Is this true? I’ve got LEDs in my house because they cost vastly less to run, and because I rarely have to replace the bulbs.
Some cheap LEDs do flicker (at 50 or 60 Hz). But that’s fairly easily solved. I don’t think I’ve noticed the flicker since some cheap bulbs I bought in 2014 or so.
Well… (Sorry, let me put my tinfoil hat on.) Yeah, well that noticed part is what is worrisome to me. I do worry that there is some effect on our brains even though we might not perceive the flicker.
As an analogy, I got into those supposedly audiophile "Class D" (or "Class T") amplifiers over a decade ago. Every day I turned on the music in my office and coded with the T-amp playing. I would have told you at the time that, indeed, it sounded amazing.
Some time later I built a tube amplifier (The Darling [2], in case anyone cares—I've since built perhaps a dozen more).
When I brought it into the office and swapped it out for the T-amp, the change was sublime but immediately noticeable. I hate to fall back on audiophile terminology but it's the best I have for the experience: I was suddenly aware of "listening fatigue" that had been a component of the T-amp. I hadn't even known it had been fatiguing until I heard the tube amp in its place for days on end.
With the loss of color fidelity and the flickering issue, I'm embarrassed to say that incandescent is starting to look good to me again.
I might, as an experiment, replace only those lights that we turn on in the evening when we are relaxing, reading.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class-T_amplifier
[2] https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/darling-1626-amp.... and https://imgur.com/gallery/oh-darling-tube-amplifier-Lq2Sx
Probably there are more
LEDs clearly do not produce anything like the spectral energy of blackbody radiation (sunlight, incandescence bulbs), and many do flicker (although that’s a byproduct of individual designs, not the technology itself). This is easy to confirm with simple sensors. So it’s completely uncontroversial to say they don’t replicate “natural” light.
Pretty much all tube amp designs produce an output that is modified from the input signal. This is what makes them sound different and to plenty of personal opinions more enjoyable to listen to music on. But they are more like the “LED” side of the lighting example - they produce an output that is different from the “natural” aka original audio material.
its the same thing. If it uses less electricity it both reduces the cost to you and reduces emissions from generating electricity.
I think most people would have switched over gradually anyway, but effectively banning incandescents speeded it up.
At least in EU is true. Citing from Wikipedia: "The 2005 Ecodesign directive covered energy-using products (EuP), which use, generate, transfer or measure energy, including consumer goods such as boilers, water heaters, computers, televisions, and industrial products such as transformers. The implementing measures focus on those products which have a high potential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions at low cost, through reduced energy demand."
LEDs are just terrible in every way except electrical consumption.
Every other low quality led I bought around that time or even later is long dead by now. I disagree
Hooray shitty capitalist incentives.
The non-cheap LED bulbs I've bought have all lasted years and years. I do have some cheap ones that are starting to fail, after just a year or so. (Problem with those is that it was really hard to find the correct bulb size and connector type, so my options were limited.)
I buy the ones that are suitable for dimmable switches (even tho I don't have dimmers) because there is discernible flicker with most other LED bulbs if you for eg wave your arm through the air or made a saccade. There is a certification (i think) for LED bulbs that are closer to sunlight in their emission spectrum
A counter example is a water pump, which converts electricity into gravitational potential energy of the water as it flows upwards.
My point was about efficiency of the generation. You want the light, you don't necessarily want the heat.
Save heating for the (efficient) heat pump.