LED Lighting from Tubemodules.com

Most designs you see offered almost everywhere are mostly centered on making LED's look like incandescent bulbs. They are based on the old "Edison socket" which has been the standard since light bulbs for the last 100 years.
While casual users of new technology would be most comfortable with something that looked like what we were used to, I believe that it may be time to take a new approach.
Low-voltage LED lighting modules and fixtures are much more efficient because they don't need a rectifier, regulator, and current limiting in every bulb. and they don't need such a big heat sink.
If you consider that we also could have the need to move into renewable and stored energy, and that 12 Volts DC is a standard that we have lived with for over 100 years with the automobile battery, it seems that it would be most sensible to use 12 Volts DC for these LED's for lighting and with currently-available and cheap energy storage technology - the car battery.

Learn from experience!

When the hurricane visited our fine city, the power was off for 3 days at my place. Right across the street it was off for 2 weeks because of the damaged poles and lines. I had to do something to keep going, keep cool, and keep working at my job at home.

I had a car battery that was mostly charged up, and an inverter that created 120 Volts AC from the 12 Volts in my battery. Using that, I powered a light. Once I could see and work again, I found my White LED's that I had bought, and wired them to work on 12 Volts from the battery.
I had just eliminated a great deal of lost energy in the inverter and the fluorescent light fixture. I was using current directly from the battery to power the LED's. No conversion, only some crude current limiting to prevent the LED's from taking in more current than they could handle.

Here are photos and a report on my current efforts into room lighting with LED's.
To the left is lighting with one 19 Watt twisty bulb in Daylight White. To the right is my single-module LED in Neutral White drawing 12 Watts.

Not a really fair comparison, as the left one is at night and the right one is in daytime, but the window does not admit too much light. The point is the quality of the light is a bit better, and the wattage used is quite a bit lower.

Here is the power supply readout.


The LED Module is mounted on a CPU heat sink with a small fan that also runs off of 12V. It has a small 2-pin connector.

The LED is the BridgeLux BXRA-N0802-00000 from the ES series of LED Modules.
Specs are:

I bought some cheap frosted glass fixtures from the depot store and used them to help spread the light. Otherwise it had too much glare and the shadows were too sharp.
For more light and more money, I could have bought the BXRA-N1203-00000, which is 1530 Lumen at the same current!

Update:

I bought some little step-up regulator modules that take whatever voltage you have and boost it to whatever you want (within reason).
I have 11.85 Volts going in and 12.25 Volts coming out, at about 1 Amp. This lets me use some cheap "12V" power supplies and still light the LED Modules to full brightness. The difference in light available was quite noticeable.
It would also (more importantly) let you get lots more light from whatever power you have, even if the battery voltage drops way below normal.

Here are a few pretty cheap LED modules that run on 12 Volts.
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Solar and Wind Power

You can't really skip the opportunity to get energy from wind and the sun.

Solar Panels and collectors

Solar panels
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Flexible solar "roll"

Just roll them out on a flat roof or any other surface. Sticky on one side. Flexible and hard to damage, and its flexible. Made to stick to smooth roofs.

Flexible solar roll from www.sunelec.com



www.dcpower-systems.com is a wholesaler of this stuff. Become a dealer or find one to use their products. But you can learn a lot just from their catalog... except for prices. But great knowledge for what to buy when you are ready. and how big a system you will need. They have solar and wind power, batteries, and inverters. Everything you need.

Wind Energy and Grid-Tie Inverters

These connect your energy source to your power line in the house.

. . . .
. Here is a link to a place that sells small wind generators. Wind Turbine System $899
Power Your Home With A Wind Turbine. Starting At $899


Background Data about this LED and Lighting stuff:

History of lighting, much condensed.

The first light was from the Sun. Great light, kinda yellowish, but mostly white, and plenty of it when it was daytime.
But at sundown all activity stopped, and restarted at sunup. But the light color was yellow, for the most part. Then was FIRE! This wonderful discovery opened up all sorts of activities after sundown. Life did not stop at sundown! Candles were great... no more crowded around the fire all evening. Light color was pretty yellow.
Kerosene Lanterns were bright, portable, safer than candles, but kinda stinky. Yellowish light.

Electric Age

I think glowing-gas bulbs were the first. I'll check on that. Available in any color but white.
Arc lamps were intense, white, hot, dangerous. And they put out Ultraviolet light, which can blind you. Not for homes.
Acetylene Lamps were used by miners. White light but dangerous because it came from burning gas.

Cool, Warm, and in between

Fluorescent bulbs have been available in several "temperatures" for a long time now. You see them in the stores... Cool White, Warm White and so on. These represent literally different color temperatures as measured by instruments, and offer more blue-end light or more red-end light, as desired by the user.
The same offerings, plus more, are available in the LED world of lighting. What is funny, though, is that Cool White looks like fluorescent tubes, and Warm White looks like incandescent bulbs! Do they have any that look like kerosene lamps? When is the backward-compatibility going to stop?




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