the funny thing there are still some in the lighting industry who doubt leds will become the universal light source. i dunno.

Why LED? Why not Induction (Like I've seen in Stop Market Yagur) .
The Induction lighting proved to be able to last the theoretical 100,000 of the LED, in general lighting (What LED can do only in low voltage low brightness applications [Nightlights, indicators, emergency lighting, etc...]), with the only concern is the ballast, which must be electronic HF, to be able to supply the MHz that the induction coil requires for effective coupling.
Induction lighting only now, begins to enter in Israel, with Gal-Or provides a wide varity of induction fixtures (Through floodlighting isn't a suitable application for induction, as it will have 180deg beam like a CFL floodlight).
I've seen the first induction lighting system in Israel and in my real eyes yesterday at Stop Market Yagur (The picture i posted above).
Induction is much more greener solution than LED, as it haven't the toxic materials that LED have, and the amount of mercury used is little. It is usually dosed by an amalgam.

Induction is more expensive and less reliable (more complicated electronics with more stuff that can go wrong, more fragile lamp ....)

Ash: But induction lamps proved to last the 100,000 hours mark in general lighting, unlike LED. Also they aren't more fragile than electrode based fluorescent lamps. The ballast is the only problem.
Btw, have you seen the induction lighting system that I found in Stop Market Yagur ?

When you are comparing the highest class inducion lamps on the market, be fair and compare them to the highest class LED - and the LED will last for all the hours you want

Ash: I think that you don't know about this lighting technology, since it was only recently reached to Israel, but it was there in commercial production begining on 1991 (Philips QL, internal induction coil design inside a pear shaped discharge vessel) and was trailled during the 80's. The first commercial induction lamp in the configuration of the closed tube (External induction coil, like in Stop Market Yagur), is the Osram Endura which launched on 1993.
More info about induction fluorescent lamps at James hooker's website .
I have the first meet with this technology through the internet, and James Hooker's website in particular, many years before this technology was even known in Israel, and when projects of energy efficiency by throwing old operating fixtures, and installing new fixtures of a technology that considered "Green" and the Philips cartel that leds to the lamp/ballast/tube bans, or even the EU RoHS, were yet to be started.
Reading about lighting, was actually my first use of the internet.

I think you should stop being the "know it all". I know about induction lighting anything that is available for me to know, same for all other LG members that you explain well known things to them. I read all that stuff yearse before i even joined LG

When you mention reliability as you did in the post above, when comparing well made LED products (and not "home user" grade devices), there is no reason whatsoever why LED would be less reliable than induction



Reading your post 2 posts above deeper i see that you also relate the longevity of LED lighting to the voltage it is supplied with, there are few more mistakes you made there :

 - Both exit signs and nightlights work on 240v and not "low voltage". Of course each LED is working on low voltage but then every LED device existing is "low voltage" for this definition....

 - Nightlights often come with capacitive driver, many of them are very prone to failure since any harmonics present on the line will cause overdriving of the LED - unless there is someextra overvoltage protection closer to the LED like a zener diode. This is the example for one of the worst LED drivers possible. Even wih the zener, there is the problem of the capacitor degrading and generally such "capacitive dropper" powered devices do make problems

 - 12v LED products for car "pimping" - and those truly are low voltage devices - are often unreliable as well, simply because they are not made as high grade products

 - On the contrary, there is no reason why a 240v powered LED device, with proper SMPS driver and good quality properly sized LED elements will ever fail - other than drying electrolitic capacitors whichh will happen many years after it completed successfully its rated 100K hours

IMHO leds and induction are hard to compare:
- white leds are a quite new technology -- call it "transitional" to remain in the topic -- that manufacturers have been exploring for 15 years: there are so many phosphors recipes, so many formats (5mm, internal phosphors, remote phosphors, etc.), so many tints, etc. etc.
- fluorescent lighting based on low-pressure mercury and fluorescent coating on a tube have existed for 75 years, manufacturers have great experience feedback although tube formats, types of electrodes (or "non-electrodes"!), etc. have been developed in various formats.

The comparation here is not on which is best overall but on one property only : reliability/longevity. In overall comparation there are more properties to count like indeed color quality

So far all LED lighting failures i know about are caused by overloading or insufficient cooling of LEDs and by driver failure, in all cases ultimately caused by cost cutting in the design. Those are not limitations of the LED technology even at the intermediate stage in which it is now - present day LEDs can outlast most other light sources if made well and treated well

Technically there is nothing on LED's, what would make them inherently shorter lasting/less reliable than induction, both are limited mainly by electronic reliability on the first place and the second well manageable degradation mechanisms (if you feed a 70W induction from a 750W microwave oven, the phosphor will most likely degrade to unusability in the matter of few seconds, the same as when you overpower or overheat the LED's)

If there is any inherent difference, it is exactly the opposite: The LED's do not have such requirements as high frequency (for the coupler to be efficient), nor high voltage (to ignite the discharge), so the ballast design become more flexible, so allow more optimization towards higher reliability, if desired.

The problem of LED vs induction was practically exactly specified by Cavannus: The LED's capable to become usable light source are here about less than 5years, while the induction is here already at least 30years as real, commercially available practical light source. So when comparing LED's with induction, you are actually comparing the expertise of an infant with experienced professional...

ASnd even with that, the LED's have already overtaken the induction in one aspect: No one was able to refine the induction concept over the 30 years of commercial experience so, it would become as cheap to make, so as profitable for the maker as the LED's are today after only 5 years of the commercial use.
In fact no other light source was capable to reach such target by far so fast (for incandescents it took many decades, for CFL's about 20 years, while LED's are there just after those 5 years). And that is quite strong proof of the inherent robustness of the technology: Even with the little knowledge on how to design them in a most optimum way for given application, they already become very competitive.

don't forget the first visible light led was invented 50 years ago by nick holonyak jr, so it also took forever for leds to become viable for lighting.

don't forget the first visible light led was invented 50 years ago by nick holonyak jr, so it also took forever for leds to become viable for lighting.

Yes, but with the same metrics it took about 100 years with the induction from the first principal invention till usable light source (see Nikola Tesla's experiments withinduction technology in late 19'th century till first commercial Endura/Icetron in late 20'th century)

Every technology is transitional because human desire for better is never satisfied. If there was a stop point to all this it would probably stop at LED lighting but then again it would be suicide because when it stops developing the market stagnates and companies will struggle to survive due to saturation of the same product.

@imj: Exactly said...

yeah the more i think about it i think lighting will continue to evolve. even if leds do actually reach 100% conversion of electricity to light lighting will continue to evolve in other ways maybe fiberoptics?

i recently read an interview with chuck swoboda (the ceo of cree) and two others, he confessed that he thinks some fluorescent, hid etc will stick around, even though cree boasts they want to drive 100% adoption and i really thought they were literal, my tendency is to take everything literally which i think is a bad thing and have to work at it.