D.E.D.

July 14, 2016 1:39 PM

In the first quarter of 2016 according to the National Electrical Manufacturers Association, L.E.D.-lamp shipments in the U.S. were up three hundred and seventy-five per cent over last year, taking more than a quarter of the market for the first time in history. This would seem to be a good thing, but building bulbs to last turns out to pose a vexing problem: no one seems to have a sound business model for such a product.
posted by theodolite (86 comments total)

Very interesting! I knew about planned obsolescence, but had never thought it through. Thanks for the post!
posted by languagehat at 1:46 PM on July 14, 2016

On the flip side many cities now have building codes that mandate non-edison bulb bases in fixtures which makes replacing the few LED lights that do die a lot harder. This is to prevent people from just removing the LEd lights and replacing them with cheap incandescent bulbs later on. (As it stands now people apparently mount lights just for electrical inspections and then remove them completely later on so they can meet the bare minimum for code compliance on energy saving fixtures)

You're going to end up replacing entire fixtures when an LED dies which is going to be orders of magnitude more expensive.
posted by GuyZero at 1:50 PM on July 14, 2016 [7 favorites]

Well I've already had multiple LED bulbs that were marketed to last for several years burn out (under normal household use conditions) in under a year or two. So despite the hype, I'm not entirely sure that LED manufacturers aren't building obsolescence in . . .
posted by BlueJae at 1:51 PM on July 14, 2016 [23 favorites]

“My starting point is, get the economics right,” Tim Cooper, a design professor who heads the sustainable-consumption research group at Nottingham Trent University, told me. It’s already possible to buy durable products, he said—Miele washing machines, Vitsoe shelving, Jaguar cars.

Ummmm…
posted by indubitable at 1:51 PM on July 14, 2016 [45 favorites]

Surely you just use the innovations from one area to fund and develop innovations in another area. It's not rocket sci-

Oh actually wait, that is how a lot of rocket science gets funded.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 1:54 PM on July 14, 2016 [4 favorites]

And having read further down, they make exactly this point about Philips.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 1:57 PM on July 14, 2016 [1 favorite]

I find that LED bulbs burn out as regularly as compact fluorescent bulbs (I was an early adopter for both), which is to say not that often, but often enough that I replace a few every year. If everyone is replacing a few LED bulbs a year at $8 to $15 each, I don't think there should be much worry for the lightbulb manufacturers in the long run, even if there is a decline after most incandescents are replaced.
posted by fimbulvetr at 1:58 PM on July 14, 2016 [1 favorite]

I had an LED bulb die on me in a relatively short period of time. (A much better track record than CFL since those became mass market) Turned out to be subject to a recall for a defective, and fire-prone, design. Otherwise, they've all lasted years and years.
posted by wierdo at 2:00 PM on July 14, 2016

I have had exactly one LED bulb fail in more than 5 years of daily household use. The thing is I'd like to replace all of them with high C.R.I. LEDs—at least 94 and preferably 97 or better—that have finally come down to a more realistic price.
posted by bz at 2:03 PM on July 14, 2016 [5 favorites]

This is one of the greatest failings of the capitalist model. Capitalism is capable of driving incredible feats of progress but only when there's profit to grease the wheels.

So far the cheap LED bulbs I've bought have worked fine, but there's no doubt they're not of the same caliber of earlier generations of LED. My favorite part of the whole thing is the steady decline of mercury and sodium vapor lamps for outdoor applications. Soon cities will glow pure white instead of the amber with spots of blue in ages past.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 2:04 PM on July 14, 2016 [10 favorites]

I don't understand why the market hasn't solved this. While the manufacturer benefits from short product lifespans, the consumer certainly doesn't. Whats to stop some startup from making million-hour LEDs and selling one for every light fixture on the planet? There's a hell of a lot of profit in that, just not eternal profit. Why doesn't that happen?
posted by overhauser at 2:07 PM on July 14, 2016 [1 favorite]

Really? I'm going to miss the amber. It's spookier.
posted by Faint of Butt at 2:08 PM on July 14, 2016 [14 favorites]

If incandescent light bulbs were already in the 20s and 30s capable of lasting much longer than 1000 hours, wouldn't it have been possible to mandate longer life for incandescent light bulbs instead of forcing a shift to LEDs and CFLs? I suppose the latter also have lower energy costs than incandescents, but I must say, I vastly prefer the light that incandescents provide.
posted by crazy with stars at 2:08 PM on July 14, 2016 [3 favorites]

Just burning out is nothing. Try having a LED light catastrophically fail (i.e. melt) inside a 5 story capacitor bank designed to drive a 500 kiloamp current in a large fusion experiment. That makes for a very fun day!
posted by Zalzidrax at 2:10 PM on July 14, 2016 [10 favorites]

Try having a LED light catastrophically fail (i.e. melt) inside a 5 story capacitor bank designed to drive a 500 kiloamp current in a large fusion experiment. That makes for a very fun day!

Whatever you do, don't cross the streams.
posted by GuyZero at 2:13 PM on July 14, 2016 [19 favorites]

Turning an incandescent light on and off repeatedly wears it out a lot faster than leaving it on continuously. The heat from the electrical current makes the filament expand, and then the filament contracts when it is turned off. Over time the filament becomes worn and brittle, more prone to breaking.
posted by rustcrumb at 2:13 PM on July 14, 2016 [1 favorite]

I've had a number of LEDs fail on me, but they still strike me as a good investment. A bigger concern of mine is the proliferation of different light sockets and fixtures with non-replaceable bulbs. I replaced six ceiling fixtures in my kitchen with LEDs claiming to last 30 years a couple of years ago and one is already refusing to light on occasion. It was hard enough to find lights to fit in the existing non-standard fixtures, and if one fails it will likely be impossible to find a matching replacement.
posted by TedW at 2:15 PM on July 14, 2016 [2 favorites]

I suppose the latter also have lower energy costs than incandescents, but I must say, I vastly prefer the light that incandescents provide.

Yeah, a good LED bulb uses like a quarter to a tenth of the energy used by an incandescent. This guy calculates that a billion dollars of LED bulbs saves the same amount of energy you'd need to build ten billion dollars worth of coal plants to generate.

The energy savings that LED bulbs create is a huge, huge deal.
posted by GuyZero at 2:16 PM on July 14, 2016 [29 favorites]

Phoebus members rationalized the shorter design life as an effort to establish a quality standard of brighter and more energy-efficient bulbs. But Markus Krajewski, a media-studies professor at the University of Basel, in Switzerland, who has researched Phoebus’s records, told me that the only significant technical innovation in the new bulbs was the precipitous drop in operating life. “It was the explicit aim of the cartel to reduce the life span of the lamps in order to increase sales,” he said. “Economics, not physics.”

That may have been their primary concern, but it is at the same time true that thinner, hotter-burning, shorter-life filaments really do burn whiter and more efficiently. Just because your motive is economics doesn't mean the physics goes away.

It is also true that, as a light-bulb-consumer, the cost of those old school bulbs is nearly irrelevant (if one is cognizant of the big picture), because when you buy the bulb you're committing to spending 10x to 20x the bulb's price on electricity. The overall cost wouldn't change much even if the bulbs were double the cost or half the cost.

I am pulling numbers out of my hat, but I don't think they're crazy numbers: If your standard 1920s 2K-hour bulb was 4% efficient and a newer cartel-spec 1K-hour bulb was 5% efficient, that's actually a very large (25%) gain in the amount of utility produced for the electricity consumed.

The more-efficient 1,000 hour bulbs may have produced more sales for the bulb makers, but they almost certainly were ultimately more economical for the buyers, too.

I love the Phoebus story, I think it's an exceptionally rare case of the right decision being made for the wrong reasons.
posted by Western Infidels at 2:16 PM on July 14, 2016 [13 favorites]

It’s already possible to buy durable products, he said—Miele washing machines, Vitsoe shelving, Jaguar cars.

Some cars are known for being pretty darn durable, but most car makers slap the "make year" on their models, to reinforce the Value of New. There's obsolescence, and there's being "out of date."

crazy with stars: I vastly prefer the light that incandescents provide.

You can select light colors or tones, from warm to cool and natural light (orangy-yellow to light yellow, and into light blue). For us, the sheer heat generated by incandescents was what pushed us to change to CFLs.
posted by filthy light thief at 2:17 PM on July 14, 2016 [3 favorites]

In between the last time I had to buy bulbs and moving into a new place a few years later, some kind of major shift happened in the quality of the LED bulb as a product. As in, it's now kind of actually a viable one. They don't seem to die immediately and the light they produce is, well, maybe not perfect, but vastly better than it was initially.

(Here's hoping this finally kills the idea of the CFL for all but whatever few perverse specialist applications lead to people actually needing/wanting the damn things, because they have always been shit and seem destined to remain so.)

I had no idea about the history of planned obsolescence in incandescent bulbs. Fascinating piece.
posted by brennen at 2:17 PM on July 14, 2016 [1 favorite]

I heard about LEDs being installed in aircraft, specifically for the really long life of the "bulbs," except the LEDs were "over-powered" to make them burn brighter, but burn out, so they'd have to be replaced more often. Unfortunately, I can't find a citation for that.

We recently bought some new interior light fixtures with built-in LEDs, which hopefully will last quite a while, because replacing the fixture seems like an annoying procedure to replace lights.
posted by filthy light thief at 2:18 PM on July 14, 2016 [1 favorite]

I haven't disassembled any of my dead LED bulbs, but my money is on shoddy power electronics design rather that the LED itself burning out. Each of these bulbs has an internal power converter to convert your mains voltage into something the LED can use. Transients, shoddy home wiring, deviations from the ideal waveform shape can all reduce the life of a power supply not designed with a sufficiently large safety margin.
posted by Behemoth at 2:19 PM on July 14, 2016 [9 favorites]

Yeah, the real revolution comes when building codes mandate 24V or 48V DC home wiring for powering LED lighting and we can finally stop building fancy power supplies into every light bulb.

That said, they tried it in datacenters and I don't think it ever took off there so maybe not.
posted by GuyZero at 2:30 PM on July 14, 2016 [9 favorites]

I hoping tplasma bulbs get in home use soon.
posted by lumpenprole at 2:30 PM on July 14, 2016

I hoping tplasma bulbs get in home use soon.

aren't plasma bulbs the thing things that explode in star trek consoles, sending styrofoam bricks and red-clad extras flying everywhere?
posted by entropicamericana at 2:37 PM on July 14, 2016 [3 favorites]

I've lost a few LED bulbs and it's been the driver electronics each time. I still got some value out of them because I salvaged what didn't burn out and the LEDs themselves. I suspect it's because the particular model that failed on me runs very hot at the base. They're cheap and dimmable so it's not surprising. I haven't measured but it feels at least as hot if not hotter than a 40W incandescent and the heat is close to the base where in many fixtures there's likely to be less airflow.

Soon cities will glow pure white instead of the amber with spots of blue in ages past.

I live in a historic district and most exterior lighting on businesses and street lights have to be sodium. It's pretty in that it's uniform across the whole neighborhood and there are loads of lampposts because they don't put out much light. A business just got clearance to use LED fixtures, but they have to put out amber light that looks just like a sodium light. It's a bit jarring to see the first time.
posted by Clinging to the Wreckage at 2:37 PM on July 14, 2016 [2 favorites]

I heard about LEDs being installed in aircraft, specifically for the really long life of the "bulbs," except the LEDs were "over-powered" to make them burn brighter, but burn out, so they'd have to be replaced more often.

Interested, we replaced our short-life bulbs with LEDs and have had no problems. The landing and taxi lights had a life expectancy of only about 50 hours and cost... I don't remember, but wouldn't be surprised if it was over $100 per bulb. They were replaced with LEDs maybe five years ago and haven't needed to be replaced since. We can basically drive the planes around with the lights on all the time and not worry about them going out.
posted by backseatpilot at 2:38 PM on July 14, 2016 [3 favorites]

I haven't disassembled any of my dead LED bulbs, but my money is on shoddy power electronics design rather that the LED itself burning out.

White LEDs are blue LEDs with a yellow phosphor to cover the full spectrum, and both the chip and the phosphor degrades over time, especially at higher-wattage use where things tend to run way above room temperature. Then add a power supply with one or more capacitors in the critical path, and you have multiple expected points of failure (dielectric materials have limited lifetime).

Of course, you could use MIL spec components and use efficient cooling, but then things get both expensive and rather bulky...
posted by effbot at 2:51 PM on July 14, 2016 [2 favorites]

Another subject where the more you learn about it the more depressed you become.
posted by Beholder at 2:59 PM on July 14, 2016 [4 favorites]

Soon cities will glow pure white instead of the amber with spots of blue in ages past.

There is concern that the increased blue spectrum in LED street lights will cause sleep issues.
posted by Candleman at 3:27 PM on July 14, 2016 [2 favorites]

A lot of cheap LED light bulbs use poor-quality components, have shoddy designs (including under-rated capacitors, over-driven LEDs and very sketchy safety margins) and they range from disappointing to dangerous. Well designed LED lighting can achieve very long life (>>30k hours) without resorting to milspec or heroic cooling, but is easy to undercut on price by the shoddier stuff.

A good and entertaining place to see the nastier stuff taken apart and analysed is Big Clive's Youtube channel. He's a profesional lighting engineer, rigger and electronic gizmo chap, and delights in finding out why bad things are bad. Not just LED lights, but they form a large part of his lawful prey.
posted by Devonian at 3:30 PM on July 14, 2016 [13 favorites]

Try having a LED light catastrophically fail (i.e. melt) inside a 5 story capacitor bank designed to drive a 500 kiloamp current in a large fusion experiment.

Each of these bulbs has an internal power converter to convert your mains voltage into something the LED can use.

Huge induced voltages across the LED when the capacitors fire?

My problem with LEDs isn't planned obsolescence, it's all that blue light.

White LEDs are like mercury vapor fluorescents in that they produce broader spectrum light with phosphors which are excited to fluorescence by more energetic light, monochromatic light of ~450 nm in the case of LEDs, and a significant percentage of that blue light gets through.

That blue light is right near the ~480 peak sensitivity of the blue photoreceptors in the ganglion layer of the retina which is responsible for resetting circadian rhythms -- hence the insomnia effect of LED lighting -- and that blue light can also damage those photoreceptors in people with a range of eye problems, including glaucoma.

And low color temperature is not a reliable indicator of low blue light emission; as I understand it, most low temperature LEDs merely balance the blue with blending colors.
posted by jamjam at 3:31 PM on July 14, 2016 [8 favorites]

There are two interesting examples in this article about how the "invisible hand of the market" can go wrong. The first is an example of subversion through collusion, where in the evil overlords of the lightbulb cartel (hee, hee) fix longevity as a way to ensure revenue. In an unconstrained market, of course, the longer-lived bulbs at a similar price would win. The second example is that a good product with societal benefits may not make it with subsidization, because it can't be monetized at a high enough level. If, once stocked This is the bigger problem with trying to rely on the market for solving all of society's problems. Just as though market-based solutions for defense led to feudalism, so market-based solutions to health care have led to the screwed up health care system we have today.

One interesting example of increased longevity is automobiles. According to the EPA, the average car now lasts about 200,000 miles, compared to around 100,000 in the '60s and '70s. As quality of imports allowed them to be driven farther, it dislocated the US automotive industry and we saw the upheaval that caused. I suspect that same sort of dislocation will happen with LED lighting. If not, we will have to subsidize the market, because the social costs of throw-away, high energy bulbs is not sustainable.
posted by Mental Wimp at 3:32 PM on July 14, 2016 [3 favorites]

My favorite part of the whole thing is the steady decline of mercury and sodium vapor lamps for outdoor applications. Soon cities will glow pure white instead of the amber with spots of blue in ages past.

Orange sodium vapour lamps were just starting to appear when I was in high school.

Just how old do you think I am?
 
posted by Herodios at 3:37 PM on July 14, 2016

When it comes to LED bulbs you really do get what you pay for. The super-cheap bulbs are going to blow a cap in a year or less. A good, brand-name bulb will basically last you forever. I've been using Phillips bulbs; they generally range from $12-$35, and the pricier ones are dimmable. I've yet to have a problem with any of them. (One minor caveat with the dimmable bulbs: below a certain voltage they shut off altogether rather than providing a very low light. It's only noticeable to me because I have both LEDs and halogens on the same dimmer, so when they fade to black the LEDs blink out just before the halogens.)
posted by phooky at 3:50 PM on July 14, 2016 [1 favorite]

All I know is that since the decline of incandescents I feel like the world is growing dimmer and darker as the sun sets in the west. I can't find a non-incandescent bulb that illuminates the area where I sit and read at night. I guess I can now empathize with the olden days when they used candles. Can anyone recommend bulbs that actually give off light for us nighttime readers?
posted by njohnson23 at 3:50 PM on July 14, 2016 [3 favorites]

Every time I'm in Costco, I think I'm going to buy 32 of the two-bulb 4' fixtures they sell for shop lights to replace the florescent on my shop ceiling. Aside from the "plug/switch" which I'm paying for and don't need, I'd be be thrilled to convert.

Fluorescents have TWO kill factors: The bulbs themselves, and the stupid ballasts, which must have suddenly taken a nosedive on quality, as I've lost four in two years at $35 each. The Costco fixtures are $25 each. What I really would like are bulbs and a drive for them I could fit into my existing fixtures, and not those LED replacements which still rely on the worst part of the fixture, the LED ballast, and add a bunch more crap to convert that.
posted by maxwelton at 3:55 PM on July 14, 2016

Back in November, I replaced the bulb that is on a timer by our front door with this interesting specimen. It stays on for 12 hours a day. I look forward to evaluating its performance through the summer heat, but so far it has performed great. It dims very well, has no perceptible flicker, and is basically only distinguishable from one of those retro "Edison" bulbs by being brighter and cold to the touch.

My only complaint is that it has a bit of an orange cast, but I figure this is because people want them to have a colour temperature more like a dimmed incandescent than one driven at full voltage.

Big Clive, who Devonian links to upthread has done a few teardowns of these bulbs and they are quite ingenious.

At first I was amazed how they manage to hide all the power supply components in the base, but once you appreciate that these bulbs are actually tons of tiny LEDs in series, you realize the combined voltage drop across them allows them to be driven off 120V directly. Inside the base, you find a tiny IC containing a bridge rectifier and current regulator programmed with a resistor, sometimes along with a smoothing capacitor and discharge resistor. That's it. Heat dissipation is aided by filling the bulb with helium.

From what I have heard, these bulbs are mostly made in old Chinese incandescent bulb factories that have converted to make these. As far as I am concerned, they have the issue of replacing the <100W incandescent solved. I've already bought more and am finding that the new ones have even better colour rendering, almost indistinguishable from halogen in the same fixture.
posted by [expletive deleted] at 4:06 PM on July 14, 2016 [9 favorites]

but once you appreciate that these bulbs are actually tons of tiny LEDs in series, you realize the combined voltage drop across them allows them to be driven off 120V directly. Inside the base, you find a tiny IC containing a bridge rectifier and current regulator programmed with a resistor, sometimes along with a smoothing capacitor and discharge resistor. That's it.

Yes that is really something! Bridge resistifiers and distoothing whatchamatallits!
posted by Justinian at 4:25 PM on July 14, 2016 [2 favorites]

What were people's objections to CFLs? I installed compact fluorescents on all my lamps and fixtures about 7-8 years ago, and have only needed to change maybe two or three bulbs in that time. I was used to incandescents burning out every three or four months, but some of my CFLs are pushing a decade now. My local utility company sent me a free box of bulbs about five years ago, and I ended up giving them away because they were just taking up space. Has anybody else experienced this with CFLs, or is my house weird?
posted by Strange Interlude at 4:32 PM on July 14, 2016

The light from CFLs is ugly; they have to "warm up" before they get to full intensity; they have to be specially disposed of because they contain mercury; they're not as efficient as LEDs; they don't last as long as LEDs. Basically they were a stopgap while LEDs improved to the point where they made more sense.
posted by indubitable at 4:38 PM on July 14, 2016 [6 favorites]

What were people's objections to CFLs?

Harsh white light

Also:

buzzzzzzzzzz
posted by Tomorrowful at 4:48 PM on July 14, 2016 [4 favorites]

Billions...The energy savings that LED bulbs create is a huge, huge deal.
can we take some of the *billions* they save and get some spectrum please? the approach to blue light is like a shitty soundman's approach to bass: turning the treble up does not turn the bass down.
posted by j_curiouser at 4:49 PM on July 14, 2016 [2 favorites]

The article gets more interesting towards the end. The idea that we have to move from a growth centred economy towards a steady state one is one of the great unanswered challenges of the 21st century. Orthodox economic theories are predicated on growth. We need to dematerialise and uncouple growth in productivity from growth in material flows. LEDs are a great case study here.
posted by wilful at 5:07 PM on July 14, 2016 [8 favorites]

What were people's objections to CFLs?

The cheap ones tend to catch fire, at least in my experience.

I switched to Cree/GE/Philips LED and haven't looked back.
posted by MikeWarot at 5:15 PM on July 14, 2016

How do LED bulbs perform when located in a fixture on the exterior of a house in the dead of winter?
posted by InsertNiftyNameHere at 5:36 PM on July 14, 2016

maxwelton, you want ballast-bypass tubes. You remove the ballast entirely and wire the power directly to the sockets.

InsertNiftyNameHere, I live in Alberta and bought some Feit Coldstart LED bulbs at Home Depot for my garage and exterior lights (A19 and PAR38). It only went as low as -20C/-5F last winter, but those bulbs were bright and turned on immediately in those temperatures, unlike my old CFLs that glowed a dull pink-orange.

My only problem with LED bulbs was finding ones that would work in enclosed fixtures. For example the Feit ones I mentioned above are not rated for that. Most A19 bulbs aren't, and you have to pay a bit extra to find ones that are. Basically none over 60W (equivalent brightness) are.

I found that instead of bulbs, LED downlight kits were great for replacing recessed lighting.
posted by Pruitt-Igoe at 6:01 PM on July 14, 2016 [1 favorite]

maxwelton: "What I really would like are bulbs and a drive for them I could fit into my existing fixtures, and not those LED replacements which still rely on the worst part of the fixture, the LED ballast, and add a bunch more crap to convert that."

These already exist. In fact, they existed before the plug-and-play lamps became common a couple of years ago. Also, I'm pretty sure the couple of Philips LED tubes my father installed a few months ago said they could be installed either as direct-swap tubes or by removing & bypassing the ballast.

And a good whack of the "LED battens" for sale here are simply standard trough-style battens fitted with an LED tube & without a ballast. The slimline battens with an integral driver & LED panel are less common.
posted by Pinback at 6:06 PM on July 14, 2016

How do LED bulbs perform when located in a fixture on the exterior of a house in the dead of winter?

I can't speak specifically to that exact situation, but there are definitely LED fixtures that do fine outside in frigid winters. Most 12"/8" LED traffic lights that I know of come with @7 year warranties, and the majority do seem to last that long through horrid Wisconsin winters.
posted by drezdn at 6:11 PM on July 14, 2016 [1 favorite]

The 1,000 hour life of incandescents is not about planned obsolescence as much as energy efficiency. I'm surprised this article repeats that same old myth. The million-hour lightbulb in the firehouse, you'll notice, draws sixty watts and glows with the power of a nightlight. Filaments of the same energy consumption can be designed to put out a lot of light but last a short time, or produce much less light but last much longer. The 1,000 hour incandescent light bulb is considered a good balance between replacement costs and energy costs. Halogen bulbs, by the way, are just incandescent bulbs that use a smidge of halogen gas (maybe a little bromine, a little iodine) in a process that allows them to burn more efficiently - a little brighter and/or a little longer.
posted by tommyD at 6:13 PM on July 14, 2016 [4 favorites]

Strange Interlude: "What were people's objections to CFLs? I installed compact fluorescents on all my lamps and fixtures about 7-8 years ago, and have only needed to change maybe two or three bulbs in that time. I was used to incandescents burning out every three or four months, but some of my CFLs are pushing a decade now. My local utility company sent me a free box of bulbs about five years ago, and I ended up giving them away because they were just taking up space. Has anybody else experienced this with CFLs, or is my house weird?"

This is pretty well my experience. The two 7W, candelabra base CFLs that I mounted in the exterior fixtures next to my door when I moved in 9 years ago have been on essentially 24X7 ever since. I think I've replaced three other CFLs since because they burned out. And we replaced all four of the 4" globes in our bathroom fixture a couple years ago just because the bulbs we put in 9 years ago while of fairly good colour rendition took quite a while to ramp up from about 50% brightness to full when you first turned them on. I want to replace a bunch of bulbs with those network connected bulbs but I can't see myself replacing a working CFL.
posted by Mitheral at 6:33 PM on July 14, 2016

There does seem to be a push coming for warmer tinted street lights, with less stray light pollution, too: Don't be blue; Cree introduces warm LED street lights
posted by Pryde at 6:49 PM on July 14, 2016 [2 favorites]

Is everyone forgetting that style and fashion can drive obsolescence even when technology doesn't? I live in an apartment with parquet oak floors that will last for decades. Most of those floors have been ripped up and replaced with laminate, though, because parquet is out of style.

I predict that it'll be relatively easy for manufacturers to create a style cycle for bulbs, too.
posted by clawsoon at 6:56 PM on July 14, 2016 [2 favorites]

Already doing that - witness the recent (current?) fad for LED globes that mimic ye olde filament lamps.

I've been looking for a while to replace all my light fittings, but the style cycle seems to be such that whenever I find something acceptible it's out of date & no longer produced. And the other day I stumbled across some new fittings that were an almost exact replica of these 70's monstrosities I'm trying to replace…
posted by Pinback at 7:19 PM on July 14, 2016 [1 favorite]

The light from CFLs is ugly

Truly shitty ones, yeah. Those offered for sale for cheap at my local supermarket are fine.

they have to "warm up" before they get to full intensity

Truly shitty ones, yeah. Those offered for sale for cheap at my local supermarket are fine.

they have to be specially disposed of because they contain mercury

Mandated mercury emission limit from lignite fired power plant, US standard: ~0.12lb/GWh ~= 50g/GWh = 50mg/MWh

Excess energy consumption of equivalent 100W incandescent bulbs over the 10,000 hour service life of a 23W CFL: 10,000h × (100 - 23)W = 770,000Wh = 0.77MWh

Net mercury emissions saved by using CFL instead of incandescents: 0.77MWh × 50mg/MWh = 40mg

Total amount of mercury in a CFL, which is as much as could possibly be released by irresponsible disposal: 4mg

Even if your local plant burns bituminous coal rather than lignite, so that its mandated maximum mercury emission is about a tenth of what a lignite plant is allowed to emit, it's a wash.

they're not as efficient as LEDs

True. But both are so much more efficient than incandescents that until incandescents have been totally displaced, LED vs CFL efficiency is very much a second-order issue.

they don't last as long as LEDs

True.

Basically they were a stopgap while LEDs improved to the point where they made more sense

True.

Given the choice between incandescent and CFL, don't choose to wait for LEDs on the basis that CFLs are shitty. They're actually pretty good.
posted by flabdablet at 7:27 PM on July 14, 2016 [2 favorites]

My biggest complaint about CFLs is the fact that when they break you end up with hazardous materials on your hands (hopefully not literally). If your CFL breaks while current is flowing, you've just filled the room with mercury vapour. Even if it breaks while off, now you've got mercury dust lying around that you can't vacuum.

Now, a single bulb obviously isn't going to kill a healthy human being. It's not even that likely to kill a healthy pet. But it's still a big health and environmental hazard, especially since most people are just chucking their CFLs in their trash bin rather than taking them to the hazardous material station at the dump like they're supposed to.

All that said, CFLs were a great thing in that they weaned people off incandescents while LED technology wasn't quite there yet. And if I had a CFL anywhere in my house, I'd wait for it to burn out naturally rather than replacing it with an LED bulb right away. But, I see no reason for anybody to buy a new CFL ever again.
posted by tobascodagama at 7:28 PM on July 14, 2016

Pinback: "Already doing that - witness the recent (current?) fad for LED globes that mimic ye olde filament lamps."

I installed a set of these in cone reflector drop lights on a client's deck. Just cheap (like $15) bulbs from a home improvement Borg. They look pretty good and emit a very old timey orange glow. The line of LEDs mimicking long filaments are not super convincing if you pay close attention because the end loops aren't glowing but it is a pretty decent effect. I was surprised really.
posted by Mitheral at 7:37 PM on July 14, 2016 [1 favorite]

What does everybody have against the Canadian Football League, anyway?
posted by clawsoon at 7:40 PM on July 14, 2016 [5 favorites]

I see no reason for anybody to buy a new CFL ever again.

Here in rural Victoria, my local supermarket has a comprehensive selection of excellent CFLs for very little money, and a restricted selection of LED bulbs with weird-ass bases for a lot more.

I plan to stick with CFLs until the local selection of LEDs is rather better.
posted by flabdablet at 8:08 PM on July 14, 2016 [1 favorite]

Not that this is an urgent priority. We have about 20 bulbs in the house, all of them fluorescent, and I'm replacing one maybe every three or four months.
posted by flabdablet at 8:10 PM on July 14, 2016 [1 favorite]

The article? It's not about light bulbs.

It's about finding non-growth ways for an economy to thrive.
posted by yesster at 8:16 PM on July 14, 2016 [9 favorites]

While the manufacturer benefits from short product lifespans, the consumer certainly doesn't.

Society and the environment certainly doesn't' benefit, either.

If we had to pay the full social and environmental costs of these and other "disposable" products, we couldn't afford them.

Planned obsolescence is evil. Corporations are getting rich by ruining the planet and using resources that we should be saving for the future generations.
posted by BlueHorse at 8:53 PM on July 14, 2016 [3 favorites]

Light bulbs be damned. Natural, organic whale oil for all my lighting needs.
posted by um at 8:59 PM on July 14, 2016 [4 favorites]

Nothing like a renewable resource. Let's fatten those whales up!
posted by BlueHorse at 9:08 PM on July 14, 2016

How do LED bulbs perform when located in a fixture on the exterior of a house in the dead of winter?


Our cheap IKEA LEDs perform just fine at -20C. In general, LEDs don't have the cold issues that CFLs do.
posted by ssg at 9:22 PM on July 14, 2016 [3 favorites]

they just need to make them taste better boom done
posted by klangklangston at 10:35 PM on July 14, 2016 [1 favorite]

If incandescent light bulbs were already in the 20s and 30s capable of lasting much longer than 1000 hours, wouldn't it have been possible to mandate longer life for incandescent light bulbs instead of forcing a shift to LEDs and CFLs? --crazy with stars

Isn't that what they are doing? But it isn't about the life, so much as laws enforcing minimum efficiency. The incandescent only becomes illegal because it can't meet the efficiency standard.

For example:
California will phase out the use of incandescent bulbs by 2018. The bill aims to establish a minimum standard of twenty-five lumens per watt by 2013 and sixty lumens per watt by 2018.

If you can find a way to make an efficient incandescent, then you can keep selling them.
posted by eye of newt at 10:51 PM on July 14, 2016 [1 favorite]

I use them for the lighting in my shop, and most have lasted over 4 years. I go months without changing any in the showroom.
My utility bill went down about 25% when I changed over, even though I added more lumens.

The bulbs that have gone out have been hacked and used to make bike lights and other things.
The LEDs are often mounted to a heat sink plate and you can cut a section out around a single LED and solder to the leads and then screw the bit of metal it is on to something as a mount and heat sink.

I made a really nice solar driveway light this way that has worked for 3 years.
posted by boilermonster at 12:01 AM on July 15, 2016 [1 favorite]

Also LED's pretty much give zero F**s regarding cold.
posted by boilermonster at 12:06 AM on July 15, 2016 [3 favorites]

Whenever talk turns to planned obsolescence, I always think of The Man in The White Suit
posted by itsjustanalias at 1:16 AM on July 15, 2016 [1 favorite]

(Haven't read the whole thread, coz I need to leave for work, so sorry if that point has made before.)

LED lightbulbs have become quite cheap around here, lately (4-5 €). They cost around 4-5 times as classic lightbulbs, 1,5-2 times the price of Energy Saving Lamps. They have 10% of the energy need of classic lightbulbs, 40% of Energy Saving Lamps. They last longer. This is a no-brainer.
posted by ojemine at 2:16 AM on July 15, 2016 [1 favorite]

So the LED lightbulb business model will start to look more like the building fixture business model than the disposable/consumable business model of post-Phoebus incandescent lightbulbs. That's hardly a tragedy.
posted by acb at 4:05 AM on July 15, 2016 [2 favorites]

I've used a number of LED bulbs, from quite pricy Phillips 100 watt equivalent ones to a few from the dollar store. No doubt you get what you pay for, but my rule of thumb is that I always buy dimmable bulbs since those generally require a more sophisticated power supply. Colour performance on the better Phillips bulbs is far better than the dollar store cheapies, as you'd expect. The Ikea ones are somewhere in the middle.

I'm really amused to see how many of us watch BigClive.
posted by sfred at 6:57 AM on July 15, 2016 [1 favorite]

At this stage in the game the problem I have with fluorescent bulbs is that they're nearly impossible to dispose of properly. I think I can go to one of the big box hardware stores, and only so long as they continue to accept them (and within their requirements - no 8' tubes), otherwise apparently I have the choice of paying $50 + $25 per item (I think) for a hazardous materials special waste collection, waiting for the annual hazardous waste collection bonanza at the fairgrounds or, y'know, chucking it in the bin and figuring it's Waste Management's problem. Yet True Value and Ace continue to sell bulbs that you can't dispose of. yay?

As flabdablet pointed out above, even if all the mercury in every fluorescent tube was released on disposal, it's still a net mercury reduction.
posted by Kyol at 7:08 AM on July 15, 2016

The electric company gifted us a box of good quality CFLs when we moved into town. And then gifted us another box two years later, when we moved a couple miles down the road. We just moved again and we're wondering whether the electric company's munificence will continue, and if so what form it will take. Basically for five years we've been accumulating CFLs faster than we could reasonably want to use them, so we're unlikely to hop on the LED train for a few years, as much as I'd like to: for us it'll be more wasteful than continuing to use CFLs.

Something I rarely see remarked on is that LED lights might last a long time but the use life is not necessarily as good as advertised. The diodes will fade with use and age, emitting half of their original output after some majority of their advertised expected lifespan. So they still can work and be useful for awesomely long times, this makes me wary about permanent LED fixtures, because eventually they have to be augmented with additional lamps.
posted by ardgedee at 7:32 AM on July 15, 2016 [1 favorite]

I thought the main cause of dimming over the life of both CFLs and "white" LEDs is degradation of the phosphor coating. Thus, if you use a lamp that does not have phosphor, they don't wear out. (Heat can still kill the LED itself or more likely the power supply, though)

One development nearby my house uses mostly phosphor-free lamps. They have some white fixtures, but most are either straight blue LEDs thst approximate mercury vapor or have a mix of red, green, and blue that end up looking white thanks to the mix of colors. I have yet to figure out what the particular pattern is.

In any event, I much prefer any of them to the old timey style sodium lamps used elsewhere simply because they aren't so terrible in terms of glare and light pollution since they are inherently full cutoff even without a special fixture.
posted by wierdo at 11:55 AM on July 15, 2016 [1 favorite]

I got 1 neighbor to turn off their big 'security' light at night, now another neighbor just got a horrid led replacement for what used to be a not-very-bright light that is now a big glare. Sheesh. I love being able to see stars at night. I love that LEDS are very efficient, but that doesn't mean you have to be able to read a book - in your driveway. And, like a lot of conscientious people, I converted to cfls, and am annoyed at the suggestion to convert again. Except for that LED filament bulb - I love that.

I love the deep blue of some led string lights, and the mix of warn and cool white led string lights can be pretty. There was an interesting MeFi thread about the color of led lights, not sure if any of these is the one I remember.
one two three four five
posted by theora55 at 2:36 PM on July 15, 2016

like a lot of conscientious people, I converted to cfls, and am annoyed at the suggestion to convert again.

There's a completely compelling economic case for converting from incandescents to CFL or LED: over the efficient replacement's expected service life, its total cost (in purchase price + energy consumption) will be anywhere from $30 to $100 less than sticking with incandescents.

There is no similarly compelling economic case for converting from CFL to LED.
posted by flabdablet at 9:19 PM on July 15, 2016 [2 favorites]

It's reasonable to replace perfectly-good incandescent lights with either CFLs or LEDs if you have one or the other at hand. The energy savings are pretty dramatic and make up for the waste cost. If you have to watch your budget, upgrade.

But if you have CFLs already, there's no point in replacing them with LEDs until the CFLs are burnt out. LEDs might be more efficient but the difference is comparatively small. Also, LEDs are still pretty expensive relative to what CFLs were going for after that trend peaked. If you have to watch your budget, stick with what you have.

In my case (noted above), I'm in a situation where I can seriously consider replacing not just the lights but the fixtures as an economic and ecological improvement, so that instead of buying dozens of LED bulbs each with their own dedicated power unit, I'm going to be able to replace ceiling fixtures with units designed to have singular good-quality power supplies driving entire light arrays.

There's an fluorescent tube box light in the kitchen. I'm rarin' to have a go at that ugly, buzzing monster.
posted by ardgedee at 8:21 AM on July 16, 2016 [1 favorite]

Also LED's pretty much give zero F**s regarding cold.


Not strictly true - you can get some neat colour-changing effects by dunking them in liquid nitrogen. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to work out the physics behind that...
posted by Devonian at 9:35 AM on July 16, 2016 [1 favorite]

The case for converting from CFLs to LEDs is that I don't have to put up with people acting like its Chernobyl up in here any time somebody drops a CFL on the floor.
posted by Justinian at 10:36 PM on July 16, 2016 [4 favorites]

The case for converting from CFLs to LEDs is that I don't have to put up with people acting like its Chernobyl up in here any time somebody drops a CFL on the floor.

True, but the concern has been vastly overrated. Since the 1950s more than half of all lighting in the U.S. has been from fluorescent tubes which contained more than 10 times the amount of mercury as modern tubes and CFLs. It's not like this is some new hazard.
posted by JackFlash at 3:57 PM on July 17, 2016

Since the 1950s more than half of all lighting in the U.S. has been from fluorescent tubes which contained more than 10 times the amount of mercury as modern tubes and CFLs. It's not like this is some new hazard.

It actually kind of is, because until about ten years ago most people's experience of fluorescent bulbs was industrial ceiling fixtures in places of business. A CFL in a table lamp might have less mercury in it, but it also has a much higher chance of breaking, and when it breaks there is a much higher chance that people or pets will be exposed to it.

I mean, it's still not worth replacing all of your functional CFLs over, but it's a legitimate issue.
posted by tobascodagama at 4:25 PM on July 17, 2016

JackFlash: Right. If I break a CFL I sweep it up and throw it away. But other people act like I'm going to start glowing or grow a tail or keel over immediately when I do that.

I guess I won't tell them about playing with the mercury from broken thermometers when I was a kid.
posted by Justinian at 6:29 PM on July 17, 2016

tommyD: The 1,000 hour incandescent light bulb is considered a good balance between replacement costs and energy costs.

Perhaps it is a good balance, but having a self-interested cartel make this decision rather than the market casts doubt on that conclusion.
posted by Mental Wimp at 11:43 AM on July 18, 2016