Domestic LED lamps: reliability

uart

Hi Jim, here in Australia they didn't technically ban them, they just set efficiency standards for lighting that the conventional (cheap) incandescent lamps didn't meet. So kind of a de-facto ban.

It didn't take very long however before manufacturers just started producing more efficient incandescent globes (better gas and/or filament and hotter temperature) to meet the new standards. It wasn't all that huge of an improvement, 60W reduced to about 45W I think, but it was enough apparently. So incandescent light globes are back on the shelves in stores here and very readily available. You should check, they might have done something similar in the US.

sophiecentaur

In Australia they have seen the light, you could say.

NascentOxygen

There are two areas where reliability can suffer: poor quality control of the individual LEDs, and the cheap, badly built transformerless power arrangement that Chinese manufacturers use for the substitute lamp. With multiple LEDs in series to get the required voltage drop, failure of 1 means failure of that whole string.

An alternative arrangement is to have a separate low voltage transformer in the ceiling, and (for optimal efficiency) operate multiple (2 or 4) LED ceiling lamps from that one transformer. This may be optimal efficiency because a typical LED lamp might be 8W, but the typical mains transformer on light loading has heat losses of around 10W. (So there's a hidden 50% efficiency hit right from the start if you allocate 1 transformer per lamp.)

Drop-in LED replacements are even available for the long 4' fluro tubes, over $100 each and bristling with LEDs.

Here's a little light reading (pun intended):
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum....cfm?t=1905803
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum....cfm?t=1951172
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum....cfm?t=1917704
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum....cfm?t=1499905
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum....cfm?t=1156179

skeptic2

One other possibility I didn't see mentioned here was line transients. The LED lamps may be more sensitive to line transients than either incandescents or CFLs.

sophiecentaur

Full of info - thanks.
I think I may wait a few years until going for a full LED conversion. But CFLs are not all they're made out to be, either - their lifespan can be unimpressive.
Back to rush lamps and candles, I think.