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$60 Light Bulb Debuts On Earth Day
theodp writes "How much would you pay for an amazing light bulb? On Sunday — Earth Day — Philips' $60 LED light bulb goes on sale at Home Depot and other outlets. The bulb, which lasts 20 years, won a $10 million DOE contest that stipulated the winning bulb should cost consumers $22 in its first year on the market. Ed Crawford, the head of Philips' U.S. lighting division, said it was always part of the plan to have utility rebates bring the price down to the $22 range."
How many people does it take to change it?
Reading lights on the bus I ride have been replaced with multi-LED cluster bulbs - in less than 18 months most have several dead LEDs in the cluster.
Yeah, I'd consider 60 bucks.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Hopefully it comes closer to these claims than the CFLs, which claimed 5 year lives, but often failed within a few weeks.
Philips AmberLEDs i bought for $20 each from home depot. In some areas they are now $15. Awesome light color and brightness. When they first went on sale they were $50-$60 each. now they are $20. Wait for a year and the pricing of these will also drop to $15-$20 making them affordable.
It's not that the latest technology is expensive it's that the light-bulb won $10million and one of the requirements was that the bulb cost consumers $22. The best excuse they could come up with was we were planning on their light-bulb being heavily subsidized which is the reason for the high price.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
I've had a very similar looking bulb to this new one in use in my living room for some time now. Very pleased with the quality of light it puts out, and works properly in an lamp with a dimmer circuit in it (some LED bulbs flash in dimmer equipped outlets). It's the strangest looking bulb I've seen - it's dandelion yellow when off, but blazing white when turned on. I'd pay $60 for an improved version just to give it a try.
In my experience CFLs last no longer than incandescents. Why should I believe that these claims about LEDs are not also lies?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I wont be buying any though....well maybe a few as a stop-gap but, not many.
I have been getting RGB LED strips, and looking to totally replace the house lighting. Part of the problem here is the "bulb". Yes, if you stick to a bulb form factor, and be backwards compartible, it can be hard to get enough light from LEDs, and expensive to build out etc.
However, bulbs were just the first invention....what makes that form factor so superior except for backwards compatibility?
I am looking at long strips, more like flourecent tube fixtures than bulbs. Can use many cheaper LEDs instead of a few expensive big ones... can use RBG LEDs and thus be able to change colors, or even white temp.
Of course, the stips are cheap pre-made, cheaper than I can find the LEDs on them in fact (cheapest price for 1000 in bulk was more expensive per LED than buying strips of 150 at a time) and the strips have limiting resistors, which are a major source of power loss (would be better to drop the resistor and use a constant current circuit.... but having to desolder or jumper smd resistors on each and every segment of the strip defeats the purpose of buying strips to make it easy)
Still though.... at $60/bulb.... ouch. and...its still just a bulb... with a single light color?
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Okay. But the light bulb is heavily subsidized. I get rebates from my power company for a variety of things. I've gotten rebates on CF bulbs in the past. If rebates were part of the rules of the competition, then I don't really understand your objection.
Don't worry, the LEDs will still have tens of thousands of hours left in them when a $.02 capacitor blows its guts out and terminates the driver board because a $.05 capacitor would have bloated the BOM too much...
This article doesn't mention it, but part of the increased cost is the fact that the parts are made in CA & they are assembled in WI. So you're going to pay more for them compared to the same thing from China. And these seem pretty advanced, so you may not be able to buy an equivalent yet. Certainly, if I see them subsidized, I'll pick up a few.
And therefore most likely an anti-Philips submission, intended to shame them into dropping the price. The actual article says Philips is already doing this.
Netherlands-based Philips, is discounting it right away to $50 for consumers, and working on deals with electric utilities to discount it even further, by as much as $20 to $30.
This means the bulb will cost anywhere from $20 to $60, depending on where it's found.
And of course more clarification
Congress launched the L Prize contest in 2007, with the goal of creating a bulb to replace the standard, energy-wasting "incandescent" 60-watt bulb. The requirements were rigorous, and Philips was the only entrant. Its bulb was declared the winner last year, after a year and a half of testing. The contest stipulated that the winning bulb be sold for $22 in its first year on the market... In that context, the $60 price tag has raised some eyebrows.
The title of the PhysOrg article? "Rebates to cut price of $60 LED bulb". That's a positive, and theodp should be ashamed for trolling.
For what my anecdotal account is worth, I'm completely satisfied with my CFLs. I've had nothing but CFLs in my house since about '04 and have only had to replace a half-dozen or so.
The energy savings justified the cost of the switch from incandescent bulbs to CFLs. Going from CFLs to LEDs, it isn't even close.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
> Does your experience concern Philips CFLs?
Many different brands.
> I have one that has lasted since 1998.
And I have one incandescent that has lasted since 1995. Outliers happen.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I mean really, you can't drive adoption with a $60 bulb. Most people at the store going I've got 3 bulbs out are going to go "hrm $15 dollars or $180" Which do you think they are going to pick?
I'd love to know the Margins on this.
Since you can get el-cheapo incandescents at around 50 cents each, I've changed maybe 3-4 in the last 10 years, no thanks...
Can they be dimmed using a *standard* inexpensive dimmer? Besides, aren't some LEDs very narrow in their color range (and too cold too)?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-emitting_diode#White_light
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
How is the Phillips $60 light bulb different than this $15 bulb?
Oh, and there are already complaints on the home depot site that it causes radio interference.
An incandescent light bulb will have a lifespan proportional to the thickness of the filament and a power efficiency inversely proportional to the thickness of the filament. You can have a long-life incandescent bulb, but it will drain even more power from an already inefficient design. The 1000-hour bulb was a reasonably optimal point on the power vs. replacement cost curve.
Then they can keep it.
I don't understand why everyone is/was so excited about CFLs. When they broke into the mainstream a few years ago, they were more expensive but were long lasting and energy efficient -- at least, that's what we were told. I have owned many, and ALL of them have died prematurely. Sometimes an entire package will be dead within a few weeks of purchase. Who in their right mind pays for such garbage? The carbon footprint of making and then throwing them away must be far larger than the savings in electricity. Also they are slower to light up than the good old fashioned bulbs. Why does nobody admit that?
So, do these new light bulbs come with a 20 year replacement warranty? If not, there's NO FRICKIN' WAY I would buy it. Also, I'm not convinced that these new bulbs actually make the same light. I'll wait until I've seen it in person.
-d
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
My objection (and I am not parent poster, obviously) is that I'm still paying the full price of the bulb. Rebates aren't magically printed money, and that $60 cost has to come from *somewhere*. Ultimately it comes right out of our power bills or tax dollars. Subsidies hide the true costs of something and ultimately just serve to benefit one company or another while reducing the variety in the market ecosystem - look at oil, corn, or any number of other subsidized industries as an example. It also only propagates our short-sighted obsession with up front costs. CFLs are subsidized here - but I'd still buy them if they weren't because I understand the differences in power consumption.
+1 Disagree
They claim a 20 year lifetime at 4 hours/day, but how bright will it be after 20 years? LED's reduce their light output over time, and the end of life is based on some loss of brightness (30% loss?), so that 60 watt bulb may be more like a 40 watt bulb by the end of its lifetime. And based on previous LED lights I've seen, I'm skeptical that it's really equivalent in brightness to a 60 watt incandescent bulb in the first place.
Funny, I replaced all the wall lights in my family room (which tend to be left on by anyone and everyone) with LEDs.
Old bulbs: 6x 40 Watt, burn out on average one bulb per month.
New bulbs: Phillips 2.5w ambient bulbs ($15/each) 8 months in, none have burned out, and I've gone from:
240W/hr to 15W/hr.
Given that these bulbs are on no less than 10 hours a day:
2.4KW/h draw replaced with 150W/h or at $0.12/KW/h $8.64/month to $0.54/month ($48.60 in 6 months) in electricity just for that room. In 1 year all those bulbs will have paid for themselves.
(this doesn't count the added cost of AC in the summer for heat or the savings on gas in winter).
What people tend not to like about the LED bulbs is the directionality of the light. Almost all other sources of light throw the light evenly in all directions, but with LEDs (even with a diffuser) the light tends to be directional. For some applications this is an issue, but for others, not so much.
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
Cthulhu doesn't exist, however we can all agree that an Eldritch Abdomination is bad.
How are they gonna make money when eventually everyone has one of these and it takes 20 years for it to die...
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
I've taken apart a number of Philips' premium lighting products (both top-end CFLs and also electronic ballasts for fluorescent and high-intensity discharge lamps).
I was pretty surprised to see absolutely nothing but the best components. All the capacitors were either high quality metalized film, ceramic or premium ultra-long-life high-temperature Japanese Al electrolytic from a tier 1 manufacturer.
Similarly, the active components were heavily over-specified 100% avalanche rated rugged MOSFETs, with high quality protection (diode clamps and current limiting resistors) on the gate drives.
While cheap Chinese CFLs often use garbage grade components - I was pretty surprised at the quality of the commercial lighting products - but then I suppose that's why these units command such high prices.
Does your experience concern Philips CFLs? I have one that has lasted since 1998.
So this means... that all Phillips CFLs will last 14+ years? No, it means that one did. It says absolutely nothing about the quality and longevity of all other Phillips CFLs manufactured in 1988.
Anecdotal evidence is... anecdotal.
Right. No, your other right. No, the other other right.
Ultimately it comes right out of our power bills
Perhaps the power companies see it as an investment. Subsidizing the development (and eventual economies of scale) of technologies that use less power will allow a power company to put off expensive upgrades to generators and the grid for a few years.
Don't worry, the LEDs will still have tens of thousands of hours left in them when a $.02 capacitor blows its guts out and terminates the driver board because a $.05 capacitor would have bloated the BOM too much...
Friending you for that comment, cause that's probably what will happen.
Hmm... digging around some more, I find this breathless press release that says the competition dictates a minimum three year warranty. Funny how they advertise 20 years but promise only 3. Keep that in mind when deciding to purchase.
Living in southern climes (N hemisphere), I personally look forward to cheaper LED bulbs, though I think the whoop-de-doo is overestimated for people who live in northern climes or for rarely used lights. This is one place where the Republicans were right... I want a 75-cent bulb for my coat closet, not a $3 one and certainly not a $25 subsidized one.
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
My power company doesn't give a subsidy for buying these LED bulbs so, no, I really CAN'T get it for $22 and Philips scammed the taxpayer by making false claims to win the prize.
And other companies sell their bulbs for about half the $60 pricetag. Considering Philips got handed millions of free cash, they should be able to do the same.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
While I'd never wish to submit to the invisible hand of a free eldritch abomination, the idea of a regulated abomination, it's hands carefully controlled, might be something I'd be interested in entertaining.
They're there affecting their effect.
With the various types of lightbulbs on the market these days, I put together some simple rules for buying them:
1. Lights that are left on for long periods of time -- CFLs. CFLs last a long time if they are not constantly switched on and off, and they offer the best brightness and cost effectiveness. Nightlights, and my living room and kitchen lights, are all CFLs. They have lasted for years. The nightlight in my kitchen is on 24 hours a day, and I just changed it after 5 years of constant use. The trick to making CFLs last is to never turn them off.
2. Lights that need to be turned on and off frequently -- LEDs. The lifetime of CFLs is limited by how often you switch them on and off. If you need to switch a light often but don't care if it's a little dim, put an LED there. (LEDs are dimmer than other types of lights.) My bedroom and basement/laundry lights are LEDs.
3. Lights that need to be bright and/or that need to light up right away -- Incandescents. Yes, I still have incandescents in my bathroom and on my porch. Both locations need light that is brighter than LEDs can put out, and the light needs to come on immediately which CFLs are poor at doing. If I used either LEDs or CFLs in those spots there would be times when I would be stumbling around in dim light in a dangerous area.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
EXCEPT other companies already sell their LED bulbs for about half the $60 pricetag. Considering Philips got handed millions of free taxpayer dollars, they should be able to do the same by diverting that cash to reducing the pricetag. (This is reminiscient of the telephone companies getting millions in 1996 telecommunication subsidies to run fiber to the home, and then they never did.)
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
I've had it for a month.
I love it. Very bright, great light.
To be honest, the only place it falls down is in the electronics.
Compared to $30 EcoSmart 60W bulb I got from Home Depot, the L Prize starts up slower (about 0.25sec versus instant), can turn red when it dims (sometimes the blue LED driver circuit cuts out and the red stays on) and sometimes when you turn the L Prize off it flashes once about 0.25sec after you turn it off.
Finally, putting both bulbs on an oscilloscope, the L Prize also has a messier current waveform, far more harmonic distortion than the other bulb.
What gives? This is a great bulb, but the electrics seem like they could use some improvement.
Any comments?
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
I switched to using leds quite early (not Philips), and while the energy saving is definitely worth it I've had one die on me and another if flickering occationally.
The issue seems to be the electronics rather than the leds themselves. And while I do plan to buy leds in the future as well I think it's premature to assume the 20 year figure will hold. Time will tell.
.: Max Romantschuk
I can sell you that bulb for $30 right now. It is still pricey but in 18months have been cut in half price wise. As production gears up expect them to fall until the 15-20 range. As it is they are awesome lamps. You can put them into existing fixtures and dimmers and not think twice
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
I don't intend to pick on Philips specifically, not enough data to judge them against their peers; but more to express my frustration with the failure modes so common among the (not always predictable in any useful way) questionably well made offerings.
For some reason, the 'lightbulb' form factor seems to bring out the worst in designers of driver boards: Your basic, boring, overhead fluorescent tubes can be found running until their electrodes eventually degrade on some 80's inverter that has probably seen at least a dozen tubes come and go. LEDs, similarly, seem to last forever in their miscellaneous applications; but the moment they get shoved into lightbulbs half off them are either not receiving power, or in a series chain with a blown one, long before you get to start worrying about serious dimming or phosphor breakdown.
Neither tubes nor LEDs are, themselves, immortal of course; but it's just frustrating to see how often it's the driver board that keels over and dies long before the (generally not user-swappable) light emitters themselves are ready to go...
Funny how they advertise 20 years but promise only 3.
At a $60 price tag, that doesn't boost my confidence in their product. If they are going to claim 20 years, they should have a warranty of at least between 10 and 15 years.
This:
"I'm still paying the full price of the bulb"
means almost the exact opposite of this:
"that $60 cost has to come from *somewhere*"
Yes. The money comes from somewhere: it comes from somewhere other than from you. No, you don't pay the full price of the bulb, you pay $22/60, plus maybe another ten cents, and the rest of society pays for the rest. Congratulations, you just benefited from a transfer program which society set up because society thinks the world is better with it, than without it. Society wants people like you to have a bit of their money, which is why we voted for leaders to give us such programs. If you don't want the money, that's okay too, you don't have to bother with the rebates.
I object when I hear people say that all market distortions are bad. No, they aren't Many market distortions are good. Some are bad. Obviously these are judgement calls, but to equate oil subsidies with LED subsidies is absurd and does a dis-service to everyone. It is culpably simplistic reasoning. (Let me be perfectly explicitly clear: it's still okay if you think this particular market distortion is bad, but it is not okay to thus conclude that all market distortions are bad.)
I'm glad you would buy the bulbs un-subsidized. Me too, probably. But that's not the question, the question is would other people buy them, large numbers of people. If the answer is yes, then perhaps no market distortion is necessary; but apparently the people who set it up thought the answer was no, and I tend to agree with them.
It appears that in 45 states in the U.S. the mercury saved by not burning that much extra electricity's worth of coal offsets the mercury content in CFLs, even if they are all broken to bits. http://nearwalden.com/blog/2011/08/averages-cfls-and-mercury/
If you tell me who your power company is, I will attempt to show you that you are wrong about the rebates available to you. Before you answer too quickly, consider that many rebates are available from places other than your one power company. My CFL rebates, for instance, were from some company in Seattle, but I live in Wisconsin. Why? I don't know. Nevertheless, I still bet your power company has some kinds of programs, because I've never heard of one that doesn't. But you can show me my first, by telling me what company supplies your electricity, and I will do the leg work of googling "[company name] + rebate".
They sell tools for changing light bulbs... they're like cherry-pickers.
Brian Fundakowski Feldman
The cheap ones are complete garbage. The Philips are different. I've had several of the previous generation Philips 819933 12.5w 800 lumen "bulbs" running for almost a year, one 24x7 and others piling up a lot of hours. Not the slightest problem from any of them. The quality of the light is just as good as incandescent.
You may not have looked at the price dispassionately and analytically. One of these uses $37.50 in electricity over its 25,000 hr rated life, at 12.5 cents/kWh. You would have to buy twenty-five 60 watt incandescents (total cost $12.50-$25.00?) and run them one at a time to burnout to make the same amount of light for the same period, and these would use $180.00 in electricity.
So total cost is $40 (retail) + $37.50 = $87.50 for the LED, versus $12.50 + $180.00 = $192.50 for the incandescents. That's a saving of $105.00. Actually my electricity rates are closer to 18 cents per kWh, so I save a lot more than that. Not to mention saving yourself 24 bulb changes. Oh, and this previous generation Philips is available for under $20 locally where I live.
If I am spending my own money, I'd be tempted to just get this one:
http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-led-lightbulb-philips-ambientled/
I wonder what the differences are? Maybe the $25 one is assembled in China?
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
I was actually annoyed that the expensive flourescent "bulbs" I got burned out in less than a year. Save on energy used but wasteful on energy used to manufacture and creating plenty of toxics. Easier to just turn the lights off when you're not in the room.
This thread seems to have rapidly degenerated into allusions to Japanese tentacle porn. Congratulations!
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
From what I can tell big difference they are using phosphor codings to correct the normally crappy led spectrum.
Spectrum looks very clean but still a small spike around blue/purple.
http://www.usa.lighting.philips.com/pwc_li/us_en/connect/tools_literature/downloads/EnduraLED_A19-110726_2.pdf
Still think I'm going to skip leds and save up for quantum dots and carbon nano tube lighting.
Precisely.
I've got products (computers) which were warrantied for 1 year which have lasted over 10. For electronics with no moving parts it is not unreasonable to expect 10 years of service, even in non-ideal conditions, assuming you do not have severely bad power.
Consider for a moment that cheap and partially blown power supplies can remain putting out power for years, and that the only way to kill a LED is to, basically, burn it out through overvoltage. How likely is that to happen? Hopefully not very, or the fundamental engineering was flawed: the breaker box should be able to handle everything up to being struck by lightning.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
No point in buying a bulb which lasts 20 years. By 2020, there would be more efficient bulbs and this would be banned. And by 2020, both Google and Facebook would have capability to report to the Govt what bulb you turn on, the ban will also work on products which have already been purchased before the ban.
How many Prolog programmers does it take to change a lightbulb? false.
20 years at only 4 hours per day is what they advertise. 3 years at 24 hours a day is the equivalent of 18 years at 4 hours a day. Their warranty must be counting on a worst-case usage model. I wouldn't call that entirely unfair.
I use $5 battery powered motion-activated stick-up LED lamps for closets (with $3 worth of eneloops in them.) Mainly because there's no wiring run to them in this old house. They never blow out, and I rent, so if I move, they get tossed in a crate, no need to carefully pack them. Those closets where there was a socket used to blow their bulbs once per year. I'm now 7 years in on the stick-up lamps, so it's some time yet before I'll make my money back on those compared to replacing bulbs, and I annually top up the batteries so there is little convenience benefit versus changing bulbs, but considering a motion sensor for 120VAC costs as much as the lamp+batteries, in some respects I already have made my money back. They aren't powerful lights, but why I would need 40+W of light to find my vacuum cleaner is beyond me, and being magnetically attached means I can grab them to use them as a flashlight if needed. FWIW LED lights unlike CFLs are probably more tolerant to very occasional use and applications where they are turned on/off a lot (e.g. via motion sensors) than even incandescents.
Someone had to do it.
You are the very model of a modern major generalizer.
Might want to stop with the assumption that large groups of people all think and operate in the exact same way.
What free market? America has never been a country with zero market regulations -- never. In fact, for the first couple hundred years our entire tax base was levied on imports.
It seems to me that tmosley doesn't know what a free market is. That isn't surprising, today's proponents of free markets rely on people having no understanding of what a free market is, and simply having a knee-jerk attraction to anything with "free" in it.
Look it up. You might blow your own mind. "ZERO market regulations!? Who would want that?!" An incredibly tiny minority of industrialists would want that, tmosley. It's the job of the rest of us to stop them.
What about the energy spent producing the bulbs, and the energy used by the workers (their salaries come from that high priced bulb)?
You must do that type of in depth analysis to find the true costs of these things. Assuming no externalities, then price is the final arbiter of energy efficiency, because all money is eventually spent on energy of one type or another. This is why the poorest man today is richer than the greatest king of 1500 years ago--access to cheap energy.
This thread seems to have rapidly degenerated into allusions to Japanese tentacle porn. Congratulations!
"Degenerated"???
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
You're asking for difficult, expensive processes to be priced lower than easy ones. Big Macs are cheap to produce (even cheaper if you include finely textured beef product!), organic salads are more resource intensive, hence more expensive. As a bonus strike, the salad carries fewer calories. The bus a $1/day for unlimited use will cost more to run on your $10/gal fuel than $1.
Part of what you're paying for is R&D (and IP) on these new goods. The first million out the door have to cover the cost of creating the product, plus carrying costs, plus profit (no profit = no products). After that, it gets cheaper. Still, the difference between an electronic assembly built to an old standard and a piece of wire in a cheap glass enclosure is pretty stark. We could retrofit our houses for more efficient use of the technology and minimize the per-piece cost, but that makes the electronic assembly look cheap.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Ultimately it comes right out of our power bills or tax dollars.
Yes, but you need to compare apples and apples. When my neighbor keeps on using a low-efficiency incandescent bulb, they're putting more CO2 in the atmosphere, because where I live, the source of energy is virtually all fossil fuels. That means that my kids and grandkids are subsidizing my neighbor, who doesn't have to pay the real cost of global warming. We also wouldn't have fought the last three wars if there wasn't oil in the middle east, so when I pay my income taxes this week, I'm subsidizing the use of fossil fuels by paying the ruinous costs of those wars.
It also only propagates our short-sighted obsession with up front costs.
You've got this precisely backwards. Using an incandescent bulb is a short-sighted decision based on ignoring the long-term consequences of global warming.
Find free books.
I bought 8 of a similar LED to replace the overhead incandescent 60W floods. Cost $40 at Home Depot.
I did the math and compared to the power hogging incandescents which we were using, we're in the black after 2 years. I forget the exact numbers, but I own a Chicago garden apartment and we work from home, so these lights are on ~5 hours a day, more in the winter. In locations where we use it half that much, the payback time is twice as long, etc.
The thing about the overhead bulbs is that they are GOOD. Unlike CLF floods, which I tried several and none were acceptably good. These put out wide spectrum light, tinted towards yellow, and dim nicely down to about 10% total output. Silent. Also, they should be the last light bulbs I buy for a long time, which seems pretty reasonable to me. I suspect most people won't be willing to take a $300 hit at the register, so maybe these will find their first use in new construction.
http://www.lightingprize.org/60watttest.stm
99.3% of initial brightness after 25,000 hours use. (see lumen maintenance)
This is far better than a CFL and better than an incandescent too.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
I've used and am using a previous generation Phillips bulb - has the same prongs and yellow exterior. Looks like a bug light bulb. It IS superior to any of the 8 or so other bulbs I've bought. Most of the others were either too dim, had poor color, or were too directional. Some of them were name brand too - I find Lowe's stocks the best selection BTW. This bulb though, it was able to be installed in a vertical torchier lamp just fine unlike any other. The light is warm and it spreads well. Yes, these cost bux - I got no rebates obviously - but they last and last. They are also instant-on without flicker. I'd suggest buying a couple and trying them in various fixtures to see if they are suitable. I have yet top try mine in my porch light but if it works there I'm buying a few - others really sucked in that application.
This new generation apparently uses less power so that's a bonus and yes I will buy some. The lifespan and the much much lower power usage plus the quality of the light makes them perfect. Sadly they will not work in a fixture I've got that's using a 100watt incandescent (I need light dammit) nor will they work in my outdoor floods. I can hardly wait for replacements for those! :-)
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
no, the free market doesn't ';correct itself'. That whole saying it stupid.
Correct itself towards what? Some imaginary center point??
All a free an unregulated free market does it move wealth in one direction. Industrial want ou to live in there crappy shanty, by crappy goods at the company store, and for you to work 18 hours a day without health care or education. Meanwhile dumping their waster into the local water supply.
So, if by correcting itself you mean "Turn everyone into indentured servants, then yes.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I want free markets for my economy like I was a leprechaun for my President -- which is to say, even if one existed, which it doesn't, I still wouldn't want it.
Markets are good; free markets are bad, or would be if they were real.
How was this modded 'Troll'? Apparently some moderators have a tricky relationship with the truth. The post is true. 1) Free markets do not and never have existed 2) If a Free Market did exist, nobody would like it, including business. Does anybody really think Oil, Agriculture, Finance, High Tech, Medical, Pharma....does anybody really think those industries thrive in a "free market"? Get real.
Here are the docs:
http://www.usa.lighting.philips.com/pwc_li/us_en/connect/tools_literature/downloads/EnduraLED_A19-110726_2.pdf
That's pretty impressive for a nation that's only 236 years old. In reality, however, the income tax was first levied in 1861 in order to pay for the Civil War, so we actually made it income tax free for just 85 years. Of course, the changing sources of funding says more about the size of the federal government than anything.
GP was talking about imports, not income. Until federal income tax, federal government was indeed largely funded by import levies.
just how they test a lightbulb to verify it actually lasts 20 years--without spending 20 years testing a bunch of them.
I'm aware that stress tests can be devised to (supposedly) simulate the accelerated passage of time, but just what do those tests involve? I suspect:
1) Increased voltage and/or current. This will alter the conditions away from reality by increasing acute stress on the bulb, and favoring highly conductive substances that might be less durable, long-term. Example (using a non-LED bulb): Gold is a poorer conductor than iron, but gold doesn't rust. More electricity will favor iron, since it can take more heat without melting, and will produce less heat, overall. Iron tarnishes easily, though, such that any imperfection of the vacuum will result in a shortened lifespan, when compared with gold. (There are reasons why the data media of the Voyager spacecraft were made of gold...)
2) Extra-severe, fast-paced (simulated) weather conditions. Rapid changes in severe temperatures (i.e. very hot to very cold) will favor elasticity over other forms of durability. Therefore, the bulbs with more pliable/expandable exteriors (and interiors, to a lesser degree) will last longer during the stress test. However, there's no guarantee that those same materials will, say, oxidize slower, react better to the presence of hand oils (which are very bad for typical light bulbs), etc. Also, moisture tests (fog, rain, etc.) will favor exteriors made out of non-rusting metals (for the contacts, at least), and that will have basically the opposite effect from what the inner components will experience: the outside of the bulb needs to be sturdy, so that it won't warp over time or have problems if it gets accidentally bumped. (For $60, it should darn well tolerate a light thrashing...) If the outside is made of softer, non-tarnishing metals, it will cause warping, which could destroy the seals between the outside and the inside. Also, it might eventually warp to a degree, such that it can't make good contact with the power source.
I'm sure there are more items that belong on the above list, and I'm also sure that there's plenty I don't know about the topic; but given how we were promised longer life from compact halogen bulbs--that actually turned out to be at least as flimsy as traditional incandescent ones (and put more strain on the power plants, besides)--I think there's every reason to be skeptical about trusting that a fancy new $60 light bulb will last such a long time as 20 years. Personally, I'm inclined to call the claim B.S. and be done with it.