Comment by ubercore | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ubercore | Hacker News Reader

I really dislike this article. It took me a little bit to figure out why. Most of the annoyance comes from fatigue of reading this kind of thing. "Humvees are more carbon neutral than a Prius" kind of thing.

Besides my personal annoyance though, this kind of unbalanced and unrigorous article is just flat out dangerous to public discourse on a pretty important issue. LED bulbs have strengths and weakness, to be sure. I didn't think the heat issue was a "secret" that "nobody will tell me". It was the first thing mentioned in nearly every single article or story I've seen about LED bulbs. I've been using LED bulbs for about 4 years now (in regular fixtures, closed fixtures, outdoor fixtures in summer and winter, closed bathroom fixtures) and have not had a single issue. As others mention, even if I did there's good warranty coverage.

I'm probably more radical than most on energy issues, but I find this kind of FUD downright irresponsible.

It also is part of this annoying trend of people that really enjoy trying to poke holes in new technology. Like electrocuting elephants with evil electric distribution technology.

So, I actually own an LED lighting company, and I found the article quite fair. This has been bugging me for a while with the new LED bulbs, there's frankly no reason to get them to replace a CFL except for mercury, and the build quality is garbage. The heat sinking stuff is absolutely critical, and while yours may be fine, a lot of these bulbs (and more every year that new players get into making them) are simply not amenable to being used as direct replacements without some extremely clever design that's not being done.

Not to mention that the incremental efficiency gain is negligible. Incandescent to CFL is a huge efficiency gain, so you can actually pay back the increased cost in electricity usage in a short while. A 60W equivalent CFL might consume ~13W. A similar LED bulb will be around ~9W. That extra 4W is such a marginal improvement that it would take decades to make it back in energy cost. So the only selling point is lifetime, and I've seen no indication that there is a big difference between the two -- both have similar types of failures, usually control electronics or power supply passives due to poor quality manufacturing.

I love my 35 watt CFLs, and still can't find any LED equivalents at an affordable price :-)

> there's frankly no reason to get them to replace a CFL except for mercury

Isn't that enough? I try to keep things that can kill me to a minimum.

I actually have a room of my house I don't go in because a cfl broke there a year ago.

When I read how to clean it up it sounded so scary I now stear clear of the whole room :-(

Even if you'd have spilled all of the mercury on the carpet (and most of it will possibly have stuck on the inside of the bulb and been disposed of with the shards), it will have evaporated (and hence, left the room in gaseous phase) a long time ago.

http://www.state.nj.us/dep/dsr/research/mercury-bulbs.pdf

In my observation, it is not enough for most people. They need an economic reason as well. Besides, the amount of mercury in a modern CFL is not all that bad as long as you don't try to vacuum it up and.

Disclaimer: I'm sort of a chemist, so let's just say I've been around far, far worse than a few milligrams of mercury. I do have a healthy respect for safety hazards, and am very cautious, but I don't have a strong immediate inclination to avoid small amount of mercury (or DMF, or THF, or paint thinner, or...) outright as too risky.

> I'm probably more radical than most on energy issues, but I find this kind of FUD downright irresponsible.

FUD? Seems like common sense to me.

If something comes with a heat sink, it's to disperse heat. If you're dispersing heat, you need airflow.

I know this. You know this. But the average consumer does not.

Consumers should be aware of this and this article accomplishes that.

Please keep any fanatical environmentalism to a minimum. Nobody is saying LEDs are bad. I own quite a few. It is, however, important to know how to use them effectively.

Sure, I went off the handle a bit, but the thing that really set me off here was "what nobody will tell you." It's linkbait-y FUD. Every communication around LED bulbs I've seen has mentioned the heat issue.

In mild support of your comment: I haven't bought any LEDs yet. I found out that they had reached practicality when I saw a display in Home Depot a few months ago (last I'd heard was years ago, that they were too expensive). Yet I still managed to hear that you can't use them in enclosures. I can't even remember where: it might have been some guys talking at the office.

I'm sure that there are people out there who don't know this, but it also seems like it's approaching common knowledge.

Fwiw... The elephant thing was a planned execution of an aggressive elephant. The video being shown as far and wide as possible(and likely the reason he got involved in the first place) was a business decision by Edison because he had a lot of money invested in DC distribution.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topsy_(elephant)

The entire first part of your response is pointless. You are essentially admitting that you are annoyed by articles that don't agree with your preconceived notions. "it bothers me because it doesn't fit my version of black and white" is not an argument and does not belong in this discourse.

I was just using that to lead into the thing I really wanted to say. I admit my dislike is my problem. I thought that I followed it up with reasoned and thoughtful discourse. What part of my statement do you disagree with?

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