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by jzwinck 4273 days ago
That 683 lumens per watt number is, as you say, for a monochromatic light. This is not useful for humans to see with[1]; the actual limit for human vision is about 300 lumens per watt[2]. That's an upper bound even ignoring losses, and some LEDs are around 70 now, so the remaining efficiency gains we can make seem limited to about 3x.

[1] http://www.cool.conservation-us.org/byorg/us-doe/color_quali...

[2] http://phys.org/news202453100.html