Hacker News Reader

Comment by rsynnott | Hacker News Reader

Mildly weird piece, in that it's really measuring two things; lighting efficiency (and only at an extremely low resolution, implying a whole-system efficiency that doesn't change between the invention of the light bulb and the fluorescent light) and wage growth. 60 hours of work may have bought 72 hours of electric light in 1880, but rather more in 1990, say, for a combination of both reasons.

That said, LED bulbs do still feel like a bit of a sea-change; since they showed up, lighting is cheap enough that most people don't really have to think about it at all.

View on HN

> Mildly weird piece, in that it's really measuring two things

True, but I think it's an interesting metric. I don't think it maps well to everything, but it is cool that it is a combination of two things since a lot of our technology has just gotten better and better over the years. I mean, just look at how incredible computers are. Power efficient, performant machines that can allow someone to work a job from anywhere, start a business, learn, etc and you can get a decent used one for $300 USD. One hell of a time to be alive, all things considered.

I have a love hate relationship for led lights. They are more efficient, come in an array of colors for you to personalize your space.

But I consider them expensive and a lot of them surprisingly don’t last that long, especially for their price. I’ve already replace two out of three led light fixtures that are supposed to last at least a decade and it hasn’t even been 5 years.

I hope the quality improves or there’s some system out there so I can get a reliable lightbulb that lasts and/or doesn’t randomly flicker.

They last a lot longer than incandescent bulbs, though. In fact, I've been using LED lights for about 15 years now, and I'm not sure I've ever replaced one. Even the cheap ones. By comparison, incandescent bulbs had to be replaced all the time in my experience. My parents had a supply of them ready. Phosphorescent bulbs were a bit in between. They don't break, but they get dimmer and need more time to get to full brightness as they age.

Though perhaps I do recall a particular LED light that would overheat in a particular fixture. It's possible not all fixtures are equally suitable.

> incandescent bulbs had to be replaced all the time in my experience

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel

I've used LEDs for much fewer years, both cheap and brand names, and have had multiple failures (from both camps).

I once complained to one of the brand companies and they said the same thing about overheating in poorly ventilated fixtures. One of this fixture was not closed, but somewhat narrow (open glass cone). If that actually was the problem for that bulb - ie. such an fixture is prone to overheating it's no wonder people are complaining about LED longevity.

You are lucky. I’ve personally had a lot of failures. I like that they don’t make heat and are brighter. (And I also like how they can be packed more densely on dedicated lighting circuits than traditional fixtures), but they are definitely prone to early failures.

There are a lot of cheap, poorly designed LED bulbs that put heat stress on critical components.

Technology Connections : A troubling trend in lighting? - https://youtu.be/fsIFxyOLJXM (It goes into how a number of LED bulb failures are because the lamp wasn't able to dissipate heat from the electronic components. It also shows how some higher quality LED bulbs are made so that they dissipate heat better - they don't make as much heat as an incandescent bulb, but there is still some and that is the cause of a lot of failures.)

The lamps you're not allowed to have. Exploring the Dubai lamps - https://youtu.be/klaJqofCsu4 is also interesting. They have a different design and it gets into the electronics.

>You are lucky. I’ve personally had a lot of failures.

Or perhaps you're unlucky. LEDs on the whole have longer lives than incandescent bulbs do.

Under lab conditions they do.

> I’ve already replace two out of three led light fixtures that are supposed to last at least a decade and it hasn’t even been 5 years.

I think you must be getting cheap bulbs. I bought a bunch before my kid was born, and he's 10 and none have gone out. I've even taken them with me when I moved.

Yep. It is virtually always the power regulator that fails, rather than the LED itself. Lots of LED bulb and fixture manufacturers cheap out here. We could do better by running low voltage DC power in our homes, but even that isn’t a panacea.

> I bought a bunch before my kid was born, and he's 10 and none have gone out.

You can't buy those bulbs anymore, both literally, and they truly don't make them like that anymore. I have new ones and old ones, the old ones weigh three times as much. There were more components run at a lower limit of peak capacity. I move my old bulbs when I move because new ones won't last as long.

Huh. I replaced every light bulb in my house with Ikea LEDs about seven years ago. They cost between about 4 and 10 EUR apiece depending on size. I think three have since failed. This seems like _fairly_ good going, and certainly way better than the old incandescent and halogen bulbs I had.

Out of a set of 30 or so LEDs, I've had five fail.

Four of those are spots in either recessed or exposed cans, and I suspect temperature or moisture may be involved. (Another set matching three of the failed, in near-identical fixtures ... are doing fine.)

One was a stick-type bulb used in a closet which seemed to fizzle.

In all cases I suspect it was electronics rather than the LED elements themselves which failed.

Three-way LEDs are hugely superior to incandescent 3-way bulbs, which always seem to lose at least one filament within a few months. The LEDs are going strong years on.

There are definitely a range of quality when it comes to bulb manufacturers, heat dissipation is also important.

I got 10 LAP GU10 bulbs 6 years ago for use in en-suite bathrooms - 6 years later all 10 are still trucking along.

On the other hand, I had multiple Phillips B22 bulbs last at most 2 years.

They are made to fail fast, it's obviously by design. One simple thing I do in all my led light bulbs, that makes them last for an almost indefinite amount of time: remove the plastic bulb. One of the main reasons for one of the leds or one of the capacitors to fail, is the high temperatures reached during the operation of the device. Removing the bulb makes it a lot cooler, and in the last few years since I've been removing the bulbs, no led light has failed in my house. There's other things you can do, but this is the main one any consumer can do to fight back against this scourge of modern capitalism. I recommend Big Clive's Youtube channel for getting more tips like this one.

Huh, I wonder if drilled ventilation holes would work too...

When I first embarked on this quest to make my led bulbs stop failing, I saw a video of a russian guy that, beyond removing the bul itself, drilled roles on the base of the device, and plugged screws on them to create passive cooling. Not very safe, since the screws have access to the inside of the fixture, and can eventually touch the wires and become live, I wouldn't personally do it myself.

As for drilling holes on the bulb itself, I'm pretty sure it would not reduce the temperature as much as simply removing it, and in my experience, the luminosity is even better without those cheap plastic bulbs anyway.

If we are just looking at "Fun" numbers it might make sense to include house prices. After all I need a power socket to plug in my light bulb vs say a candle or lamp I can fire up anywhere.

LEDs released->electricity bill reduced->money freed up->wages increase->price of everything else increases

It's nice to see these efficiency gains aren't entirely eaten up in this way and the is some ultimate benefit for humans, $1 2023 >= $1 1990 as far as lighting, and wages are up. You can have the lights on more and keep the same quality of life in all other regards. But this can be used to mask growing inequality, just take some but not all of the gains, e.g. by artificially limiting housing supply, QoL still improves so no revolution.

Ironically, LEDs being so efficient means I need to use the central heating more often.

My CFL TV used to provide some respite, not now I have an OLED.

I hope your heating is more energy efficient than heating with electric light bulbs though!

(And it should be - worst comes to worst basic electrical heating can be effectively 100% efficient, and heat pumps can do better)

Light bulbs are resistive heaters, and they are also 100% efficient at making heat. Some of it just bounces around the room as light first.

Light bulbs are also nearly 100% efficient, minus whatever fraction of light seeps out through windows or similar. As is just about anything else electric. Unfortunately that heat is usually suboptimally distributed, and pales in comparison to the heat pump effective efficiency which as you mentioned can go well above 100%.

When is electric heating not 100% efficient? I thought they were by definition.

Heat pumps achieve greater thermal output than the input energy, unlike electric resistance heating.

The latter is 100% efficient (all energy in is delivered as heat). Heat pumps exceed 100% efficiency, and can deliver 3 to 6 times the heat energy as input, as they are moving heat from the exterior environment to the heated space.

Probably not in the summer time.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com