Cartels might shorten LED bulb life, increasing emissions | Hacker News Reader

Cartels might shorten LED bulb life, increasing emissions

bloomberg.com

21 pointsPranavBerry7 comments

LEDs will be around for a while, but effectively are a dead end. They will not get any more efficient. Incandescent light, however, with R&D can get a lot more efficient than, what, 4%? Eventually, incan light will come back and be more efficient than LED.

LED wouldn't and shouldn't be so bad... but it most often is. Cool white, 6500K+ light is horrible, and literally slowly blinds the user with blue light. The other thing that is horrible about a lot (nearly all) of LED is their PWM-laden drivers.

I have some decent HiCRI 3500K LED I like, and some using constant current drivers without PWM, and they're fine. But for some reason the LED market is flooded with cool white LED driven by PWM, and they all suck, every single one.

I'm sick about people talking about the Phoebus cartel. Incandescent bulbs have a trade off between efficiency and longevity, 1000 hours was settled on for practical reasons and it was never a conspiracy.

Anyways,

LED Bulbs used in an enclosed fixture are the most common failure mode. Unlike incandescent bulbs, LEDs require ventilation and will fail prematurely when heat is trapped in the fixture (even bulbs advertised as suitable for enclosed fixtures). You're best off replacing the fixture or using a fixture with integrated LEDs

Besides that, you get what you pay for. You can't possibly expect a $1 bulb to have the longevity of a $20 bulb. Stop buying cheap junk and getting surprised when it fails.

I have personally never had a LED bulb fail on me because I only buy good quality ones and use them in suitable fixtures.

Shout out to the Dubai bulb[1], "the world's most efficient led" (and long lasting).

[1] https://kbelectricpa.com/dubai-lamp-worlds-efficient-led-lig... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25808959 (72 points, 16 months ago, 132 comments)

Will the Dubai lamps really last that much longer because of Temps. They have several times more leds inside so more chances for failure? What happens when one stand dies do the other still work?

I just had two LED bulbs fail after a year, around the same time. I absolutely believe this story. There is no reason they should have failed so quickly, even if I was running them 100% of the time, they should have lasted far longer. The only conclusion I could come up with is that they were designed to fail early.

>There is no reason they should have failed so quickly

electrolyte boiled off in the caps from heat

>they were designed to fail early

its more of they were designed to last the warranty period with minimal manufacturing cost

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klaJqofCsu4

The bulbs you're not allowed to buy.

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