I get to play with these at work - they are bright as hell but are a long way from replacing incandescent and fluorescent sources as general lighting.
Consider:
1. White LED's (Luxeons included) are made from dropping a pile of sulphor on a blue LED chip. The formula for the sulphor is constantly in development and minute changes affect the resulting color of the white in drastic ways. We just did a job that used 2800 White Luxeons (in 10-emitter lines) and the color between the individual lines and between the emitters themselves was terrible. We had to hire a company with special light color measurment tools to measure the color temperature of over 10,000 LED's to find 2800 that we could use.
2. High output LED's are not more efficient than fluorescent. Sure, they run on 5-10V DC, but that 5-10V DC has to be supplied by a driver which takes 120V AC and converts it to DC then PUSHES constant current to the LED's because Luxeons require anywhere between 350mA to 1000mA to light at optimum levels. These drivers consume anywhere between 25W and 34W and, when coupled to the Luxeons in whatever fixture they are installed in, produce about 15W-20W of light output - almost 1-1.
3. Cost - Luxeon's aren't cheap ($6-$90 depending on model and color) and the drivers aren't being given away either. They are about equal to compact fluorescent in unit-to-unit cost but it takes more Luxeons (and consequently more drivers) to produce the same amount of light as one compact fluorescent lamp. Sure, there's a longer life expectancy but the brighter and warmer the white, the shorter the life span.
4. Optics - making an LED shine bright is one thing, getting the light to go where it's needed is another. Currently there are a few manufacturers developing optics but for most applications, you have to roll your own.
Now, LED's are good at theatrical lighting, for color changing luminaires (Color Kinetics makes cool stuff but I think they are turning into the Monster Cable of LED lighting. Oops! Did I just type that?), and they are good for producing colors other than white for accent lighting or marker lights (Tuberoller's new caddy has Luxeon tailights), but for general lighting they are still a few years away.
ok,
erix
