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The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy
HughPickens.com writes: Markus Krajewski reports that today, with many countries phasing out incandescent lighting in favor of more-efficient and pricier LEDs, it's worth revisiting the history of the Phoebus cartel — not simply as a quirky anecdote from the annals of technology, but as a cautionary tale about the strange and unexpected pitfalls that can arise when a new technology vanquishes an old one. Prior to the Phoebus cartel's formation in 1924, household light bulbs typically burned for a total of 1,500 to 2,500 hours; cartel members agreed to shorten that life span to a standard 1,000 hours.
Each factory regularly sent lightbulb samples to the cartel's central laboratory in Switzerland for verification. If any factory submitted bulbs lasting longer or shorter than the regulated life span for its type, the factory was obliged to pay a fine. Though long gone, the Phoebus cartel still casts a shadow today because it reduced competition in the light bulb industry for almost twenty years, and has been accused of preventing technological advances that would have produced longer-lasting light bulbs. Will history repeat itself as the lighting industry is now going through its most tumultuous period of technological change since the invention of the incandescent bulb?
"Consumers are expected to pay more money for bulbs that are up to 10 times as efficient and that are touted to last a fantastically long time—up to 50,000 hours in the case of LED lights. In normal usage, these lamps will last so long that their owners will probably sell the house they're in before having to change the bulbs," writes Krajewski. "Whether or not these pricier bulbs will actually last that long is still an open question, and not one that the average consumer is likely to investigate." There are already reports of CFLs and LED lamps burning out long before their rated lifetimes are reached. "Such incidents may well have resulted from nothing more sinister than careless manufacturing. But there is no denying that these far more technologically sophisticated products offer tempting opportunities for the inclusion of purposefully engineered life-shortening defects.""
Each factory regularly sent lightbulb samples to the cartel's central laboratory in Switzerland for verification. If any factory submitted bulbs lasting longer or shorter than the regulated life span for its type, the factory was obliged to pay a fine. Though long gone, the Phoebus cartel still casts a shadow today because it reduced competition in the light bulb industry for almost twenty years, and has been accused of preventing technological advances that would have produced longer-lasting light bulbs. Will history repeat itself as the lighting industry is now going through its most tumultuous period of technological change since the invention of the incandescent bulb?
"Consumers are expected to pay more money for bulbs that are up to 10 times as efficient and that are touted to last a fantastically long time—up to 50,000 hours in the case of LED lights. In normal usage, these lamps will last so long that their owners will probably sell the house they're in before having to change the bulbs," writes Krajewski. "Whether or not these pricier bulbs will actually last that long is still an open question, and not one that the average consumer is likely to investigate." There are already reports of CFLs and LED lamps burning out long before their rated lifetimes are reached. "Such incidents may well have resulted from nothing more sinister than careless manufacturing. But there is no denying that these far more technologically sophisticated products offer tempting opportunities for the inclusion of purposefully engineered life-shortening defects.""
In my experience CFLs last about 1/3 as long as incandescents at best.
I recently tossed a set of 4 year old Bosch HE front-loading washers and dryers. The washer was full of mold and the dryer needed 2-3 cycles to adequately dry clothes.
I performed all the preventative steps periodically running a hot cycle, running bleach and cleaning agents through the machine, leaving the door open after every use, cleaning out the dryer vent twice per year...etc.
None of it mattered. The service tech says these problems are common to all HE machines. They simply do not use enough water at a high enough temperature to adequately flush the machine. They dryers are also garbage as the manufacturers are forced to use small burners and short cycle times to meet energy efficiency requirements.
My mom's 25 year old Kenmores washed and dried clothes without complaint for many years - now we are saving the planet by putting crappy appliances in a landfill every few years.
I finally opted for a non-HE washer and dryer (Speed Queen if anyone cares). They are old-school commercial-duty devices. No WiFi, no touch screens, no weather or twitter feed - simply clean clothes in half the time.
Yup they use more water and gas, but I wouldn't have it any other way.
I was told that by 2016 or 2017 these units will no longer be made thanks to more efficiency regs. It's madness.
How does this relate to CFLs and LED bulbs - well - I like my LED bulbs - my CFLs were almost all garbage that lasted a year or two. Most CFLs that I bought didn't last anywhere near their rated 7 year life.
It would have been better to simply give people economic incentives to buy the more efficient bulbs instead of being forced to buy the bulbs.
Sounds like something's wrong with your wiring. I switched to using CFLs over a decade ago and the shortest lifetime I've had on one is 6 years (I think - one might have gone after 4). The first time I moved house, I brought a load with me, but they'd become so cheap that I didn't bother the last time. The only incandescents I've had last longer than a year are ones that are rarely used. I worked out that - back when they were expensive - that after 3 months of operation they'd saved me more in electricity than the cost of an equivalent incandescent, so they've been a pretty good investment.
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I think a lot of people who have over the years tried to use more energy efficient bulbs found that their actual lifespan was all over the map. I'm sure this has led to a lot of people being turned off and going back to incandescents.
When they decided to phase out incandescents they should have made bulb makers date stamp the bulb with a "good until" date AND mandate that any bulb burned out before this date is eligible for a free, over-the-counter replacement.
This would have greatly improved consumer confidence and forced manufacturers to be either more realistic about lifespans or not skimp on components.
What I've found odd about CFLs is that they seem to fail strangely with no discernable pattern. I've gotten some to last in extreme places (outdoors, through subzero winters) and had several fail in places you think they wouldn't, indoor lamps with good ventilation.
Out with it, where are these scathing reviews of yours?
This is crazy. Just because the service tech told you something doesn't make it true.
I have an HE washer/dryer that predates yours. I got it them 10 years ago and they're still going strong. It was the Maytag Neptune, which was the first HE washer on the US market. There was a flaw in the door latch on the first year or two model but I was lucky to avoid that, mine is from just after that.
The washer works fine, although it is nice if you leave the door open for a day once in a while to dry it out in there otherwise, since the door is sealed, any moisture left in the drum after a cycle just sits there until next time you use it. It doesn't have anything to do with hot water, hot water only stays hot for a short time and hot water doesn't kill mildew anyway, if it did you wouldn't need to scrub or bleach the grout in your shower! Later models from Samsung and LG don't have this problem.
The dryer doesn't even have cycle times. It just runs until the clothes are dry. It does this using a dryness sensor, the same type which has been around since 1980 or so. If you do run it on a timed cycle, you can adjust the time it runs in one minute increments. So I have no idea what your tech was telling you about mandating short cycle times or burners that aren't hot enough.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
In my city, they started campaigning for people to save water. The result? People saved so much water that they ended up having to raise the rates because they weren't making enough to run the water system. The system basically has a fixed cost to run, regardless of how much water goes through it.In the end, we cut our water usage in half (averaged over the city), but we now pay twice as much for our water.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
For dimming, you might look at the better LED lights as some of them are dimmable - in Europe they are quite common, and if dimmable, explicitly say so.
The Cree brand bulbs I've been buying are pretty terrific and they are nicely dimmable. But i've noticed a problem with the dimming. I presume they dim by doing some sort of PWM to change the duty cycle and thereby result in some dimming... With the Leviton slide dimmers I've been buying, and set to full brightness (slider all the way up) the Cree bulbs have a flicker with a period of about 6 seconds. As in, every 6 seconds, the light will turn off for approximately 50-70ms. I have one circuit that has a couple of sockets. I put a Cree bulb in one socket, and a Phillips bulb in the other socket. At full, the Cree still exhibits the problem while the Phillips does not. However, the Phillips doesn't dim correctly. Whereas the Cree will dim in a nice linear sort of fashion, the Phillips will dim about 20 percent for the first portion of the slider, and then will maintain that brightness until the slider gets sufficiently far down and then the Phillips just turns off...
I have a Sylvania that just doesn't dim at all.
I think that covers all three of the major manufacturers. So far the Cree is the best except for the iritating 'blink' at full brightness... All of my Crees exhibit the same symptom on different dimmer switches throughout the house. If I put two Cree's in two sockets on one dimmer, they both blink, but at slightly different periods.
"We're not there yet".
No LED-based lighting fixture uses a voltage regulator and a series resistor to limit the current through the LED.
The LED is driven by a current regulator; yes, it usually has a small sense resistor to measure and adjust the driving current, but that's something totally different from a resistor used to limit the current.
Remember, the 'D' in LED stands for (semiconductor) "Diode", which means that in forward conduction it has an exponential relationship between current and voltage. The only way to control the brightness is to control the current, you can't rely on the equivalent "resistance" (i.e. Vd/Id).
The premature failure of the LED bulb is caused exclusively by the embedded electronics degrading at high temperature. Since the LED is still dumping a lot of heat when working, the heat must be dissipated (hence puny LEDs and bulky, machined Al heatsinks) or the electronics get fried.
Guess what the drive to reduce the manufacturing cost will do to the quality of the LED bulbs?
Unless you have a very big heavy-duty resistor (rheostat) in your wall dimmer, it's not directly controlling the AC line. You have a variable resistor modulating the duty cycle of the A/C by biasing the control line to a thyristor - typically an SCR or triac. An SCR can modulate one size of the power sine, a triac is 2 SCRs back-to-back, so it can modulate both sides.
A typical circuit has the resistor connected to a capacitor across the power legs of the circuit. Do you know what a capacitor is? The junction of the resistor and capacitor typically connects to a diac so that the trigger will be essentially digital rather than analog. When the diac fires, it triggers the gate of the 3-terminal thyristor. By adjusting the resistance, hence the charge time of the capacitor, the point in the A/C sine wave where the thyristor fires and cuts off the power can be moved earlier or later in the cycle, thus regulating the total power output at the expense of making the sine wave a dirty mess. This is why dimmers often cause radio hash. But they're fairly energy-efficient.
Yes, I'm being a snot. You see, I really DO know what I'm talking about. I've not only built them, I've repaired a few as well.
A rheostat would be the blunt-instrument approach and not only is bulky, but also gets hot, since it's a resistor carrying a lot of wattage.
None of the LEDs in this house have failed so far (after close to three years since installation), so I have no reason to expect that they won't last the rated lifetime.
LED's I've yet to have a problem with. CFL's, I've had nothing but problems with, ranging anything from massive flicker bad enough to cause migraines to them going up in smoke in a matter of months even in your standard lamp base. It seems to me that manufactures the first couple of years after CFL's became common started cutting costs by reducing the quality of the components themselves. Leaving you with a good glass fixture, and cheap ass electronics. Most of the failures I've seen after pulling them apart fail on resistors or capacitors. Lot of the people saying "the caps are over heating" to me, in all the cases where I've seen a capacitor fail, it's followed the same path as the "bad cap" scandal that hit PC motherboard makers in the early 00's. That is, fake caps.
Om, nomnomnom...