Good old Scottich Electricity! There is a standing charge as well and any use over a certain base amount is 20p/kWhr or something like that.
As we have oil fired CH and solid fuel the electricity usage generally stays well inside their lower tariff band except in cold winters.
Anyway if your electricity is more expensive then it strengthens the case for using the most efficient possible lights in 24/7 applications.
They were already a winner on my very conservative assumptions.
Comparing electricity prices is a PITA all the online comparison sites want way too much detail from you before they will allow you to see any of the numbers! Confusing electricity tariff #2456 (T&C apply) is only available to one legged pirates with a parrot on the left shoulder etc.
Because if I'm to save money the bulbs have to be onb a significant amoubt of time. If you leave LEDS on for that long their life shortens quite quick ily.
"Long life 25000 hour or ten year lifespan in normal use means they last mu ch longer than ordinary bulbs, this equates to about 25 years if used for a few hours per day."
I've had LEDS go in under 3 years. I want their estimate of the LEDs life i f they were on 6-8 hours per day.
NOT for LEDS their life times are quoted for 4 hours per day or less.
Yes much sooner.
Every year or so we get new higher efficiency bulbs.
LEDs also waste energy in heat, but that heat never goes anywhere useful al l it does it heat up the materail and reduces the LEDS life span.
Well I don't so it's not really a problem.
I've brought 4 LEDs tubes, be intersting to see how they do.
I have yet to see an LED fail of old age and I have some original ones from the early 70s. The main way that they fail is though abuse when bending the legs or inadequate heatsinking on the new high power LEDs.
3 years is about the maximum life of the current CFLs. High power production LED lamps haven't been around long enough for you to have had one fail with three years of use unless you are an incredibly early adopter with money to burn or an insider at a research lab.
The LED lamps available three years ago were *very* expensive eg
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"under $50" which ISTR meant $49.99
Rubbish. I can believe that the lifetime of the control electronics will be limited a bit by continuous usage but the LED reaches thermal equilibrium very quickly after being switched on. The capacitors will dry out slightly faster when warm but in a good design they are well within limits. I don't doubt there are some bad ones out there too.
The jury is still out on that one. I haven't owned any for long enough to see a single LED unit failure yet. CFLs on the other hand expire after ~3 years in normal use due to tube failure or capacitor degradation and I have enough to be pretty sure of the statistics.
Yes. But if you buy an LED now instead of a CFL you will be ahead after under two years including the electricity used - and the savings are even better if you are not on an optimum low use tariff.
The amount of waste heat from LEDs is usually too small to notice. It is only a problem in a very confined insulated space with no airflow. The sort of position that halogen downlighters tend to be installed in.
Putting LEDs into such an environment ensures near certain early death, but that doesn't stop people selling them to consumers.
It affects plenty of people who do see local mains spikes.
Like what, to give meaningful results they need to know where in the country you are, who your current supplier is and the current tariff name and a fairly accurate annual usage.
But yes, getting the real figures to plug into your own spreadsheet can be a PITA but it's normally easier on a comparison site than the direct with the supplier. They quite often have a single 60 page .pdf with electricity only, duel fuel, gas only with every tariff for each of those and all the variations that arise from the 16 electricity regions. The comparison sites at least filter all that irrelevant information quite well.
A 50w Halogen bulb emits MUCH, MUCH more heat than those LEDs. There ain't no way that an LED designed to be a replacement for a halogen is going to expire because of heat, unless the actual LED "bulb" itself is designed incredibly badly. It certainly isn't going to be due to lack of heatsinking or free air of the actual fitting, unless using a halogen would have resulted in a minor conflagration (or molten plastic, at the very least) in minutes flat.
Hell, the last LED GU10-fitment bulbs I bought were for sunken, sealed light fittings - and those fittings specifically _demanded_ LEDs precisely because of the lack of free air.
(and, yes, those were replacements for failed LEDs, too - but that was due to water ingress)
Not really. I don't count failures due to badly engineered retrofit designs.
And the enclosure and insulation around it is designed to protect the rest of the building from the insanely hot halogen lamp envelope.
A halogen lamp or any filament lamp can survive happily with ambient temperatures that will melt plastics so long as it doesn't get so hot that it softens the glass seal. By comparison the capacitors in a CFL or LED controller will die after not that long held at 100C or above and suffer a shorter life with above ambient operating temperature.
That is why LED/CFL in glass globes and designed for halogen lamp downlighters tend to end up dead pretty quickly.
It would be interesting to put an irreversible thermometer telltale on one of your dying LED units to see how hot they really get. This would be too dangerous to do with a halogen lamp as it might well catch fire!
My money is on something around 70-90C after a couple of hours.
Some are definitely more equal than others. FWIW I am inclined to agree with you that GU10 LED units are mostly a waste of money - not fit for purpose. YMMV (although in this case it clearly doesn't)
ubt of time. If you leave LEDS on for that long their life shortens quite q uickily.
t much longer than ordinary bulbs, this equates to about 25 years if used f or a few hours per day."
fe if they were on 6-8 hours per day.
They must be very original then, there were few about in the early 70s and non were meant for mains lighting. In 1978/9 blue LEDS were about £30 each.
inadequate heatsinking, yes perhaps that's it, as I said. If the heatsinking were adequate they could be left on longer.
Makes you wonder how they work out they'll last 25 years doesn't it.
Mine weren't the high power production LEDs.
So what we're talking abouyt what you buy not individual parts.
If the control circurty fails how much will it cost to replace it.
your not one of these crackpots selling this crap on ebay are you. A friend opf mione spent quite a bit on such LEDS shipped from china 20% fa iled in under a month, mosty likely fakes.
In those you have quoted, why only quote for them if left on for a few hou rs a day ?
Me too, I won't be buying them just yet. I'll wait for the real users resul ts.
Depends on the use, I have little use for LEDs bulbs in the home as for efficint lighting.
l all it does it heat up the materail and reduces the LEDS life span.
Never had them never wanted them sio no need to replace them.
Never had them never wanted them sio no need to replace them.
They are original red, yellow and green (the green isn't good at all) from about 1974. I have one in series with a modern LED with the same current flowing through both for science demos.
Blue LEDs back then were insanely expensive and very rare gallium nitride or silicon carbide. Blue LEDs initially found favour in high end cost no object audiophool equipment. Red were by far the cheapest.
You are misreading the information. They can run perfectly well for extended periods. They are merely translating the 50k hrs MTBF into something that they think people can more easily understand.
A bit like converting everything into London double decker buses, Olympic swimming pools or the area of Wales. I never found these "helpful" Blue Peter style comparisons at all useful.
Engineering methods and accelerated testing.
You can't - no user servicable parts.
No. Of course not. I have pointed mostly to Philips and Samsung units on Amazon which I have found to be good.
They didn't. You are reading something into it that is *NOT* there.
Make your mind up! Just below you also say you have bought four!!!
You could try writing that again in English.
Or even bought them if your earlier claim is correct.
They weren't designed for lighting at all. Merely signal lamps. And not 'white'. So their life is of absolutely no significance as regards this discussion.
Compared to the bulbs they replaced they were wonderful though and lasted almost forever. "Green" was more dark lemon yellow. It is only comparatively recently that a true green and cyan have been possible.
The modern white LEDs are mostly blue with a wideband yellow phosphor and mostly fail by degrading the clear plastic encapsulation and/or darkening the phosphor closest to semiconductor die.
In practice I think the capacitors will be the weakest link on any properly designed high power mains LED bulb.
Decent quality under-run tungsten can have a very long life too. The LEDs which replaced signal lamps cost many times the price of tungsten. Better quality tungsten would have provided a more reasonable comparison. And, of course, LEDs didn't replace tungsten where actual light was needed - like say for a panel meter.
Tungsten hasn't (yet, and to the best of my knowledge) beaten carbon filament - at 110 years or more. And that is probably very much under-run - or the filament was over-sized.
I found a cupboard with unused carbon filament lightbulbs in their original packets, dating from around 1902. They will be handy when the ones we are using burn out!
I wonder why energy prices should vary dependent on where you are in the country? I could understand why it might cost more to provide it on a remote island, but not from one mainland county to another.
Indeed. But I am often not convinced the comparison sites are correct. Have you ever actually saved the amount that the site said you would?
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