LED light bulbs have come of age
MikeDYur
Posts: 2,176
Picked up four of them for less than $2.
If they last less than nine years, I won't remember. But that is less cost, than any incandescent I can remember.
EDIT: These new design processes, flat panel and an LED filament, are new tech to cut away dependency's from our past.
P.S. sorry for the sideways pic.
If they last less than nine years, I won't remember. But that is less cost, than any incandescent I can remember.
EDIT: These new design processes, flat panel and an LED filament, are new tech to cut away dependency's from our past.
P.S. sorry for the sideways pic.
2048 x 1152 - 610K
Comments
Yesterday was the first time I bought an LED bulb for the house in five years. The last time, I made a sizable purchase when household LED were just a small section in the incandescent light bulb isle.
I had bought about three different sizes. And the others didn't last but a week, slowly turning black and burning out all together. Burned and never tried to get satisfaction on that deal.
Since then we have been using CFs, but they are not very good in cold conditions. And they last longer if left on or off, switching is what shortens their life. Not crazy about the drop of Mercury in each bulb either.
But walking down the bulb isle yesterday, it now is mostly LED bulbs, and you would be hard pressed to find an incandescent or compact fluorescent. Every conceivable wattage and base. And the prices are reasonable too.
BTW: Some of the best bulbs I ever had, were incandescent's used in traffic lights, they seem to last for ever, but I don't have any examples today, so I guess they don't.
Question: I have one CFL that is dimmable, just how does that work? Voltage, current or pulsed. Forget it, thinking about the dimmer control itself, I can understand how.
Never noticed if they had dimmable LED's, bet that would take a circuit to accomplish.
And why does the manufacturer feel the need to use glass in the outer envelope. Could it be a possible shortening of the bulbs life expectancy?
IIRC when the bulb ban came, many incandescent were rebadged as heating spheres as a loophole. Tomayto, tomahto.
At home Depot and Lowes I find many dimmable LED's available. But do some product research and read customer reviews because there are quite a few out there that make audible noise when being dimmed. After doing my research I was able to zero in on a particular Philips model that remains quiet as a church mouse throughout it's range. I'm still using the original dimmer from over ten years ago. Learned that the worst offender was also a Philips brand, the one that looks like a flattened disc with the actual LED elements in an arc around the disc on a standard size lamp base.
I have almost completed converting my entire house over to LED and my electric bill has come down. (I have my daughter and her two teenage boys living with us and like teenagers everywhere, once a light has been turned on it remains that way until someone else, usually me, turns them off.)
Philips has been in the light bulb business like forever, I think, never payed that much attention to light bulbs as a kid. That's great on your conversion to LED, I should get some more while I'm at it.
I shouldn't be telling you this Hal, but if it isn't a kid leaving a light on in the room they just left, it's my wife.
Mike Y.
Sounds like an X-10 device, you can switch the relay from a remote wired main's switch.
These things are made to exist hopefully in a WCS of our outdoor environment.
Manufacturers make it awful tough to service something like this,.mostly beyond salvaging some parts. Don't think they want you to be resourcive.
I was recently at Costco in Maui, and they were selling 10 packs of 100 watt equivalents for $2.99 a pack.
That's 29.9 cents a piece!!!
Unfortunately my suitcase was already full, so had to pass it up. But if everyone wanted some, I'd be willing to go back for a bulk purchase !!
Cheers,
Peter (pjv)
"My first LED died this month...."
Oh my God. I want to cry.
My first LED was in 1970. I remember her well. I was just a kid. She was new and bright and red. Nobody had ever seen such a thing.
If I knew where she was now I'm sure I would find her shining brightly still.
Slap...
Oh you mean these new fangled LED bulbs?
Is it so that the US is some years behind Europe in the banning of good old fashioned tungsten filament lamps?
For some years now you could only by CFL around here. They were horrible.
Thank God new LED technology brings us nice lights again.
This is why my LED lighting is powered directly off of my 12 volt system, no conversion loss.
All in all a lot more efficient than creating heat in good old filament lamps.
Well, except I worry about all the power taken to run those semiconductor plants and such...
Where's your 12V power coming from such that you don't have the AC->DC conversion loss? Solar-powered is the only (significant) source I can think of off the top of my head that isn't AC.
The current to the led has to be controlled at any voltage so there are comparable losses no matter the voltage. CFL's and LEDs produce 6 to 10 times the light per watt compared to an incandescent bulbs and last about 10 times longer on average.
Well my power comes from a combination of solar panels and wind generators, with storage banks for making it through the low to no wind nights (most nights here). For me running AC requires conversion.
Also thank you, as a lot of what I do and talk about revolves around saving power for my system I edited my signature to reflect this and reduce the redundant missunderstandings.
I have been using a transformered 12VDC @10A power supply, to operate various items in the house 24/7 for 15 years. All because switching power supplies were not that dependable back then. It is time to change that RS unit out, and get something a little more eco friendly. Battery backup takes a big hit when going through a transformer. Time to re-think and re-tool.
If this looks promising, I will gladly help, and lend the use of a couple of suitcases to help the cause. But air travel takes me a couple of weeks to recuperate. So we do have time to pack those light bulbs carefully.
The slide dimmer in my daughter's room is also an issue. At full dim, the LEDs bulbs were about 70% brightness, so the dimmer became pointless. So, rather than dumping the $40 slide dimmer, I put incandescent back in (I have plenty now from the places where LEDs worked fine)
Above my wife's craft desk, I splurged and bought 2 GE Reveal Flood lamps for the recessed cans. It is amazing how the colors look under those versus ANY other light. Everything pops.
The porch lights are all LED and run from a timer. One is green to support our troops, but is still pretty bright.
One thing I learned from all of this: Don't buy cheap LED bulbs. My first LED bulbs were the cheapest name brand I could buy. Lasted about 3 months. When I bought a huge pack of GE bulbs that were discounted through a SMUD program (my electric company) but still far from the cheapest, I have been very happy.
On my wishlist, is this LED garage light made by BigAssFans (yes, that's their name):
And I have good reliable switching power supplies that were made in the mid 1980's, so I am not sure about them not being available 15 years ago?
I've had a few of my Cree bulbs fail. Sometimes flipping the switch a few times would work, other times I would hit them with a broom. Eventually they would just quit for good.
I took one apart to see what was going on. The board that the leds are soldered to is folded around a central core that acts as a heatsink. The only thing holding the board to the central core is the pressure resulting from sliding it onto the core. In other words, the quality of folding it into the cylindrical shape determines how well and snug it fits the core. There was no thermal paste or goo of any kind to help transfer heat. Several of the leds had fallen off and a few more would fall off when touched.
My opinion is that a simple clip that applies even pressure around the led board would greatly improve heat transfer to the heatsink and vastly increase service life. If it didn't require breaking the glass bulb to access the inside I would probably wrap a few turns of thread around the board to hold it snug to the core.
Well, that would be if your batteries had no losses when being charged, which is usually around 30%, IIRC. Just being nit picky. :-) I live off grid too and your consumption figure isn't too far off mine, but I don't count power used when the sun is shining. I have to be honest that I have room left for improvement but since the power is free...
99% of my usage is direct (without storage usage) during daylight/windy hours. During night/no wind I use much much less (only a couple Raspberry Pi and some small LED's).
Also my figure includes the storage charging.
I mean that: I come off of mains voltage to supply the house with 12VDC. Switching power supplies just wasn't thought of as dependable long term high demand power source. Transformers do it with Induction, and somtimes are their own heatsink. I always liked a transformer between me(my stuff) and mains.
@davidsaunders, are you totally off grid 100 percent? Disconnected. You know I remember not being around EMF's for over two weeks, and there is a relaxing feeling that comes over you. With all the frequency's flying around these days, not sure where you would go to find that anymore..
100% off grid, and yes the reduction in EMF around does give a relaxing feeling. Though do to local law there is a mains line coming in, I am just paying the $15 per month for it and not using it at all (it goes into an empty breaker box).
I am hoping the neighboring county does get us (they are trying to get this part of this county), as they do not have that dumb law. Then I will be able to even lose that unused mains source.