7 ms·

The dirty secret of LED lighting is that while LEDs themselves last a long time, they only do so in the presence of good power supply design and good thermal de

The dirty secret of LED lighting is that while LEDs themselves last a long time, they only do so in the presence of good power supply design and good thermal design. If you cut corners on the power supply or thermal management, LEDs will burn out much quicker than older lighting technologies. The majority of consumer-grade LED "bulbs" available today are shitty on both counts, AFAICT.

marcosdumay 8y ago
Fluorescent lamps have the same issue with power supply (but not heating). And compact fluorescent bulbs had the same issue of only bad power supplies being available. We urgently need some standards over electronics longevity, like the ones we have over power consumption.
- icebraining 8y ago
  It would be interesting if there were standard warranty terms (no fiddling with the tiny print) and shops had to post the product's price/warranty-year ratio along with the regular price. Maybe it would promote some competition, as people would start to think in the longer-term cost.
  - marcosdumay 8y ago
    The energy consumption one has only a set of standard measurements. Many countries require that the seller do the measurement and place the results on a large tag. Nothing more, and worked wonders.
    - inflatableDodo 8y ago
      That's a great idea.
  - semi-extrinsic 8y ago
    At least one local store chain has a own-brand LED bulb, where the name of the store is printed on the bulb, and they advertise a 10-year warranty. I've gone in and returned probably a dozen such bulbs without any receipt, just saying "hey, these are your bulbs, you say 10 year warranty, this is broken and they only came to the market 5 years ago". Of course this only works now in the early days. If the date of manufacture was printed along with the store name, it'd be problem solved forever.
    - tialaramex 8y ago
      The LED lamps I use in my bedroom are serial numbered. When one dies they can see when they sold it and authorise a free replacement if it qualifies. I thought the last one to die had qualified, but when I got as far as pulling out my records I realised the one I'd been thinking of was actually still in its box yet to be installed, so this one lasted almost double its warranted lifetime.
  - wjnc 8y ago
    In Europe you can. I've always saved receipts and boxes of lamps (both for inventory and waranty purposes). It's been trivial to return lamps and get free replacements even after the 2 yr default warranty by claiming it broke to soon and giving a quick calculation how with say 4 or 8 hours a day I couldn't have hit the hourly mark at that point in time. Must have gotten at least a dozen free lamps. It is uneconomic neurotic consumerism on my part though. But I sure do hate how old fashioned bulbs were made illegal based on surely false economic lifetime projections of LEDs. On top of that half of the year I'm central heating and I couldn't care less what the source of my heat is.
    - iforgotpassword 8y ago
      Huh? Here in Germany you get 6 months for any type of bulb. Everything else is voluntary.
      - kalleboo 8y ago
        https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/dealing-with-customers/consumer-contracts-guarantees/consumer-guarantees/index_en.htm https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/dealing-with-customers... > EU law also stipulates that you must give the consumer a minimum 2-year guarantee (legal guarantee) as a protection against faulty goods, or goods that don't look or work as advertised. In some countries national law may require you to provide longer guarantees. If the package says something like "10,000 hours" and you haven't run it for that many hours and it dies in 2 years you can get it replaced by EU law
        wjnc 8y ago
        In the Netherlands (my country) this is interpreted as that you have a right to a functional product for the usual lifespan of a product. After the two years guarantee you're supposed to share the repair costs proportionally. The boxes of bulbs state the expected lifespan (most home appliances do not) so that's an easy starting point. Plus I guess my local DIY-shop just doesn't want to haggle with me and just gives me the replacement each and every time since I'm the only one asking. I'm unsure about how my online LED-supplier will react if in 3-5 years my LEDs burn out, but I've tried to choose a respectable brand and supplier.
- pg_is_a_butt 8y ago
  We do have standards over electronics longevity... as far as lightbulbs and new technology, the laws were created to ensure the bulbs WOULD break, and thus ensure american jobs.
- all_blue_chucks 8y ago
  Opening bid: devices with inefficient power circuits come with warning labels as disconcerting as those that come with cigarettes.
  - bdamm 8y ago
    "Going cheap can risk you and your family. Don't let fire start in your bedroom." (Picture of burnt family remains.) Hmm.
- oldjokes 8y ago
  Yes this. I have gone through insane numbers of CFLs and LEDs over the past ~20 years of being a homeowner. They fail, they buzz, they flicker, they fail more. I would have saved money and the landfills would be better for it if I just stuck with old incandescent bulbs that burn your fingers.
inflatableDodo 8y ago
Given how cheap the actual leds are, I am surprised people aren't saving money on power supplies and thermal design by wear levelling and redundancy. edit - and small, you could dot a lot of spare leds around without a problem.
- emeraldd 8y ago
  This reminded me of Big Clive's youtube channel. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtM5z2gkrGRuWd0JQMx76qA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtM5z2gkrGRuWd0JQMx76qA He does tear downs of consumer grade led lights for (mostly for the European/UK market since that's where he's based). It's interesting seeing some the iterations that "cheap" devices go through as they are refined to the bare minimum of cost.
amelius 8y ago
What are the requirements on the power supply?
- dreamcompiler 8y ago
  It has to be a good source of direct current, literally. It has to produce a steady, constant amperage regardless of grid spikes and fluctuations. Given that the grid is AC, this requires a relatively complex circuit and more careful engineering than is commonly done for the power supplies inside bulbs. Edit: Sometimes LED current is actually high-current AC with a square waveform, especially with dimmable bulbs. This is fine provided it's well-regulated and protected from spikes.
  - acchow 8y ago
    Can we design an LED that isn't affected by typical city fluctuations and spikes?
    - pixl97 8y ago
      If you can, I'm sure someone would pay you a lot of money for the design.
    - Itsdijital 8y ago
      I'm not sure where the OP is coming from because any halfway decent LED driver will accept a wide range of voltages, far more than the fluctuations seen on public lines.
      - dreamcompiler 8y ago
        I think he's asking if LEDs themselves can be more tolerant, since the drivers built in to LED bulbs rarely even rise to the level of "halfway decent."
      - Itsdijital 8y ago
        LEDs themselves are very intolerant of voltage (well really current fluctuations, semi-conductors are weird), but that isn't an issue because the driver deals with that and large swings will kill the driver or kill the driver and LED. LED tolerance doesn't really play into the scenario here. It's all about the driver.
taneq 8y ago
> If you cut corners on the power supply or thermal management, LEDs will burn out much quicker than older lighting technologies Really? As an anecdatum, I replaced most of the lights in our house with cheap LED globes a few years ago and so far not a single one has failed. Maybe I'm just lucky. CCFL lamps, however, have been terrible while using 3x the power.
- RRWagner 8y ago
  My anecdatum is that I bought CREE LED replacements about five years ago and I've had to replace more than a few already as they have started failing.
  - foobarian 8y ago
    I had a few batches that failed at a high rate. The most interesting one was a fixture with 3 candle-format LED bulbs that all failed at the same time! Clearly some power surge/power supply related event.
  - xbmcuser 8y ago
    Led tech has improved in the last 5 years. So experience with led of 5 years ago might no be the same as led of today or even 3 years ago. My boss converted his house to led 5-6 years ago I did around 2 years ago. We had a huge discussion about it when our office was being renovated recently. He had to replace about half in the first couple of years of install I have had to replace none so far.
  - inferiorhuman 8y ago
    I put a variety of LED bulbs (Ikea dumb + smart, Philips Hue, some no-name brand of T8 drop in replacements) about four years ago and only one (an early Philips Hue) has failed — even that's a soft failure. Meanwhile I've lost one T12 and one T8 in that period (despite only having four FL bulbs in service). Plenty of the LED traffic signals around here have dead LEDs though. Those lasted a surprisingly short amount of time. The thing is, as bad as the waste is — I'd much rather chuck out LED bulbs than CFL/FL.
  - 8y ago
gingabriska 8y ago
In a recent power surge, most mobile chargers and LED bulb blew. Nothing happened to incandescent bulbs or fan. Luckily I had a power strip with surge protection on which all my expensive equipment were hooked. Power strip blew up but saved my equipments. Edit: if you open your mobile charger you'll see 400v capacitor right after the bridge rectifier. On 220v mains this circuit needs to handle 310v but can survive upto 400v peak to peak. But power surges can be more than 400v, and similarly the circuit in CFL or LED driver can only survive very low band of power surges. Unless you've surge protectors in your house actively scrubbing mains dirty electricity, you'll see your LEDs will not survive long enough. LEDs don't survive because driver quality sucks and can't deal with mains fluctuation, and LEDs are very sensitive to temperature and voltage, little change in temperate or voltage, will drastically change the current going through the LED and will burn them. I solved the problem of continuously burning my LEDs by running low voltage DC lines and using 3 level surge protection in my house. Now, I've several mounts for LEDs with fans which keep the temperature in control. You need serious cooling for anything over 5w led. I am using aluminium heat sink with fan and my LEDs don't die.
- dreamcompiler 8y ago
  > running low voltage DC lines This is key and how all houses should be designed. All lighting circuits should be low voltage DC. This makes the individual drivers much simpler.
iforgotpassword 8y ago
When led bulbs appeared on the scene I thought "well, that's gonna be the end of the oligopoly of incandescent bulbs". It made sense to me that those big old companies would totally fall behind. But reality was that you had the choice between dozens and dozens of brands you never heard of before, and chances were high the one you picked just sucked. Amazon reviews were worthless because most people wrote them weeks after buying, very few people would come back if they failed after a year or two, and often by that time the company might have rebranded everything so you wouldn't know anyways. Not to mention how many people apparently are unable to recognize that atrocious 100hz flicker if the company cheaped out completely. Long story short, all my led bulbs since 2015 are osram or Philips and I haven't been disappointed since.

marcosdumay 8y ago

Fluorescent lamps have the same issue with power supply (but not heating). And compact fluorescent bulbs had the same issue of only bad power supplies being available. We urgently need some standards over electronics longevity, like the ones we have over power consumption.

icebraining 8y ago
It would be interesting if there were standard warranty terms (no fiddling with the tiny print) and shops had to post the product's price/warranty-year ratio along with the regular price. Maybe it would promote some competition, as people would start to think in the longer-term cost.
- marcosdumay 8y ago
  The energy consumption one has only a set of standard measurements. Many countries require that the seller do the measurement and place the results on a large tag. Nothing more, and worked wonders.
  - inflatableDodo 8y ago
    That's a great idea.
- semi-extrinsic 8y ago
  At least one local store chain has a own-brand LED bulb, where the name of the store is printed on the bulb, and they advertise a 10-year warranty. I've gone in and returned probably a dozen such bulbs without any receipt, just saying "hey, these are your bulbs, you say 10 year warranty, this is broken and they only came to the market 5 years ago". Of course this only works now in the early days. If the date of manufacture was printed along with the store name, it'd be problem solved forever.
  - tialaramex 8y ago
    The LED lamps I use in my bedroom are serial numbered. When one dies they can see when they sold it and authorise a free replacement if it qualifies. I thought the last one to die had qualified, but when I got as far as pulling out my records I realised the one I'd been thinking of was actually still in its box yet to be installed, so this one lasted almost double its warranted lifetime.
- wjnc 8y ago
  In Europe you can. I've always saved receipts and boxes of lamps (both for inventory and waranty purposes). It's been trivial to return lamps and get free replacements even after the 2 yr default warranty by claiming it broke to soon and giving a quick calculation how with say 4 or 8 hours a day I couldn't have hit the hourly mark at that point in time. Must have gotten at least a dozen free lamps. It is uneconomic neurotic consumerism on my part though. But I sure do hate how old fashioned bulbs were made illegal based on surely false economic lifetime projections of LEDs. On top of that half of the year I'm central heating and I couldn't care less what the source of my heat is.
  - iforgotpassword 8y ago
    Huh? Here in Germany you get 6 months for any type of bulb. Everything else is voluntary.
    - kalleboo 8y ago
      https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/dealing-with-customers/consumer-contracts-guarantees/consumer-guarantees/index_en.htm https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/dealing-with-customers... > EU law also stipulates that you must give the consumer a minimum 2-year guarantee (legal guarantee) as a protection against faulty goods, or goods that don't look or work as advertised. In some countries national law may require you to provide longer guarantees. If the package says something like "10,000 hours" and you haven't run it for that many hours and it dies in 2 years you can get it replaced by EU law
      - wjnc 8y ago
        In the Netherlands (my country) this is interpreted as that you have a right to a functional product for the usual lifespan of a product. After the two years guarantee you're supposed to share the repair costs proportionally. The boxes of bulbs state the expected lifespan (most home appliances do not) so that's an easy starting point. Plus I guess my local DIY-shop just doesn't want to haggle with me and just gives me the replacement each and every time since I'm the only one asking. I'm unsure about how my online LED-supplier will react if in 3-5 years my LEDs burn out, but I've tried to choose a respectable brand and supplier.
pg_is_a_butt 8y ago
We do have standards over electronics longevity... as far as lightbulbs and new technology, the laws were created to ensure the bulbs WOULD break, and thus ensure american jobs.
all_blue_chucks 8y ago
Opening bid: devices with inefficient power circuits come with warning labels as disconcerting as those that come with cigarettes.
- bdamm 8y ago
  "Going cheap can risk you and your family. Don't let fire start in your bedroom." (Picture of burnt family remains.) Hmm.
oldjokes 8y ago
Yes this. I have gone through insane numbers of CFLs and LEDs over the past ~20 years of being a homeowner. They fail, they buzz, they flicker, they fail more. I would have saved money and the landfills would be better for it if I just stuck with old incandescent bulbs that burn your fingers.

inflatableDodo 8y ago

Given how cheap the actual leds are, I am surprised people aren't saving money on power supplies and thermal design by wear levelling and redundancy. edit - and small, you could dot a lot of spare leds around without a problem.

emeraldd 8y ago
This reminded me of Big Clive's youtube channel. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtM5z2gkrGRuWd0JQMx76qA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtM5z2gkrGRuWd0JQMx76qA He does tear downs of consumer grade led lights for (mostly for the European/UK market since that's where he's based). It's interesting seeing some the iterations that "cheap" devices go through as they are refined to the bare minimum of cost.

amelius 8y ago

What are the requirements on the power supply?

dreamcompiler 8y ago
It has to be a good source of direct current, literally. It has to produce a steady, constant amperage regardless of grid spikes and fluctuations. Given that the grid is AC, this requires a relatively complex circuit and more careful engineering than is commonly done for the power supplies inside bulbs. Edit: Sometimes LED current is actually high-current AC with a square waveform, especially with dimmable bulbs. This is fine provided it's well-regulated and protected from spikes.
- acchow 8y ago
  Can we design an LED that isn't affected by typical city fluctuations and spikes?
  - pixl97 8y ago
    If you can, I'm sure someone would pay you a lot of money for the design.
  - Itsdijital 8y ago
    I'm not sure where the OP is coming from because any halfway decent LED driver will accept a wide range of voltages, far more than the fluctuations seen on public lines.
    - dreamcompiler 8y ago
      I think he's asking if LEDs themselves can be more tolerant, since the drivers built in to LED bulbs rarely even rise to the level of "halfway decent."
    - Itsdijital 8y ago
      LEDs themselves are very intolerant of voltage (well really current fluctuations, semi-conductors are weird), but that isn't an issue because the driver deals with that and large swings will kill the driver or kill the driver and LED. LED tolerance doesn't really play into the scenario here. It's all about the driver.

taneq 8y ago

> If you cut corners on the power supply or thermal management, LEDs will burn out much quicker than older lighting technologies Really? As an anecdatum, I replaced most of the lights in our house with cheap LED globes a few years ago and so far not a single one has failed. Maybe I'm just lucky. CCFL lamps, however, have been terrible while using 3x the power.

RRWagner 8y ago
My anecdatum is that I bought CREE LED replacements about five years ago and I've had to replace more than a few already as they have started failing.
- foobarian 8y ago
  I had a few batches that failed at a high rate. The most interesting one was a fixture with 3 candle-format LED bulbs that all failed at the same time! Clearly some power surge/power supply related event.
- xbmcuser 8y ago
  Led tech has improved in the last 5 years. So experience with led of 5 years ago might no be the same as led of today or even 3 years ago. My boss converted his house to led 5-6 years ago I did around 2 years ago. We had a huge discussion about it when our office was being renovated recently. He had to replace about half in the first couple of years of install I have had to replace none so far.
- inferiorhuman 8y ago
  I put a variety of LED bulbs (Ikea dumb + smart, Philips Hue, some no-name brand of T8 drop in replacements) about four years ago and only one (an early Philips Hue) has failed — even that's a soft failure. Meanwhile I've lost one T12 and one T8 in that period (despite only having four FL bulbs in service). Plenty of the LED traffic signals around here have dead LEDs though. Those lasted a surprisingly short amount of time. The thing is, as bad as the waste is — I'd much rather chuck out LED bulbs than CFL/FL.
- 8y ago

gingabriska 8y ago

In a recent power surge, most mobile chargers and LED bulb blew. Nothing happened to incandescent bulbs or fan. Luckily I had a power strip with surge protection on which all my expensive equipment were hooked. Power strip blew up but saved my equipments. Edit: if you open your mobile charger you'll see 400v capacitor right after the bridge rectifier. On 220v mains this circuit needs to handle 310v but can survive upto 400v peak to peak. But power surges can be more than 400v, and similarly the circuit in CFL or LED driver can only survive very low band of power surges. Unless you've surge protectors in your house actively scrubbing mains dirty electricity, you'll see your LEDs will not survive long enough. LEDs don't survive because driver quality sucks and can't deal with mains fluctuation, and LEDs are very sensitive to temperature and voltage, little change in temperate or voltage, will drastically change the current going through the LED and will burn them. I solved the problem of continuously burning my LEDs by running low voltage DC lines and using 3 level surge protection in my house. Now, I've several mounts for LEDs with fans which keep the temperature in control. You need serious cooling for anything over 5w led. I am using aluminium heat sink with fan and my LEDs don't die.

dreamcompiler 8y ago
> running low voltage DC lines This is key and how all houses should be designed. All lighting circuits should be low voltage DC. This makes the individual drivers much simpler.

iforgotpassword 8y ago

When led bulbs appeared on the scene I thought "well, that's gonna be the end of the oligopoly of incandescent bulbs". It made sense to me that those big old companies would totally fall behind. But reality was that you had the choice between dozens and dozens of brands you never heard of before, and chances were high the one you picked just sucked. Amazon reviews were worthless because most people wrote them weeks after buying, very few people would come back if they failed after a year or two, and often by that time the company might have rebranded everything so you wouldn't know anyways. Not to mention how many people apparently are unable to recognize that atrocious 100hz flicker if the company cheaped out completely. Long story short, all my led bulbs since 2015 are osram or Philips and I haven't been disappointed since.