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How Many Retailers Does It Take to Change a Lightbulb?

12/01/2011 7:00 AM

Companies that are investing in novel light bulbs are making attractive savings. Yes, some of it is coming from reduced energy consumption compared to incandescents, though the greater part is coming from reduced maintenance costs. It's good news for the price of cheese and bad news for electrical maintenance contractors:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203537304577031912827196558.html?mod=wsj_share_in_bot

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#1

Re: How Many Retailers Does It Take to Change a Lightbulb?

12/01/2011 9:56 AM

There's more money in replacing these lights than maintaining them...This is a good thing...As a contractor you are reducing costs to your customer, and increasing revenue for your own business....The same thing is happening with a/c in the south, and insulation everywhere, and windows, and autos, and etc...

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#2

Re: How Many Retailers Does It Take to Change a Lightbulb?

12/01/2011 11:18 AM

Yup, time is money.
Del

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#3

Re: How Many Retailers Does It Take to Change a Lightbulb?

12/01/2011 12:10 PM

This is not bad news for electrical maintenance contractors.

Irregardless of "novel" lamps it will still require 4 electricians to replace that light bulb:

1 electrician to transport and hold the ladder.

1 electrician to hold the light bulb for the electrician going up the ladder to replace the light bulb.

1 electrician to go up the ladder after being handed the light bulb to replace it.

and because this crew is larger than two electricians

1 electrician to act as foreman to ensure the three other electricians properly execute the light bulb replacement procedure.

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#4

Re: How Many Retailers Does It Take to Change a Lightbulb?

12/01/2011 10:33 PM

with a bulb life of 100,000 hours, why do they make sockets? 10 hours a day for a car is ~28 years. Same for houses. I anticipate the new LED lamps will give rise to permanent built in lights, since remodelling is usually more frequent than every 28 year.

And that bulb life is now. In 5 years it will be 250,000 hours - and you can derate them by 20% and get 5 times the life.

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#5
In reply to #4

Re: How Many Retailers Does It Take to Change a Lightbulb?

12/01/2011 11:32 PM

Except many of these "100,000 hour" light bulbs tend to die in their infancy...

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#6
In reply to #5

Re: How Many Retailers Does It Take to Change a Lightbulb?

12/02/2011 12:28 AM

I'm with you on that score.

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#7
In reply to #5

Re: How Many Retailers Does It Take to Change a Lightbulb?

12/02/2011 7:10 AM

Mostly due to poor heat maintenance, and too-high output demand from the design. As designs improve (and shysters get driven out of the market by savvy consumers) and prices decrease due to quantity sales, the quality (and thus, longevity, which is a big driving factor, both in marketing, and purchase, of LED lights) will improve.

And just think, all of the improvement on both sides will be driven by market factors. Not by government regulation!

And the result will be that we'll see (send deliver) less and less of the "short lifetime" complaints.

In fact, I suspect most of our quality of product complaints come from trying to make less product, at less engineering cost, do more, for fewer dollars.

But at some point, we, the consumer, decide that enough is enough, we are getting the quality we expect to pay for, at a price we expect to pay. When that point is reached, there will always be market (short-lived) for the cheap manufacturer, selling to the uninformed, or cheap, buyer, who either quits buying the cheap product, improves it him/her-self, (increasing the selling price along the way), or keeps buying cheap, and lives with the results. Again, creating a market where none might otherwise exist, and where cheap manufacturers/shysters can exist, in small numbers relative to the overall market.

And a new set of "blue chip" stocks, along with fly-by-night risky stocks, is born!

Market forces at work again. Terrible things, market forces. Governments need to regulate them out of existence! More Socialism, anyone?

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#8
In reply to #5

Re: How Many Retailers Does It Take to Change a Lightbulb?

12/02/2011 7:20 AM

I bought a few dud CF lights, with a warranty for 5 years. To use the warranty I had to post the dud back with $5 postage and handling fee and they would send me another (Dud??). Since new CF lights were less than $5 the warranty = a mugs game

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#9
In reply to #5

Re: How Many Retailers Does It Take to Change a Lightbulb?

12/02/2011 8:32 AM

Was this with induction or LED lighting? What percentage would you say died young?

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#10
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Re: How Many Retailers Does It Take to Change a Lightbulb?

12/02/2011 8:41 AM

LED lamps (on the order of $20 each), 50% failure in less than 6 months. CFD's- on the order of 40% less than 1 year (various prices, from cheap to $8.00 each)...

Of course, the sample size for the LED's is a bit small...

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#11
In reply to #5

Re: How Many Retailers Does It Take to Change a Lightbulb?

12/02/2011 8:51 AM

My partner and I have been working on this for some time now. The technical challenges are daunting once they are really considered for LED life when one takes on the task of getting the things to work for their stated life. Heat is a big problem with this, but we have found ourselves stymied by something more basic.

Where do you find an inexpensive capacitor that will run more than 15,000 hours?

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#12
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Re: How Many Retailers Does It Take to Change a Lightbulb?

12/02/2011 9:44 AM

JerMo-

The capacitor is the biggest problem. Every LED failure I have experienced has been a failed capacitor- usually an explosive failure, precluding any possibility of salvaging the rest of the assembly...

Your comment should not be off topic!

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#13

Re: How Many Retailers Does It Take to Change a Lightbulb?

12/02/2011 11:14 AM

This question is so perplexing I've converted back to whale oil lamps.

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#14

Re: How Many Retailers Does It Take to Change a Lightbulb?

12/22/2011 10:54 PM

My monthly electrical bill went down $20 a month after I replaced all the incandescent and halogen bulbs in my entire house a year ago with the 'daylight' spiral type flourescent screw in bulbs in 60 watt size.

Haven't had one burn out yet so can't tell you how long they will last...

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129CBRider (1); aurizon (2); cwarner7_11 (3); Fredski (1); JerMo (1); KJK/USA (1); KP21 (1); micahd02 (1); SolarEagle (1); user-deleted-1105 (1); Wal (1)

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