LED lighting and planned obsolescence, intentional or not.

[tom66]

What do you call planned obsolescence?
My Ikea bulbs have been working for almost 10 years. Only recently one started flickering.
Going for $1 bulbs is not planned obsolescence, you know the parts inside have John's Goodenough QA.
Bought a chinese bulb as a temporal fix, lasted 4 days 

Agreed.  Buy cheap, buy twice... one issue will be a lot of people don't comprehend this and do buy cheap LED bulbs that end in landfill.
Personally I've had only one LED bulb fail on me and that was a novelty smart bulb a friend gifted me.  Every other bulb has been rock solid.

[Psi]

There's also the people living pay check to pay check who will always buy the cheapest version they can get their hands on.
If cheap rubbish didn't exist they would perhaps have to deal with less light in their house until they could afford a 2nd light but overall they would be much better off and have more money (not having to replace it every year).

That assumes they could afford the upfront cost of the 'better' light in the first place. People living in a precarious financial state don't have the funds to invest in the future. Buy a good light and something else doesn't get bought. Or buy a cheap light and the other thing. So it's going to cost them more in the future because they'll buy many cheap lights instead of one good one, but when you don't have the funds to invest that's what happens. Same applies to food (and everything else) - they pay more for their food because they can only afford single-portion sizes and/or poor quality, whereas someone with money will buy in bulk and save overall.

You seem to have missed the point I was making here.  There's no more upfront cost of the "better" light.
The cost is the same. The only difference is the value of the resistor that sets its output wattage which has been changed to reduce the thermals to something that will not fail prematurely. If you can't afford a higher wattage light or multiple lights you just have a dimmer room. But at least you can see everything. 
If a room light is changed from 20W to 15W or 10W, sure it's not as nice but it's totally usable. You don't have to drop the power by much to massively increase lifespan.
Also LEDs tend to be more efficient at lower power anyway, so there is additional savings there.

[PlainName]

There's no more upfront cost of the "better" light.
The cost is the same. The only difference is the value of the resistor that sets its output wattage

That's a manufacturer thing and completely irrelevant to the punter. All they know is the 50p job from China is doable whereas the £15 one from Osram isn't, and you know which will have the resistor of an appropriate value.

[Psi]

There's no more upfront cost of the "better" light.
The cost is the same. The only difference is the value of the resistor that sets its output wattage

That's a manufacturer thing and completely irrelevant to the punter. All they know is the 50p job from China is doable whereas the £15 one from Osram isn't, and you know which will have the resistor of an appropriate value.

ah, so your argument is that any law for planned obsolescence wouldn't work because people would just privately import the cheap junk from china getting around any regulations?

yep, it's a fair point, but I'd be happy if just the local hardware stores would refuse to sell the cheap junk LED lamps unless they get manufacture to be lower wattage to make them thermally ok.
Stores already have to check things for electrical safety when they import stuff to sell locally. Wouldn't he hard for them to pay attention to the temp the thing runs at.

[PlainName]

There's no more upfront cost of the "better" light.
The cost is the same. The only difference is the value of the resistor that sets its output wattage

That's a manufacturer thing and completely irrelevant to the punter. All they know is the 50p job from China is doable whereas the £15 one from Osram isn't, and you know which will have the resistor of an appropriate value.

ah, so your argument is that any law for planned obsolescence wouldn't work because ...

I've said nothing for or against any such law, regulation, guideline, whatever. You are projecting what you wanted me to have said, but I have not. Please stop.

[Psi]

There's no more upfront cost of the "better" light.
The cost is the same. The only difference is the value of the resistor that sets its output wattage

That's a manufacturer thing and completely irrelevant to the punter. All they know is the 50p job from China is doable whereas the £15 one from Osram isn't, and you know which will have the resistor of an appropriate value.

ah, so your argument is that any law for planned obsolescence wouldn't work because ...

I've said nothing for or against any such law, regulation, guideline, whatever. You are projecting what you wanted me to have said, but I have not. Please stop.

I started with 'ah, so your argument is' and had a question mark on that sentence because I was not sure if I was understanding your point correctly and I was happy to be corrected if I was wrong. There is no need to get angry here.

That's a manufacturer thing and completely irrelevant to the punter. All they know is the 50p job from China is doable whereas the £15 one from Osram isn't, and you know which will have the resistor of an appropriate value.

So what is your point here? Yes, cheap the china ones have resistors that run the LED hot currently.
Ideally we want china to put resistors on them to make them run at a lower temp.
Local companies order and review china parts to purchase in bulk based on their requirements.
If their requirements are changed by some new law and they start to put pressure on their china supplier to manufacture them at a lower wattage they will. Just like they put pressure on the china suppliers to manufacture them with correct earthing and mains safety for local regulations. It may not be perfect 100% of the time but for the most part stuff you buy in the store complies with local regulations.

[PlainName]

That's a manufacturer thing and completely irrelevant to the punter. All they know is the 50p job from China is doable whereas the £15 one from Osram isn't, and you know which will have the resistor of an appropriate value.

So what is your point here.

I was refuting the idea that

If cheap rubbish didn't exist they would perhaps have to deal with less light in their house until they could afford a 2nd light but overall they would be much better off and have more money (not having to replace it every year).

and

Buy cheap, buy twice... one issue will be a lot of people don't comprehend this and do buy cheap LED bulbs that end in landfill

is practical for those of little means. 'Buy once' can be a luxury that poor people simply can't afford.

[tom66]

'Buy once' can be a luxury that poor people simply can't afford.

I'm not exactly buying luxury bulbs.  I bought a three-pack of 60W equivalent LED bulbs from Costco, and I'm still using two of those today (the other one isn't dead - it's just not in use).  I think it was under £10 for all three and that was almost a decade ago when LED bulbs were still kinda pricey.

The cheapest bulbs are the £1 to £2 a pop bulbs, and yes, those don't last long, but if someone is genuinely struggling between £2 and £4 for a bulb, they may well not even be able to afford the electricity for that bulb and there are deeper issues at play here.

I'm using Ikea smart bulbs now, which cost £7 for a Zigbee compliant GU10, and they sell equivalent non-Zigbee ones for £3.

[jonpaul]

RE fail rates and reliability:

From a  Retired lighting electronics/power, designed fluro/CFL/HID/cinema and LED ballasts.

For reliability, a system approach considers:

Mains power quality/transients

Component derating, ambient/hotspot temp in ballast or power supply

LED quality, thermal arrangement, hot spot temp.

We can apply the Arrhenius rule of chemical reactions doubling activity  with every 10 deg C increase.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrhenius_equation

Thus a semiconductor junction running at 100 deg C will have 1/2 the life of one at 90 deg C

Finally most electronics failure rates can be plotted as a "bathtub" curve over life:

High..

Infant mortality

low ...mid life

increasing ..end of life

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathtub_curve

Hope this is of interest,

Jon

[Psi]

That's a manufacturer thing and completely irrelevant to the punter. All they know is the 50p job from China is doable whereas the £15 one from Osram isn't, and you know which will have the resistor of an appropriate value.

So what is your point here.

I was refuting the idea that

If cheap rubbish didn't exist they would perhaps have to deal with less light in their house until they could afford a 2nd light but overall they would be much better off and have more money (not having to replace it every year).

I think I see were our discussion went off track. 
That post was not intended to be taken in isolation, and I could have worded it better to avoid that confusion, sorry.

When I said

If cheap rubbish didn't exist they would perhaps have to deal with less light in their house

I was referring to if it didn't exist due to the new regulation that was being discussed, if it was made using a resistor that turned it into a product that would actually last, but had a bit less light output.
The light reduction is why I said they might need a 2nd light. But at least they would pay the same cost and get something does the job of lighting the room and doesn't need replacing for many years.

[PlainName]

I think I see were our discussion went off track.

Easily happens here!

I apologise for not allowing that it had.

[nctnico]

There's also the people living pay check to pay check who will always buy the cheapest version they can get their hands on.
If cheap rubbish didn't exist they would perhaps have to deal with less light in their house until they could afford a 2nd light but overall they would be much better off and have more money (not having to replace it every year).

That assumes they could afford the upfront cost of the 'better' light in the first place. People living in a precarious financial state don't have the funds to invest in the future. Buy a good light and something else doesn't get bought. Or buy a cheap light and the other thing. So it's going to cost them more in the future because they'll buy many cheap lights instead of one good one, but when you don't have the funds to invest that's what happens. Same applies to food (and everything else) - they pay more for their food because they can only afford single-portion sizes and/or poor quality, whereas someone with money will buy in bulk and save overall.

You seem to have missed the point I was making here.  There's no more upfront cost of the "better" light.
The cost is the same. The only difference is the value of the resistor that sets its output wattage which has been changed to reduce the thermals to something that will not fail prematurely. If you can't afford a higher wattage light or multiple lights you just have a dimmer room. But at least you can see everything. 
If a room light is changed from 20W to 15W or 10W, sure it's not as nice but it's totally usable. You don't have to drop the power by much to massively increase lifespan.
Also LEDs tend to be more efficient at lower power anyway, so there is additional savings there.

You can argue this all you want but the general public wants the brightest bulb for the lowest cost. If people wanted long life bulbs, manufacturers will produce long life bulbs. And many manufacturers do that in fact and make long-life lamps as well. https://www.lighting.philips.co.uk/consumer/ultra-efficient

[Psi]

There's also the people living pay check to pay check who will always buy the cheapest version they can get their hands on.
If cheap rubbish didn't exist they would perhaps have to deal with less light in their house until they could afford a 2nd light but overall they would be much better off and have more money (not having to replace it every year).

That assumes they could afford the upfront cost of the 'better' light in the first place. People living in a precarious financial state don't have the funds to invest in the future. Buy a good light and something else doesn't get bought. Or buy a cheap light and the other thing. So it's going to cost them more in the future because they'll buy many cheap lights instead of one good one, but when you don't have the funds to invest that's what happens. Same applies to food (and everything else) - they pay more for their food because they can only afford single-portion sizes and/or poor quality, whereas someone with money will buy in bulk and save overall.

You seem to have missed the point I was making here.  There's no more upfront cost of the "better" light.
The cost is the same. The only difference is the value of the resistor that sets its output wattage which has been changed to reduce the thermals to something that will not fail prematurely. If you can't afford a higher wattage light or multiple lights you just have a dimmer room. But at least you can see everything. 
If a room light is changed from 20W to 15W or 10W, sure it's not as nice but it's totally usable. You don't have to drop the power by much to massively increase lifespan.
Also LEDs tend to be more efficient at lower power anyway, so there is additional savings there.

You can argue this all you want but the general public wants the brightest bulb for the lowest cost. If people wanted long life bulbs, manufacturers will produce long life bulbs. And many manufacturers do that in fact and make long-life lamps as well. https://www.lighting.philips.co.uk/consumer/ultra-efficient

I've seen many LED bulbs that claim 50,000 hours / 50 year lifespans.
Very few I actually believe the claim due to the case temp on the thermal camera.

[Microdoser]

Personally, I would rather fit 5 Dubai bulbs than one 'standard' bulb. They would use the same power, give out much more light, and last a LOT longer. Barring that, I'll continue to buy my own LED strips and undervolt them.
 
I can swap out any failed bulbs using spare ones from old strips, they will last forever (for a limited interpretation of 'forever'), and I can choose the exact colour of light I get.
 
I like a lot of light for my tired old eyes, and I can get that using much less power than if I were to buy cheap, or expensive, bulbs from a store.

[tooki]

So the only possibilities are inferior products that fail as soon as the warranty is up, or products that last forever? 

I think I need to stop reading EEVblog.  This place is insane!

I wish i could understand your point of view.
Which of these statements do you disagree with.

1) Most LED lights run way to hot and fail early because of it.

2) The LED lights above would last way longer if they didn't run them so hot.

3) Making them run at under 50C is trivial (be lowering output wattage) and would add next to nothing to product cost. Obviously cost to consumer would be a little higher as they might have to buy more lights or bigger light get same output, but the product lasting for so much longer would make up for that by many times.

4) Most companies are never going to voluntary make changes that cost next to nothing but make longer lasting products because it's going to reduce profit. (unless there's a major shift in public buying habits and people stop trying to save a dollar now even if it cost $5 later)

5) The best way to fix this is for the government to pass some sort of law that prevents companies making consumable products that perform badly when there's no technical reason for it.  Or by forced warranty length in industries where there are these problems, like lighting.
I know the exact law and how it works would need to have a lot of thought. And implementing it is not that easy but i think it's totally doable.



I suspect your issue is with point 5 and I suspect its due to you being very antigovernment regulation.
Which I assume is because the government where you are is maybe not working for the people.
And if so, i would put forward that the issue is then with the government not working, rather than an issue with a law to stop or help reduce planned obsolescent.   Apologies if one of my assumptions in this paragraph is wrong, it's just a guess.

1. Agreed.
2. Agreed.
3. Yes, but… Consumers want compact LED lamps that are screw-in replacements for incandescent bulbs. That dictates the mechanical envelope as well as the expected brightness. For example, I have 75W-equivalent LEDs in my ceiling lights in the hallway, because less than that simply isn’t bright enough. It’s a rental apartment so I don’t want to invest lots of money in whole new fixtures that are either natively LED or that can hold two bulbs. So the consequence is that the LED lamps have to be 75W-equivalents that run kinda hot.

Also, having also cobbled together some LED lighting myself using COB LED modules, I think you may be underestimating the amount of heat produced by power LEDs. I have a ~@12W COB module (approximately 3”x1”/80x25mm or so) that I run on a finned heatsink that’s about 4x4x1.5l”/100x100x40mm, with an aluminum slab (about 4x3x0.3”/100x70x8mm) attached as well as both heatsink and shade, all connected with thermal grease. It gets hot, fast. And that’s with a completely separate power supply.

Another aspect is that the warm white LEDs people want for their homes are a bit less efficient than the cool white ones.


For sure, in many LED lamps, it’s the power supplies that fail first, due to them being run very hot. I think there is room for improvement here. (For example, by making more PSU chips that are happy with only ceramic caps, so we don’t have electrolytics anywhere near that heat.) Bu the LEDs themselves fail much faster at higher temperatures, and I don’t think there’s a whole lot that can be done about that. And you can’t legislate physics.

If we implemented a ban like you suggest, the ultimate result would be that the maximum wattage of the LED lamps would be cut dramatically, forcing people to use lamps that are not bright enough for their needs; warm white would disappear; and flicker would increase as manufacturers switched even more lamps to simple capacitive droppers. I don’t think this is a viable solution.

[Ranayna]

What do you call planned obsolescence?
My Ikea bulbs have been working for almost 10 years. Only recently one started flickering.
Going for $1 bulbs is not planned obsolescence, you know the parts inside have John's Goodenough QA.
Bought a chinese bulb as a temporal fix, lasted 4 days 

Agreed.  Buy cheap, buy twice... one issue will be a lot of people don't comprehend this and do buy cheap LED bulbs that end in landfill.
Personally I've had only one LED bulb fail on me and that was a novelty smart bulb a friend gifted me.  Every other bulb has been rock solid.

Especially the IKEA bulbs that DavidAlfa mentions are not really an example for "Buy cheap, buy twice".
Granted, my sample size is tiny, but my experience with IKEA LED bulbs is excellent, given their price. I have two E14 base bulbs running now for at least 5 years, i don't remember when i bought them. They were like 3 Euro for 2 or something like that. Granted: They are low wattage, and the fixture i use them in is open and well ventilated.
BigClive also only had good things to tell about IKEA USB power supplies that are also very cheap for what they are.
And IKEA rechargeable batteries also seem to rival Eneloops.

I sound like an IKEA shill But i really only mostly heard good things about them with electronics.

[Psi]

Buying low wattage helps a lot.

[PlainName]

If everyone ignores the brightest LEDs and buys the dimmer ones because they'll last longer, doesn't that just lower the bar and then producers will churn out cheaper short-lasting dim lights instead?

[Psi]

If everyone ignores the brightest LEDs and buys the dimmer ones because they'll last longer, doesn't that just lower the bar and then producers will churn out cheaper short-lasting dim lights instead?

A lot of the problem is the legacy form factor. It's not well suited for LEDs of the same power as incandesces.

[Kjelt]

I've seen many LED bulbs that claim 50,000 hours / 50 year lifespans.
Very few I actually believe the claim due to the case temp on the thermal camera.

If those are Ac led lamps you should know it is BS.
Have you ever seen a manufacturer making elektrolytic capacitors with a guaranteed lifespan of 50 years ?

If you want to sort the BS from the decent ones, look at the packaging, it should not only state an expected amount of hours but also an amount of on/off cycles, which is exactly where the elektrolytic capacitor comes in.

For dc/dc led bulbs 40000 hours if used mlcc capacitors or those solid elektrolytes should be feasible. If you want long lifetime you need a decent led driver. A decent one will already cost you aroud €20 minimum, the professional grade ones will cost multiple times that and are sold forvroadways, tunnels, swimming pools, pro applications where changing the bulb in manhours and equipment cost more than the driver/bulb 

If you want to argue about low cost low lifetime garbage, talk to your neighbours and educate them. Also tell them the capitalist way of living has its negative sides where manufacturers would like to make profits and sell something, which is pretty hard if the other side of the world practically gives their low lifespan electronic garbage almost away for free 

[AVGresponding]

If everyone ignores the brightest LEDs and buys the dimmer ones because they'll last longer, doesn't that just lower the bar and then producers will churn out cheaper short-lasting dim lights instead?

A lot of the problem is the legacy form factor. It's not well suited for LEDs of the same power as incandesces.

Agreed, but the difficulty there is the ubiquity of ES and BC variants, in domestic settings. I have found 2D LED replacement lamps to be of pretty good quality and longevity on the whole, but all the new fittings that would have had 2D lamps in them are fully integrated now, often with crappy microwave sensors that introduce yet another failure mode that leads to a whole-fitting replacement.

Just for shits and giggles, here's what a chandelier looks like when populated with CF lamps   

[Marco]

It's a pretty shit conversion regardless of the lamps, I don't see why they even dangled the bulbs. CFLs don't make it much worse.

[gnuarm]

If everyone ignores the brightest LEDs and buys the dimmer ones because they'll last longer, doesn't that just lower the bar and then producers will churn out cheaper short-lasting dim lights instead?

Really?  Is there anything in this thread that is rational or actually thought out?  This is one of the biggest BS threads at EEVBlog. 

[John B]

If everyone ignores the brightest LEDs and buys the dimmer ones because they'll last longer, doesn't that just lower the bar and then producers will churn out cheaper short-lasting dim lights instead?

Really?  Is there anything in this thread that is rational or actually thought out?  This is one of the biggest BS threads at EEVBlog.

Huh...? I agree with PlainName here, that sounds exactly like what a company would do. If they were going reduce the brightness, they'd just reduce the number of discrete LEDs to save on cost, and still run each element at a power level that will target a certain lifespan.

This is why I have moved towards separate LED arrays and drivers. Commercial grade lighting is a good way to get off the shelf components as you can get passive LED fixtures then choose a driver which runs the LEDs conservatively. It also opens the possibility for dimming, external control and automation etc, but is still simple enough for a sparky to do a regular light switch install.

[Someone]

If we implemented a ban like you suggest, the ultimate result would be that the maximum wattage of the LED lamps would be cut dramatically, forcing people to use lamps that are not bright enough for their needs; warm white would disappear; and flicker would increase as manufacturers switched even more lamps to simple capacitive droppers. I don’t think this is a viable solution.

Flicker is usually counter productive to efficiency due to the massively non-linear characteristics of LEDs, buying on (fixture/instrument) lumens per watt is a pretty good guide.