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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?

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>environmental impact is pretty low of these where the mercury cycle is closed // Which countries have widespread recycle facilities for CFLs? In UK I'm almost certain they all just go in to landfill (in this country or another).

In the US you can drop off burned out CFLs in recycling bins at Home Depot and Lowes.

However yes, most people don't know about that and just landfill them.

Re: What Happened to the 100000 Hour LED Bulbs?

#202

> 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…

> Sure, eventually, but without further context this obsession with light bulbs always sounds a little bit penny wise and pound foolish to me. Might be, might not be, it all depends on the usage of the various items e.g. let's say I've a 100W incandescent kitchen bulb, it's lit 5h/day on average, an equivalent LED would be 12~15W for ~$5 and will save ~3000Wh per week. Going from a Class A to an A+++ washing machine…

> Going from a Class A to an A+++ washing machine would save ~500Wh/cycle.

The major energy cost for clothes washing is heating the water. A rooftop solar water heater dramatically reduces energy use, often more than one would get from using the same space to install solar panels.

A front loading washing machine uses less water than a top loading one and will also use less energy for water heating.

Re: What Happened to the 100000 Hour LED Bulbs?

#203
post #12

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…

I replaced around 25 bulbs in my house with cheap Walmart "Great Value" LEDs just under 3 years ago and they've all been fine. Previously, I had replaced around 4 bulbs with Cree LEDs from Home Depot, and half of those were dead within a few months.

The Walmart bulbs without any special pricing were way cheaper than the Cree bulbs from Home Depot, but even better, there was some sort of automatic rebate or something like that in cooperation with the local electric company that made the Walmart bulbs $0.17. By "automatic rebate", I mean that the bulbs rang up on checkout at $0.17. No rebate forms to send in or anything like that.

Re: What Happened to the 100000 Hour LED Bulbs?

#204
post #185
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> mains-connected smoke detectors (1% efficient) Those aren’t a waste, they are critical life safety equipment. If their 1% efficient power supply lasts the full 10 year lifespan of a smoke detector rather than 6-18 months like a typical LED lightbulb, I’d say that’s the appropriate level of reliability.

Yeah, they're important & valuable. However, battery-powered smoke detectors do it with 1% of the power. If every home in Australia had two smoke alarms, that means 5,600 kW of continuous and largely wasted energy consumption. I don't mean wasted in purpose: smoke alarms are essential. The wasteful part is the fact that 99% of the power going into smoke alarms goes to converting AC power to DC power. As far as I'm co…

That is an incredible amount of energy and I agree that it is worth trying to reduce, but I’m skeptical of adding numerous DC-DC converters to the chain. In the current state, it’s all passive devices between the turbine at the power plant and the smoke detector on the ceiling. I wouldn’t trade that reliability for power savings lightly.

Re: What Happened to the 100000 Hour LED Bulbs?

#205

So, engineering lead of a (outdoor) led Luminaire manufacturer here. And our sales director used to work for one of the biggest Asian light bulb OEMs. Happy to answer specific technical questions out there that this article triggered.

So which led light bulb do you install in your house?

Ikea when the size is available, for reasons I cannot discuss here.

Re: What Happened to the 100000 Hour LED Bulbs?

#206

So, engineering lead of a (outdoor) led Luminaire manufacturer here. And our sales director used to work for one of the biggest Asian light bulb OEMs. Happy to answer specific technical questions out there that this article triggered.

From the perspective of efficiency, defined as maximum perceived (by human eye) luminosity per watt used, what's the best color for LED bulbs? Is white as good as it gets, or is there any advantage with pure green LEDs?

Go look up scotopic vision, phototopic vision, and metamerism if you want a deeper dive on human vision.

Our eyes are most sensitive in the green, but green LEDs are not necessarily the most sensitive

Re: What Happened to the 100000 Hour LED Bulbs?

#207

And why does every single LED stoplight I see have large segments of unlit LEDs? Seems like some municipalities got sold a pile of crap. At least they work even with the missing lights, but who knows how often they are having to replace those?

Funny... I've never noticed that. Maybe your municipality picked the wrong vendor?

yeah, probably, but not limited to my town... I've noticed it in multiple states.

Re: What Happened to the 100000 Hour LED Bulbs?

#208
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yeah, I switched a few bulbs to CFLs 10 years ago when they "became decent", and then switched them out every 6 months (i.e. when they burned out) until LEDs "became decent"... Haven't had as much trouble with LEDs as CFLs, but I'm definitely not paying $10+/bulb like I did with CFLs.

> definitely not paying $10+/bulb

Maybe you should. I mean, the cheapest option is rarely the most durable or performant. See Vimes' Boots Theory.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Vimes#Boots_theory_of_soci...

Re: What Happened to the 100000 Hour LED Bulbs?

#209

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.

Curious, have you noticed any sleep issues, after you've switched to LED?

Let me guess: you've switched from yellow light to white light?

White lights emit more blue light than yellow lights, which can negatively affect your sleep. It's the real-world equivalent of uninstalling redshift/f.lux on your device.

I've invested in "smart" LEDs and I change their color based on the position of the sun. If the sun is up, the light is white. If the sun is down, the light is dimmed orange.

Re: What Happened to the 100000 Hour LED Bulbs?

#210
post #203
post #12

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…

I replaced around 25 bulbs in my house with cheap Walmart "Great Value" LEDs just under 3 years ago and they've all been fine. Previously, I had replaced around 4 bulbs with Cree LEDs from Home Depot, and half of those were dead within a few months. The Walmart bulbs without any special pricing were way cheaper than the Cree bulbs from Home Depot, but even better, there was some sort of automatic rebate or something…

The Cree bulbs have been a disappointment for me as well. There was so much buzz about then when they came out, but I've had so many where one of the elements fizzles out and kills the whole bulb because they are wired in series and the elements fail closed or very high resistance.

If I cared more I might try to take the bulbs apart in a way that I could get them back together and just bypass the failed LED with a resister to bring the bulb back to life (at 15% reduced capacity or so).

I have been very disappointed in how hot the bulbs run as well. It feels like they must be wasting a lot of energy to run that hot.

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