Nearly half of U.S. households use LED bulbs for all or most of their indoor lighting

[bykfixer]

It appears the train has been driven off the tracks ........

I just stuck the last CFL bulb purchased around 2000 in a lamp. I have some LED bulbs in lights here or there but since I had bought like 50 of the CFL bulbs way back then I still use(d) them as replacements.

I used to use those as light bulbs when I moved around a lot so I'd store light bulbs that were in the lights at places I rented and swap in CFL's. When I'd move I'd swap back in the light bulbs so when I bought a place I had like 50 CFL's all told.

Meanwhile now days LED bulbs are easy to find and easy on the wallet so as the CFL's go bad LED's will replace them.

 

[idleprocess]

just stuck the last CFL bulb purchased around 2000 in a lamp.

I've got a box of those around somewhere. I recall a string of failures from some in the box thus never bothered depleting it. Last CFLs in service in the house are these freaking >10 year old immortal candelabra base bulbs in a fixture over the stairs; when those die I'm replacing the fixture with something less hideous.

 

[wws944]

Of note, almost all my original Philips alien head and 1st gen Cree bulbs have failed by now and have been replaced. Fortunately the more recent purchases seem to be holding up well.

 

[idleprocess]

Of note, almost all my original Philips alien head and 1st gen Cree bulbs have failed by now and have been replaced. Fortunately the more recent purchases seem to be holding up well.

Conversely I've got a low-end Feit bulb that's been running all but continuously (perhaps 14 days' total downtime) in a semi-enclosed fixture since 2012.

 

[bykfixer]

I've got a box of those around somewhere. I recall a string of failures from some in the box thus never bothered depleting it. Last CFLs in service in the house are these freaking >10 year old immortal candelabra base bulbs in a fixture over the stairs; when those die I'm replacing the fixture with something less hideous.

Most of the lights in my house have CFL's. I bought them when an LED bulb was like $10 and CFL 6 packs were like $4.

 

[PhotonWrangler]

I have four Philips alien-head bulbs that are still going strong after a couple of years in semi-enclosed fixtures.

 

[LEDphile]

I'm sure it did/ They were overengineered, probably because household LEDs didn't have a track record yet and they didn't know how long the phosphor would hold up under direct thermal contact with the LEDs. Remote phosphor design seemed like a good idea considering.

From what I can tell, the advantages to the remote phosphor design were primarily around improved efficiency (phosphor has thermal droop in addition to the LED thermal droop, and you don't need an external diffusing lens with the associated losses). High power white LEDs had been in the market for nearly a decade when the first remote-phosphor designs were released, so I suspect the lifetime characteristics of the phosphor weren't an unknown by that point.

 

[idleprocess]

From what I can tell, the advantages to the remote phosphor design were primarily around improved efficiency (phosphor has thermal droop in addition to the LED thermal droop, and you don't need an external diffusing lens with the associated losses). High power white LEDs had been in the market for nearly a decade when the first remote-phosphor designs were released, so I suspect the lifetime characteristics of the phosphor weren't an unknown by that point.

The early LED bulbs were chonkers relative to what we have today. The first tentative 40W equivalent bulbs barely hit rated lumen output, generally weren't omnidirectional, sported immense heatsinks, got incredibly hot, asked more than $20 per example, and still had high failure rates.

The alien head was the first 60W equivalent LED bulb I remember seeing on store shelves, utilized a tremendous mass of aluminum heatsink, didn't fit within an A19 footprint, and also got quite hot in operation. So ... given that it was early days for LED as general illumination I suspect that in addition to the efficiency bump there was some hedging of phosphor heat tolerance in that design.

 

[kaichu dento]

Once LED bulbs became affordable I gave away all CFL and incandescent bulbs I had and now my only incandescent bulbs are either in the microwave fridge or oven.

 

[troutpool]

I've had a good experience with Feit bulbs. I have one in my bedside lamp that gets used a few hours every evening. Still going strong after ten years. (It's soft white 7.5W 3000K.)

 

[The Hawk]

I replaced all the incandescent bulbs in our house a few years ago with LEDs. I have only had one burn out since then. Plus, our electric bill went down by about $10/month. I figure they have already paid for themselves.