Posted on 10/19/2023 4:08:51 PM PDT by george76
Have been using LEDs for years. No need for incandescents at all. They are more reliable, use much less power, and provide pleasant lighting. No complaints except the manufacturers do not mark them well. Weird.
Heresy!, Report immediately to train 53 for re-education.
A coworker of mine used to collect the mercury. He made bombs as a hobby. He used the mercury for detonating switches. He specialized in blasting out farm ponds. Farm ponds muck up real bad and need dredging every five years or so. Or......You blast them. The mud and muck flies a quarter mile. It works really well. Gave him something to do.
AC-DC converters (choppers using capacitors) are incredibly ubiquitous. No LED is actually running on AC. I agree that the capacitors go, and that is actually the main failure mode. There are videos on repairing the bulbs, though there’s no need to do that as long as the “supply chains” are running. Stock up on capacitors?
Great read
A domestic LED uses about 14% of the energy that an incandescent does. A common LED bulb costs no more than one dollar. Pretend that incandescents only cost 25 cents in a non-manipulated market.
Give the incandescent bulb a 1000 hour lifetime. Count on about 10,000 hours for the LED. That is a savings of $1.50 per bulb over their lifetimes (10 old bulbs vs 1 LED).
In the 10,000 hours, a 100 watt bulb will use 1,000 (one thousand) kilowatt hours. Figure a very low 10 cents per kilowatt hour. That’s one hundred dollars for electricity over the life of the ten incandescent bulbs.
The LED bulb, running at 14 watts, will use 140 kilowatt hours. At only a dime per kW h, that’s $14.
So LEDs are a lot cheaper to run.
But, refer to the videos from the MD that I posted above. Being inside too much is bad for your metabolic health, and blue-ish light in the evening is bad for your sleep.
So maybe the savings of LEDs are often a bad idea. Bear in mind that you are paying about TWICE for the electricity when your AC is on when you figure the cost of running incandescents.
> Being inside too much
In this case, meaning lack of exposure to red and IR light. IR penetrates deep into your skin and has health effects on your cells.
Look at Dr. Seheult’s videos. You probably need more IR light than you are getting, and that’s exactly what white LEDs do not have.
> The ban on incandescent does not apply to incandescent heat bulbs
That is kind of funny because almost all of the energy converted by a white incandescent bulb is heat.
I may be the minority. I really like LED bulbs. In the southern part of the country, excess heat impacts comfort and cost in central AC. The also don’t work great outside in very cold weather but that is limited in my geographical location. I find that LED are more susceptible to voltage drops from power companies.
Picking the correct color of light is important. Buying in bulk lowers unit cost. Allication is critical but LED works much better than Compact fluorescent bulbs.
All that said US FEDGOV should have no voice.
“That said... I love LED light bulbs.”
Same here - they are way more efficient than incandescent. They mostly generate light rather than heat. As a result they use about 1/8 the energy.
But the luddites here in FR will never admit to it even if you prove it to them.
These are the types who, had they been alive during Edison’s era when electric bulbs became available, they would have still clung to candles and oil lanterns.
LEDs are more efficient. But they emit radio waves and cause interference in other electronics. Especially two way radios.
I have a stash of candles and kerosene lamps. You’d have to be crazy to trust that newfangled “incandescent” gimmick. Electric lights? Just a passing fad.
LEDs use less energy, are brighter, cooler, and (at least the better ones) seem to last forever. Whenever an old incandescent burns out I replace it with LED. I’m happy with them and I’m sticking with them.
But yes, the market should decide. Last data I saw indicated that the market was deciding - LED’s had captured something like 70% of the market. Banning incandescents is nothing but ignorant virtue signaling. If anything should be banned it’s mercury-bearing fluorescents.
No, I will not rework them, but I am an old school Ham Op (have GROL too) and inherited the cheap approach.
I’m going to take the LED’s out and panel them for direct DC from batteries. Current limiting is easy that way. I bought some like that, off shore, that gave me ideas for layout.
I like to take things apart and see what makes them tick. Makes no economic sense, but it give me satisfaction.
I can fix about anything.
100% for market choice. Mandates suck.
That said, I have never managed to burn out an LED lightbulb (yet), the original article is full of bad analogies and faulty logic, and I like using less power, money, and heat lighting up things.
Little more outlay up front; order of magnitude more efficient vastly outweighing the cost; and to be fair one has to include the cost of time to obtain and replace annoying lightbulbs when they go out.
The only use case where I see them as a waste would be in low-value rentals where people bust things regularly. Homeowners, businesses, and renters who aren’t wasteoids are better off with the bulbs (not the mandates).
Oven lights, yes, for now but you may want to rethink the refrigerators.
My new fridge has LED lights everywhere, including the freezer, and they light up the whole inside nicely. Better than any refrigerator I have owned that used incandescent bulbs.
I will admit that LEDs are in some area of my place, but incandescent don’t give me the same headaches that LEDs do. Sure, they burn out a little faster than I’d like, but they are better for those who can’t tolerate the on-off nature of the LED bulbs.
I’m gonna check them out too. Thanks for the suggestion.
It’s a good article that goes into detail. However, all that detail, while interesting, was unnecessary. In this case, and in all others:
“If LED light bulbs are truly unquestionably superior, you would not need to pass a law stopping consumers from purchasing incandescent bulbs.”
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