Reply #16: Current products. [View All]

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My argument was towards your point that a heat sink would have to be abnormally large. This is not true. Yes, you need a conductor to get the heat away from the junction, but the total area of the heat sink need only be as big, or smaller, as the surface area of a CF bulb.

That CF bulbs don't need to be cooled to as low a temperature as LEDs is besides the point because CF bulbs currently operate close enough to the temperature LEDs require that the difference is not drastic. So my base point stands: a heat sink, likely doubling as a reflector or scatterrer in many cases, need only be as big as a CF bulb. LED bulbs of equivalent wattage will fit fine wherever swirls do.

Further, your conjectures don't mesh with reality. Here is a photo of a current LED light product. This uses the LEDs that are not as efficient as CF bulbs.

6W, about what you were stating for a goal for 60W incandescent equivalents, and advertised to "never get hot" despite having a lower efficiency than a CF bulb:



It is not too hard to find LED bulb assemblies in both flood and lamp profile up into the 25 Watt range. Being made with lower-than-state-of-the-art LEDs they dissipate more heat than the newer ones will, and do not seem to need any huge honking heat sink to do it. Moreover they advertise respectable MTBFs and yes, I do realize they dim over time, but they still retain most of their efficiency for longer than the MTBF of a CF bulb, which is all that matters.

I don't know what research articles you're into, but they must be for specialty and industrial applications, because there simply is not a real heat problem to be had in the normal household bulb profiles. None of these require TECs.