GE ending production of CFL bulbs

I have been keeping track of CFL and LED lifetimes since building in 2009. To date (out of a total of 22 lamps) 9 CFLs have died, most Lowes generic brand, and 2 out of 5 LED's have died with less than a year on them, both Osram 7.5W, got them to warranty and closest replacement available was Sylvania 8.5w 800lum. All have been 2700k. I am a control electrician, and we also install many outdoor lighting in commercial applications (wallpacks and pole/street). LED failures before the life expectancy is not as uncommon as you may think, and those fixtures are all $500+ dollars, so calculating payback over traditional HPS/MH is not always clear cut.

TS

BoilerMan said:

I have been keeping track of CFL and LED lifetimes since building in 2009. To date (out of a total of 22 lamps) 9 CFLs have died, most Lowes generic brand, and 2 out of 5 LED's have died with less than a year on them, both Osram 7.5W, got them to warranty and closest replacement available was Sylvania 8.5w 800lum. All have been 2700k. I am a control electrician, and we also install many outdoor lighting in commercial applications (wallpacks and pole/street). LED failures before the life expectancy is not as uncommon as you may think, and those fixtures are all $500+ dollars, so calculating payback over traditional HPS/MH is not always clear cut.

TS

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Exactly what I was implying. Thank you for some real-world experience, on this.

In case this might help anyone, in Feb of 2015 I picked up some Feit 2700 Lum, 13 W (65W replacement), BR30 LED's from Costco. 2 pack was $10. Used in my kitchen floods (6) I figured my payback time was 3mo, 6 on the outside.

They have performed well, are still kicking and I am solidly in the black on those.

CFL's have been all over the map. Like the LED's I waited until the prices dropped before I started buying. Some have held up beautifully while others didn't last at all. Surprised that GE brand was a bad batch for me. Contrary to what others have observed I've had pretty good luck using them in hand held shop lights where they have lasted longer than old incandescents.

What's most entertaining to me is that the oft-cited "short lifetime" of incandescent bulbs. I believe some of the incandescent bulbs in my house are over 20 years old, and still going fine. I know that, with the exception of a few that have been damaged by vibration (eg. wall sconce next to back door), all are at least 5 years old. This, next to CFL's that may die in only a year or two?

I've still got maybe a dozen total incandescents in the bathroom where good color rendering is more important, and in closets and similar locations where they aren't used often enough for LED's to really be worthwhile. There's also a couple fixtures in the kitchen that take PAR-20 bulbs, and I couldn't talk myself into paying $20/bulb for the LED version.

The bulbs are usually rated for 1000 hour lifetime, but I'd estimate I've been getting closer to 2,000 hours on them, especially the PAR-20 halogens. 1-2 seem to die per year.

I've got 15-20 CFL's. None of them will die. They're 5+ years old and some have at least 5,000 hours on them. Two are in a garage door opener that killed an incandescent in a few months. One is by a door that shook to death multiple incandescents in a year. I dislike the subtle green/pink undertones and they way they make certain colors look washed out, but I dislike throwing working items in the trash even more. I'm starting to wish actually wish for them to die, especially now that I've seen Feit is selling 90+ CRI LED's at Costco for $5/bulb (good candidate for my bathroom lights. I wish they had a 3000K halogen equivalent for the kitchen).

I've got half a dozen or so LED's, including a couple of the Feit's I installed in a small, fully enclosed fixture where they're not supposed to survive. Age ranges from a few months to 4 years, and one of them is probably averaging 2000+ hours per year. None of them have died.

So my experience puts both the CFL's and the LED's clearly outlasting the incandescents. However, reviews of premature failures in CFL's and LED's abound (especially the cheaper ones), so clearly failures are not uncommon. Based on my experience in engineering, this is what I expected. Incandescents are dead simple and extremely unlikely to have a defect that causes them to die early. The power supplies in CFL's and LED's are more complicated and minor defects can allow the bulbs to pass a functional check in the factory, but die quickly in use due to high temperatures or noisy powerlines pushing them over the edge.

The manufacturers could improve the quality control to avoid these early failures, but the costs would go up. They're always seeking a balance point between the costs improving the product and losing customers due to price, versus the costs of warranty claims and losing customers due to dissatisfaction. In many product lines, targets of 5% or 10% maximum premature failure rates are common. At that rate, most households should expect to see a handful of bulbs fail early. Statistical variation or even bad batches can mean that some households see none, while others see far higher numbers.

Aren't you glad the government took hundreds of millions from you and subsidized the bulb, only to then find out they are hazardous waste and pretty much suck?

The CFL did not lead to the LED. LED production has become cheaper through technology breakthroughs on how to make the LED, how to drive it, and how to heatsink it.

People would have lept more quickly to the LED if they didn't have closets of crappy CFL's. The transition from incandescent to LED is a no-brainer.

It was a relatively short lived technology wasn't it.

Highbeam said:

It was a relatively short lived technology wasn't it.

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They've been around as a practical product about 20 years. That makes them longer lived than plasma TV's.

It's true that CFL's didn't lead to LED's. But white LED's simply didn't exist even as a development project until CFL's were already established in the market, and white LED's sucked worse than CFL's until about 10 years ago. They were still too expensive to really be worthwhile and only matched or barely beat CFL performance until about 5 years ago.

CFL's were a useful interim technology - far more efficient than incandescents, and while not as efficient as sodium vapor or metal halide lights, had far better light quality than the former, and were far more practical in household applications than the latter. It's hard to say they pretty much suck when for every lighting technology that existed until LED's reached maturity, there was at least one performance category that CFL's could claim a significant advantage in.

And they're not hazardous waste. The mercury content is genuinely trivial. Yes, hazardous waste laws apply to them in some areas, but that's because of politicians who ignore science in order to pretend they're earning their keep, not because of actual hazards.

Highbeam said:

It was a relatively short lived technology wasn't it.

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Compared to Edison bulbs that are still the most used, yes.

iamlucky13 said:

until LED's reached maturity,

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At what point do you think that will happen? I can see a lot of problems ahead before maturity sets in. Heat sink issues, light diffusion, compatibility with existing fixtures, color, etc. I like the way lumens/watt efficiency issues are going, though.

Actually, I'd say they're mature now, by which I mean they've reached a point where they are practical for a common use. That's not to argue the issues you raise don't exist or that LED's are the right choice for every application, but that they've been addressed to a sufficient degree that LED's have meaningful advantages over competing technologies in certain aspects.

Put another way, room for continuing improvement is not the same as immature.

In most of the places I've tried LED's, I find no reason to remove them and go back to either CFL's or incandescents. The main exceptions are the bathroom, for good rendering of skin tones in front of the mirror by incandescents, and the range hood in the kitchen, which has some sort of built in dimmer that interacts very badly with LED's. I'd call that a generally competitive experience.

I know of occasional cases where others have had bulbs not quite fit in a small fixture or are too heavy, have a poor light distribution, buzz audibly, or have overheated, but those appear to be a reasonably small minority. I also know of a few folks who have very high expectations for color quality that even the high CRI LED's can't meet, but they are a very small minority. Those cases are also why I don't think the bulb ban should have been passed (in addition to it being unnecessary)

LED's are looking very promising. Just 10 years ago, a headlight made of entirely LED's was something only exotic manufacturers were thinking about because of cost. Now an economy car like the Toyota Corolla has them. Since there is very little burn in time (like HID's) they can be switched on and off almost instantly, allowing use for high beams with dedicated lenses. Check out the Mazda adaptive LED headlight.

http://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/m...mming-adaptive-led-headlights-at-ceatec-2014/


Very cool stuff.

You can buy retrofit LED capsules for the common headlights as well. Like H4s. Not cheap though.

Back in the early 1990s my parents bought a "small fluorescent replacement" on QVC (remember the Quality Value Channel?) it was quite heavy, fully enclosed and made in Japan, something like $40. That was put in the hallway fixture that was left on 24/7 whenever they left the house and at least 6 hours a day any other time. It just failed a couple of years ago. Wish I had kept it for a bit of research, may have been a rebranded Phillips or Sanyo. But it had a pile of hours on it, took at least a min to warm up and seemed to be about the equivalent to a 60W incandescent.

TS

Gets rid of the mercury problem