LED lights will change the world as incandescent bulbs phase out
vox.com
vox.com
At least halogens and incandescents were just a bit of glass and some wire. LED bulbs all have a circuit board with many components. If they're taking the place of incandescent and still being a consumable item it might be worse for the environment in the long run. At least incandescents using lots of power puts all the CO2 production in centralized locations that can be mitigated. LEDs environmental footprint is much more distributed.
I'm not against LEDs light bulbs. I replaced almost all of mine with LEDs (though I have a stockpile of halogens for some uses). But they're certainly not going to change the world. Light bulbs remain consumable items.
And worse, they cost ten to twenty times as much as comparable incandescent bulbs, and they honestly don’t even last as long..
But I live in the EU, so maybe those LED bulbs follow stricter regulations.
Even the cheap LED bulbs last far longer than incandescent ones.
For example, Philips made LED bulbs sold in Dubai [0] that last many times longer than the ones in the US.
[0] https://hackaday.com/2021/01/17/leds-from-dubai-the-royal-li...
If your power was the issue, it would probably have to be so bad that you'd regularly kill all kinds of equipment...
I have an early U.S. Philips bulb that has been burning continuously since December, 2010. It cost about forty bucks, as I recall.
It's in a dark entryway where it's a real pain in the butt to change the bulb, so I was happy to pay that if it meant not getting out the ladder several times a year.
You're right -- the ones made now don't last nearly as long.
On the other hand, they don't cost forty bucks, either.
Maybe one of these HN startup people will make the first modular light fixture with separate "ballast", LED, and "Smart Element", if desired. There's not really any technical barriers to making 10 or 20 year fixtures (I suspect a large number of cheap LED desk lights today will be around in a few decades if not tossed while perfectly good).
That (separate led and driver, or hoewever make the driver replaceable) should be the norm even for common bulbs, surely there would stil be some issues with the heat, but we would save lots of money (besides reducing the amount of electronic waste).
A lot of fixtures are big enough to hide a recessed but still accessible box with a USB charger.
USB powered lights would solve a lot of this, they are more durable by far than led bulbs it seems, and the bulb itself would only need to request a specific current via PPS.
No new standards created, all parts reusable in other things, nothing intimidating for a consumer that would require professional service, if it breaks you probably already have a spare, if you want to get more compact than USB C wall outlets already exist.
The 5V choice might not be the best one, but 12 or 24 V (like commonly led strip are powered) could be fine.
A socket adapter might be the best for getting it out there though, you'd need more new electronics but no new construction work. But with a new electrical interface you could cover RGBW too.
I wonder if it would be possible to make the heat sink a separate part too without needing paste or degrading performance, since heatsinks don't wear out
If something fails early because of "poor quality" power, that just means it wasn't engineered properly. Modern switch-mode power supplies can work with an astounding range of input voltage.
Most people in highly developed countries don't have this problem so I'm an exception there. But most people in the world don't live in highly developed areas.
I moved in 5 years ago, most rooms where fitted with LEDs back then 2 had old lamps that got replaced later on, it's not a big flat.. so 15 bulbs first stage
The ones without LEDs? Replaced 4 bulbs in 2 years before replacing everything with LEDs.. (5 bulbs)
Not a single led one replaced so far, and some of them are burning > 6 hours a day.
The solution can be to install a dedicated 12/24 V low voltage DC grid and drive it with constant current drivers. I have one in my workshop and it Runs my LEDs for the past 12 years without a single fault.
What? This isn't true. LEDs function using DC current, and are either on or off. "Dimmable" LEDs have chips in the bulbs that use pulse-width modulation (PWM) to turn the diodes on/off at a different rate to create the dimming effect.
All incandescent bulbs are dimmable (on AC power) with no additional hardware other than the dimmer, which adjusts the input voltage to the bulb. Try to do this with a non-dimmable LED and you'll damage the bulb.
Modern incandescent dimmers don't change the voltage. They just chop off portions of the AC wave, which produces something like a PWM wave, except the on voltage is not constant.
I wouldn't want to try using this chopped up wave to power anything more complicated than a light bulb, but I don't see how it would damage an LED.
This isn't exactly true; no one has used a rheostat for dimming in like 50 years since that just wastes power. Most incandescent dimmers implement cycle chopping where they clip the beginning or end of the AC cycle (the type used depends on the implementation). Most commonly done using a diac or triac. Most "LED" in wall dimmers work this way too because you can't PWM dim on the other side of the power supply. This is also why in practice most LED bulbs are shit and even the best bulbs will visibly flicker whilst dimming. Yes LEDs are DC but as a compromise you have to implement dimming on the AC side because homes are wired with AC power.
This isn't universally true. Here in Japan, there's commonly-available LED ceiling fixtures (that look something like UFOs) that are dimmable with a remote control. They surely use PWM dimming, but it's done in the LED driver circuit; the fixture is getting the same 100VAC at all times. They also commonly have bluer and yellower LEDs, so you can adjust the light spectrum with your remote control.
Sure, but there's little difference between the two practically. Both of them are a light-emitting device, which plugs into a simple, standard socket on the ceiling. The ones I refer to are bigger, since they're meant to light up a whole room, but otherwise not really different, except that the standard socket is a lot better and easier to use (you just turn the fixture a quarter-turn to plug it in).
Source: I have a 5-way constant-current dimmer on a breadboard on my desk driving 5 CREE XLamp CXA Series LED's.
Drivers from vendors such as Tridonic https://www.tridonic.com/en/int/product-finder/led-drivers?f...
Advantages include lack of flicker and more reliable LED boards (hardly any components except for the LEDs). Drivers still fail, but it's nice to have them be a replaceable part.
It’s a nice idea, pretty cool to light the entire house for pennies an hour.
> and lasting 25 times longer
I refuse to believe it. It may be possible but in practice even “quality” LED bulbs have either awful QC, intentionally engineered obsolescence, or both.
About a year ago I replaced every bulb in my house with upper end Phillips LED bulbs, probably 50 or more of them.
20% of them have already failed.
When CA first required high efficacy lighting in kitchens via Title 24 in 2010, it was a train wreck, there were no good options and it got a bad name. Slowly they were required throughout new construction in tightening requirements every three years. Then technology caught up and the quality, flexibility, color and lumen options have far exceeded incandescent bulbs. Now people are doing things never imagined (as discussed somewhat awkwardly in the article) with LEDs spurred in part by legislation that pushed the technology from behind. Perhaps one of the few times technology didn't create the product and market. Legislation has created the market, and technology responded. Doesn't usually work out that way...
Now however, the new control requirements are ridiculous and add far more cost than will ever be recouped. Most likely since these requirements were planned back when California used 90 percent more electricity for lighting, it seems rather useless especially in the face of our unaffordable housing. Hopefully I am wrong there but it seems we went a bit too far.
In the apartment I had before with non LED lighting (not sure what it was specifically, I had about 25-30% of my lights fail within 18 months.
That's only a little over a month of continuous burning.
Those are $40 light bulbs. 99.999% of people do not have $2000 to spend on light bulbs, or laugh at the ludicrousness of such a thought, possibly both.
This is not the metric by which you judge everyone else's experiences. It is luxury/entitlement at its finest. Most commodity LED bulbs are garbage.
Not a single defective one
A good pair of boots is expensive, but will last for many years.
Cheap boots are more expensive in the long run, because you're lucky to get a year out of them.
> 99.999% of people do not have $2000 to spend on light bulbs
You don't have to replace them all at once. Just doing one at a time, starting with the one that's on the most, would work fine.
I'm also doubtful that the average poor person has 50 light bulbs.
If I were a renter, I think I'd take my good bulbs with me when I moved, replacing them with dollar store cheapies.
Know what I never had to do when I had incandescent bulbs? Use a lookup table to verify the make and model of my light bulb was compatible with my dimmer. Or have it not be compatible at all. Or read that the bulb is "not for use in enclosed fixtures" which is most bedroom lights and ceiling fans.
You can complain to the FCC.
On the plus side, they work much better outdoors than CFLs do.
You also need regulations that will bitch slap manufactures that underrate components. Seriously if an LED light burns out inside 10 years you should be able to exchange it for two similar ones at the manufacturers expense.
Another interesting point for American readers is that these light fixtures belong to you. When you move into an apartment, there are no light fixtures inside, just those empty sockets I mentioned. (Or, if you're lucky, they'll have a cheap adapter and a regular edison-socket bulb, so you can see at night until you buy a real light fixture.) Just like the refrigerator, you have to bring your own. So you might as well get a nice one, because when you move, you can bring it with you.
It's either a conspiracy theory that isn't happening, or it is happening and here's why it's a good thing
But the blue light fears some game seem at least worth looking into.
I can’t help but thinking in 50 years people will be replacing phrases like “they used LEAD pipes” and “they sprayed loose asbestos into the attic” with something akin to “they used unfiltered LEDs”
Screens are more of a problem than lamps.
Their sale was outlawed in the Netherlands years ago, everyone has switched to LED by now.
LED is pretty cool btw. So many cool designs and they do last much longer, contrary to many naysayers in this discussion. Only thing I don't like is that dimmers cost an arm and a leg, although recently I discovered that some bulbs have build-in dimmers, which switch to a different brightness when you quickly flick the bulb off and on.