861–870 of 966 posts
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I sure hope 12V doesn’t happen. 12V is absurdly low for lighting and needs extremely thick wires to get decent efficiency. 24V is okay. 48V would be nicer for indoor use.
Wiring up a house with 48V for lights and 120V for plugs would be such a pain. Pulling 2 different wires to every room. Weird circuit breakers. Yuck.
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I think it's the flicker. Pulse width modulation is evil. I'm not aware of a single instance where it's preferable over an analogue adjustment. It's a horrible and thoroughly "non-human" solution to a problem. The most annoying thing for me is that car headlights are now PWM LEDs. I can see the flicker, especially in my peripheral vision. It's highly distracting and annoying.
I think PWM can be used with success if the frequency is high enough. https://www.dxomark.com/flicker-the-display-affliction/ claims that most people should be ok with PWM above 250Hz.
250Hz flicker in very visible in lighting under certain circumstances. I'm of the opinion lighting should be flicker-free, or at least over about 5kHz.
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I wondered for a long time why we don't have standard built-in DC in building codes that could power our lights, and most electronic devices. Really the few things in my house that require full line voltage are all in the kitchen. Everything else has a transformer attached.
It's because of Ohm's Law. Any sophomore-level electrical engineering student could answer this question immediately.
I say this, because I was guilty of this exact shortcut thinking (in another comment). But I paused and thought to myself "I should run the numbers before just repeating the usual voltage drop criticism".
So I compared scenarios and it depends a lot on the topology, lengths, costs, and situation (new vs renovation).
Sure, a whole house system doesn't typically make sense, but I don't think that's what people are really talking about. I think people are interested in hybrid systems; e.g. DC power supply for each room.
I don't know if you meant it, but the sentence about "any sophomore level electrical engineering student can solve this" can easily come across as dismissive. I also think it gives too much credit to sophomore students. :)
I would have more confidence in an electrician apprentice on this one. I think they'd have more practical experience when it comes to figuring out what are the right questions to ask.
I did EE in college and do a fair bit of hands on residential electrical work.
P.S. How many sophomore level engineering students learn to do a sensitivity analysis?
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And this is the exact reason that the market for good quality LEDs is so small. You care about price but not light quality (primarily CRI but also flicker and dimmability). That's fine, it's totally your decision to make. But the two products are incredibly far from equivalent.
I mean there’s gotta be some reasonable price limit where you stop blaming the consumer. If each supposedly higher-quality LED bulb is $50,000 are you still blaming the consumer? Especially when the consumer has can’t realistically even know if they’re going to get a higher quality bulb or just a $5 bulb resold for $50,000.
And it says on the box.
I usually stick to the same brand too. All Phillips bulbs are 90+ CRI and some are 95+ so I just buy Phillips. Problem solved.
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On my first read of this, it makes sense though. The mileage of infrastructure is the same regardless of use. Those powerlines still need maintenance even if LEDs are making homes more efficient.
Sure, but I'm billed by kw-Hr. Bill me for the infrastructure if that is what costs money.
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Almost all LED bulb failures are because the power supply died due to overheating, not the LEDs themselves. I harvest the LEDs out of dead bulbs to use in hobby projects. With Edison-style bulbs, anyway, the orientation they're mounted in makes a huge amount of difference. They're last a lot longer if they're oriented upright (base down) than in any other orientation because it reduces the heat buildup in the power s…
This is the frustrating thing about LEDs that IDK we can change. If there was a "DC" light socket in the house we could have LEDs outlasting owners, and for cheap. Nearly all the expense of LED bulbs is the power supply. Everything else is dirt cheap. A single home DC power supply with ~200W of output could light an entire house, flicker free. What's even more frustrating is I think we could fix it. A national regula…
How about power over ethernet?
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I can’t imagine sitting in a room with the color temperature of a gas station bathroom with random flickering and fading out every couple of years.
I have those HD bulbs. They are nowhere near as bad as what you just described.
Incandescent bulbs were very simple. Cheap vs name brand. White vs soft white. 120v vs 130v. LEDs have at least 7 attributes, some of which are not documented well or at all.
Tell me what LED bulb is ideal to produce 1500 lumens of output in an outdoor semi-enclosed fixure? It will take about 10 minutes of googling around if you are in the know. The average consumer doesn’t have a chance.
I bought two light fixtures like this that claimed to last "up to 40 years". Almost all have weasel words like "up to". Both were dead within a year. Instead a quick operstion to swap out the bulb I had to find whole new units and re-hardwire them in.
More recently I needed a new garage light and Home Depot didn't cary a single option with replaceable bulbs. Not one.
My biggest gripe about LEDs is the trend towards fixtures that use them as non-replaceable bulbs. The claim is that they will last X number of decades so there will be no need to change the bulb. This is bullshit, in my experience. I bought two light fixtures like this that claimed to last "up to 40 years". Almost all have weasel words like "up to". Both were dead within a year. Instead a quick operstion to swap out…
I had an over-the-stove microwave with an overhead light. When the bulb burned out I replaced it with a LED. The new bulb outlasted the microwave.