Workshop lighting / energy costs

Just a side note that the vaunted reliability of LED bulbs seems to be limited by the (in many cases poor) reliability of the built-in driver circuitry for the LEDs rather than the LEDs themselves. Every failure I've had with LED bulbs/tubes appears to have been a failure of this circuitry. Often after a relatively short time.

In April 2017, I replaced the two 5ft 80 watt fluorescent tubes in my workshop (AKA garage) with six 9.5 watt (60 watt equivalent) LED GLS lamps. They improved the lighting spectacularly as I suspect the old tubes were on their way out anyway. The lamps are still going strong and only consume 56 watts as opposed to the 160 watts of the fluorescents. It's not a lot to save but "Every little helps......"

About the same time, I replaced the lighting in the house with the same lamps. Since they were fitted I've probably had about 10 fail. I opened up the last three failures and found 2 with faulty LED arrays and one with driver circuit failure. Being me, I transplanted the good LED array into one with a working driver circuit and glued the cover back on. Now have another spare lamp.

Hello Anthony, OK about the repair once you have the board out, but tell us how you gained access to the board. I thought the envelope was glass as before, is it now clear plastic ? I bought three lengths of LED with self adhesive backing, I attached it to some 25mm plastic angle and secured them to the roof of my workshop, all driven via an old computer PSU Easy to carry out, no main wiring involved, other than to PSU and what a transformation, lighting wise. Using LED strips you can cut them to length, as they are diodes in parallel and with careful use of the soldering iron join odd bits up to size. John

I have used LED lighting strips as described by John above to light a bank of shelves, Each strip goes on the lower outer edge of a shelf and illuminates the shelf below. I stuck my LEDs inside the angle in lengths of light alloy angle as I had some spare and thought that the bright surface of the alloy would reflect the light and the angle would shield the LEDs from dazzling me. I screwed the angle to the shelves and it all makes things a lot easier to find and keep tidy.

This was so successful that I have done the same with the storage spaces in my lathe stands, using double sided tape to secure the angles in place, and again, things have become much easier to locate. Previously the storage spaces seemed a little like black holes, things put away seemed to disappear forever!

,I have also read some indications more recently that LEDs are best kept cool ( LEDS do get just a little warm when lit) and the alloy angle should conduct heat away from the LEDs and prolong their life - I hope!

Rod

tell us how you gained access to the board.

Bigclivedotcom likely shows how it is done - probably several times over.

LED's are very heat sensitive an increase of 5 degrees centigrade can shorten life drastically., I was responsible for designing and manufacturing LED machine vision units. These had closely spaced LEDs and the diminution in lifetime was horrendous. It needed a total redesign to get acceptable lifetime.

Andrew.

I've gone for five 43W LED battens.

If I get fed up in the workshop, I will be able to take my shirt of, lie back and develop a tan.

Neil

I suppose it all depends on the construction of the lamp. Mine come in a pack of five from Screwfix and are about the same size and shape as the old incandescent ones. These however have a translucent plastic hemisphere at the top end, which can easily be sawn off. In the picture you can see the two pins of the driver circuit sticking out from the bottom part of the lamp. The circular board carrying the LEDs sits on this and is held in place by the three metal tabs.

Many thanks Anthony worth knowing, I'll be getting to work with my Dremel as we have a couple of dud ones. John

Well, it's all been a bit of an eye-opener. I've now accumulated data over 11 days during which time I've spent five or six evenings in the workshop - the pro tem adjustments I've made are hardening myself off ( I actually work faster and more efficiently with the workshop at 17 degrees than the 21-22 in which I'd been luxuriating), and directing light to where it's needed rather than flooding.

The results so far suggest that my house + workshop electricity needs should be satisfied by 2.7 MWh / year in contrast to the 7.86 MWh /year estimated by the electricity supplier. That translates to about £100 saving  - an eighth of a roll of gold wallpaper or 20 carbide inserts -  per month, depending on how you personally reckon it.

I can make further improvements by cladding the ceiling with something painted white as suggested - I have some hardboard as Dave Halford advises, but even cardboard (thanks to Amazon, lockdowns, and my reluctance to bin anything) would do.

I don't want sell the bandsaw and go back to hand sawing as Martin recommends because I think that might put an unnecessary burden on the Ambulance service, but it's an idea I suppose.

On Peter Greene's point about the reliability of LED's I too have found that for the most part the drivers fail before the LED's themselves. I posted a question about this some time ago and someone (MichaelG I think) suggested that poor quality light switches might be a factor. I have replaced my (old) house switches with MK versions, and it's made a real difference.

Robin

Edited By Robin Graham on 12/10/2021 01:52:00

Edited By Robin Graham on 12/10/2021 01:56:34

Edited By Robin Graham on 12/10/2021 01:59:31

2.7MWh/ annum ! Wow , that's some workshop you have there.

Errm ... that's projected total house / workshop consumption. Ofgem give the average electricity consumption for a 3 bedroom house as 3,000 kWh / annum - which is 3MWh / annum in my head. Have I gone wrong there? Or was that intended ironically?

The problem is my electricity supplier is projecting 7,860 kWh (or about 7.9 MWh by my reckoning) per annum based on past usage.

I think I can do better!

Robin

Edited By Robin Graham on 14/10/2021 00:33:29

Edited By Robin Graham on 14/10/2021 00:35:54

' Guess it's normal , 'us' ' lone survivors ' forget what 'normal consumption ' was.

News is Freightliner can't afford the bill anymore, so are going forward to use diesel motive power instead.

Fuel of the future.

'Over the Rainbow or over and out, for now? Freightliner has grounded its fleet of class 90 electric locomotives due to steeply rising energy costs.'

Interesting thing economics! *** Link to article in RailFreight.com ***

John

Diesel is only 'fuel of the future' until the price goes up. And at the moment, the price of oil is rising at much the same rate as natural gas. Choppy waters ahead.

Thing is, all the rules change whenever demand exceeds supply. In the near future, whatever the answer is, it's not burning fossil fuels.

Dave

7,860 kWh (or about 7.9 MWh by my reckoning)

?

Kilowatt = one thousand watts

Megawatt = one million watts

Why do you reckon that they are the same ?

You would cetainly notice the bill for 7.9 MWh consumption - about £1185000 at £0.15 per KWh !

Nigel B.

Possibly a little confusion over ' What Watt' and decimal places. The original statement is correct (IMHO) the cost @ £0.15 per kWh is around £1185

John

7,860kWh is the same quantity as 7.86MWh. Note the change from comma to full stop.

The bill for 7.86MWh at 15p per kWh would be £1179.

Andrew

I think a few years ago the eco-target was 10kWh per day of energy of whatever source including heating, average for the year. Unfortunately a typical house roof PV installation only gives on average 2kWh per day, and most of that not when you need it.

Bazyle, pays to have batteries to store your solar energy when produced but of course that adds to the capital costs, we have 7.4 kWh storage capacity which works very well with our panels which on a sunny summers day can produce >25 kWh. Dave W