I just bought some LED “Ribbon Strip” for a new version of my Motion Studies light boxes. I came across this interesting article that details why LED technology is not ready to replace fluorescent lighting in many situations. I recently read that IKEA is going to eliminate all incandescent lighting by the end of the year.
I contend the energy-efficiency argument with LEDs for all major light sources is premature at this time.
Well-suited uses
However, LEDs are well suited to replace such-small area illumination uses as retail, display, refrigeration and task lighting, but warehouses, large stores and office buildings are better served with fluorescent lights, from both cost and energy-saving perspectives.
…For illumination, increasing the unit-area brightness beyond a certain level isn’t vital. It’s more vital to acquire a brightness level that uniformly spans a broader area. Substantially increasing unit-area brightness (for example making each LED lamp brighter with either higher feed current or higher efficacy) beyond this level isn’t useful as long as LEDs themselves remain small, planar and directional.
…Some argue that when the unit area brightness is increased, meaning, when individual LEDs produce more lumens per square area without driving them harder (improving the efficacy by a factor of 2, that is, to 150 lm/W), the LED T8’s light output will be the same, or more than, that of the LFL T8.
via How Well Can LEDs Meet the Energy Challenge? | SignWeb | signweb.com.
