Why rarely? Where I am it's pretty dark every night.
> But if you have issues with the ecological impact of the manufacture of LED bulbs, you can't use anything involving plastic or silicon, including computers.
Bring it up when we make computers of comparable capabilities from glass and tungsten I guess?
> cherry picking to single out LEDs
So sorry for sneakily cherry-picking LEDs (of all things!) in a thread about alternatives to LEDs under a link to the article that talks about LEDs and their downsides. Let's discuss plastic bottles and other environmental hazards instead.
Why rarely? Because you're talking about incandescent bulbs. The only way they're going to be more environmentally friendly than LEDs is in situations where they're rarely going to be on. Because they use a lot more energy when on.
So if you have a storage shed that you're only going to look in once a week during summer, and then only for a minute or two, incandescent bulbs may be a great choice. But not for a living room where light is going to be on every evening for hours.
> The only way they're going to be more environmentally friendly than LEDs is in situations where they're rarely going to be on. Because they use a lot more energy when on.
They use less energy if they are dimmed than when they are blasted at full power. They also allegedly last loads longer (will see).
Also, I am yet to see supporting evidence that LED bulbs are e2e more environmentally friendly in terms of manufacturing and clean recycling than say tungsten bulbs.
> So if you have a storage shed that you're only going to look in once a week during summer, and then only for a minute or two, incandescent bulbs may be a great choice. But not for a living room where light is going to be on every evening for hours.
The opposite. If I need to find something in a dark storage shed I need very bright white light for assistance. That's not great for the bulb. While the key benefits of the bulb is it's easy on the eyes, dims with absolutely zero flicker, easy to wind down to sleep. Completely wasted on a shed.
> They use less energy if they are dimmed than when they are blasted at full power.
That's true for anything, and not a difference between LEDs and incandescents.
> If I need to find something in a dark storage shed I need very bright white light for assistance.
Which you can get from a bulb.
> That's not great for the bulb. While the key benefits of the bulb is it's easy on the eyes, dims with absolutely zero flicker, easy to wind down to sleep.
Which you can get from a LED.
Both LEDs and incandescents can be bright or dim, both can be dimmable if you want them to be. LEDs offer a lot more control (some can switch between different colours, different colour temperatures), incandescent are more limited, but cheaper. And not as durable, and they waste a lot of energy when you have them on a lot when you don't need the extra heat they give.
So they're great for short periods when you need something simple, like in a shed, and not so great when you want them on for a long time or you want something unusual.
> That's true for anything, and not a difference between LEDs and incandescents.
Yeah, except LEDs don't dim, they just flicker on and off very quickly.
> Which you can get from a bulb.
Turning a bulb on full power suddenly reduces its longevity. That's the moment when most bulbs fail. I'd go with a LED in a shed. I'd go with a bulb if it's a room I am in often and I care about my eyes and sleep quality.
Dimmable LEDs do dim. And good LEDs don't flicker.
LEDs run on DC, so connected to AC power they need to turn that into DC. If you do that without a capacitor to smooth things out, you get flicker, which may be the case in cheap LEDs, but good LEDs will have a capacitor and therefore not flicker.
A LED lamp consists of many individual LEDs. Dimming a LED lamp involves turning off some of those individual LEDs, rather than supplying less power to each of them. A LED lamp needs to explicitly support that or it won't work. But those LED lamps exist. Similarly, LEDs that only produce dim light for situations where you only want dim light, exist.
Look, you are saying many things that can work in theory, but in practice all LEDs I have seen that cost reasonable money dim using PWM and have detectable flicker.
I know "good LEDs" exist but if we are talking a few dozens of dollars per good photography-grade LED fixture then we are at a point where the savings compared to running a dirt cheap regular bulb approach zero or even go negative. At least in reasonable time periods, maybe such good LEDs are cheaper in the very long run but that's not for sure (faulty units exist) and even if it was I probably wouldn't even live that long.
Why rarely? Where I am it's pretty dark every night.
> But if you have issues with the ecological impact of the manufacture of LED bulbs, you can't use anything involving plastic or silicon, including computers.
Bring it up when we make computers of comparable capabilities from glass and tungsten I guess?
> cherry picking to single out LEDs
So sorry for sneakily cherry-picking LEDs (of all things!) in a thread about alternatives to LEDs under a link to the article that talks about LEDs and their downsides. Let's discuss plastic bottles and other environmental hazards instead.