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What Happened to the 100000 Hour LED Bulbs?

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Re: What Happened to the 100000 Hour LED Bulbs?

#91

Post by mattnewton »

BurningFrog wrote: post #14
vanderZwan wrote: post #7

> 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.

These wins are all relatively easier than weening the country off massive cattle farms, personal gasoline cars and jet fuel vacations, and they can still be environmental wins. I think the energy they take from larger problems is immaterial and so there isn’t any harm done.

Re: What Happened to the 100000 Hour LED Bulbs?

#92

Post by masklinn »

CharlesColeman wrote: post #27
vanderZwan wrote: post #7

> 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 relative cost of lighting on the monthly electricity bill is tiny so those savings are pretty small. Getting a more efficient fridge, washing machine, TV or (in our profession) computer typically has a much bigger effect on electricity expenses. And that is assuming your heating and cooking is done with gas. The switch from using tiny space heaters for light to using LEDs that consume a tenth of the power was a…

> It only takes a few 100w bulbs to equal or exceed the energy consumption of a modest desktop computer.

Might even take a single one, depending on the specific machines it might be pulling no more than 60~80W idle.

As in performance optimisation, energy optimisation requires measurements.

Re: What Happened to the 100000 Hour LED Bulbs?

#93

Post by djtriptych »

My experience has been totally positive, although limited to an early release of the full color Philips Hue bulbs which are like $50/each.

The Hue app kinda sucks but those bulbs have been going strong for 4-5 years. No failures of course, and one bulb that was left outside (covered) in NYC and always on for almost two years. No issues at all, and runs very cool.

Re: What Happened to the 100000 Hour LED Bulbs?

#94

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC »

spicymaki wrote: post #56
umvi wrote: post #37

This makes me wonder if we shouldn't have an AC and DC circuits in the house. I mean, it could be all AC coming in, but at the box it splits into (at least) two different circuits (an AC one and a DC one). AC circuit would still be used for things that have motors, but everything else uses DC. Imagine how simple LED lighting could be on a DC circuit. Just an LED and resistor. I only took a few electrical engineering…

To convert from AC to DC you need a transformer and a rectifier and there will be energy loss during the conversion.

You only need a rectifier, the transformer is only needed for isolation, if you need that.

Re: What Happened to the 100000 Hour LED Bulbs?

#95

Post by baybal2 »

taxicabjesus wrote: post #79
baybal2 wrote: post #19

I once worked for an offshoot of Sunfor - a chemical company making LED phosphors. The first driverless, flicker free LEDs on the market were their invention. Basic idea is that if you fine tune phosphor components, and their ratios, you can make a direct 120hz AC driven LED with close to no visible flicker for as long as your output colour temperature is in between 5500 to 6000 Kelvins

> as long as your output colour temperature is in between 5500 to 6000 Kelvins color temperature is really important. I despise 3300K+ headlights and bulbs. Philips has a dimmable LED bulb where the temperature varies between 2200K and 2700K. I've also found standard 2200K bulbs. But mostly I prefer using single-color red orange and yellow bulbs. My understanding is that white LEDs are basically blue/ultraviolet LEDs…

No specifics, they don't get public about the tech besides bare minimum:

http://xlgy.scnyw.com/product/powder.html

http://en.scnyw.com/About/Affiliates/4.html http://xlgy.scnyw.com

They were bought and sold like 10 times over since I left them in 2013

Re: What Happened to the 100000 Hour LED Bulbs?

#96

Post by blattimwind »

sevensor wrote: post #72
pitaj wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> until I'm reminded that DC power loss over a distance can hurt bad, even 48VDC telecom power. If you had AC to your house, then a rectifier for a 100V/200V DC circuit through your house, the losses wouldn't be any worse. DC losses are less than AC losses at the equivalent voltage, because the resistance seen by DC is less than the AC impedance.

Certainly at the household scale this is true. I cringe at the inefficiency of rooftop solar panels, hooked up to inverters, powering transformers that supply phones, lights, and electronics. AC in the house is great for an electric oven, vacuum cleaner, or fridge compressor, but so many modern electronic devices would be happy to run off of 5V or 12V.

Grid-scale transformers are very efficient. The tiny pole-mounted ones used in the US and some other countries probably not so much, but everything north of 50-100 kVA gets into 99+ % efficiency.

Just because generator/machine set transformers and 380/220 kV step transformers require semi-active cooling doesn't mean they're inefficient... just means that they handle a huge amount of power (MWs), so even at very high efficiencies that translates to a lot of heat in absolute terms.

Re: What Happened to the 100000 Hour LED Bulbs?

#97

Post by blattimwind »

FredFS456 wrote: post #58
CharlesColeman wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, TV or (in our profession) computer typically has a much bigger effect on electricity expenses. And that is assuming your heating and cooking is done with gas. The switch from using tiny space heaters for light to using LEDs that consume a tenth of the power was a…

I don't know about you, but I had long switched to CFL's before LED bulbs came around. CFLs are definitely not as efficient as LEDs, but at least they're still a fraction of the power that incandescent bulbs use.

Modern fluorescent lamps are surprisingly efficient and the electric ballasts seem to be more reliable than any LED bulb I've seen so far. The tubes do fade eventually, but the tube itself only costs 1-2 Euros and the environmental impact is pretty low of these where the mercury cycle is closed.

Re: What Happened to the 100000 Hour LED Bulbs?

#98

Post by legitster »

So it seems like part of this answer could be that the age statement could have changed even if the bulbs did not. After a dozen or so years on the market they have learned to promise less.

The article goes into how the color and brightness degrades naturally over time, so it may also make sense that they counting more of that behavior as failures rather than the traditional "burn out".

Re: What Happened to the 100000 Hour LED Bulbs?

#99

Post by ip26 »

CharlesColeman wrote: post #27
vanderZwan wrote: post #7

> 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 relative cost of lighting on the monthly electricity bill is tiny so those savings are pretty small. Getting a more efficient fridge, washing machine, TV or (in our profession) computer typically has a much bigger effect on electricity expenses. And that is assuming your heating and cooking is done with gas. The switch from using tiny space heaters for light to using LEDs that consume a tenth of the power was a…

To add, your typical laptop these days has a 45W or 65W power supply, which will not be fully loaded most of the time!

Re: What Happened to the 100000 Hour LED Bulbs?

#100

Post by ip26 »

nine_k wrote: post #66
CharlesColeman wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, TV or (in our profession) computer typically has a much bigger effect on electricity expenses. And that is assuming your heating and cooking is done with gas. The switch from using tiny space heaters for light to using LEDs that consume a tenth of the power was a…

This is correct. I just thought that "everybody" has switched to CFLs 10 years ago, when they became decent.

CFLs are everywhere, but came with a lot of downsides. My personal observation was that they were never more than 50% of the bulbs in a house (that I ever saw).
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