
What Happened to the 100000 Hour LED Bulbs? - jccalhoun
https://hackaday.com/2019/02/05/what-happened-to-the-100000-hour-led-bulbs/
======
mrb
Lifetime isn't even my #1 concern with LED bulbs. It's strobing/flickering.

I film all the LED bulbs I buy in slow motion at 240 fps with an Android
phone, and play the movie back on a PC with mplayer using the dot(".") key to
move frame by frame. Here is a shot I made comparing 2 brands of LED bulbs:
[https://youtu.be/QbenId_F2RQ](https://youtu.be/QbenId_F2RQ) (Edit: yeah you
don't have to transfer to a PC, just playing back in slow motion on the phone
will still show the effect quite well.)

It's amazing how I find this way that most (but not all!) of LED bulbs flicker
with a strobe effect at 120 Hz (frames alternate between bright and dim)
because they have crappy power supply designs that fail to smooth the A/C
voltage. As a result they flash one time during the positive phase and one
time during the negative phase of the 60 Hz A/C mains frequency.

I find this unacceptable. Although not too noticeable in normal conditions, a
120 Hz strobing light is definitely noticeable when your eyes move or track an
object illuminated by the bulb.

In my experience, Philips lightbulbs are one of the few brands that don't have
this flaw because they take care of converting AC to a stable DC voltage
internally. In fact they are advertised as such:
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CFRCGKC](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CFRCGKC)
"COMFORTABLE LIGHT: Our products meet strict test criteria including flicker,
strobe, glare and color rendition to ensure they meet EyeComfort requirements"

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
LED flicker could prove harmful or fatal if you work with anything that
rotates or reciprocates.

The rotating / reciprocating mass may appear stationary at some RPM.

Just a reminder to only ever use incandescent or halogen lights around
machinery you can touch while in operation: drills, lathes, mills, slotting
machines, etc.

~~~
handzbagz
Just how likely is this to happen though, it would have to be the only light
source and be flickering with exactly the same frequency as the machinery is
traveling at (which i assume for most devices varies a lot).

Not saying it can't happen but it does seem stupidly hard to achieve.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Pretty common, about as common as the wagon wheel effect in 24fps film movies.
In just the same way, the item can appear to stop, run slow, or run backwards,
just as with film. No it does not have to be the only light source, just the
nearest one to the machinery.

Fluorescent tubes are most noticeable, LEDs a little less. Tungsten or Halogen
are the only sensible option for workpiece illumination.

~~~
mcv
Or, of course, just use a LED that properly smooths out the DC. It's not hard
to do, and a quality LED manufacturer should get this right. The only excuse
for flickering is a cheap LED that cuts cost for circuitry.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Oh I agree, but a surprising number of LED bulbs have some degree of flicker,
even from those makes you might expect to do better. A purpose made work lamp
should get it right though. Hopefully. Maybe.

For my hobby stuff, I just bought a couple of spare halogens that should see
me out.

------
setquk
I've taken every single LED bulb that has failed on me to pieces and it's
always the same failure mode. The heatsink compound isn't applied properly to
the back of the LED board. The LEDs immediately in the gaps smoke out.

Alas this isn't a problem. If a lightbulb goes, Amazon send me a new one out
now free of charge and tell me to throw the old one in the trash.

This is one manufacturer, prevalent on Amazon, the Long Life Lamp Company.
Long Life my ass.

They have been replaced by Philips and Ikea LED bulbs now which the oldest are
5 years old now and still going strong.

Edit: one thing to note is the really cheap ones run pretty hot. They have 105
oC rated capacitors in them. If you look at the derating curves at the running
temperature they are clearly designed to last just past a year.

~~~
baybal2
Do not buy "bulbs," they are hopeless. Just buy a whole fixture with a big
aluminium PCB and directly bonded chips.

~~~
JohnTHaller
My friend's bathroom light that is now a strobe light and the landlord has yet
to replace because it requires an electrician to replace the whole fixture
would like a word with you.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
>requires an electrician to replace the whole fixture would like a word with
you.

Kind of like how replacing a gas dryer "requires" a licensed plumber to make
the gas connection or you're "required" to drive no faster than the speed
limit at all times.

You're getting the runaround. If it was in a vacant apartment that they were
showing to people it would already be fixed. If they cared about getting it
done ASAP they'd either shell out the big bucks or ignore the law.

Edit: I think a lot of people on HN don't realize how simple swapping failed
parts is. Swapping a failed water heater or electrical fixture (especially
light fixtures) is a waste of the skilled tradesman's time and the customer's
money. Even an incompetent landlord or maintenance service should be able to
get it done.

~~~
Sebguer
yeah, darn those pesky laws around liability getting in the way of some good
old-fashioned handiwork.

~~~
talltimtom
The law once mandated that you hire the services of a licensed electrician to
replace a lightbulb. Imagine if the same laws where applied to tech. Need to
update Microsoft office? No way arround it you need to hire the services of a
licensed IT professional! You might get electrocuted in the process not being
a professional. So it all makes sense.

~~~
brlewis
Cite please. Was that ever really a law anywhere other than Victoria,
Australia?

~~~
toss1
Actually it is the law at every trade show I've ever exhibited at, just about
to the point where you can't plug in anything without a union electrician
doing it. One can usually get away with plugging in a laptop, but certainly if
you need anything more than the single standard 10A 2-outlet power drop,
expect to pay and wait for the official electrician (and they will kick you
out of the show for violations).

Edit: I've seen this at least in NY, Florida, California

~~~
B1FF_PSUVM
> it is the law at every trade show I've ever exhibited at

I've read that you can't move chairs, etc, either. I understand it's part of
the contracts between venues and unions.

------
lucb1e
... so what happened to the 100k hour LED bulbs?

It never answers the question. It has an anecdote about the author's own lamps
that ran an estimated 15-20k hours with an advertised lifespan of 30k and have
degraded to the point where they will replace them. That's n=1 and nowhere
near 100k hours, or even 50k as the author mentions early-adopters will
remember seeing advertised.

The article contains a lot of info, but does not actually answer the original
questions it poses in the title and the second paragraph.

~~~
jiveturkey
as with many such articles, the title is rhetorical and not intended to be
answered.

~~~
djsumdog
Is it in this case. I presume that at one time there were actual bulbs which
said 100,000 hours on the physical box. What specifically happened here? Do we
have the same bulbs today and the marketing was wrong, or are bulbs today de-
engineered?

~~~
shadowoflight
I'm not positive on this one, but out seemed the article alluded to the idea
that the 100,000hr life was measuring to LED failure and ignoring the
possibility of driver failure, whereas now there are stricter standards both
for measuring the potential of a driver to fail and measuring the lifetime of
an LED as the point at which out drops by 30% rather than the point of total
failure.

------
phasetransition
So, engineering lead of a (outdoor) led Luminaire manufacturer here. And our
sales director used to work for one of the biggest Asian light bulb OEMs.
Happy to answer specific technical questions out there that this article
triggered.

~~~
jandrese
Why do so many of the bulbs run hot? Like so hot you can't hold them in your
hand if they were on when you unscrewed them. Isn't this a lot of wasted
energy?

~~~
phasetransition
All bulbs produce heat, both from the LEDs and the electronics. Incandescent
bulbs were blazing hot, too, and they radiated IR on top everything else.

A high efficiency LED assembly is still producing on the order of 50% light
and 50% heat.

~~~
jandrese
High efficiency is only 50%? Isn't that terrible? Are LEDs really that bad?

~~~
snaily
Incandescents used to be 5% visible light at best, with 95% of energy turned
into non-visible radiation.

------
crispyambulance
I also have been disappointed with LED "bulbs". They get too damn hot in
recessed fixtures but NOT because of the LED's. It's all because of the shitty
power converter embedded deep inside the bulb getting too hot and failing. The
industry has necessarily had to retrofit to where incandescent bulbs are
supposed to go.

I think that we'll start to see improvements in this area as people move away
from "screw-in bulb" as the form factor and towards using external power
converters delivering power to to LED fixtures that are just LED's and their
heatsink + mounts.

~~~
Steltek
Every so often, I come back to the "I should have DC power on demand in my
house!" until I'm reminded that DC power loss over a distance can hurt bad,
even 48VDC telecom power.

Perhaps USB-C PD might help? USB power adapters are compact and PD offers
standard, useful high power DC. If the adapters become ubiquitous, you could
see "USB-C lightbulbs".

~~~
Someone1234
Slight tangent but "in-building DC" exists, and is rapidly gaining popularity
but not via the medium many assumed: Power Over Ethernet.

You can buy PoE LED light fixtures now, which are both powered and controlled
over ethernet. You buy a single PoE switch, run some low voltage Cat6, and you
can power an entire floor's worth of lighting.

EEPoE (Energy Efficient PoE) offers more efficient PoE too which claims up to
94% efficiency.

Definitely a space to watch. Particularly as the cost savings of running low
voltage Ethernet cable compared to high voltage electrical cable (110v) are
substantial.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
_you can power an entire floor 's worth of lighting_

? Must be either very low current lighting or that's some pretty beefy Cat6. I
think the average Cat6 cable is only 24 gauge and that won't carry a lot of
current very far.

~~~
bronson
Star topology

~~~
jandrese
Isn't this like saying you could light the world if you had a big enough
switch and unlimited cable?

~~~
bronson
Where did you get that? GP is talking about lighting a floor in a building.

~~~
jandrese
He's talking about running a separate cable for each and every bulb. It's a
wasteful solution compared to running all of the lights off of a single
circuit (or limited number of circuits) like a normal building.

~~~
Someone1234
No I wasn't. PoE+ can support half a dozen LED panels off of a single Cat6
run.

------
nkurz
I'm surprised that there is no mention in the article of "filament led" bulbs
(and very little mention in the comments):
[https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/article/led-filament-
bu...](https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/article/led-filament-bulbs). They
are based on the simple idea of stacking enough small LED's that they can run
on mains voltage. You still need a rectifier to go from AC to DC, and a
capacitor for smoothing, but no voltage conversion means there are fewer parts
to fail. And multiple smaller LED's makes the heat dissipation much easier, so
they tend to run cool.

I've been using them for a couple years, and think they are so much better
than the previous generations of CFL's and heat sink LED's that would quickly
fail, especially in enclosed fixtures. I'm buying cheap ones from Amazon, and
occasionally I get early failures, but lifespan after initial burn in has been
excellent. Like others, I often wonder why they haven't taken over the market:
[http://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/why-haven_t-filament-
led-b...](http://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/why-haven_t-filament-led-bulbs-
taken-over-the-market/)

~~~
pitaj
These result, generally, in a 120Hz flicker, which some people are sensitive
to.

~~~
ricardobeat
There’s no reason they can’t smooth out the power like other lamps (except
space). The linked article mention manufacturers already doing this in 2014,
surely you’ll find flicker-free versions. These are all over home improvement
shops over here.

~~~
pitaj
Doing so requires bigger and better capacitors.

------
wil421
My father in law is a general contractor and religiously keeps all his LED
bulb receipts. If anything goes out before the listed hours he returns it to
HomeDepot. He hasn’t had any issue so far including some of the older bulbs
described in the article.

~~~
rayshan
Pro tip: Home Depot recently started to allow receipts to be pulled up and
items to be returned with just a credit card. Ikea does this too if you always
scan your Family Card.

~~~
arbitrage
> if you always scan your Family Card

i.e., if you agree to be tracked.

~~~
ahakki
I mean in this case you literally want them to track your purchases so that
you can return defective bulbs without keeping the receipts.

~~~
lucb1e
Sure, but not for any other purpose, and that's what GP means.

It's like GPS tracking: I track every trip I make with OsmAnd's tracking
feature automatically when it starts routing. But I wouldn't trust Google Maps
to do the same with their location history feature. Their usage of the data
isn't limited to what's in my best interest, so I'll collect it myself.

------
umvi
This makes me wonder if we shouldn't have an AC _and_ DC circuits in the
house. I mean, it could be all AC coming in, but at the box it splits into (at
least) two different circuits (an AC one and a DC one).

AC circuit would still be used for things that have motors, but everything
else uses DC.

Imagine how simple LED lighting could be on a DC circuit. Just an LED and
resistor.

I only took a few electrical engineering classes so correct me if this is a
bad idea.

~~~
spicymaki
To convert from AC to DC you need a transformer and a rectifier and there will
be energy loss during the conversion.

~~~
umvi
Right, but my question is would it be better to do the conversion once for the
entire house or to make every single device bundle in its own transformer and
rectifier as we are currently doing?

~~~
spicymaki
I was not clear. The point I was trying to make was that transformers are not
perfect in the conversion even when there is no load there is some power loss
in the form of heat. Not sure if it is a real problem or not.

------
nkingsy
As others have mentioned, it seems all backwards that each bulb is converting
AC/DC internally, and does not appear to have much in the way of heat
dissipation for the converter or the LED chip(s).

I've built a lot of LED lighting setups, and even with the most efficient
chips and converters, extremely underdriven, the footprint required to run
efficiently and dissipate heat in a way that will let them last 10-20 years is
an order of magnitude larger than what would fit in a bulb.

~~~
atonse
I've thought about the idea of wiring my entire house with DC for the lighting
parts, for exactly this reason. But the fact that I'd have to sell my house
one day stops me.

~~~
Freak_NL
I've built a custom LED-lighting setup in my living room. There is one 10cm ×
4cm × 30cm AC/DC transformer (with its jet-intake-like 4cm fan replaced with a
quiet 8cm fan intended for gaming rigs) that supplies 12V from a central
location, passing through a panel of MOSFETs driven by a PCA9685 controlled by
a Raspberry Pi, onwards to the custom armatures in the ceiling. I can set it
to all the colours of the rainbow (RGBWW LEDs), but the warm-white LEDs mean I
can mix anything from a very low-key ambient amber evening lighting to a
brighter and colder light useful for doing things that require, well, light.

I've only done this in the living room as an experiment, and have no intention
of doing this anywhere else exactly because of the maintenance overhead and
the breaking with convention.

> But the fact that I'd have to sell my house one day stops me.

“Here. It works now. Here is a manual that describes how it works, here is a
box of spare parts. You are welcome to rip it all out and replace it with
conventional gear. There is no warrantee on this thing, even though it's
awesome.”

------
djtriptych
My experience has been totally positive, although limited to an early release
of the full color Philips Hue bulbs which are like $50/each.

The Hue app kinda sucks but those bulbs have been going strong for 4-5 years.
No failures of course, and one bulb that was left outside (covered) in NYC and
always on for almost two years. No issues at all, and runs very cool.

~~~
tdhz77
Economically it’s a disaster but technically Hue lights are a wonder. Every
bulb is a Hue @ my house. I can make it a 80’s Miami nightclub or make the
rooms feel bigger with bright light. It’s nice.

------
ChuckMcM
From the article -- _" The new $5 BR30 LED bulbs I just installed in the
kitchen are amazingly bright and crisp: tests with a lux meter show the
illuminance is more than 60% higher. Plus, they’ll more than pay for
themselves in electricity savings compared to the old, inefficient LED bulbs
they replaced."_

This is what amazes me, I've been an early adopter of LED bulbs (Google even
gave out a bunch at one time to employees) and have seen my share of failures,
from color shift, to brightness degradation, to controller failure. That said,
they nearly always cost less to operate than the previous incandescent lamps
they replaced.

When the LED 'tubes' which replace fluorescent bulbs became cost effective I
replaced all the bulbs in my garage. And when a credible can light with
acceptable dimming came out I replaced all of the recessed lighting in the
family room and living room. I now don't have a single incandescent lamp in
the house and it has reduced by monthly energy by anywhere from 35 to 55 KWhr
per month. That represents about a $50 a year in energy cost savings. The cost
has come down to the point where the bulbs pay for themselves well within
their lifetime range (my experience over a population of 62 different bulbs
has been 7.5 years MTTF).

That said, I haven't been as diligent in figuring out exactly why a bulb has
died, if it is just the power supply I expect they could be resurrected less
expensively than a new bulb, caveat the reassembly of the light diffuser bulb.

------
izzydata
This is pretty annoying as I replaced every bulb in my house with LED under
the assumption that they would last at least a decade. I didn't even think to
check a powered-on time rating.

Not that using incandescent bulbs is a good option anymore anyway.

~~~
dchichkov
Curious, have you noticed any sleep issues, after you've switched to LED?

~~~
izzydata
No, but all my LED bulbs give off a yellow light instead of a white light.

~~~
andy_adams
As I understand it, even though LED output is yellow, the primary light range
emitted is blue. No idea if this study [1] is good, but the abstract explains
it a bit.

[1]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4734149/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4734149/)

------
baybal2
I once worked for an offshoot of Sunfor - a chemical company making LED
phosphors.

The first driverless, flicker free LEDs on the market were their invention.
Basic idea is that if you fine tune phosphor components, and their ratios, you
can make a direct 120hz AC driven LED with close to no visible flicker for as
long as your output colour temperature is in between 5500 to 6000 Kelvins

~~~
taxicabjesus
> as long as your output colour temperature is in between 5500 to 6000 Kelvins

color temperature is really important. I despise 3300K+ headlights and bulbs.

Philips has a dimmable LED bulb where the temperature varies between 2200K and
2700K. I've also found standard 2200K bulbs. But mostly I prefer using single-
color red orange and yellow bulbs.

My understanding is that white LEDs are basically blue/ultraviolet LEDs with
phosphors to knock down the energy level of the photons. Do you have any links
about the phosphor components used for different color outputs?

~~~
baybal2
No specifics, they don't get public about the tech besides bare minimum:

[http://xlgy.scnyw.com/product/powder.html](http://xlgy.scnyw.com/product/powder.html)

[http://en.scnyw.com/About/Affiliates/4.html](http://en.scnyw.com/About/Affiliates/4.html)
[http://xlgy.scnyw.com](http://xlgy.scnyw.com)

They were bought and sold like 10 times over since I left them in 2013

------
jxramos
I was an early adopter thinking it would save a bunch of money in the long
run. I went all Cree and happened to have a few Philips. The Philips are still
standing tall, one burned out of the two after like 7 years. However there's
these eco incandescent lights I installed in my parent's bathroom that are
connected to a standard fixture powered trough one of the Lutron Maestro
dimmer switches. Those bulbs have never failed possibly going on 8 years+. I'm
pretty convinced that their fade in fade out dimming when you turn on/off the
switch makes a graceful ramp of current that the filament never gets shocked
to suffer rapid thermal expansion that eventually fails the bulb.

Cree has a good 10 year warranty though, I've sent in boxes of dead bulbs to
them. However many substitutes are dying out too and they're included in many
of the replacements that are going back for my next batch.

------
userbinator
I have some electronics with LED displays/indicators that have been on 24/7
for over 30 years, or 256k hours, and haven't failed. The difference between
those and the ones in bulb replacements is that the latter are driven much
harder, to the point that they dissipate a lot of heat. Indicator/display LEDs
don't get hot or even noticeably above ambient.

Thus it seems that, just like with incandescent bulbs, LEDs will last
practically forever if they're run dimly. The difference is that LEDs are
actually _more_ efficient at lower current densities, where they're converting
more of their input power to light instead of heat, but cost considerations
has lead to typical bulbs driving them at much higher currents for more
brightness but correspondingly less life and efficiency. They're still far
more efficient than incandescents, so I guess that's what counts...

------
JoeAltmaier
I toured a house looking to buy, 20 years ago. The old lady owner said "The
light bulb over the door is going with me! I've had it 20 years and counting."
It was a weird antique-looking thing with lots of wires and stuff in the clear
glass bulb. Dim as hell. But 20 years! They don't make them like they used to.

~~~
blattimwind
The expected life of incandescent bulbs follows power laws with pretty big
exponents: w.r.t. intensity its to the third power, w.r.t. voltage to the
sixteenth power. So if you e.g. put a 230 V bulb on 110 V power, it will be
dim as hell, but boi will it last!

~~~
jandrese
So what this is saying is that light bulb companies engineered their bulbs to
need regular replacement and we could have had much much longer lifespans with
somewhat dimmer bulbs?

~~~
chihuahua
But then the efficiency (light output per watt of power used) would be quite
bad, so we'd be wasting enormous amounts of power.

------
8bitsrule
New Yorker:'LED Quandry'
(2016)[https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-l-e-d-
quanda...](https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-l-e-d-quandary-why-
theres-no-such-thing-as-built-to-last)

"A light bulb at a fire station in Livermore, California, has been on almost
continuously since 1901. In 2015 it was recognized by Guinness World Records
as the world’s longest-burning bulb.... Giles Slade, in his book “Made to
Break,” traces the term “planned obsolescence” to a 1932 pamphlet, circulated
in New York, titled 'Ending the Depression through Planned Obsolescence'....
the lamps market will bring in an estimated thirty-eight billion dollars this
year, L.E.D.-bulb makers are already reacting to the spectre of declining
sales."

~~~
th0ma5
See also
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centennial_Light](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centennial_Light)

------
brianpgordon
Why are they putting electrolytic capacitors in these light bulbs? The SM2082D
datasheet specifically calls for an electrolytic cap, but wouldn't a power
ceramic cap last longer? 4.7uF is doable with ceramics. Is it just a really
minor cost thing, and hoping the bulb fails so you have to buy a new one?

~~~
rmu09
Could be the driver is designed for a specific range of equivalent series
resistance of the capacitor. High ESR could help with peak current and EMC.

~~~
brianpgordon
You have to add a resistor across the cap anyway according to the wiring
diagram. I think dfox is probably right that it's a voltage rating thing.

~~~
rmu09
That's a bleed resistor to discharge the capacitor when turning off, else it
could keep dangerous charge for a long time.

ESR limits current inrush into the capacitor, with ceramic caps you would need
some additional current limiting.

Voltage should not be that much of a problem, but there may be other issues
with ceramic caps (like cracking due to thermal stress, voltage dependent
capacity, microphoning, ...)

------
hypertexthero
I was recently excited to find an ”award winning” Ikea Riggad LED lamp on the
”take for free” shelf by the recycling area of my building.

Plugged it in, did not work. Tried dismantling it with the help of these
photos — [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhfZ-
vwau8c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhfZ-vwau8c) — but some screw sockets
seemed damaged and the screws would not come off. I could not see anything
wrong with cables or soldering as far as I got, so I wonder if the LED or
circuit board is the problem.

Good design needs to consider sustainability, longevity and ease-of-
maintenance in addition to how something works and looks.

------
momentmaker
The same could be said about every product...

Appliances back in the days could last decades. Now you're lucky if they don't
break in a few years.

What do they say about the best type of customer? The best customer is a
repeat customer :)

~~~
scrooched_moose
It says more that customers overwhelmingly prefer cheap products.

A 1962 washing machine was 184.95 [1] ($1523.97 today) and a 1959 model was
$209.95 [2] ($1729.97 today); which are both more expensive than all but the
highest end front loader currently at Best Buy. The vast majority of top
loaders are in the $500-700 range, top loaders $800-1000. There simply isn't
much market for $2000 machines that will last decades.

It's a similar story for almost all home appliances I've looked at.

1)
[http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/60selectrical.html](http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/60selectrical.html)

2) [http://www.aei.org/publication/appliance-
shopping-1959-vs-20...](http://www.aei.org/publication/appliance-
shopping-1959-vs-2012/)

~~~
philsnow
> The vast majority of top loaders are in the $500-700 range, top loaders
> $800-1000. There simply isn't much market for $2000 machines that will last
> decades.

Those "high end" washing machines will also fail in the same time range that
the low end ones will.

There is a market for them, but it will remain unfulfilled because the
manufacturers make more money in the short term with the low-reliability ones.

~~~
jandrese
I've never seen a washing machine manufacturer put their money where their
mouth is with a $2000 machine with a 20 year comprehensive warranty.

------
amelius
And the confusion really starts when you hook up LED bulbs to a legacy dimmer.

------
eddieone
It's no problem to get 50,000 hour LED bulb but you going to pay $10+ for each
one. Mainly due to the metal heat sink. American companies are still machining
blocks of metal. The Chinese adapted other heat sink technologies to make
thinner heat sink fins, when combined do the same with less materials. I'm
pretty sure the next leap will come from LCD scale LEDs combined into bigger
arrays which require even less for cooling since they can be printed onto
various materials.

------
epx
Well I had only one LED bulb fail me in 10 years. And not having a mercury
vial in each roof (CFLs) is a bonus.

------
kuon
I have another issue with LEDs, I am designing an indoor device that use solar
panel for recharge, and if I put my current solar panel (IXYS panel) under a
LED vs under an halogen light, which are both similar in light intensity "to
the eyes", I have like 100 times less energy on my panel under the LED.

I just discovered that a few days ago because I was using a LED maglight to
test my panel and realized I had incredibly small power output with it. Now I
am building a small circuit to measure and datalog the power output of
different solar panels under different type of artificial lights (vs having to
use the multimeter + oscilloscope which is not very portal outside my labs).

If you designed solar powered device for indoor use and have heard of this
issue, I'm very interested.

------
natch
Article does not so much as mention Philips which are the gold standard here.
The off brands he’s looking at are the problem. Cree is a fine brand for LED
components but not for the entire bulb assembly in my experience.

------
vanderZwan
> _Plus, they’ll more than pay for themselves in electricity savings compared
> to the old, inefficient LED bulbs they replaced._

Sure, eventually, but without further context this obsession with light bulbs
always sounds a little bit penny wise and pound foolish to me.

The relative cost of lighting on the monthly electricity bill is tiny so those
savings are pretty small. Getting a more efficient fridge, washing machine, TV
or (in our profession) computer typically has a much bigger effect on
electricity expenses. And that is assuming your heating and cooking is done
with gas.

~~~
CharlesColeman
> The relative cost of lighting on the monthly electricity bill is tiny so
> those savings are pretty small. Getting a more efficient fridge, washing
> machine, TV or (in our profession) computer typically has a much bigger
> effect on electricity expenses. And that is assuming your heating and
> cooking is done with gas.

The switch from using tiny space heaters for light to using LEDs that consume
a tenth of the power was a huge savings. It only takes a few 100w bulbs to
equal or exceed the energy consumption of a modest desktop computer.

~~~
nine_k
This is correct.

I just thought that "everybody" has switched to CFLs 10 years ago, when they
became decent.

~~~
dwighttk
Yeah, I switched a few bulbs to CFLs 10 years ago when they "became decent",
and then switched them out every 6 months (i.e. when they burned out) until
LEDs "became decent"... Haven't had as much trouble with LEDs as CFLs, but I'm
definitely not paying $10+/bulb like I did with CFLs.

~~~
nine_k
> definitely not paying $10+/bulb

Maybe you should. I mean, the cheapest option is rarely the most durable or
performant. See Vimes' Boots Theory.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Vimes#Boots_theory_of_soci...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Vimes#Boots_theory_of_socio-
economic_unfairness)

~~~
dwighttk
those $10 CFLs burned out almost as quickly as I could replace them. Kinda
spoiled me on the whole "spend more for something that will last longer"
theory.

------
SomeHacker44
My personal biggest problem with LED bulbs is that my entire (100 year old)
home is wired with neutral free light wiring and a lot of 3-way switches. This
makes using dimmers very hard and most do not support 3-way and many will not
work with LEDs and no neutral wire. Some do - Lutron Caseta makes a nice
neutral free dimmer that works on many of my bulbs - but others don’t and I
then just use high efficiency incandescents. Shame. Maybe there is a good
“neutral free dimmable LED” that allows reasonable leakage current so the
dimmer can work.

~~~
ricardobeat
There are many recent LED models that have built-in dimming, you step through
three or four brightness levels by flicking the switch on and off.

Or, switch entirely to Philips/Ikea smart bulbs which are very affordable now.
I think dimmers as a wall-mounted fixture will be on the way out soon.

------
foxhop
Personally I love the heat that an incondecent bulb emits, I can actually keep
my hands warm on my keyboard while lowering my room heat. 75 watt bulb with
heat versus a 3000 watt space heater.

~~~
QasimK
Depending on where you live, the energy “inefficiency” of a light bulb is no
such thing.

In the UK, for example, during winter (and spring and autumn) the heating is
appreciated! However, it is 2-3x more costly than using gas central heating.
(However however something something whole house vs room-specific heating.)

In the summer, it’s a complete waste though.

Directed infrared heating panels may be the most efficient because they do
what you describe - heat you up directly, rather than heat the air in the
room.

~~~
Brakenshire
It's also heating the ceiling, which will reduce the efficiency further.

It's a straightforward issue of separation of concerns, there are some
occasions where you want heating and lighting always tied together, but they
are niche. Almost everywhere in the world you have large periods of the day or
year when you want lighting without heat.

~~~
foxhop
I use a desk lamp so It's really close to me and I get both the light and heat
and I swap the bulb out for an LED during summer.

~~~
Brakenshire
Ah, I see, that’s a good idea.

------
SomeHacker44
One potential solution would be to standardize the driver and lighter
assemblies and allow them to be independently replaced. You could even then
have lamps with a single large driver which connects to many small lighter
assemblies without duplicated effort. Of course, that standardiZation process
could take a very long time and have a wide variety of form factors, output
levels, etc... which is sort of where we are anyway with light fixtures and
bulbs today!

------
joecool1029
Reading about bulbs lead me on a journey and I somehow stumbled upon
limelights (aka oxyhydrogen bulbs), which was the original theater lighting
'bulbs'. Basically, you can direct a torch over a block of lime (or a cinder-
block I guess) and it will become extremely bright.

Could only find one video of the effect:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wheumkzDslA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wheumkzDslA)

------
jpalomaki
As pointed out in the article the LEDs just fade away. This means that if you
define "lifetime", you also need to define how much you can lose brightness to
still considered it to be alive.

Could it be that with the initial 100k LEDs the definition was different than
with current ones? As mentioned, the industry is now using the 70% of
brightness as the limit. Since such figure was probably not defined early on,
maybe the vendors put the limit much lower.

------
ConceptJunkie
The same thing that happened to CFLs, they got cheap.

The CFLs I bought in the mid 90s lasted for years and years. Now they are
practically pre-burned-out for your convenience.

------
legitster
So it seems like part of this answer could be that the age statement could
have changed even if the bulbs did not. After a dozen or so years on the
market they have learned to promise less.

The article goes into how the color and brightness degrades naturally over
time, so it may also make sense that they counting more of that behavior as
failures rather than the traditional "burn out".

------
jonny_eh
What's the short answer?

~~~
baybal2
The AC-DC or DC-DC converter will likely die long before LED's junction.
Primary failure mode is capacitors "drifting" and closing the mosfet inside
the buck converter too early.

This is why I tell people to buy simple "driverless" LED bulbs. A shitty
constant current driver is worse than not having it at all.

~~~
jacobush
But don’t they flicker a LOT?

~~~
baybal2
Ones that are properly designed for "direct drive" do not.

------
trumped
We know how to make incandescent bulbs that last this long, that is not the
problem... Companies just make more money this way.

------
yonatron
Unless you need to get there by boat, it's "lighting aisle", not "lighting
isle".

------
midef
Cree's 1st generation LED bulbs are one of the worst purchases that I've made.
I outfitted my entire house with them, but they started dropping like flies.
The failure rate was around 50% and the cost of shipping back a bulb under
warranty was the same as buying a new one.

------
jammygit
I personally haven't have a LED bulb last 2 years yet, most last 3-6 months. I
get them from dollar stores, Walmart, and Ikea. Maybe there is some magical
lighting store that sells good ones, but I think there are 3 burnt out ones in
various places in my house as I type this.

------
ShinyObject
There is a youtube channel that does detailed led bulb teardowns, for those
who would like more of this sort of info.
[https://www.youtube.com/user/electronupdate](https://www.youtube.com/user/electronupdate)

------
moab
Some fun reading on the topic of long-living light bulbs:
[https://www.tildedave.com/byron.html](https://www.tildedave.com/byron.html)

Edit: the source is not mentioned anywhere. This is an excerpt from Gravity's
Rainbow.

------
mrbill
I bought a bunch of the Cree LED bulbs from HD when they first came out, and
I've had probably 6-8 of them fail into what I call "disco strobe" mode.

Eventually I'll replace the rest of them as they fail with whatever cheap
store brand LED bulbs I can get.

------
fritzball
The biggest advantage of LED over fluro for me is light quality. High quality
LEDs can put out a pretty nice spectrum which for me makes them ideal to
replace halogens or incandescent. I use 100W (actual) LED flood lights for my
loft and I love them.

------
ocdtrekkie
Two of my Cree bulbs failed a couple months from each other about five years
into a 22-year advertised life. I realized it wasn't worth it to pay to ship
them the bulbs for replacement, so I just decided not to buy more Cree bulbs.

------
rsynnott
Three years in on a bunch of very cheap Ikea GU10 LED bulbs, haven't seen any
failures yet. Though one of them occasionally likes to buzz softly at random
times.

The fittings are open-backed (not ceiling-recessed) which probably helps.

------
liotier
First generation "high power" LED (I have a bunch with E27 socket) had a small
cooling fan... If you ever owned a laptop for a while, you know what happens
to small fans after a (admittedly long) while.

------
analog31
In some of the fixtures in my house, I've thought of installing small fans
running at low speed (resistor in series with the fan slows it down) to stir
the air and help cool the lamp.

------
pishpash
Bad LED bulbs, like bad headphones, or TVs that emit high pitched whine,
brought to you by undiscerning people with broken senses who nevertheless
insist you're crazy.

------
OliverJones
Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon, has a plotline involving hunting for a
rogue lightbulb that has lasted too long.

------
finin
cf. Byron the Bulb in Thomas Pynchon's book Gravity's Rainbow
[http://lukedanger.blogspot.com/2009/02/story-of-byron-
bulb.h...](http://lukedanger.blogspot.com/2009/02/story-of-byron-bulb.html)

------
ph0rque
Somewhat related, I am collaborating with someone on building an indoor
aquaponics system, and he's ready to pick out LED lights. We both are really
confused by all the acronyms (PAR, PPF, PPFD, etc). Does anyone have a good,
ELI5 (or ELINP: Explain Like I'm a Normal Person) article on what to look for?

------
Spooky23
A: There is no such thing.

In pursuit of cost savings, we made a simple product 100x more complex.

------
perseusprime11
LED bulbs are bad for us. Better to use low-voltage incandescent halogen
lights.

------
0000011111
Life pro tip. Sharpie the date on your bulbs the day you install them.

------
dwighttk
And why does every single LED stoplight I see have large segments of unlit
LEDs?

Seems like some municipalities got sold a pile of crap. At least they work
even with the missing lights, but who knows how often they are having to
replace those?

~~~
organsnyder
Funny... I've never noticed that. Maybe your municipality picked the wrong
vendor?

~~~
jandrese
Or he lives in a town where people regularly shoot the stoplights.

~~~
dwighttk
maybe... looks like some sort of passive failure to me though. I haven't
noticed any bullet holes.

------
noonespecial
They didn't come with 100000 hour power supplies.

All the failures I've torn down over the years had failed power supplies and
perfectly functional LED's. I've got a drawer full of the for little projects.

------
droithomme
Most of mine have lasted about a year. So a few times longer than
incandescent, sure, but cost a lot more. And I am sure the energy cost of
manufacturing them (including mining for rare earth minerals) is so greatly
more that over their lifetime they use more energy than incandescents which
were made of simpler materials.

------
2019ideas
I bought some G9 bulbs, and they are not performing like the halogens... It
doesn't give me the full RGB like halogens and my house looks pale white(lacks
red) instead of full color.

I might go back, I do not like the look of my house, and I find myself turning
on my living room lights AND dining room lights. The brightness wasn't there.

There is massive improvement to be made on LEDs still.

~~~
cr0sh
If you're getting a pale white, "operating room" color - look into "warm
white" (instead of cool white or "sunlight") LED bulbs. I've found them to be
the closest to an incandescent you can get. Be aware, though, that some "warm
white" bulbs are toward the "cooler" end of the range and look more white;
you'll need to try a few brands to find the color temp you like.

~~~
2019ideas
Yeah the G9s we bought had nothing labeled. Going to give amazon a try.

------
gt565k
Seems like a capitalistic society will never get away from products with
built-in planned obsolescence. It's all about the profits. Buy and replace
consumers...

There's a great documentary on planned obsolescence for those that haven't
seen it.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdh7_PA8GZU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdh7_PA8GZU)

