I need to replace some LEDs twice a year in our apartment, whereas formerly bulbs lasted at least several years. I have tested different vendors, including expensive ones, but all last equally short times.
Light fixtures were designed for incandescent bulbs. Even with advent of fluorescent bulbs and now LED based bulbs little has changed with how light fixtures are made. Old style tungsten bulbs had no problem with high temperature, fixtures trapped heat - hot air rises up and is kept inside. Components of LED bulbs like electrolytic capacitors have known life expectancy based on ambient temperature, even high temperature ones (105degC series) degrade fast when in such conditions.
Another problem is that manufacturers overdrive components. To make bulbs cheaper they just use few more mA of current, that makes LEDs run hotter, more smoothing is needed and caps get hammered by switch mode power supplies.
Without changing light fixtures to be open, allowing circulation of air nothing really can be done for standard e27/bayonet bulbs. I have personally experienced this and had clearly seen the huge difference in LED bulb lifetime between light fixture - glass globe with hole in the bottom (no air vents at the top) and another one that was just a bowl with open top. Never had to change a bulb in second one versus 5-6 changes in globe one.
Heat is not the only problem, I had to replace once a year even 5 Wt LED lamps which are barely warm. I guess LED drivers (one cannot connect LED directly to 230V) are unreliable and fail long before the LED itself.
I totally agree that if run them cool enough they last forever.
but I had some bridgelux 10W that I just threw in some copper tubes on an aluminum slug with a minor affordance for cooling (some slots cut in the Al to promote convection). These ran at 80C and lasted for >5 yr at at least 80% brightness. and still the primary failure mode was the little meanwell dc/dc converters playing thermal runaway. and that whole assembly cost $10
it just has to be penny pinching at the end of the day.
Yes, it’s because they drive the heck out of the LEDs to get their maximum rated light output. This produces excessive heat, shortening the lifespan of everything inside the case, including the very cheap electronics they use to rectify mains AC.
In Dubai they actually have efficient and long-lasting LED lights [1]. These exist in order to satisfy strict government regulation there. They’re not sold anywhere else because they’re more expensive to make (more LEDs per bulb running at lower output).
I would gladly pay more for longer lasting but environmentally sustainable ones! Another case where government intervention seems necessary and there is no real "corrective" force with only capital oriented companies.
Capital oriented companies can lead to the correct outcome if the consumer has enough information to distinguish the superior product. One solution to this problem that capitalism has found is UL Listing (Underwriters Laboratories.) Of course you could say they are just outsourcing what should be done by the government. It comes down to who do you trust to not fall into corruption.
So just import them from Dubai? Or you could start a company and start selling long lasting lightbulbs yourself. Its not like you need a team of super scientists to design a LED board with a bigger heat sink. Its weird how so many peoples' first thought is always to have the government micro manage everything through legislation.
“Just rely on another government’s strict regulations and illegally create a business around it so you can get a few durable items oh and stop complaining about government regulation.”
It's not only heat from LEDs but also from power unit that LEDs uses. They transform electricity from 220V sine wave (AC) here to 5V DC.
In 90% of cases where LED need replacement problem happens in this transformer unit. In rest 10% it's on LED fault - but it's also problem because they are series connected and when one is gone whole circuit stop. If they are parallel connected such issue won't happen.
The LEDs are not driven at 5V - that would be one of the worst voltages to be driven. The LED bulbs are driven approx at 3.2V x number of LEDs. (some LED chips may have 3-4LEDs in series as well)
You can buy them in Australia, or at least the bulbs sold here by philips as their "UltraEfficient" range look the same and match the specs of their Dubai bulbs marketing page.
They don't appear to be available in the US though, that's true.
I think I'll get a couple to try for those places where I think "60w incandescent equivalent" is sufficient, although cynical experience tells me to expect 40w at most - but for low single digit wattage power draw I'll accept that in some places.
Mostly I like to see though, so I'll keep buying their 150w equivalent bulbs.
I find it completely ridiculous you can’t buy these anywhere else or it is very difficult. Lends credence to the theory that we are in a new led bulb light conspiracy. I don’t think I’m the only one that would like to buy an over engineered LED bulb that will actually last as long as it should.
This has been discussed multiple times here, a sibling comment is right
- LEDs light bulbs are overdriven to show better numbers on the box
- they are designed for universal voltage range: AC 90-264V
- which leads to extra overheating in the US/Canada and passive component failure, due to high current on the primary
- in 230V range, the common failures are the LEDs, themselves (black dot of death), due to lack of decent heat dissipation (and generally overdriven)
- as a general guidance - buy the heaviest bulbs at a specific lumens, they may have Al heat sinks, better heat dissipation, better passives
Overall the LEDs cannot retrofit well in the existing sockets, e.g. E27, esp E14, for incandescent light bulb. The LEDs need to have enough room to dissipate heat and run AC/DC converter with decent passives. OTOH, near custom ceiling LEDs driven at decent currents (with no terrible drivers) would last many years - but they require some electronics background to repair.
> they are designed for universal voltage range: AC 90-264V
I have never thought of that, since it's not a problem on its own. But yeah, this makes the first point way worse than it by itself. It's enough to explain all the geographic difference in quality I have noticed.
> as a general guidance - buy the heaviest bulbs at a specific lumens
But this does not work very well. You can easily get a 20 times difference on the power supply waste between bulbs. If the one that is 20 times worse is 10 times heavier, it will still have a much shorter life time.
The most noticeable difference is still the metal heatsink. LED drivers would be non-isolated ones, so only a single coil (not a transformer). The other part of the weight difference would be capacitors (hopefully larger ones), and (hopefully) input filtering. Some LED bulbs have terrible input filtering (or not at all) and can easily die due to transients (incl. inductive motor noise/kickback) - input filtering normally would be a capacitor + coil.
One thing we noticed with other brands was that not only many fail after a year or so, the ones that still work have significantly redeuced efficiency.
5 LED Downlights in the kitchen, 3 in the upstairs bathroom, 2 in the downstairs bathroom all installed by an electrician 11 years ago and still going fine.
LED bayonet fitting bulbs in the regular light fittings in the rest of the house seem to only get a few years though.
Exactly the same experience here. I think the downlights are designed with cooling in mind, whereas the bayonet style are just shoehorned into that form factor
