Re: Anyone moved to LED Lighting?

[don@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Don Klipstein)]

In article <4b3c9333.6535421@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Dave Houston wrote:
>The Daring Dufas <the-daring-dufas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>>CFL units also
>>use switching power supplies to operate the lamp and a wholesale change
>>over to CFL lighting could cause problems in older buildings.
>
>I'm not sure how much of a problem this will be. Most commercial/industrial
>buildings use tubular fluorescents and/or high pressure sodium lights which
>save far more energy than CFLs so there's no incentive (nor mandate) to
>switch to CFLs. (Changing from magnetic to electronic ballasts may be a
>problem but I don't know how prevalent this is.)

  The usual commercial ballasts for 4 foot fluorescents are high power
factor anyway.

>As lighting is only 9% of residential energy use, even changing to 100%
>CFL/LED with SMPS may not be a major problem. Electic rates already embed
>charges for residential power factor issues (rather than use demand
>metering). It's likely that the utilities will merely ask for rate increases
>to compensate for their increased costs related to harmonics.

  Just wait for dimmable CFLs to become more widespread, and they are
becoming increasingly available.  They have high power factor.

 - Don Klipstein (don@xxxxxxxxx)