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There's something off about LED bulbs

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Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#151

Post by Waterluvian »

sbradford26 wrote: post #128
Waterluvian wrote: post #93

We wire our homes with a whole bunch of AC circuits. These are basically busses, right? Why not add more kinds of busses? Why not a DC bus? Every light in my home is an LED, and most appliances (by count) are DC. I understand that moving DC long distances can be problematic. But is 100-300 feet too long? Am I completely off on this? This feels like a legacy inefficiency issue.

DC actually tends to be more efficient at long distances at the same voltage. DC lighting does exist in the commercial space where lighting costs actually start to add up more than household use. The main barrier to DC systems in homes is simply that it would require houses to be rewired and a whole new standard for plugs and such. The benefit is also hard to describe to the customer.

The limitations you describe make sense. But they seem like we can overcome them.

My home has 3 non-plumbing busses: AC to every room. Twisted pair to like 6 rooms that will never see use. Coax to 7 rooms that is only used for a modem in one room.

If we can run all that wiring, I think we can introduce a new standard for upcoming homes.

In fact, now that I think of it, my home has a trait that the homes I grew up in never had: the overhead lighting and the wall receptacles are never on the same circuits. ... I wonder if I can re-use the 14-2 Romex for DC and retrofit one or two rooms myself and see how it works? (I recognize this is a bad idea for many reasons, such as them being indistinguishable and wrongly colour coded, making it a dangerous trap for future owners).

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#152

Post by xnx »

formerly_proven wrote: post #24

There's a lot wrong with LEDs in general and retrofit (E27 bulbs) in particular. In no particular order - LED emitters driven hard for cost reasons, age and fail quickly - Power supplies driven hard for cost reasons, age and fail quickly - Poor CRI and SSRI - Flickering - Dim-to-warm is uncommon - Poorly designed power supplies that age and fail quickly - The same light quality is vastly more expensive to achieve wit…

Quantity (lumens) is its own type of quality.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#153

Post by britzkopf »

DougN7 wrote: post #135
amluto wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The same light quality is vastly more expensive to achieve with LEDs, even if you account for high electricity prices. In a screw base, maybe. But compare: https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/luminus-devices-i... $25 for an excellent 700mA driver, 86% efficient. https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/bridgelux/BXRH-30... $3.45 for a very nice, ~2000lm 97 CRI LED, about 99 lm/W. (Efficiency goes up quite…

This is just an anecdote, but I’ve had multiple “10 year” LED bulbs fail after just a year or two. I suspect much of the claims for these bulbs are theoretical as they just don’t hold up, probably for reasons the grandparent poster is pointing out.

I'll add a second identical anecdote. I've witnessed about a dozen die after about doing about 1/10th their promised duty.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#154

Post by organsnyder »

orev wrote: post #91
galleywest200 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cooling the LEDs enough Maybe I am missing something from this conversation, but all of my LED bulbs produce far _less_ heat than incandescent bulbs. The lamp in my bedroom no longer keeps me warm!

By cooling the issue is that LEDs and the driving electronics will become damaged with heat, while an incandescent has simple parts which can easily survive inside an oven. This matters when used in fixtures like recessed ceiling cans where there’s no ventilation. The LEDs just cook themselves while incandescents don’t care.

When my garage+office was built a few years ago, the electrician used a bunch of faux-recessed LED fixtures (the brand name is "I Can't Believe It's Not Recessed!", which is certainly memorable). They surface-mount over standard ceiling junction boxes, but appear similar to recessed lights once installed. We have ~20 of these fixtures, both interior and exterior. They're quiet, flicker-free, and have a great dimming curve (with the standard Z-wave dimmers I've used). We've had no failures so far after almost four years, so they've passed the leading edge of the bathtub curve.

I think it's much easier to design entire fixtures than retrofit bulbs, as there's much more control over heat dissipation and so on. Finding trusted manufacturers (and supply chains that resist counterfeits) is also extremely important.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#155

Post by Scene_Cast2 »

elil17 wrote: post #132

Lots of people here are arguing about whether LEDs actually look worse. Who cares? Even a modest environmental benefit is worth it. If you want nice-looking light, just go outside - it's free.

Lots of people live in areas where for half a year, the days are short, cloudy, and cold.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#156

Post by orangepurple »

roel_v wrote: post #56
formerly_proven wrote: post #24

There's a lot wrong with LEDs in general and retrofit (E27 bulbs) in particular. In no particular order - LED emitters driven hard for cost reasons, age and fail quickly - Power supplies driven hard for cost reasons, age and fail quickly - Poor CRI and SSRI - Flickering - Dim-to-warm is uncommon - Poorly designed power supplies that age and fail quickly - The same light quality is vastly more expensive to achieve wit…

"Good indoor lightning" Man I'd love me some indoor lightning, no matter the cost.

Building a fire death machine using soviet military tech

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNisqZOAaAs

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#157

Post by titzer »

Not mentioned in the article are the LED replacements for full-size fluorescent tubes (i.e. 48in tubes). I got a bunch for my basement. The LED tubes really are a million times better than the fluorescents. For one, they aren't enormous fragile glass tubes filled with toxic mercury vapor, and two, they give off good light (for a basement work area) with very little power.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#158

Post by tomjen3 »

s_dev wrote: post #84
the_af wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if you don't want to become an expert, which is something that wouldn't scale for every piece of tech and equipment? (Maybe you enjoy tweaking with lights, but what about chairs, tabletop materials, woods, wall paints, and yes -- electronic gadgets?). With LEDs, what's the "I don't want to deal with this, I just want something that will work as intended and not introduce weird artifacts"?

>With LEDs, what's the "I don't want to deal with this, I just want something that will work as intended and not introduce weird artifacts"? That sounds like an ideal situation the free market should be fixing -- so why isn't it?

Because EU banned the free market. The ideal would have been a slow transition where LEDs would have had to compete with bulbs.

Like the others I want to buy an LED where the visible light cannot be meassured differently from a normal one, and with the guarantee that I can return it for a full refund if it fails before the 20k hours are up.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#159

Post by iso1631 »

DougN7 wrote: post #135
amluto wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The same light quality is vastly more expensive to achieve with LEDs, even if you account for high electricity prices. In a screw base, maybe. But compare: https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/luminus-devices-i... $25 for an excellent 700mA driver, 86% efficient. https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/bridgelux/BXRH-30... $3.45 for a very nice, ~2000lm 97 CRI LED, about 99 lm/W. (Efficiency goes up quite…

This is just an anecdote, but I’ve had multiple “10 year” LED bulbs fail after just a year or two. I suspect much of the claims for these bulbs are theoretical as they just don’t hold up, probably for reasons the grandparent poster is pointing out.

On the other hand I lived in my last house for 5 years and didn't replace a single bulb.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#160

Post by JasonFruit »

DoneWithAllThat wrote: post #140
ghaff wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or because, as with many products and services, many people go into Home Depot or wherever and buy whatever is cheapest--especially in a world where higher price does not necessarily equate to higher quality or longer life.

I do not, nor will I ever, excuse penny-pinching by companies by agreeing that they’re forced to do it because people will always buy the cheapest thing they can. It’s trotted out as the lame excuse for bag check fees and other declining flying services, cheap consumer goods, cheap electronics, you name it. To accept the premise is to believe that anything made of quality will never get bought/used which is manifestl…

The problem is evaluating quality before purchase. There's not a great way of expressing the sorts of factors that differentiate between good and bad LED bulbs that consumers can easily understand, let alone anything to encourage different manufacturers to use the same measurements. If the consumer can't tell what is quality, what's to get them to spend the money for it?
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