Trying to Solve the L.E.D. Quandary | Hacker News Reader

Trying to Solve the L.E.D. Quandary

newyorker.com

34 pointsohjeez46 comments

Quandary?

As a market matures, new markets appear. When LEDs become so cheap and you have all the light you need, you could add more light or find new applications.

For example, right now using LEDSs for growing food is cost prohibitive, but if prices go down a significant amount of agriculture could be done with it, as solar panels are way more efficient converting light to energy and you could close your plants away from pests without insecticides, or underground, or transport the energy to places in winter without natural light.

This application alone could mean hundreds of times more LED light than what is used today in houses.

Wouldn't growing food with solar cells and LEDs be less efficient in land usage than simply allowing the sun to shine on the plants?

With solar panels and LEDs you can shift the spectrum of incoming light into the ideal range for photosynthesis. My understanding is that this outweighs the conversion losses.

Many locations have too high a population to feed locally, and eating locally appeals to many people. LED farms in basements could help with that.

You'd think so but not necessarily.

Photovoltaic cells can take in a broader range of energy from the sun than plants can through photosynthesis. LEDs can then emit that energy at specific wavelengths such as red or blue that the plants can take in.

The whole system can end up being more efficient.

Furthermore the prospect of growing plants in a completely controlled environment where you can control all the variables from light intensity, light cycle, temperature, humidity and remove the pest factor and therefore the cost of pesticides can result in a much better final product.

Honest question: Would this type of production be considered organic? There's no pesticides and such, but it's also not quite "natural".

I think it depends on which definition one subscribes to. Broadly speaking, there are two major lenses through which "organic" is viewed:

1) Focuses on holistic management, rejects intensive injection of industrial inputs into the farm/garden, and emphasizes applications of emergent activity of native species rather than aggressive "pest control".

2) Focuses on keeping "unnatural" chemicals or genes out of / off of the food.

I think this approach would tend to look organic under lens #2 but not lens #1. Various definitions of "organic" lend different weights to them and introduce other considerations, though.

I think that you're right. AFAICT artificial illumination for growing plants makes sense for growing staple foods in deep space if crewed missions ever get out there, or high-value specialty crops (delicate fruits/greens/herbs, cannabis) near terrestrial demand centers. It's worthwhile to grow tomatoes artificially in Edinburgh in the winter if you have customers who will pay the premium over bred-for-transport-durability tomatoes shipped in from abroad.

A really good diode light source might have a wall plug electricity-to-photons efficiency of ~50%, and the best rooftop solar modules achieve a bit over 20% light-to-electricity conversion efficiency. I would really be curious if anyone can provide citations to the effect that sunlight -> PV -> LED light -> plants is more efficient than sunlight -> plants. You'd have to get an enormous benefit from wavelength shifting, enough to offset the ~90% energy losses from sunlight -> PV -> LED light.

We have 46% efficient solar cells that are not currently cost effective. 45% of sunlight is in the useful wavelengths for plants, but the important comparison is their peak effecency with the optimum wavelength of 30% vs there theoretical limit with sunlight of 11% which is a ~3x boost under optimum conditions. Another consideration is leaf peak obsorbtion is around 10,000 lux though trees for example capture light through multiple layers. So, some plants are going to be more efferent at lower light levels. (this is also why trees don't look like a mushroom with one big leaf for maximum light capture.)

So, ignoring costs you can come surprisingly close to break even in terms of energy budget. Though we are likely better off going with GMO plants to capture more light than build millions of acres of solar farms just to break even.

I don't see how this is a "quandary." It's just a product becoming obsolete. The new product, LED bulbs, doesn't fill the same market niche. There should be no expectation that the same companies that once produced incandescent bulbs should transition into making LED bulbs. At least in an economic sense, they are very different things.

Thinking they are the same thing is like thinking that hard drives and cloud storage are equivalent to blank videotapes and cassettes, or camera film. They just aren't.

If LED makers are failing to make money, that is because there is too much competition. Companies will exit the business until a new equilibrium is reached. The price of LED bulbs may go up, and that's ok.

I don't really see the long term problem. When light bulbs truly stop needing to be replaced, they will stop being _replaceable_. The market that will disappear is the light socket market. Consumers will buy a lamp with a permanently wired in LED and when they get tired of the way the lamp looks, they'll replace it along with the LED in it. This is already happening in wall and ceiling fixtures.

I considered buying a few of those, but I realized that if one lamp in the room failed, but the others were good, I'd have to replace them all since I'd be unlikely to be able to find an exact match.

So I decided to buy regular fixtures with replaceable bulbs.

The non replaceable kind only makes sense in places where you need light, but you don't see the actual fixture (for example edge lighting a room or stairs).

I started reading the first paragraph and thought "ha ha I will sarcastically comment about "Light Bulbs as a Service"", because that would just be plain ridiculous, and then...

And then you discovered your worst fears?

And just like almost every other FPAAS (Former Product As A Service) touted in the past ten years, it's got nothing to do with customer benefits and everything to do with milking an ongoing revenue stream from the suckers that use your product.

I had understood color rendering index (CRI) to be independent from color temperature. This article suggests CRI and temperature are—if not the same thing—correlated. Perhaps that is true, but I know that I have gone out of my way in the past to buy high-CRI, high-color temperature bulbs because I prefer "daylight" (~5100K) illumination. I've got some 5100K bulbs that were rated at 90+ CRI in my kitchen and I love it.

CRI is different than temp. A bluish, high-temp lamp and a reddish, low-temp lamp can both have terrible color rendition. Lamps come with a chart, like here:

http://www.topbulb.com/color-rendering-index

that graphically shows the color distribution. Temp is where on the visible color spectrum its focus is.

I'd say they're definitely corroloated, a really low or high color temperature bulb will go much lower on the CRI since it won't be producing as much of the other end of the spectrum. But a good temperature bulb won't necessarily have a good CRI because a middle temperature bulb doesn't have to produce all the intermediate frequencies that a good CRI bulb will have.

I suspect a lot of the R&D in LED manufacturing has been focused on bulbs which functionally replace incandescent. Creating functional replacements of incandescent bulbs is certainly a noble goal, but incandescent lights aren't uniquely suited to every situation.

For instance, I live in a row house. The south facing windows have shades over them, which I can't remove because I'm renting. This means the amount of natural light is extremely limited inside. I find that if I don't spend some time in the sun early in the morning, I feel extremely sluggish and lethargic.

Replacing the sun is really hard though. Not only does the sun have a "perfect" CRI, but it is extremely bright and provides a very diffuse light. (Not to mention, the sun is really cheap). I've found the easiest way to mimic the diffuse nature of sunlight is to have a number of light sources.

Right now, the only "sunlight" (7500k+) bulbs that I can find that are inexpensive enough to cover my living room, render color well, and are efficient enough to keep on during the day are florescent. Halogen uses too much power and generates too much head. I can't seem to find reasonably priced LEDs with a good CRI above 5000k.

I've only been able to find 2 kinds of "sunlight" LEDs. One is 75-watt BR40 (or lower wattage BRxx lights), which, as spotlights, are not very versatile. The other are "grow-lights", which I am hesitant to buy, since I have little interest in partaking in a no-knock raid at 2 AM. That might be paranoia, but I've heard stories at the homebrew/hydroponic store where I buy my homebrew supplies, and I don't think it's too unlikely.

CRI and color temperature are not the same thing, but this isn't the first time I've seen people get them confused.

These 5100K, 90+ CRI bulbs in your kitchen -- are they fluorescents or LEDs?

I very much prefer a more yellow light than a more blue light. I feel like I'm in an asylum when I'm somewhere that has real blue lightbulbs. Shouldn't something that only emits one color have a perfect CRI? Or are lightbulbs assumed to mimick the sun and that's why they don't have perfect ratings?

Beware of the hype around "high CRI". It's more of a global snapshot of a light's various colour rendering abilities. I've seen some "high CRI" bulbs with shockingly bad spikes in certain colours. What you really want to pay attention to is the individual R1-R14 values and make sure there's no dips.

For example, if you're looking to replace your household tungsten lightbulbs then it's really important to pay attention to the R9 value that your LED ilght has (1), as it refers to the red value being emitted by the bulb and is what affects skin-tones.

And, yes, CRI is completely independent of temperature. You can have a daylight or tungsten LED bulb with completely varying CRI values.

(1)http://www.eyelighting.com/resources/lighting-technology-edu...

>Cree is approaching L.E.D. lights as products, like smartphones, that people will regularly upgrade in order to benefit from new features or improvements.

Isn't that cute.

What Cree is actually doing is replacing their claimed 10,000 hour bulb with a 5,000 hour bulb. However, their 10,000 hour bulb doesn't achieve its rated life; I now have four failed ones. The power supply, not the LEDs, fail.

The coming thing is a power supply that doesn't use electrolytic capacitors.[1][2] This should increase power supply life beyond LED life, to about 40,000 hours. But will we see that in consumer products?

[1] http://www.ledsmagazine.com/ugc/2011/09/dali-power-unveils-l... [2] http://www.rle.mit.edu/per/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Chen-E...

For the reference of people commenting here, the definition of quandary is "a state of perplexity or uncertainty over what to do in a difficult situation"

I imagine that if you are Sylvania, or if you are thinking about making large investments in LED manufacturing capacity, then yes, this is a quandary.

I think LED opens the possibility for more custom lighting. If the lights are going to last over 20 years (or possibly longer with higher quality), why not do a custom lighting design for your bathroom or kitchen? You don't need to be limited to standard shapes of globes, tubes, circles, and A-lines, you want a wavy design or a varying radius, that's great. It will live until your next remodel when you can have a new custom lighting design.

I believe the same. Nobody writes an article called the granite counter top quandary. You won't buy leds, the contractors constructing the house will.

It isn't a quandary. Innovation does not owe you a future. Electric cars, and self-driving cars, will reduce annual unit volume for cars, and might simplify cars, along with carbon reinforced plastics, so that lightweight, inexpensive cars are possible. Light bulb makers that forestall a cheap, lifetime LED product will fall to Asian competitors who will take whatever market opening exists, and worry about saturation later.

What quandary? Let global demand fall off to replacement rates.

So what if there's only one light-bulb factory left in the world and they only produce three bulbs a year?

Heck, in about fifteen minutes or so nanotech will happen and all this is moot. I've said it before: there's an inflection point after which anyone in manufacturing that isn't doing nano is just playing with toys. And we may be past that point already.

I have the feeling that 99% of IT is "just playing with toys" already.

UrbanVolt solves the problem by replacing its customers’ lights at no initial cost; each client then pays UrbanVolt a monthly share of the savings on its electrical bill.

This is exactly how the makers of advanced stationary steam engines operated after the start of the industrial revolution. The engine is "free," the customer pays a fraction of the fuel savings.

What I don't understand is: how come it's not the established players like GE or ConEd who are pursuing these strategies? If someone's going to eat your lunch, why not make sure it's you?

It's really, really hard to change an old organization to follow a different business model without effectively firing everyone, selling everything off, and starting over. There's inertia in the various forms of personnel specialties, management style, capital expenditures, and financing. A tiny company can change that stuff in the span of a single email because there isn't anything to unwind, but a big company that has gone to great effort to optimize its existing position and has a lot of stakeholders to appease will run into trouble even if it has visionary leadership that can see the problem.

For that reason, startups can persistently find opportunities: e.g. IBM had a rental-computing business model, so it gave up a big early advantage in the PC market while scarcely realizing it; Microsoft swooped in to occupy the new monopoly on software.

Here is the real problem. Incandescent bulb tech has been capable of being far more long-lasting, and therefore cheaper, since nearly the beginning. [1] The entire industry has been based on a kind of lie.

We are very fortunate that the LED industry has not been tainted by this mindset, and really most modern tech hasn't.

[1] http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/history/the-great-lightbu...

> has been capable of being far more long-lasting

Sorry, but that's not true. In order to make longer lasting bulbs you have to reduce the energy efficiency (i.e. don't run as hot).

> and therefore cheaper

You'll pay more in electricity than in bulbs with longer lasting type. It's not actually worth it.

That cartel had bad intentions but good results - if you run the number you'll see that they actually saved people money.

There's a reason why I've put in commercial-grade LED fixtures in my kitchen and garage. I'm willing to pay a premium for something that'll possibly last the next 20+ years with how few hours a day I use it.

Unfortunately most of those products don't really fit the decor of the rest of the house.

If you consider the matter in the long-term, the sustainable model is the only approach that actually provides returns over time. At the end of the day the argument is everything now or a little now and a little later.

"Yeah, and when are we going to see subsidies for buggy whips?!" -Confused Author

I'm not sure how else to interpret this article; are we supposed to buy shit for the sake of buying shit?

Isn't that what capitalism is all about? /s

"can’t make money in the long run from products that rarely need replacing. "

What a ludicrous statement. Price = f(supply,demand). Just decrease supply, voila, profit.

That's like saying "I wish we could charge more for cell phones. I know! We'll decrease the supply and make a ton of money!"

It's a cutthroat market and someone will replace you.

It's not an individual firm that will decrease the supply, but the market as a whole. Largely this will occur as companies go out of business or shut down their LED operations because they're not profitable. Eventually when few enough firms are competing, the remaining firms involved in the market will be able to turn a profit and the market will stabilize. At least that's what I would expect.

Other sectors have experienced dramatic drops in demand, and the world doesn't end, even though some companies might. I expect the few companies that keep selling long-lived LEDs will outlast their more gimmicky counterparts.

I don't expect people to find much money in LED lightbulbs. You buy the LEDs from one of the big LED producers, and then the rest is commodity electronics. If there starts being money in it, new companies will jump in.

Which I suppose can get prices down to the point where someone can make a company that stays in business, but it won't get them to a point where there are significant profits to be found.

EDIT: The area where this is likely wrong is the locked-in home automation silos where you can get people into an ecosystem and then screw them as much as you like. I'm hoping we can avoid that being the dominant strategy.

I've already had to replace two. The LED's were OK but the control circuitry failed.

Sounds like I need to stock up now on LED bulbs for life, before the whole market is flooded with planned-obsolescent pieces-o-shit (if it isn't already).

They should form a cartel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel

> The question remains whether any company has an incentive to make a product that is not designed to fall apart or become obsolete.

What a patently ridiculous question to ask. I can't even fathom how the writer thought it up, but I can only imagine they must have gone into a coma immediately afterwards. It's a question in the way "I wonder if elephants can fly?" is a question.

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