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The big problem for me is, as a consumer, how do I know that brand X is producing quality bulbs that'll last a long time? The issue is that LED bulbs aren’t si
by chongli 4y ago
The big problem for me is, as a consumer, how do I know that brand X is producing quality bulbs that'll last a long time?
The issue is that LED bulbs aren’t simple devices like incandescent bulbs. LED bulbs have an electronic power supply inside which drives the LEDs at a constant current.
Power supply design is a major subfield of electronics engineering and there are all kinds of tradeoffs you can make to optimize for different goals. Consumer electronics almost always optimizes for cost, to the detriment of all else.
It is possible (and not very difficult) to design LED bulbs that will practically outlive their owners [1]. The problem is that it requires putting more LEDs in the bulb and driving them at lower current. This makes the bulb cost more and the only benefit is longer life. For a manufacturer, there are nothing but downsides to this approach.
[1] https://youtu.be/klaJqofCsu4 https://youtu.be/klaJqofCsu4
- jasonlaramburu 4y ago>It is possible (and not very difficult) to design LED bulbs that will practically outlive their owners It is also possible (and not very difficult) to design incandescent bulbs that will outlive their owners. In fact, the first mass produced light bulbs generally lasted 2,500+ hours. In the 1920s, the major bulb manufacturers formed the 'Pheobus Cartel' in Geneva and secretly colluded to limit the lifespan of bulbs to 1,000 hours to boost sales [1]. Another example of planned obsolescence harming consumers and the environment. [1]https://interestingengineering.com/science/everlasting-lightbulbs-exist-ed https://interestingengineering.com/science/everlasting-light...
- shagie 4y agoThis goes into the "actual conspiracy - not a theory" category. Veritasium - This is why we can't have nice things - https://youtu.be/j5v8D-alAKE https://youtu.be/j5v8D-alAKE The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-great-lightbulb-conspiracy https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-great-lightbulb-conspiracy > On 23 December 1924, a group of leading international businessmen gathered in Geneva for a meeting that would alter the world for decades to come. Present were top representatives from all the major lightbulb manufacturers, including Germany’s Osram, the Netherlands’ Philips, France’s Compagnie des Lampes, and the United States’ General Electric. As revelers hung Christmas lights elsewhere in the city, the group founded the Phoebus cartel, a supervisory body that would carve up the worldwide incandescent lightbulb market, with each national and regional zone assigned its own manufacturers and production quotas. It was the first cartel in history to enjoy a truly global reach. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel
- garaetjjte 4y agoDevil's advocate: Incandescent lifetime is inversely related to efficiency, thus Phoebus cartel prevented spread of long-life but inefficient bulbs.
- neuralRiot 4y agoAn also should add that color temperature on incandescent lamps play a role on its lifespan, want long lasting lamps? Lower the current (or increase the resistance).
- xxs 4y agoincandescent light bulbs efficiency increases with their temperature/current. At low enough current they will last long enough but waste a lot energy as well. You can dim them, and provide a slow start to prevent the inrush current (which is like 10times more than nominal with tungsten resistance increasing due so high 2500K temps).
- 6510 4y agoput them in series
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Maursault 4y agoThankfully, LED lighting will probably be gone within 20 years, while incandescent will be coming back more efficient than LED could dream. Already bumping up against theoretical maximum efficiency, LED lighting can't get any more efficient, and the better LED is at color rendition, the less efficient it is. But there are vast amounts of improvement available for incandescent lighting, and a group at MIT has already created incandescent light that is twice as efficient as LED.[1] [1] https://news.mit.edu/2016/nanophotonic-incandescent-light-bulbs-0111 https://news.mit.edu/2016/nanophotonic-incandescent-light-bu...
- lightedman 4y agoThat incandescent cant reach the theoretical 40%, at the color temp/physical temp needed, the tungsten filament would melt.
- seanp2k2 4y agoExciting, but that article is from 2016 and here we are in 2023 with no commercial availability. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskScienceDiscussion/comments/j6hwn0/what_ever_happened_to_that_efficient_mit/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskScienceDiscussion/comments/j6hwn... asked what happened with no real updates.
- CydeWeys 4y agoAh yes, people, famous for living less than checks notes 2,500 hours.
- jasonlaramburu 4y agoPlease consider reading the linked article first. The longest continuously active incandescent bulb in the world was switched on in 1901.
- CydeWeys 4y agoI'm well aware of it. That's survivorship bias; it's literally the oldest one, and it's super dim, and it's never power cycled.
- mariodiana 4y agoPerhaps the planned obsolescence helped the consumer, because perhaps there would have been no willing producers if producing the lightbulbs at a price the users were willing to pay for wasn't going to turn out to be profitable, with respect to setting up production in the first place and then producing until the investment was paid back. When we're talking market price, we have to acknowledge that it is a meeting of the price needed to bring a product to market and the price the consumer is willing to pay. We can't assume that the price of the longer lasting bulb would have been attractive to consumers, when compared to the price of the shorter-lived bulb, even if they had all the information available. It's perfectly valid for a person to decide they'll spend more over the long run, rather than ponying up a larger sum now. And it's perfectly valid for producers to take the chance of deciding this for the consumer. As Henry Ford noted, "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." Was anybody stopping anyone from offering the consumer a higher-priced and longer-lasting bulb?
- bagels 4y ago2500 hours is 100 days. I hope I live longer than 100 more days :(
- jasonlaramburu 4y agoPlease consider reading the linked article. The longest continuously active incandescent bulb in the world was switched on in 1901.
- jghn 4y agoYes, but this is exactly what I'm asking. How do I find the ones designed in a buy it for life way? Or at least ones designed to last longer than the crap on the Home Depot shelves.
- vl 4y agoYou can't buy a bulb that is rated to last a lifetime, but you can buy ones rated to last for 10+ years if used 8 hours a day (i.e. 35,000 life hours). I retrofitted entire house - 200+ bulbs and fixture retrofits more that 5 years ago. I had one or failures since. I bought highest CRI bulbs, i.e. most expensive, and they work well. (Also, do not use bulbs for downlights - get entire "led can light fixture retrofit") I used 1000bulbs.com because I can filter/read specs there, but you can get specs for any high-tier vendor and buy elsewhere.
- jghn 4y ago> 35,000 life hours How trustworthy is that state though? I have always assumed 0% trustworthy. Is that incorrect?
- chongli 4y agoIf you don’t trust the manufacturers, you’ll have to find an expert to trust, or tear down the bulbs and examine them yourself. The best way to know for sure is to measure the current being driven through the LEDs and compare it to their maximum rated current. The ones that don’t last long are usually being run at their maximum current, producing a lot of excess heat which shortens their lives dramatically.
- vl 4y agoI don't think it's untrustworthy in a sense you are deliberately lied to. I think more likely problem is that there is quality control issues and entire batch of particular bulb is compromised, like can happen with anything else - hard drives, RAM, pencils. In general it's quite reasonable. Cheaper bulbs failed on me, more expensive ones work just fine for many years. One thing is I wonder about if phosphorus (or whatever chemical they use) is burning out over the years. I.d. do I get worse light quality as these bulbs age?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- com2kid 4y agoTake a time machine back to 2001, any LEDs you bought back then will likely last over 60 years. Of course they won't be as efficient, and output very little light, but they will last forever. (also, no white, but hey, win some lose some!)
- fexl 4y agoI've noticed that LED bulb packages say they'll last several years, but so many of them die after just a year or so. I should start tracking this precisely, but I've just gotten the sense that they often die prematurely.
- t0bia_s 4y agoYou have 2 year warranty. Return it. My dad did it so often that they refuse to sell him a new one in that shop. What an irony.
- alexsereno 4y agoWhy? That strikes me as odd, since the manufacturer is the one who eats that warranty cost.
- amalcon 4y agoAssuming that the retailer can actually get a refund or replacement from the manufacturer (for some products, only the consumer can actually do that), usually they just replace the item or the wholesale price. They don't replace the retailer's gross margin. Thus the retailer ends up eating the cost of things like stocking and actually processing the warranty. For e.g. a one-person operation, that means extra work for zero profit. It's usually not that much, but I can see why they might eventually be upset about it.
- e28eta 4y ago> The issue is that LED bulbs aren’t simple devices like incandescent bulbs. LED bulbs have an electronic power supply inside which drives the LEDs at a constant current. Not all of them! I was very surprised to open up my generic outdoor patio LED bulbs and find two strips of LED filament wired directly to power. AFAICT it’s just enough LEDs in serial for 120VAC at 60 Hz to be “good enough” that they survive for “long enough”.