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Earlier quoted context omitted.
The AC-DC or DC-DC converter will likely die long before LED's junction. Primary failure mode is capacitors "drifting" and closing the mosfet inside the buck converter too early. This is why I tell people to buy simple "driverless" LED bulbs. A shitty constant current driver is worse than not having it at all.
But don’t they flicker a LOT?
> Plus, they’ll more than pay for themselves in electricity savings compared to the old, inefficient LED bulbs they replaced. Sure, eventually, but without further context this obsession with light bulbs always sounds a little bit penny wise and pound foolish to me. The relative cost of lighting on the monthly electricity bill is tiny so those savings are pretty small. Getting a more efficient fridge, washing machine…
I think that we'll start to see improvements in this area as people move away from "screw-in bulb" as the form factor and towards using external power converters delivering power to to LED fixtures that are just LED's and their heatsink + mounts.
> Plus, they’ll more than pay for themselves in electricity savings compared to the old, inefficient LED bulbs they replaced. Sure, eventually, but without further context this obsession with light bulbs always sounds a little bit penny wise and pound foolish to me. The relative cost of lighting on the monthly electricity bill is tiny so those savings are pretty small. Getting a more efficient fridge, washing machine…
I think people are always overly focused on things they personally touch and see. Thus environmental policy centers on shopping bags, straws, and light bulbs, rather than things that objectively have real environmental impact.
That said, leds that are 13-15 watts instead of 60 watts does make a big dent into saving electricity at the country scale.
> Plus, they’ll more than pay for themselves in electricity savings compared to the old, inefficient LED bulbs they replaced. Sure, eventually, but without further context this obsession with light bulbs always sounds a little bit penny wise and pound foolish to me. The relative cost of lighting on the monthly electricity bill is tiny so those savings are pretty small. Getting a more efficient fridge, washing machine…
I've taken every single LED bulb that has failed on me to pieces and it's always the same failure mode. The heatsink compound isn't applied properly to the back of the LED board. The LEDs immediately in the gaps smoke out. Alas this isn't a problem. If a lightbulb goes, Amazon send me a new one out now free of charge and tell me to throw the old one in the trash. This is one manufacturer, prevalent on Amazon, the Lon…
Do not buy "bulbs," they are hopeless. Just buy a whole fixture with a big aluminium PCB and directly bonded chips.
Worse than that, though, it was unusable with a dimmer switch; the whole thing visibly flickered every few seconds. I felt bad returning it because I really wanted it to work out, but the quality just wasn't there.
> Plus, they’ll more than pay for themselves in electricity savings compared to the old, inefficient LED bulbs they replaced. Sure, eventually, but without further context this obsession with light bulbs always sounds a little bit penny wise and pound foolish to me. The relative cost of lighting on the monthly electricity bill is tiny so those savings are pretty small. Getting a more efficient fridge, washing machine…
The switch from using tiny space heaters for light to using LEDs that consume a tenth of the power was a huge savings. It only takes a few 100w bulbs to equal or exceed the energy consumption of a modest desktop computer.
This is pretty annoying as I replaced every bulb in my house with LED under the assumption that they would last at least a decade. I didn't even think to check a powered-on time rating. Not that using incandescent bulbs is a good option anymore anyway.
> Plus, they’ll more than pay for themselves in electricity savings compared to the old, inefficient LED bulbs they replaced. Sure, eventually, but without further context this obsession with light bulbs always sounds a little bit penny wise and pound foolish to me. The relative cost of lighting on the monthly electricity bill is tiny so those savings are pretty small. Getting a more efficient fridge, washing machine…
I think people are always overly focused on things they personally touch and see. Thus environmental policy centers on shopping bags, straws, and light bulbs, rather than things that objectively have real environmental impact.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2011/05/05/bill...
What's the short answer?