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My entire house has been converted over to LED. The cheaper the design the higher the failure rate. The heat seems to kill these things over time. For example
by lgleason 7y ago
My entire house has been converted over to LED.
The cheaper the design the higher the failure rate. The heat seems to kill these things over time. For example I just ordered another warranty replacement from one brand called Hyperikon that uses similar types of designs for floods in my Kitchen. These have a much higher failure rate. Others seem to last forever. Between using electrolytic Capacitors and other tings that are prone to heat and small enclosed areas it is no wonder that the newer, cheaper bulbs fail quicker.
Since one big reason for going with LED is to be more energy efficient and greener, it would be interesting to compare the carbon footprint of these cheap LED bulbs that fail quickly with an incandescent and CFL over the entire lifespan. If the bulb lasts longer the numbers are pretty easy, but given short lifespan of some and their use or rare earth elements it would be interesting to see the full analysis of the environmental impact of each one.
- detritus 7y agoI had pretty much this exact thought recently after a couple of LED bulbs failed in fairly close succession in my house, despite a purported 20/50K hour lifespan (I can't recall which exactly, but neither reached). They're own-brand ones, sold by a major supermarket chain here in the UK (Sainsburys), so I'd expect them to be 'ok' at least. Certainly not 'cheap'. Compared to ye olde incandescents, the complexity and material make up is significantly less recyclable and looks to my eye to require a lot more invested energy to manufacture. - I've wondered this about so-called 'smart meters' too - how much energy does it take to make one, and how long to 'pay off' that investment?
- yjftsjthsd-h 7y agoWere smart meters about saving energy? I sorta assumed they were just there to make things easier on the power company. Although I suppose if it means that a person doesn't have to drive a car to every meter every month, that's probably a win.
- bcrosby95 7y agoI think they can help with saving energy indirectly: by letting power companies give customers more detailed information about their usage. But I don't know how often people take advantage of this. I've shaved off around .15 kwh of energy that was used 24/7 ($25/month in California) based upon usage information from our energy company.
- joezydeco 7y agoMy 'smart meter' is Zigbee enabled, and I own an adapter that spits out data from the meter in XML format. I can see power consumption with ~400 Watt resolution every 10 seconds without messing around in my breaker box attaching things. Downside is that we're a decade into net-connected thermostat and HVAC systems and none of them support any of this.
- joosters 7y agoSmart meters in themselves don't do anything to save energy. However, they make your energy consumption level more visible, which in turn might encourage you to use less electricity.
- lopmotr 7y agoA crude way to estimate embodied energy is just from the cost. It had to take less than $1.25 worth of energy to produce and distribute. That might have been something cheap and polluting like heat from coal, but it's still not much. You could look up the cost of that in India or China or wherever it's cheapest to get the worst case amount of energy or CO2 emissions. Alternatively, plastic takes about 100 kJ/g to produce. So if the bulb has 1 g of plastic, that's about 0.03 kWh of energy. Nothing compared to the savings in electricity using it.
- larrik 7y ago> It had to take less than $1.25 worth of energy to produce and distribute. Not always, they could be subsidized to get people off of incandescents.
- rcxdude 7y agoYes, but they aren't (in most of the world, anyway).
- makomk 7y agoWhere this gets interesting is when governments decide that if LED energy efficiency is good, more LED energy efficiency is better. There's a push for minimum energy efficiency standards to be really close to the cross-over point where consumers just barely save money compared to less efficient bulbs if they meet the nominal lifetime specs, on the pretense that it's helping out consumers who are too stupid to realise that the higher upfront cost saves them money - at least in the EU and the US pre-Trump. Given the combination of more complex designs and more incentive for cost-cutting, I can't see those bulbs meeting the lifetime specs, and I do wonder if it'd actually save energy.
- BlueTemplar 7y agoNot to mention that the "wasted" energy of incandescent light bulbs, might actually not be, at least not entirely - since they pretty much work as electric heaters...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- pwg 7y agoDuring cold winter months, when one is otherwise attempting to add heat to the indoors, the 'waste' heat from incandescent bulbs is not really 'wasted', since it contributes slightly to maintaining the interior room temperature.
- teruakohatu 7y agoIf they are resessed down lights you mostly end up heating roof or ceiling space. And in summer not only do you consumer power for heat you don't need, you end up consuming power to remove said heat with AC. Also in winter there are much more efficient ways to heat than electricity, such such as heatpumps.
- wtdo 7y agoI'd imagine on the whole it's wasted. Half the year they aren't just generating wasted heat, they're increasing cooling costs. The half of year that the heat is wanted, it's usually above you, and I imagine that heat is being generated less efficiently than a purpose-built device.
- anchpop 7y ago> I imagine that heat is being generated less efficiently than a purpose-built device. All the heat that comes out of a lightbulb is being generated at 100% efficiency :) (Although it's likely more expensive to heat your home electrically instead of via natural gas)
- 7y ago
- zippergz 7y agoI have some spots in my house where it's a major hassle to change the bulbs, so the long lifetime of LEDs was an important selling point there (in fact, much more important than the energy savings). Thankfully I've had good luck with those (all Cree bulbs), but I'd be pretty annoyed if I bought LEDs for those fixtures and ended up having to replace them after a year or two.
- julianlam 7y agoA year or two would be fantastic! I replaced all the halogen bulbs in my house with Uberhaus GU10 and PAR20 LEDs. They last on average about 6 months. They were a dollar Canadian after government incentive. You get what you pay for.
- zippergz 7y agoI'm on year 5 or 6 right now with the Cree bulbs I bought.
- Marsymars 7y agoIf you're in Canada, I've had good luck with Luminus Elite (different from the Luminus non-elite available at non-Costco locations) PAR20 and GU10 bulbs from Costco. Or I use Philips warmglow from Home Depot or comparable Ikea bulbs (which have brighter GU10 than the Luminus Elite line) in locations where I want non-ugly dimming.
- julianlam 7y agoAppreciate the tip, I'll check them out next time I head to Costco
- 9HZZRfNlpR 7y agoThat sounds awfully bad, even my cheapest of the cheap bulbs last minimum 2yrs. Are you aware how's the quality of power coming into your house?
- pkaye 7y agoI replaced a dozen halogens with Torchstar LEDs from Amazon. They have lasted for 3+ years so far. The old halogens used to fail, once every 6 months.
- ineedasername 7y agoYes, the "lifetime" of the bulb tends to be quoted in terms of the expected life of the specific light emitter, i.e., the LED itself. In reality, something else almost always fails first, and much much faster.
- tialaramex 7y agoThe LEDs stated lifetime is based on an expected gradual reduction in brightness, with an industry agreed cut-off at, IIRC 90% of original light output. If you have LED lamps that don't fail (typically due to heat) they will just keep getting gradually dimmer forever. Prior technologies have expected failure built in. An incandescent bulb's filament will fail eventually (making the filament more robust reduces light output so now your bulb lasts longer but is less useful or costs a lot more to run) and either type of fluorescent very slowly loses the gas that makes it work.
- dreamcompiler 7y agoIt's ironic that LEDs themselves last for 30,000 hours but bulbs created with LEDs can wear out much quicker than incandescents because of crappy power supply design. I can't help but think manufacturers must have initially worried that LEDs would kill their continuing revenue streams. When they finally figured out they could design the power supplies to fail quickly, they must have been dancing in the streets.
- jml7c5 7y agoI would consider market forces a more reasonable explanation: most people are going to pick the cheapest option. The success of cheap, flickering bulbs attests to that, I think. It doesn't help that the old Edison screw is terrible for cooling.
- stubish 7y agoThere is no sane option but to pick the cheapest option. You go to the shop here and see 3 or 4 brands, and looking at the details they all seem identical. You choose your voltage, colour warmth, and if you want to pay a premium for the only brand name you recognize.
- Dylan16807 7y agoYou can do 3-5 minutes of research before picking a brand.
- johnchristopher 7y agoI am reading this post on my laptop, in bed. In my grand parent's house. There's a bedside lamp next to the bed and the bulb is at least 30 years old. Two generation of children have used that bedside lamp to read stuff at night or walk to the bathroom. Meanwhile my LED - whatever the brand - are failing between 6 months and two years. edit: https://imgur.com/c6B71B4 https://imgur.com/c6B71B4
- ujjjujjj 7y agoPerfect! A great picture of the lightbulb. Its easily identifiable not :) Nonetheless in the last 20 years all my normal light bulbs had to be replaced on a regular schedule which was often enough that i got slightly annnoyed by it. My expensive philips hue, no issues so far.
- zippergz 7y agoSomwething seems wrong if your non-cheap LEDs are dying that quickly. I have an entire house of LEDs, many going on 5-6 years old, and I only ever recall replacing two (and they were a pair, used outdoors -- only one failed, but I replaced both so they would match).
- perl4ever 7y agoIf you have 5-6 year old LED bulbs, then they represent the state of the market 5-6 years ago, and aren't necessarily representative of current quality.
- ricardobeat 7y agoIt's also consuming 10x more energy for every minute it is on.
- OrgNet 7y agoit's very rare for me to have an LED bulb that last less than 2 years... but I have 4x 18-watts recessed led fixtures in the kitchen and one burnt out after about 2 years and they are no longer manufactured so I have to find one that look-a-like....
- 7y ago
- bradstewart 7y agoYep, heat definitely apepars to be the biggest factor in these bulbs dying. I have Hyperikon BR30 bulbs in various locations. About half of the bulbs installed in insulation-contact recessed cans have died, but those in exposed fixtures are fine. Philips bulbs seem to do much better in the ceiling. If only they'd make 3000k bulbs...
- WalterBright 7y agoYou can only install LED bulbs in fixtures that are open to the air. There are some newer bulbs that claim to be heat resistant, we'll see.
- ants_a 7y agoEven open to the air might not be enough. I just had a couple of self described "revolutionary thermal design" [1] bulbs fail after less than a year in a one end open glass fixture. [1] https://energenie.com/item.aspx?id=8293 https://energenie.com/item.aspx?id=8293
- gnicholas 7y agoI’ve installed Phillips LEDs in various enclosures and had no issues in 3 years. Frankly, the hum issues that I have encountered with dimmer switches and LEDs (even when not dimmed, and even when using supposedly dimmable LEDs) make them more suitable for use in an enclosure. That way you can’t hear them buzz, like in an open chandelier.
- qes 7y ago> The heat seems to kill these things over time. I think it's more about how well balanced all of the individual LED's in the bulb are. Unbalanced circuits have more current flowing through some paths than others and leads to premature failure of individual elements and it's usually rapidly downhill from there for the rest of the bulb.
- jacob019 7y agoNormally the LEDs are wired in series so that they all have the same current.
- londons_explore 7y agoLED bulbs that aren't current controlled are rare now. You're right - just sticking a bunch of raw led's in parallel over a "12v" source is a recipe for disaster.
- barney54 7y agoI have about 20 Hyperikon dimmable BR30s that are 4-5 years old and have been excellent. But I bought some cheaper ones for the kitchen more recently and they have had a bad failure rate. The older Hyperikons were excellent, the newer ones, not so much.
- OrgNet 7y ago> My entire house has been converted over to LED. all at once?
- hedora 7y agoI’ve had great luck with Hyperikon bulbs. I consider them a premium brand, due to simultaneously delivering high CRI and lumens per watt. Zero failures out of at least ten (over 2-4 years, bought in three batches). Hopefully you bought a problematic model, and they’re not uniformly going downhill. How old are the ones that are failing for you?
- sgustard 7y agoI have had a few (3 or 4) LED bulbs of a reputable brand fail. To their credit, after one email to support a new package of bulbs has arrived at no charge. So no milking their revenue stream in that case.
- himinlomax 7y agoFor incandescent, the carbon footprint all depends on the source of your electricity, because the difference in efficiency is just enormous. For CFL, it's a bit more complicated, but keep in mind that they do have quite a bit of glass (takes energy to make and form), need some mercury, and at least as much electronics (if not more) as LEDs. Furthermore CFLs don't necessary fail completely, but degrade over time. Thus they're a bit less efficient than LEDs to begin with, but a lot less after a few years. So overall, unless the LED is so shitty as to consistently fail within weeks, there's no doubt their total energy bill is competitive, and it's even more clear if you limit the comparison to products of similar quality.
- philjohn 7y agoExactly this - I ended up going with a brand in the UK called LAP for the downlighters in the bathrooms in my house. Not a single one has failed since 2016 when I installed them. They weren't cheap, but they weren't mega expensive either.