Energy I keep hearing that LEDs are more efficient

I have CFLs that just won't die, so I have resorted to giving them away.
Still have ones from 2010 going in the old house.
I found that they don't last outside.

 

If the power meter only reads watts then maybe you can explain what happened when I tested the old wives tail that "the power company only charges for watts".

I took my 120v transformer based tig welder, disabled its power factor correction i added, then plugged the welder into an isolated utility meter.
Using my Kill-a-watt meter I read that my welder was using 140w and 500va, while my fluke325 amp meter read about 4.5 amps.
I found my welder running at no load spun the meter at a rate of about 2 seconds per hash mark.
Then all I had to go find light bulbs that used some where between 140 and 500 watts.
I came back with a 200 watt light bulb.
Now the assumption is that the utility meter ignores VA, and only reads watts.
When I plug in the 200w incandescent light bulb it should spin the meter faster than the 140w welder, correct?

That's not what happened. The 200w light bulb spun the meter at a rate of about 5 seconds per hash mark, or less than half the rate of the welder.
Last to try and replicate the effect of the 500va welder load I took a 500w halogen work light, plugged it in, this spun the meter almost exactly as fast as the welder.

So explain the result?

A pretty simple test, almost anyone could reproduce.

I already posted this test on another forum about 3 or 4 years ago and got a bunch of stupid responces, which I easy shot down. I look forward to getting more intelligent responses that are not going to be so easy to dismiss.

 

1) I didn't say the meter only reads watts, I said
2) the power company charges me per kWh.

If there is a computation going on on the back end, so be it, but my power bill shows kWh used and the cost per kWh (or at leaat used to show cost per kWh) and what i owe for the...wait for it...kWh used. I don't know what to tell you and im not interested in arguing but I'm more than happy to have a discussion. You come across with a bit of an attitude that anyone who doesn't agree with your assertion, even if their experience doesn't match yours, is retarded, which is a but if a turn off for discussion.

Now, for example, take a look at this interactive sample of a bill from Duke Energy (my electric company). Notice that the only thing specifically power related (not insurance, etc) is...kWh.
Reading Your Utility Bill - Duke Energy

Do they care about any other measurement? Maybe, even probably, but my bill is based in kWh used. Might be simplified for us non-EE types, which is fantastic, because I'm not an EE.

 

I think they use kwh because that's what people are familiar with.
Every where I have ever lived bills kwh and I moved around a lot until about 15 years ago.

An observation I would like to point out, my last house got a new fancy digital meter. I was watching all its readings after I noticed that it was flashing several different numbers.
The other reading besides "kwh" were something that said "kwh 80% P.F." and "kwh 60% P.F.".

The regular kwh reading was reading millions, "kwh 80% P.F." read thousands and "kwh 60% P.F." read a few hundred.

My assumption was that those 80% units had a penalty attached to them, and the 60% number had an even bigger penalty attached to it. I never did call the power company and confirm, due to prior piss poor customer service.

 

Back to lighting.
I did buy some 120v powered non ballast T5 LED tubes. Should be here any day now.
I see a minor problem with these. They are rated for 2,800 lumen, but claim they replace 54w high output tubes. The issue there is 54w tubes are rated to make 5,000 lumen. Even standard 4 foot T5 are rated to make 3000 lumen. Bit that's alright I don't need full power fixtures on everything.
Now it starts getting weird because I'm making some Frankenstein fixtures, T5 tubes powered by my old T8 ballasts.
Real F54T5 ballasts run about $10 per tube, my old T8 ballasts power 3 tubes and cost 0, kind of hard to beat that.

 

I just noticed that I didn't post a picture.
As you can see these aren't just cheap garbage.
They say 277 emergency. They have universal ballasts and the good ones work on 277v, 240v and 120v. Plus the emergency ballasts are flat dead on most of them and barely run for a few minutes on a few. I have no use for them so I remove them.
You can see the clear cover, gasket and clips. These things seal up real well, water, dust, dirt, bugs aren't going to get inside of them.
Most of them have good tubes and working ballasts.

 

Definitely, beefy housings. The only thing better that I can think of, would be explosion proof lighting fixtures. Why not convert them to LED fixtures?

 

Most of them are ready to use aside from removing the battery backup ballast.
Plus LED appear to be of equal or lesser efficiency than T5 and the T5 LED tubes give off around a third less light.
The only T5 LEDs that I can find cost around $20 per tube for 2,800 lumen, that's about 3x the price of a ballast per tube.

 

Here, we can buy 23" long, a 9 watts LED tube, with light fixture, for $8.00 US. A fixture and lamp double that length (46") is only $9.00 US. On the labels, it is stated they are 900 and 1800 lumens, respectively. Not sure I buy that, though.

 

I just explored the news part of the plant where I work, there are what i would call explosion proof T5 fixtures.
Now I just need to convince some higher up idiot LEDs would be better...
Looks 2018 could be the year with lots of different LEDs surpassing T5 in efficiency.

 

I found some 60 watt led replacements at Sams club that were showing about 80 lumen per volt-amp.

 

LEDs are great compared to CFLs.
A small "60w replacement" CFL that just quit on me makes 34 lumen per volt-amp.
A large "300 watt replacement" CFL that I grabed when moving (been in use since 2011) does close to 30 lumen per volt-amp.
My worst LED does 55 to 60 lumen per VA.

 

I got my kill a watt meter. My old one was probably about 10 years old when it died it's final death when I accidentally stepped on it and broke it when it was plugged into 2 extension cords. I accidentally killed it back in 2010 when I fried the shunt and repaired it.

I plugged my T5 light fixture into it, they run a .99 to 1 power factor.

 

Look out for "residential grade" florescent ballasts.
These things run 0.5 to 0.6 power factor.
Which means they suck. They are also usually 120v only.
The "high power factor" ballasts that are "industrial/commercial grade" are indeed high power factor. I haven't seen one yet that runs less than a .97pf.
The sad thing is the industrial high power factor 120-277v ballasts are really close, or nearly the same price of the 120v only shit residential ones.

The advantage of the slightly more expensive industrial ones is they draw half the amps of the same ballast when compared to residential flavor.

The easy way to tell them apart is the industrial commercial ones are always going to be 120 to 277v powered, the residential ones will always be 120v powered.

Also you can run these 120 to 277v industrial ballasts off 240v, that means you could power 115 tubes running 54 watts each off a common 30a 240v dryer circuit.
Or 35 tubes with at 120v 20a home circuit, or 17 to 20 tubes off a shitty 120v residential low power factor ballasts.

I have not seen "residential" T5 HO ballasts yet, but they probably are out there. I have seen residential T12, T12 HO, T8 and T5 regular with low power factor rating.
I accidentally bought a residential T8 ballast the other day. I'll put it in a storage shed where it will get the least use.

Also I have seen residential ballasts drop off output over time. I had some T8 lights that just weren't very bright. So I tested the fixture on my kill a watt meter, the 4foot 34w tubes were only doing about 20 watts each, I assumed the tubes were getting old and so I bought new ones, same thing, the new tubes were also running about 20 watts each. That's why I bought the residential T8 ballast.

 

Because fuph china.
That's why.

 

99% of the LEDs in our house are 12v. I run them directly from the batteries so no matter what happens with the inverter the lights never go out.

 

Now they are going to actually ban incandescent bulbs.
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