
That 60W-equivalent LED: What no one will tell you - Shivetya
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/led-insights/4423570/That-60W-equivalent-LED--What-you-don-t-know--and-what-no-one-will-tell-you-
======
TheCraiggers
Not all LED lightbulbs are created equal. I've been watching some guy on
Youtube do various teardowns and tests on various brands, and it's been
enlightening. His channel is at
[http://www.youtube.com/user/electronupdate](http://www.youtube.com/user/electronupdate)

Also, isn't the phrase "What you don't know, and no one will tell you"
oxymoronic? I suppose "what you don't know, and only I will tell you" doesn't
have the same ring to it.

~~~
tracker1
It's fairly obvious, that you and the guy that runs the channel in question
are witches... prepare to burn!

Seriously though, this is pretty cool... I am fairly surprised that there
hasn't been a DC standard for lighting fixtures come into play yet... Which
could be much more effective in terms of cost over time, and temperature
control. Given the shear number of wall warts, and other fixtures common in
the home, it would make sense for a more common interface for DC (especially
low watt)... USB seems to be becoming that standard, but for lighting, and
safety for internal wiring a new standard is probably needed (or an old one
revisited).

~~~
Osiris
Given that nearly everything in a home uses AC-DC converters, I'm also really
surprised that there isn't (that I know) a standard for a whole house DC jack
that can supply common DC voltages, removing the necessity for all devices to
have their own AC-DC transformers.

~~~
ars
The wires would be too big. You just can't send enough power at a low voltage.
You'd need either lots of dedicated wires to each outlet, or a wire as big as
a hose.

AC is nice because it's easy to convert to other voltages. With DC you'd need
either the exact voltage - or a converter, and if you have a converter you
might as well just go directly from AC.

~~~
Amadou
Seems like Power over Ethernet would be a pretty good standard to go with.
Right now it's good for 25.5 watts at 44 volts. Wikipedia says some vendors
have tweaked the standard to use more lines and get it up to 51 watts. To
over-simplify, the higher the voltage the less loss there is on the wire for a
given amount of energy (amps).

Added bonus you get ethernet too so any devices like LED lights, cameras, etc
can be programmable without wifi/zigbee/etc.

~~~
ars
Power over Ethernet only helps for not having to run a second pair of wires.

You would still need a DC/DC converter, and if you do that you might as well
just go from AC.

PoE is helpful certainly, but not as a way of having universal DC in the
house.

~~~
Amadou
_You would still need a DC /DC converter, and if you do that you might as well
just go from AC._

You are thinking wall-wart type applications. I'm more along the lines of
infrastructure, lights and other permanently installed devices that can be
designed from the ground-up to operate at 44v.

~~~
ars
> designed from the ground-up to operate at 44v.

Why? What's the benefit over 110v?

------
ubercore
I really dislike this article. It took me a little bit to figure out why. Most
of the annoyance comes from fatigue of reading this kind of thing. "Humvees
are more carbon neutral than a Prius" kind of thing.

Besides my personal annoyance though, this kind of unbalanced and unrigorous
article is just flat out dangerous to public discourse on a pretty important
issue. LED bulbs have strengths and weakness, to be sure. I didn't think the
heat issue was a "secret" that "nobody will tell me". It was the first thing
mentioned in nearly _every single article or story I 've seen about LED
bulbs_. I've been using LED bulbs for about 4 years now (in regular fixtures,
closed fixtures, outdoor fixtures in summer and winter, closed bathroom
fixtures) and have not had a single issue. As others mention, even if I did
there's good warranty coverage.

I'm probably more radical than most on energy issues, but I find this kind of
FUD downright _irresponsible_.

It also is part of this annoying trend of people that really enjoy trying to
poke holes in new technology. Like electrocuting elephants with evil electric
distribution technology.

~~~
neltnerb
So, I actually own an LED lighting company, and I found the article quite
fair. This has been bugging me for a while with the new LED bulbs, there's
frankly no reason to get them to replace a CFL except for mercury, and the
build quality is garbage. The heat sinking stuff is absolutely critical, and
while yours may be fine, a lot of these bulbs (and more every year that new
players get into making them) are simply not amenable to being used as direct
replacements without some extremely clever design that's not being done.

Not to mention that the incremental efficiency gain is negligible.
Incandescent to CFL is a huge efficiency gain, so you can actually pay back
the increased cost in electricity usage in a short while. A 60W equivalent CFL
might consume ~13W. A similar LED bulb will be around ~9W. That extra 4W is
such a marginal improvement that it would take decades to make it back in
energy cost. So the only selling point is lifetime, and I've seen no
indication that there is a big difference between the two -- both have similar
types of failures, usually control electronics or power supply passives due to
poor quality manufacturing.

~~~
maratd
> there's frankly no reason to get them to replace a CFL except for mercury

Isn't that enough? I try to keep things that can kill me to a minimum.

~~~
tocomment
I actually have a room of my house I don't go in because a cfl broke there a
year ago.

When I read how to clean it up it sounded so scary I now stear clear of the
whole room :-(

~~~
cnvogel
Even _if_ you'd have spilled all of the mercury on the carpet (and most of it
will possibly have stuck on the inside of the bulb and been disposed of with
the shards), it will have evaporated (and hence, left the room in gaseous
phase) a long time ago.

[http://www.state.nj.us/dep/dsr/research/mercury-
bulbs.pdf](http://www.state.nj.us/dep/dsr/research/mercury-bulbs.pdf)

------
dangrossman
I have dozens of Cree-brand LED bulbs in my home (they're the uber-cheap brand
Home Depot carries, yet always very favorably reviewed). Their packaging
carries no warnings against use in totally enclosed fixtures, and I have
several in such fixtures in bathrooms. They also come with a 10-year full
replacement warranty. Some are now about two years old, and none of their
bulbs have failed or even become too hot to touch.

I have a feeling this guy's overstating the problem. Perhaps because he's in
the business of patenting thermal protection designs for bulb manufacturers.

~~~
Shivetya
its not the bulb that gets warm, after having one on awhile take it out of the
fixture and check the base of it.

I have two in tulip style fixtures where the bulbs point down, they don't last
long but receipts are a wonderful thing. Eventually I think the big box store
I get them from will change their return rules

~~~
jamesaguilar
As long as they have a ten-year replacement guarantee, I guess it doesn't
matter as long as it's not a fire hazard.

~~~
ScottBurson
Fire hazard? They're certainly not as hot as incandescent bulbs!

~~~
jamesaguilar
Sorry, I simply didn't know. I did not mean to imply they were.

------
tytso
There are some LED bulbs that are explicitly rated for use in enclosures with
no ventilation. The other thing to pay attention to is whether the light
dispersal pattern is pointed mostly straight down (i.e., for a recessed
ceiling lighting fixure) or omni-directional (i.e., for a sconce or a table
lamp). Reputable stores will make this clear --- and yes, it's a bit more
complicated than just grabbing a random 100W incandescent bulb. For example:

[http://store.earthled.com/collections/led-light-bulbs-
suitab...](http://store.earthled.com/collections/led-light-bulbs-suitable-for-
enclosed-fixtures-fully-enclosed-fixture-rated-led-light-bulbs)

~~~
cjensen
The point of the linked article is the bulb will not last very long when hot.
The article never said it wouldn't work.

~~~
adestefan
No bulb will last very long when hot. This isn't something new.

~~~
ars_technician
Incandescents will. They get very hot in normal operation and last the amount
of time you would expect from an incandescent.

~~~
Filligree
Which is not, by any stretch of the imagination, "very long".

~~~
DanBC
Incandescents die from thermal shock, not from being hot.

~~~
neltnerb
They die because over time the filament sinters causing grain growth and
necking at the edges. The individual grains shift until due to the 1D
constraint they each have grain boundaries with each other that stretch from
the radial edges of the cylinder across. Once the grain boundary looks like
that, you see increased surface diffusion at the grain boundary near the
surface that forms a pit which weakens the filament.

Perhaps you could argue that it requires cycling because the cooling causes
increased axial stress and gradually pulls the filament apart, but it is most
certainly more complicated than just thermal shock. I believe that so long as
you're not shattering glass, it's more about how long it's been hot so far and
how many times it's been completely cooled.

------
nickhalfasleep
What a bullshit dataless fearmongering article. If your lamp and enclosure are
UL rated then the on-die temperature is well within operating parameters for
the 6000 hr+ lifespan. If you go with a CREE or Philips lamp then their
thermal design was built for the cooking the L-Prize and Energy Star demands
of them. The DOE took their and customer experiences with CFL's to heart when
designing goals for Energy Star LED lamps.

Source: I was a lighting engineer at a major Independent Testing Laboratory
for 5 years before going to software full time.

~~~
nickhalfasleep
In short, get only Energy Star certified lamps
[http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=ssl.pr_why_es_com](http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=ssl.pr_why_es_com)

To get the Energy Star rating, the manufacturer must get an independent lab to
measure their operation at 45C and measure the temperature on the die (per the
LED manufacturer's specs), to validate that it will maintain it's life
expectancy.

[http://www.energystar.gov/ia/partners/manuf_res/downloads/In...](http://www.energystar.gov/ia/partners/manuf_res/downloads/IntegralLampsFINAL.pdf)

If you want to read all the nitty gritty details.

~~~
mcguire
" _the manufacturer must get an independent lab to measure their operation at
45C and measure the temperature on the die_ "

In an environment with no airflow?

~~~
nickhalfasleep
There is convection off of the bulb, but no flow from any other source. They
want to make sure they can sit and take it.

~~~
mcguire
That might be a problem, if the bulb was installed in a recessed ceiling can,
right? Convection would heat the environment in the fixture.

------
Spooky23
The whole lightbulb debacle is a great reason why the government regulatory
regime needs to stop meddling with the marketplace.

Until 2000, buying a lightbulb was an unconscious act. You go to any store,
and buy a fucking lightbulb. 80% of sales were 60w. Some applications call for
different bulbs.

Now, solutions for getting light out of edison sockets take up A FULL AISLE in
Home Depot, with a dizzying array of choices that are difficult to evaluate.

You can buy normal lightbulbs, except that now most of them are mislabeled --
a 60W bulb may actually be 50W. 100W bulbs are impossible to find and cost
$5/ea.

You can buy CFLs. Some are great, others make your living room look like a gas
station bathroom in 1960. Most suck, and as a layman, I now have to know what
color temperature is. And, oh yeah, many bulbs, which cost 5x-10x the original
bulbs, burn out quickly in fixtures, or burn out quickly when in any
orientation other than a standard lamp. (ie. put them in sideways, or mount
them upside down)

Now you have LEDs, which sometimes have better light quality, but they cost
$20. And while they may last longer, you need to be an engineer to evaluate
the appropriate bulb for the appropriate application.

Just let me buy a bulb and pay more for electricity.

~~~
jonknee
> Now, solutions for getting light out of edison sockets take up A FULL AISLE
> in Home Depot, with a dizzying array of choices that are difficult to
> evaluate.

So that damn government meddling has resulted in too much choice in the free
market?

~~~
Spooky23
No, it's resulted in a bunch of subpar choices by largely eliminating the best
choice from a qualitative perspective.

The government decided that modifying the electricity demand curve was more
important than me having light that meets my needs when the sun goes down.

A free market approach would allow me to make decisions based on cost and
other factors. For example, my basement and garage are lit by efficient CFL
and _very expensive_ LED lighting that was installed when the house was
purchased several years ago.

In my office, I find a standard incandescent bulb better than the more
efficient alternatives. I value not getting a headache every evening more
highly than the $8 I spend in electricity annually on those bulbs. So now I
have to resort to hoarding light-bulbs.

I'm an engineer passionate about efficiency, so I tweak stuff like this. My
mom isn't -- she ends up suffering with awful light.

------
andrewcooke
i'm confused. how can they be efficient if they get hot? are they less
efficient than the coiled tubes? if so, why are they an improvement?

edit: how can they be more efficient than cfls if they get hotter? how are the
cooler cfls wasting energy? you can't just "lose" energy - it has to go
somewhere. and normally for losses, it's heat.

~~~
kijin
A regular light bulb converts about 2% of its energy input into light, and 98%
into heat. For a 60W light bulb, about 1.25W is converted into light and
58.75W into heat [1]. It's incredibly inefficient, and the filament can reach
temperatures of over 3000K. (Ever wonder why CCFL lamps have their colors
expressed as temperatures like 2900K? That's the actual temperature of a
filament with the same color.)

A 60W-equivalent LED lamp uses 6-8W of energy. Assuming it converts roughly
the same amount of energy (1.25W) into light, the remaining 4.75-6.75W needs
to be converted to heat. That's about as much thermal dissipation as a low-end
laptop CPU, but concentrated in a much smaller area and with a much less
effective cooling system (it doesn't even have a fan). 85 degrees sounds about
right.

[Edit] Still, 85 degrees is nothing compared to the extreme temperatures that
a filament in a regular light bulb experiences. It's only a problem because
the LED chips aren't made of carbon or tungsten like filaments are.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incandescent_light_bulb#Effica...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incandescent_light_bulb#Efficacy.2C_efficiency.2C_and_environmental_impact)

~~~
andrewcooke
i'm not comparing LEDs with incadescent bulbs, i'm comparing them with the
coiled tubes - cfls. these things -
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_fluorescent_lamp](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_fluorescent_lamp)

[i thought that was obvious - are you trolling?]

~~~
kijin
I was just trying to explain how even an "efficient" lamp can overheat. Sorry
I overlooked the CFL.

In terms of energy efficiency, CFLs are halfway between incandescent bulbs and
LEDs. So the same comparison holds, only the differences are less extreme.

60W-equivalent CFLs use 13-15W of energy. That's approx. 1.25W into light
(because the amount of light is more or less the same in all cases) and the
remainder (11.75-13.75W) into heat. That's why CFL lamps get rather warm after
a while. Very bright CFLs often have slots in the base for ventilation [1].

You just don't notice it as much because:

1) The heat source of CFLs is much larger than LEDs, so the average
temperature is lower even though the total amount of heat is higher.

2) With all those coils and folds, CFLs have a larger surface area than most
other types of lamps, so they cool easily.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Compact_fluorescent_light...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Compact_fluorescent_light_bulbs_105W_36W_11W.jpg)

~~~
ars
> In terms of energy efficiency, CFLs are halfway between incandescent bulbs
> and LEDs.

That isn't true. LEDs are equivalent to CFLs in energy efficiency. The only
LEDs that are more efficient are either lying to you (they claim the light is
more directed so it "counts" as more, and they uprate the bulb), or they have
worse color accuracy so you are not comparing equivalent bulbs.

> The heat source of CFLs is much larger than LEDs, so the average temperature
> is lower even though the total amount of heat is higher.

No. The heat source is not larger - it's in a different location, it's in the
bulb part and it emits infrared light and is sent into the room. With LEDs the
heat is made in the base and stays there.

> With all those coils and folds, CFLs have a larger surface area than most
> other types of lamps, so they cool easily.

That doesn't explain why an incandescent that makes 6 times as much heat can
manage, but an LED can't. It's not the cooling of the bulb, it's the type of
heat - incandescents and CFLs make their heat in the form of infrared light
that is sent into the room.

~~~
kijin
> The only LEDs that are more efficient are either lying to you (they claim
> the light is more directed so it "counts" as more, and they uprate the
> bulb), or they have worse color accuracy so you are not comparing equivalent
> bulbs.

Let's exclude lying vendors.

Worse color accuracy is annoying for those who care, but as far as total
energy output is concerned, it shouldn't matter. A watt is a watt no matter
what frequency it is radiated at.

> The heat source is not larger - it's in a different location, it's in the
> bulb part

Sure. And the bulb of a typical CFL is hundreds of times larger than the die
of an LED.

> That doesn't explain why an incandescent that makes 6 times as much heat can
> manage, but an LED can't.

As I mentioned in the great-great-grandparent comment, glass tubes (CFLs) and
tungsten wires (incandescent lamps) are much less sensitive to heat than tiny
pieces of delicate electronics are. 85'C is child's play to glass and tungsten
but deathly to silicon.

> incandescents and CFLs make their heat in the form of infrared light that is
> sent into the room.

The "sent into the room" part is definitely correct. LEDs overheat more easily
because the heat is generated and trapped in the base. But even if you dangled
a bare LED in mid-air, I doubt you could make it as cool as a CFL because the
heat source is concentrated in such a small area. I'd also be surprised if
those LEDs didn't generate a lot of infrared ratiation.

~~~
ars
> but as far as total energy output is concerned, it shouldn't matter. A watt
> is a watt no matter what frequency it is radiated at.

Ah, but if you are willing to have poor color accuracy then CFLs should be
allowed that as well, and if you do that then their energy efficiency is
better than an LED.

> glass tubes (CFLs) and tungsten wires (incandescent lamps) are much less
> sensitive to heat than tiny pieces of delicate electronics are

CFLs have switching power supplies in the base that don't like heat either.
It's not just a glass tube. But I'm willing to accept that they can handle
heat better than an LED emitter. (And I'm pretty sure it's just the emitter
with the problem - it's certainly possible to make "delicate electronics" that
can handle heat.)

------
JackFr
This read to me like an ad for CFL's. Real shortcomings of CFL's are dismissed
with a hand wave, while LED's get the full local news style sensationalism:
"Are your LED bulbs killing you? Story at 10."

~~~
dfc
Or it reads like an advertisement for thermal management technology inside of
LED light bulbs:

"Ed Rodriguez [the author]...formed OptoThermal Technologies to focus on
thermal management technologies related to high-power LED lighting."

[http://www.edn.com/user/ed%20ro](http://www.edn.com/user/ed%20ro)

------
Benferhat
tl;dr: LED bulbs get too hot, lowering their life expectancy. Manufacturers
need to include cheap thermistor circuits, which automatically dim the light
to a safe thermal equilibrium.

~~~
benjamincburns
Consumers need to be educated, too. Anyone using an A19 in a can-style fixture
is wasting energy by lighting things they don't need lit. Use something
directional like a PAR or a BR, and you can reduce the amount of wattage
consumed to light a given area.

Further, LED manufacturers design their directional lamps with these
applications in mind. See the spiral pattern [1] on the heat sink around
Lighting Science PAR bulbs? That's designed to use the thermal differential to
create a nice air flow up into the fixture so that it may be used in a
recessed or other partially-enclosed fixture.

1: [http://www.1000bulbs.com/product/100560/LED-
PAR3011HE25WW.ht...](http://www.1000bulbs.com/product/100560/LED-
PAR3011HE25WW.html)

~~~
Pxtl
It's a light bulb.

A light bulb.

This isn't a car, which you expect to require some expertise. It's not a
furnace that will be primarily handled by an HVAC specialist. It's a light
bulb. Consumers have a reasonable expectation that devices like this Just
Work. If the device fails to meet its promised service-level without a dozen
asterisks in its usage? It's not meeting its intended purpose and it's
defective.

Consumers should not have to meticulously research every small purchase.
Simple, small purchases of replacement parts should not require reading a
10-page instruction manual of 6-point font, especially since you didn't get
this manual until after you got the damned thing home.

By allowing manufacturers to sell these defective devices, we don't just hurt
consumers, we hurt the environment with unnecessary waste of electronics, and
we hurt the real, quality manufacturers who want to sell good stuff but can't
because there's no way to tell consumers "all the other crap on the shelf will
break in under two years and we won't" so they end up getting crushed by
people who cut corners.

~~~
benjamincburns
I hope you don't work in UX.

"Educating the consumer" is the onus of the manufacturers. It doesn't mean
10-page instruction manuals with 6-point font or hours of meticulous research
[edit: this is a _horrible_ way to educate consumers]. In this case it
probably means packaging and labeling which plainly states "not for use in
recessed fixtures" in a way which most anyone would understand. This could be
a sticker which says just that, it could be iconography, it could be an
obnoxious DVD on loop in the lighting aisle at Home Depot, or it could be all
of those things.

Yes, it's a light bulb (a light bulb!) but that doesn't mean manufacturers
shouldn't attempt to get consumers to use it properly.

~~~
annnnd
I hope YOU don't work in UX... ;)

The need to educate a customer usually surfaces when someone was unable to
produce a proper product. Sure, you need to warn users when your product can't
be used under some circumstances, but if possible, you should aim at
fulfilling the users' expectations instead.

~~~
benjamincburns
Touché. The comment was mostly directed at the hyperbole of "10 page manuals"
and such.

I totally agree with what you're saying, though.

The issue at hand is that consumers want something that is impossible for
manufacturers to give to them. That is, a 100% efficient lighting solution
which shines light exactly when they want it, exactly how they want it, and
lasts forever. Consumers have gotten used to a market where there has been
almost no innovation for over a hundred years (in the driver side, fixtures
are a different story). Now that there's some diversity in the market,
consumers are unhappy because it's not matching expectations. The only way
that will change is if manufacturers properly set expectations.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
I'm not so sure we won't see the desired solution, and soon. Pretty good
illumination over a reasonable field would do the job. LED bulbs may get there
sooner than you think, unless their reputation is irredeemably tarnished by
the defective (read: not meeting minimum expectation) products being
overmarketed today.

------
ams6110
Thanks for the warning. Time to restock my cache of incandescents, before they
are completely unavailable anymore.

~~~
carlob
No need to do that, you can still use CFL and they are not being phased out.

~~~
maw
Why would anybody want to use CFL? Is it more for the migraines or for how
they make everything look sickly?

~~~
ars
CFLs don't flicker anymore, and if color accuracy is what you want stay away
from LEDs since all the efficient ones are worse than CFLs.

You can make LEDs with good color accuracy but you lose efficiency making them
worse than equivalent CFLs.

------
tonylemesmer
If the thermister circuit is installed they'll be dimmer. Either way, the
customer is still disappointed. Shorter life or dimmer bulb, depends which the
customer is more concerned about. Adding the circuit changes nothing.

------
jwr
I've spent a lot of time recently working on my own LED lamp designs. Heat
dissipation is indeed the biggest problem, the second being the cost and
complexity of interfacing to an AC network of 230/110V.

I think new kinds of fixtures will need to be designed, as well as new
standards for DC distribution within the house (I am trying out 48V and 24V).
Retrofitting existing infrastructure with LEDs makes no sense: we get
wasteful, fragile and inefficient systems.

~~~
kalleboo
> as well as new standards for DC distribution within the house (I am trying
> out 48V and 24V).

This is something I've wondered about for a while. Everything in my home aside
from a few kitchen appliances is now running a AC<>DC converter. At what point
does it make more sense to run DC circuits in the home? Would the gauge be a
problem to run enough DC power for a desktop PC, a TV, and a ton of LED
lights?

~~~
jwr
I think you need to strike a certain balance: for longer stretches of wire and
higher wattage AC will work better. What doesn't make sense is building tiny
switching power supplies into every lightbulb.

I was planning to use a power supply for every group of lights — e.g. one for
the ceiling, one for under-cabinet lighting, etc. That way you don't have to
run long stretches of wire with DC, and yet you don't have to build lots of
tiny low-efficiency converters.

~~~
kalleboo
For lighting-only, IKEA sells a mix-and-match LED system where you can connect
10 different units to a single power supply (units being various LED strips,
spotlights, etc), with varying lengths of extension cords (up to 2m I
believe).

------
Pxtl
IANAL, but it sounds like there are a dozen class-action lawsuits waiting to
happen here. Consumers have the reasonable expectation that a light bulb reach
something vaguely approaching its promised useful life in any fixture that is
supposedly compatible with it.

~~~
maxerickson
This mentality says that you can't put a screw base on some technology that
you can easily say is not for use in enclosed fixtures.

In some sense, I think you are arguing that your oven should be compatible
with gasoline (cause hey, you can put gasoline in a container that will fit in
an oven). Of course you aren't, I just think you are probably headed too far
in that direction. I guess I'm willing to make consumers do more than make
sure they fit together.

------
grogenaut
Don't Bury the Lead Dude.

I've seen senate reports that take less time to get to the point about safety
warnings. TL;DR: Many leds aren't meant to be in unventilated can fixtures and
will either burn themselves up, reduce lifetime, or worse start fires. At
least that's what I think I got out what was mainly a lot of talk about other
types of bulbs.

~~~
vacri
Given this topic, I would have gone for the alternate spelling in 'don't bury
the lead'...

~~~
grogenaut
don't burly the lead?

~~~
vacri
'lede'

------
ajcarpy2005
It looks like we're gonna need some innovations in light fixtures which have
better heat flow/sinks.

------
mistercow
It seems like the obvious solution to this is to actively increase airflow.
Small fans or synthetic jets could be included on the bulbs themselves,
although this would be tricky to do compactly, especially for fans.

Alternatively, they could be built into light fixtures designed specifically
for LED bulbs, which would be less expensive overall, and would allow the
cooling to be designed for the specific fixture (face up vs. face down, for
example).

------
stcredzero
Aren't we hobbled by the legacy interfaces for light bulbs, in much the same
way that SATA isn't necessarily the best interface for flash SSDs? LEDs are a
different thing. It seems like lamps that use them should have thermal
management built into them. The increase in surface area would make thermal
management much easier.

~~~
magnawave
Yes this is _exactly_ the problem - less so with CFL but hugely so with LED.
LEDs should appear as a part of the fixture itself - not as a screw in
replacement for the legacy Edison socket. I suspect this will happen
eventually when people start to see all the cool lighting options you have
with LED fixtures - but its going to take a good while to get the mental shift
to happen!

------
pkulak
I still have no idea why an led bulb is better than CFL for home lighting.
From what I can tell, people just like new stuff.

~~~
dangrossman
> I still have no idea why an led bulb is better than CFL for home lighting

* They use 30-40% less power, costing you less to operate

* Cheap CFLs commonly had ballasts that died in 1-3 years despite higher life expectancy claims on the packages; LEDs are backed with 10+ year warranties

* CFLs burn out quickly if used in fixtures that are turned on and off frequently

* LEDs don't flicker/strobe like fluorescent lighting

* Virtually all LED bulbs work in dimmers, not just more expensive specialty ones

* Cheap LED bulbs don't produce bluish light like cheap CFL bulbs

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mrgriscom
and they rise to full brightness immediately... and they're indestructible...
and they're not filled with mercury...

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pilom
An CFL bulb has less mercury in it than a can of tuna:
[http://www.lamprecycle.org/public/images/docs/LD+A%20August%...](http://www.lamprecycle.org/public/images/docs/LD+A%20August%202009.pdf)

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refurb
Wow! I actually liked this article. Taught me something I don't know, made a
nice factual argument without using hyperbole.

A great example of the kind of article we should see more of on HN.

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Hermel
Also, regardless of what it says on the package, the light won't be as warm as
that of a classical light bulb. For a cosy light, you need to get a classical
bulb or halogen.

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Zoomla
They also currently take much more energy to manufacture then an incandescent
bulb.

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nodata
So is there a table of which manufacturers use thermistors?

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lotsofcows
Oxymoronic titles ftw!

