It seems that light bulb makers may be putting themselves out of business by pushing LEDs.

http://money.msn.com/business-news/article.aspx?feed=OBR&date=20140403&id=17493828

But I don't think so.
The long reliability of LED lighting I think is a open question.
Where did this 27 year LED life span claim come from anyway?
May be if you don't use them.


I seen one review of fluorescent bulb replacement with LEDs in August 2013 only to have most of them fail by December 2013.
This guy installed these in his whole office space following the instructions, took out the ballasts and connected 120 volts to the Bulb holders to run the LEDs.

Now they all have failed and since he tossed the ballasts and bulbs out (LEDs last 27 years right?)
Now he has no lights, no ballasts or bulbs.

He ended up putting in all new fluorescent fixtures.
He was not a happy camper about this.
I wonder how much money this whole fiasco saved?

I am hanging on to my (old, clunky but reliable) fluorescents for now.
 
 

The thing is, they get used to the ridiculously huge margins from selling the LED products over the last few years, now the margins are falling back where they were in the "incandescent" times...

And for the fluorescent replacements: I think replace the already high efficient and long lasting light source by something with engineering compromises (no place for a proper heatsink,...) is the craziest concept I've ever seen. I think there is really necessary someone will really sue them for the damage: The life was clearly far below what advertized...

I'm hoping that if LED really does become the most widely-used lighting system, that it will at least overcome its teething problems by then. Usually if a product isn't worthy of purchase, there will be a lack of market demand as a result. I would like to think the same will happen in this case, but unfortunately the government is, for some reason, so eager to introduce them to the market through subsidization and bans and such, that I'm afraid it won't allow natural selection to take its course. I guess either way what happens happens, so no sense in worrying about it.

I'm kind of surprised the new-world T5 fluorescent lamps aren't spreading faster than they are. I personally think they have the potential to be a really efficient and reliable source of light.

I agree.

It seems to me that to take a theoretical LED life span and claim it is actual life span of the LED Lighting fixture they are selling is false advertising.

To me the idea of replacing bulbs in a fluorescent light fixture with LEDs that was designed for fluorescent lighting is crazy at best.
I would think any successful LED lighting fixture would have to be designed from the ground up to handle the heat dissipation required.

I personally think a successful replacement for fluorescent lighting by LEDs is many years away.
Until then I think there is going to be a lot of junk LED lighting sold, used, become defective and tossed out early.  

I'm kind of surprised the new-world T5 fluorescent lamps aren't spreading faster than they are. I personally think they have the potential to be a really efficient and reliable source of light.

They are quite short living for their price: Best T5's are rated at about 15..20khours, while T8's of the same price reach over 80khours of rated life. Quite a difference for the same cost... The 20..24khour T8 are then virtually cheap as dirt.
And the T8 give out way more light when cold compare to T5's...

No wonder the T8's are selling so bad, when mainly with higher wattages the efficacy is not much different.

I didn't know the T8 lamps were capable of up to 80000 hours! And I thought the T5s were significantly more efficient. I guess there only real benefit is the small form factor, then.

80k on a T8!?

E.g. Osram XXT series , Philips has similar line,...
The rating vary between 75..100khour, but in my eyes that difference is rather cosmetic with those figures.
Well, I guess these lamps would have some troubles to go through the TCLP in the US...

What I've seen, those are offered only in Europe (well, only the 18, 36 and 58W T8), never seen any similar (e.g. at least in the most popular F32T8 format) for the US market, no clue why...

Quite funny is there the note "The fixture has to be regularly cleaned for an optimum performance", but knowing how the maintenance sometimes works (goes there only when something fails, otherwise don't care about 5mm layer of dust blocking most of the light), it is not that off-topic remark...

WOW I am impressed!!! I wish they sold those over here!  I have a few applications where they would be perfect! 

But these are on the market for quite some time, I would guess at least 5..6 years, if not longer...
And they are the reason, why I think induction was a dead-end lighting development branch, as compare to these, I do not see, how the induction could compete...

We already have 84,000 hour fluorescent lamps on the market, Osram Sylvania makes these. Sylvania also makes 80,000 hour HPS lamps in the 100w and 150w sizes. Both are good for 20 years.

The long life of LEDs is why traditional lamp manufacturers are trying to change their business model to focus on selling intergrated LED fixtures, because the replacement market would be greatly slowed down by the use of long lived lamps. But they still confessed that LED screw in replacement lamps will be less profitable in the long term than selling incandescent bulbs.

Another "happy" LED user saving money.

This review is from: LEDwholesalers Brightest 20 Watt 4-foot T8 T10 T12 LED Tube Light 45W Fluorescent Tube Replacement UL Approved, Package of 4, White 1920WHx4 (Misc.)

Since I purchased these tube lights back in March, three of them half the lamp went out and one completely went out in a matter of two months. Amazon replaced these four tubes and since I installed them, two more other lamps have gone half out.
This is very embarrassing to my company in front of my customer. They are wondering why I ever talked them into LED tubes!! They do not even last a fraction of long as fluorescent tubes!!



Don't toss out your bulbs and ballasts yet.

This review is from: LEDwholesalers Brightest 20 Watt 4-foot T8 T10 T12 LED Tube Light 45W Fluorescent Tube Replacement UL Approved, Package of 4, Neutral White 1920NWx4 (Misc.)

I read that these tubes had some reliability issues but didn't expect that on 2 out of the 4 pack would even light up. Another reviewer mentioned that they could not return a partial on the 4 pack so now I am stuck. The biggest problem is that you have to rewire the fixture since the bulbs don't require ballasts and now it is too much work to reinstall the ballasts. Might be best to shop locally for LED's until they become more reliable

 
This review is from: LEDwholesalers Brightest 20 Watt 4-foot T8 T10 T12 LED Tube Light 45W Fluorescent Tube Replacement UL Approved, White 1920WH

I have now gone back to my original fluorescent bulbs. One-half of both LED tubes quit working. If you want a picture of what went wrong and how to fix it, email me.
I knew that this type of bulb was going to be expensive. The cost is about 7x that of a fluorescent tube, but I only need two of them. I leave these lights on in the kitchen about 14 hrs a day. These LEDs allowed me to eliminate the ballast. Installation was fairly easy. Make SURE the power to lights is OFF. I cut two wires from ballast to the fixture, stripped the ends, and routed them to the black and white wires of the power. One prong on the LED light is marked H for hot. Hot is the side that gets connected to the black wire from the power. I marked an H with a marker on the side of the LED and did a trial install into the fixture. I could see which side of the fixture was on the LEDs HOT side. The wire from this side of the fixture goes to the Black wire from power. I had a two tube fixture so I put both LED in to make sure that what was the Hot on one LED followed over to the Hot of the other tube, which it did in this case.
This is more difficult to write than to actually do. Just go over the wiring several times to make sure that you're sure, that you're sure that you got it right. I admit I still hid behind a corner when I turn the switch on. It takes about a second to come on. Worked perfectly. I'm glad I did this LED replacement even at the cost. Also you might note that LEDs can be dimmed for some applications.

 
After 3 months of use about 14 hrs per day half of one bulb had gone out! I had the hope of this lasting for years. Dumb me. You have 30 day warranty and must pay shipping both ways. I like the bulbs but, LET THE BUYER BEWARE!!
I bought two of these in Sept 2013 and by mid Jan 2014 half of both tubes have gone out. I won't buy these again!!




This review is from: LEDwholesalers Brightest 20 Watt 4-foot T8 T10 T12 LED Tube Light 45W Fluorescent Tube Replacement UL Approved, Neutral White 1920NW (Misc.)

I had a 4 tube light fixture in my kitchen that i removed the ballast and rewired to take these bulbs. I decided to order 2 at first just to see how they worked and if i liked them.

The good:
These lights are bright. almost felt like i could perform surgery in my kitchen after installing only 2 out of a possible 4 tube fixture.

The bad:

For perhaps the first 2 months, they worked fine, then one started to flicker. Half the the tube would go out while the other half stayed illuminated.

At first only one was lighting halfway, then it would light fully, only to go back to half lit. For some reason i could not find my purchase on Amazon so i could not return the 1 bulb.
I ordered a 3rd and it imediatly was only lighting half way. About that time, the second bulb from my first purchase started to only light halfway.

I was able to return the 3rd bulb to amazon.

I am still stuck with 2 bulbs that only light half way. I attempted to contact LED Wholesalers directly, but never heard anything back from them (either they did not respond or it was stuck in spam).

I am currently looking at other brands. I really like the idea of LED bulbs, but i do not recomend these. I REALLY wished they had worked.

EDIT TO THIS REVIEW:

With no chance of getting the bulbs replaced, I decided to open them up myself and take a look. Basically the inside consists of 2 strips of LED lights that are connected together with 2 pieces of wire. the wires had lost their solder connections and if anything the electricity had either no flow, or was arching to the second strip in the bulb. I made an attempt to solder myself, but my hands shake too much, so my husband was sweet enough to remove the old wires, and replace them with new wires with a good solder connection. We left the covers to the tubes off and have replaced them in the fixture. They are working great. My guess is that the solder connection simply does not survive shipping well and can easily crack. We were not sure of the true guage of the wire, but it appeared close to the 24 gauge (used for electric guitar repair) that we had on hand.

The problem with the LED replacements is all circling around heat, electrolytic capacitor life issues (their usage could be avoided with LED ballasts, but at the expense of 100/120Hz flicker; otherwise mainly problematic at elevated temperatures) and lead free soldering (the solder material just cracks, mainly when heated and/or with heat cycles).

With purpose build LED lanterns nearly all of these problems could be quite well eliminated just by the possibility to use rather large heatsink (the complete fixture body is never as small). Of course, when someone made the fixture completely from the thermally non conductive plastic, it overheats as well...

If these LED tubes really did last for the promised lifespan the manufacturers would struggle to survive once the existing fluorescent installations had already been retrofitted; they would be reliant solely on new buildings and shop refits for sales which is a small proportion of the present market. Haven't they learned anything?? Achieve market saturation (or close to it) and the order books start gathering dust.


BG

It seems LEDs do better in colder climates than warmer climates when used outside.
Where I live LEDs used outside would fry like bacon in the summer.

I figure at some point the bugs will be worked out of LEDs lighting and there will be universal standards for them.
There are some applications where they just are not going to work very well.
For example outside when it is 100+ deg F. which happens in a lot of places at night.
You could put a small fan on the fixture, but the air through the fan and across the heat sink is still 100+ deg F.

The nutty idea being promoted that you can replace your fluorescent light bulbs with LEDs is just a rip off of people trying to save a few dollars on their electric bill only to end up replacing their whole light fixtures.

Would you try to make a fluorescent light out of a LED fixture? (ok I might try)

I think any successful LED fixture would have designed from a blank sheet of paper to be a LED fixture with operating parameters that must be adhered to for any kind of long life at all.

It also irks me that the questionable theoretical figure of a 27 year LED life is being used to imply or directly make a claim that their LED lighting device will last 27 years.
Looks like most of this junk don't even last 6 months.

There is going to be a shake out first of all the junk.