I remembered that the last time I hooked a CFL up to a Kill-a-watt meter it drew more power then it was labeled as using, then I noticed that not only are CFL's rated for watts but also amps at 120 volts, my 7 watt CFL is also labeled as a .081 amp at 120 volts or 9.72 watts and that is closer to what it really draws.
LED's on the other hand tend to draw what they are labeled within 5% or so.

We have a floodlight over the driveway with a tube-style halogen bulb

http://ecorenovator.org/forum/attach...1&d=1288035356 http://ecorenovator.org/forum/attach...1&d=1288035356

The first thing I did after installing it two years ago was to replace the 500W halogen tube with a 150W bulb (the neighbors don't need to be able to read with my floodlight), but now that the darker half of the year is here, and with a dog that keeps running around, the light is on much more often than I'd like it to be. Does anyone know of an LED replacement for this type of tube-bulb? Something that would give the lumen equivalant of a 100W halogen would be best.

I think the best alternative there is to keep your lights on time to a minimum. A more efficient bulb would of course help too.

my house has one of those motion lights with the halogen bulbs as well. Mine is coming on all the time due to cats walking through the carport. My plan is to replace the entire unit soon.

At my old house I had a motion light that took regular screw in bulbs. I replaced the two 150 Watt floods with some 20 ish watt CFL floods that although they took a minute or so to come up to full brightness when cold I don't think it made any difference from a security stand point.

The time is already down to 15-20 seconds, but another problem is that it's very hard to adjust the light (dark) level of operation, so sometimes it turns on during daylight. The potentiometer doesn't have good resolution, I've already soldered a resistor in parallel, but this only slightly helped. I may just replace the unit, since it's becoming more and more problematic after two years in the elements.

Yeah, I kind of figured you had already done that. Sounds like a new fixture is the next logical step.

Piwoslaw: Your current lamp makes about 2400lm, but the LED equivalent isn't exactly affordable.

High Power led lights

Prices like these start to make sodium vapor lamps look attractive.

I was talking with an engineer from Ruud lighting a couple weeks ago. They make industrial/commercial LED lighting. He said that even though sodium has the high lumen/watt efficiency, the orange light it emits requires something like 30% more lumens to appear as bright as a white LED. Therefore, they can get away with lower lumen output with LED fixtures and it still looks as bright, and its not discolored.