
Why the falling cost of light matters (2017) - okket
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-38650976
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fabricexpert
> Switch off a light bulb for an hour and you are saving illumination that
> would have cost our ancestors all week to create

> But the price of light alone tells a fascinating story: it has fallen by a
> factor of 500,000, far faster than official inflation statistics suggest.

This is a fantastic anecdote in favour of automation, technology, science and
research.

I can imagine how the sperm whale sailors, candle stick makers and matchbox
makers felt when the light bulb started to become commonplace and replace
their jobs. We will see the same arguments against progress coming through
again and again over the next 100 years, I hope we continue to prevail in our
growth and find a solution for those displaced when technology overtakes their
job.

~~~
vwcx
> I can imagine how the sperm whale sailors, candle stick makers and matchbox
> makers felt when the light bulb started to become commonplace and replace
> their jobs.

And now the match industry has an upper-end, boutique product for wealthy
millennials. Markets in everything.

[http://skeemshop.com/apothecary-match-
bottles/](http://skeemshop.com/apothecary-match-bottles/)

~~~
nkrisc
Huge, dim "Edison" bulbs also appear to be trendy. The cycle seems to be
accelerating.

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sydd
Sadly there are a lots of flaws of LEDs, I think they are put in the spotlight
a bit too early. While they are a lot better than previous light saving
technologies (like CFLs which took a minute or two to warm up), most of the
bulbs in the market currently have lots of drawbacks:

\- Their CRI is pretty low, around 80.

\- They flicker causing eye strain.

There are now LEDs that solve both, its just a pain to find them (and cost
2-10x more than other LEDs.)

~~~
iainmerrick
How do you go about finding high-quality LEDs? Are they easily available in
standard bulbs?

~~~
toss1
Just tinkering, I've found several factors are important.

First is the color temp and CRI of the bulb/chip; make sure they match your
application. Sometimes mixing bulbs/chips works well to get a more pleasing &
usable spectrum. I've also found that the strip LEDs with multiple colors and
a tunable controller produce good results.

Second, find a power supply/controller that has a very high frequency. LED's
don't inherently flicker, and when powered straight from a source like a
battery provide a completely steady light. The flicker is typically from a
time-chopping brightness controller. Cheap ones may use 60Hz, which the eye
can still see, especially in the peripheral vision areas (rod cells, sensing
only grays detect motion much better, whereas color-sensing cone cells at the
center of the visual field have a slower response so detect flicker less
well). Ideally, get a controller well above 25KHz to also eliminate any audio
artifacts.

I'd very much like to see someone more expert chime in!

~~~
iainmerrick
Are there any dimmable LED strips that operate by fully illuminating X% of the
LEDs? As opposed to time-slicing all the LEDs. I don’t know enough about
hardware to know if that would be feasible.

The flickering and whining is pretty bad in all the dimmable LED bulbs I’ve
used (but I haven’t yet looked hard for high-end ones).

~~~
OnlineCourage
That severly shortens the lifetime of an LED, like by a factor of 10. So I
would guess it is not common because much of the benefit that gets marketed is
the longer lifetime. It is possible to build a better dimmer switch which
actually works across the full profile of voltage variation but the problem
then is you have to pay an engineer money and why do that when you can spend
money on booze and dinners to win more sales contracts with your lighting
distributors and get a higher ROI? The lighting world is a very consolidated
place.

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Double_a_92
Nice try Mr. Moth.

