Incandescent light bulbs are officially banned in the U.S.
Incandescent light bulbs are officially banned in the U.S.
America’s ban on incandescent light bulbs, 16 years in the making, is finally a reality. Well, mostly.
Incandescent light bulbs are officially banned in the U.S.::America’s ban on incandescent light bulbs, 16 years in the making, is finally a reality. Well, mostly.
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I've been in the industry for over a decade and I find it fascinating how much lighting has changed in that time. When LEDs were first available, they were $60+ per bulb. Now you can get multipacks for under $10. Also, CFL bulbs were almost universally hated by everyone (and for good reason) now we no longer sell them. We strictly sell LEDs for regular lighting and we still sell incandescent specialty bulbs. Also, when LEDs first arrived there was a lot of distain for them, especially by the elderly. They wanted their energy wasting incandescent bulbs dammit! It seems the majority of them have come around because they've learned that LEDs are better.
I think the main issue with initial Led bulbs was their color was wrong. Incandescent bulbs emit light at 2700K, a nice warm white. Early LEDs emitted light at more like 5000K or there abouts, which is a really white light. Same with CFLs. Elderly people didn't like that at all. Honestly it wasn't just them, lots of people hated them for their too white of light.
Today you can get LEDs that are 2700K and/or are adjustable to what ever color you want.
Any recommendations? I've struggle with LED light color temp off and on over the years. I haven't looked into it in a while though. It always seems like if you want a low color temp it has to be an edison bulb which is really dim.
On a separate note I've also had reliability issues with LED bulbs where they will blow out and emit smoke.
Look for colour names like "soft white" or "warm". The 2700K is a dead give away for the colour you're looking for.
Also, separate note: check your appliances or fixtures for power spikes. cheaper LEDs are notoriously sensitive to voltage fluctuations
how would you check for that exactly?
Look closely at packaging. If you're in North America, Phillips is the most common for bulbs. They have packages marked 2700K, 5000K, and 6500K.
The colours are as follows: 2700- soft white (yellow hue), 5000- bright white (white hue, almost no colour), and 6500- day light (blue-ish hue, similar to fluorescent).
If you end up not being able to distinguish... ask an employee and they should be able to help
i meant checking for power spikes lol
Lol im dumb... forgot it was a 2 pt question.
Cheap way is to buy a surge protector/ power strip with surge protector.
Plug in appliances/lights that burn out faster than others. Periodically check surge protector to see if the internal breaker has been tripped.
Fancy way is to buy a multimeter and monitor voltage when large appliances turn on/off. That's usually the most likely culprit for voltage spikes (as your home grid has to compensate for sudden increase in usage, which in turn causes voltage to fluctuate slightly)
good to know!
Also it became a political issue as all things should be somehow
Yes. Many of the people that objected also wore MAGA hats. I think the whole idea was that it was better for the environment and you know what that means.
I specifically remember trump saying something about bringing back yellow light 😮💨
Yellow street lights are actually very good.
For sure, but if an entire city switches over to LED, that is a lot of electricity saved. Imagine the impact an entire country would have.
No. High pressure sodium lights produce more light for the same wattage. HPS produces 80-140 lumens per watt, LED produces 30-90 (https://ledlightinginfo.com/why-are-street-lights-yellow-and-not-white). They also tend to run slightly warmer which means they are less likely to be covered by snow. That's why Europe is still using them everywhere.
I've heard the LEDs offer much less light pollution, but perhaps that is not unique to technology difference and just the difference in lumens?
Also, I'm surprised there aren't equal lumen led lights.
The most amazing thing to me - I’ve been using leds for 10+ years, and I think I’ve had to replace one or two of them. It is a wonder that prices can come down with demand dwindling so much.
Man, I remember as a kid we had a box of bulbs for when inevitably one burnt out each month or so. Now, I have a drawer with a bunch of led bulbs I'll never use because they don't burn out!
Seriously, I have whichever ones were remaining in the boxes when we finished populating all our fixtures. Haven’t replaced one ever.
I remember when I was a kid, it seemed like we had to change the light bulbs every other month. Now I'm annoyed because these things last so long I don't keep any spares and I have to leave my house to buy one when it expires!
I can't remember ever having to replace a dead LED bulb. And only a few CFLs. But I remember replacing incandescents all the time when I was a kid.
My LED burn outs were almost certainly defective, not normal wear.
In my old apartment I lived in for 6 years I must have had a faulty kitchen light that did something to the bulbs because I changed LEDs in that like more than once a year, but none of the other lights I changed. Granted I also turned on that light way more than the overhead bedroom light so idk. But I definitely killed quite a few LEDs.
Pretty much the worst wear and tear on most electronics comes from power cycling.
This... Doesn't seem right? Dimmable LEDs are switched hundreds of times a second as would the resistors and other components in series with them. Computers turn on and off transistors (mosfets) millions of times per second. Dude flipping a switch a few times isn't close to that.
Heat is the worst enemy of most electronics. Many LEDs are put in places where heat is not dissipated well which can shorten life span.
Excessive heat perhaps, and yeah, bulbs with bad thermal design, or bulbs installed in tight enclosures do die a lot faster.
It's also temperature changes that cause problems. A current that flickers 50-60 times a second is not going to fluctuate it's temperature. Turn it on or off every 10 minutes and the components will shrink or expand each time, and the components will eventually start to fail.
Yeah that occurred to me like in the middle of the thought process and I just rolled with it. 😅 That apartment kitchen was so dark I turned the lights on a lot.
Had my current place for four years now, one of my first tasks was to replace all the bulbs with LEDs. Exactly two have burnt out; amusingly, neither were among the most heavily used bulbs; one I suspect took water damage, since it was in the bathroom.
I had to replace an LED bulb a few months ago and I remember being annoyed because they did only lasted five years.
As energy and maintenance go down, the popularity of lighting goes up—so maybe the decrease in sales of replacement bulbs has been offset by an increase in the total number of bulbs in use.
Is there a brand that's better for LED? I get migraines and the stroking effect of LED bulbs can be a trigger.
LED christmas bulbs particularly bad. It felt like walking into a rave at the Christmas store.
Regular brand LED bulbs don't strobe at all, only the very cheap ones from AliExpress and the resellers of Chinese crapware (like Walmart) do. IKEA has some nice and cheap bulbs, for example.
Yeah, many of those christmas lights use pulse width modulation to control brightness and it is very noticeable. I hope that gets changed over for an analog voltage dimmer soon.
Also, cheap ones run directly on AC, so they flicker at 60 Hz (50 in Europe) because the current is only flowing for half the cycle.
How do high-end home LEDs get around this? Do they have a battery that caches the current between cycles?
When my wife and I bought our place, we renovated and made all lights LED. The overheads in the living room and kitchen are quite bright and steady, so they must avoid this somehow.
A bridge rectifier flips the negative current to positive, so instead of a sine wave you get a series of humps. Then a capacitor acts as a battery like you describe to smooth out the dip between humps.
There are half wave rectifiers and full wave rectifiers. The former only converts the positive AC to DC and shuts off for the negative half (causing flickering). The latter will convert both positive and negative halves to DC and don't flicker.
Well, LED lights are half-wave rectifiers that light up, so you wouldn’t add one. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a half wave rectifier referred to as a bridge rectifier.
Ok, I get the gist. Thanks!
FULL BRIDGE RECTIFIER!!!11
I’ve never been disappointed with Philips. However, I have no doubt there are tons of exceptionally good quality products out there from various brands.
There are LEDs with CCD power converter. I got one 10 years ago and tested it with a 240 fps camera, no flicker at all. I will not recommend a brand because it's been years,but search for "ccd led bulb".
Also there's a number called CRI, indicating how well it represents colors. This also may contribute to your headaches. 85 or higher is good, 90 is great. Just don't trust these numbers on Amazon, the cheapest of cheap crap is marketed as " cri 90+" there.
Or scratch what I just said and find a small store that specializes in lighting and ask the clerk (or email them).
I wonder if multi-element bulbs offset the phase of each element so the flickering cancels out.
I honestly couldn't tell you. Its been so long since I purchased LEDs and the ones I bought were from the company I work for. They have worked well for me but I don't know if any brand is better than another.
It seems the majority of them have come around because they’ve
learned that LEDs are better.died
they died
I'm sure some of them have
That, but also change happens one funeral at a time.
Now you can go into pretty much any thrift store and get a whole box of them for like $5-10.
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One problem is that CFL bulbs is that they contain small amounts of mercury (about 4mg per bulb). Because of that, disposing of them responsibly requires going through big hassles rather than just throwing them in the trash. Also, because of that mercury, accidentally breaking one means contamination of the environment around the break.
Flickering - always was a big problem for these things.
Longevity: They were very sensitive to heat, which meant that they loved to burn themselves up in a lot of applications.
Dimming: CFLs were NEVER good at being dimmable.
CFL was just a very poor technology detour on the way to the vastly superior LED lights.
CFLs aren't good at dimming because they are not dimmable. Trash light bulb tech, don't get me wrong, but you cannot even dim them to begin with. I've tried dimming them back when I didn't know any better and had one of the fuckers literally explode in front of my very eyes.
Some were produced that were claimed to be dimmable - and I wasted my money on a few and was still unhappy with them. The other problem I forgot to mention earlier was the startup time: the earlier bulbs (and the cheaper ones) wouldn't just 'turn on' when the power was turned on...they took some time to start making light, and the colder it was the longer it took - this is an aspect where LEDs are amazing - maximum brightness within milliseconds of getting energized.
The 3 biggest issues CFLs had were their warm up time, especially in cold weather, the flicker some people are sensitive too, and they contain murcury as all florescent bulbs do. That means it is absolutely necessary to properly dispose of them so mercury doesn't get into the ground water.
This is why I don't support overreach in regulation.
Put a tax on it or something, but a full ban seems excessive. Now that most people understand that LEDs are superior, they are cheaper, and there are more options, most people will make the switch.
No really. A lot of people, even when shown proof, out of simple spite just double down on their position.
When energy saving and early LED bulbs started to be deployed in my country, while the fade out of incandescent bulbs was put in place, we had runs for buying every single incandescent bulb available. The change was not welcome. Even if changing meant real, objective, tangible savings.
People would put in large orders for bulbs, arguing they wanted to "have proper lighting as long has they lived". Luckily, the stocks quickly ran out and some distributors simply refused to pass the stocks to the market.
A government cutting off a product is not overreach: it's forcing change that otherwise would not happen, for the better.
A lot of people, even when shown proof, out of simple spite just double down on their position.
But is it enough to really matter? Especially after the market for incandescent shrivels?
I'm sorry, I'm not following your reasoning. Can you elaborate, please?
People will bitch about the one guy buying all the incandescent bulbs but ignore the fact that everyone else isn't.
1 old dude isn't enough to make a difference.
This wasn't one or two isolated cases: it was a race to the stores.
I was a kid then and my grandparents got caught in the wave and bought more lamps that they required to light the entire house. Which later proved to be of bad quality and aided me in making their transition to energy saving bulbs.
People would line up in front of stores to get the precious, precious bulbs, making the exact same sort of conversation and observations we can read throughout this thread, criticizing government and politics in general.
The store owners would chime in and add fuel to the fire, stating a lot of people would lose their jobs, as the factories would close (cute fact: there was precisely zero factories for those products in the entire country).
People are stubborn and will not change ways unless no other option is available and even then grudgingly, while companies only shift practices if forced, be it by force of law or by cash flow and profit goals.
Governments enforcing positive laws and regulations, even if unpopular, are necessary measures to move things forward in a modern society.
No really. A lot of people, even when shown proof, out of simple spite just double down on their position.
When energy saving and early LED bulbs started to be deployed in my country, while the fade out of incandescent bulbs was put in place, we had runs for buying every single incandescent bulb available. The change was not welcome. Even if changing meant real, objective, tangible savings.
People would put in large orders for bulbs, arguing they wanted to "have proper lighting as long has they lived". Luckily, the stocks quickly ran out and some distributors simply refused to pass the stocks to the market.
A government cutting off a product is not overreach: it's forcing change that otherwise would not happen, for the better.