New LED lighting

[Stupoty]

I have found the LED`s are falling way short of their "guaranteed" life expectancy, I dont think mine are on for five hours a day seven days a week and I have changed most of them inside three years. That's a tenth of their supposed life expectancy, also noticed they start to generate a lot of heat when they are on the way out so probably using a lot more leccy to run them. Jury is still out whether they are a good idea or not.

Bob

I started writing the install date on my led lamps (started with them long life compact florescents) when I put them in as I've had a few go kapoot in the first year.

Since I did that they haven't been going pop so quickly , is this smart lamps maybe ?



Stu

 

[DAPPH]

Yep, the stuff that goes in skips on site verges on criminal. Could have filled the car up yesterday with lengths of BZP studding. None under 2'.

That could have sold well on here securely taped to a bit of baton ,

 

[DAPPH]

We had 3 fail at work so I saved them to see if a repair was possible. All 3 had one half of the LED'S failed and the power supplies were giving similar voltages so I cobbled one together. It came on nice and bright and lasted about 30 seconds, I guess the voltage regulators are gubbed.

Likely you need to run small groups of them through a surge protector/ filter to kill any voltage spikes on the input voltage. as well as look at how any induced voltage spike can be generated if several mains cables run in close parallel with each other.
g .

 

[DAPPH]

I started writing the install date on my led lamps (started with them long life compact florescents) when I put them in as I've had a few go kapoot in the first year.

Since I did that they haven't been going pop so quickly , is this smart lamps maybe ?



Stu

I did back in 2008 when refurbishing the bungalow on our first £158 full swap over to 24 x 3-watt LED gu10's & 18 x 2-watt corn bulb wall light LED's (there are still 9 x 20-watt G9 halogen lamps in the almost flush three hallway light units, but as they are rarely used it's not worth the cost to change them.
Most in the kitchen & lounge LED's lost noticeable luminescence after 10 years (save for those that were switched on when we got struck by lightening, which fried all things switched on), so I bunged in a complete new set in the areas. This time however the cost was about £1.60 per GU10 lamp .
Of those early very expensive LEDs ( Phillips branded ) that survived the lightning strike, all the bedroom & bathroom LEDs ( qty 16 ) are still giving out good light.
Compared to the 60 watt incandescent bulbs or the 50 watt halogen ones in the same areas it's a no brainer to have the LED's , for the 50 watt halogens were popping almost weekly throughout the home (we used to buy the replacements at a about £ 3 each in boxes of 10 . & the other before that earlier 60 watt incandescent in the lounge or kitchen died around every six months or very close to that mainly I suspect to dirty mains surges /spikes as we are at the end of a long complex branch line.

Since we have had a major power line refurbishment program in the locality, we haven't had many LED's failings save for one in a cluster of six GU9 2-watt corn bulbs on the lounge ceiling, for some reason this bulb seriously dims down to being out over a week or so about every six months, maybe it's down to a back emf spike when the cluster is switched of and this leg perhaps being a slight lower resistance in the wiring inside the light cluster gets the greater belt.

When setting up the wiring for the lights because of eddy currents & back emf's in ht lighting wirings I took great care to measure all wiring from the roses to the light units in each room and make them the same length then spiral wrapped any excess cable round different roof trusses, so I got a balanced resistance to each light fitting unit.

 

[Stupoty]

I did back in 2008 when refurbishing the bungalow on our first £158 full swap over to 24 x 3-watt LED gu10's & 18 x 2-watt corn bulb wall light LED's (there are still 9 x 20-watt G9 halogen lamps in the almost flush three hallway light units, but as they are rarely used it's not worth the cost to change them.
Most in the kitchen & lounge LED's lost noticeable luminescence after 10 years (save for those that were switched on when we got struck by lightening, which fried all things switched on), so I bunged in a complete new set in the areas. This time however the cost was about £1.60 per GU10 lamp .
Of those early very expensive LEDs ( Phillips branded ) that survived the lightning strike, all the bedroom & bathroom LEDs ( qty 16 ) are still giving out good light.
Compared to the 60 watt incandescent bulbs or the 50 watt halogen ones in the same areas it's a no brainer to have the LED's , for the 50 watt halogens were popping almost weekly throughout the home (we used to buy the replacements at a about £ 3 each in boxes of 10 . & the other before that earlier 60 watt incandescent in the lounge or kitchen died around every six months or very close to that mainly I suspect to dirty mains surges /spikes as we are at the end of a long complex branch line.

Since we have had a major power line refurbishment program in the locality, we haven't had many LED's failings save for one in a cluster of six GU9 2-watt corn bulbs on the lounge ceiling, for some reason this bulb seriously dims down to being out over a week or so about every six months, maybe it's down to a back emf spike when the cluster is switched of and this leg perhaps being a slight lower resistance in the wiring inside the light cluster gets the greater belt.

When setting up the wiring for the lights because of eddy currents & back emf's in ht lighting wirings I took great care to measure all wiring from the roses to the light units in each room and make them the same length then spiral wrapped any excess cable round different roof trusses, so I got a balanced resistance to each light fitting unit.

I have noticed some brands drop off in brightness a lot quicker. Can be a bit hit and miss sometimes. Ive had some dead on arrival also , not many but relatively quite a high percentage.

Stu

 

[Onoff]

Ive had some dead on arrival also , not many but relatively quite a high percentage.

So much for 14000 hours or such claims with these LEDs.

The sad reality is that manufacturers don't want these to last irrespective of all the eco babble surrounding their use and swapping to them. I bet a good old filament lamp is emminenty more recyclable too.

 

[minimutly]

I did back in 2008 when refurbishing the bungalow on our first £158 full swap over to 24 x 3-watt LED gu10's & 18 x 2-watt corn bulb wall light LED's (there are still 9 x 20-watt G9 halogen lamps in the almost flush three hallway light units, but as they are rarely used it's not worth the cost to change them.
Most in the kitchen & lounge LED's lost noticeable luminescence after 10 years (save for those that were switched on when we got struck by lightening, which fried all things switched on), so I bunged in a complete new set in the areas. This time however the cost was about £1.60 per GU10 lamp .
Of those early very expensive LEDs ( Phillips branded ) that survived the lightning strike, all the bedroom & bathroom LEDs ( qty 16 ) are still giving out good light.
Compared to the 60 watt incandescent bulbs or the 50 watt halogen ones in the same areas it's a no brainer to have the LED's , for the 50 watt halogens were popping almost weekly throughout the home (we used to buy the replacements at a about £ 3 each in boxes of 10 . & the other before that earlier 60 watt incandescent in the lounge or kitchen died around every six months or very close to that mainly I suspect to dirty mains surges /spikes as we are at the end of a long complex branch line.

Since we have had a major power line refurbishment program in the locality, we haven't had many LED's failings save for one in a cluster of six GU9 2-watt corn bulbs on the lounge ceiling, for some reason this bulb seriously dims down to being out over a week or so about every six months, maybe it's down to a back emf spike when the cluster is switched of and this leg perhaps being a slight lower resistance in the wiring inside the light cluster gets the greater belt.

When setting up the wiring for the lights because of eddy currents & back emf's in ht lighting wirings I took great care to measure all wiring from the roses to the light units in each room and make them the same length then spiral wrapped any excess cable round different roof trusses, so I got a balanced resistance to each light fitting unit.

You need to explain yourself re this resistance bit?

 

[Wallace]

I decided to replace the 150w outside halogens, good job I bought 4, they're weeny!

 

[not done it yet]

I decided to replace the 150w outside halogens, good job I bought 4, they're weeny!

View attachment 365782

please explain? Why would they be bigger if already big enough? It’s light/illumination that needs to be compared.

 

[DAPPH]

You need to explain yourself re this resistance bit?

When I put the lighting system in it was before we had LED bulbs . A star / radial wiring of say six 50-watt halogen bulbs of the same switch, needs to have each leg the same resistance to reduce a sack emf to reduce a strong back emf in a leg of low resistance which would end up burning out that bulb in the same fitting quite often. It's something I learnt during my city & guilds & reinforced when fitting out shops & offices with low voltage halogen lamps off a transformer. It's called, " ensuring a balanced load " .
You'll get similar in a lot of the modern LED multiple bulb light fittings on bulb is a PIA for burning out due to th back emf generated when you switch it off .
In our lounge we have three set up using Led bulbs the wall light using 6 bulbs over 3 wall fitting . one particular lamp out of ther set of six bulbs fails thre or four time a year , goes dull for a week or so, then a couple of day of being barely lit , then nothing
Same with each of the pair of 6 bulb ceiling displays. only one bulb in each fitting fails every 8 months or so .
I dare say with a bit of thought putting a discharging capacitor etc., on each leg would stop the problem, but you'd likely have to do calculations for each leg, making the legs all the same length/resistance seems the easier alternative.

 

[DAPPH]

please explain? Why would they be bigger if already big enough? It’s light/illumination that needs to be compared.

The type of LED used also make a big difference , if you look carefullyat your lamp , you'll see you have 12 LEDs in it

 

[Pete.]

Most led lamps are overdriven, which is why they fail. Bigclivedotcom on YouTube has loads of videos, including some which show the driver circuits and how to modify them - in particular one which refers to a Dubai led lamp. It seems the lamp manufacturers just can’t help themselves from designing lamps that are intended to fail.

I think that is the case here. I've just dismantled a couple of the failed/failing units. The LED's are arranged in sets of 5 LED's in parallel and there are 19 29 of these sets in series making up the batten.

The basic PSU which is slid inside the hollow extrusion is putting out about 72-73v so each set of 5 in parallel is getting 3.81-3.84v 2.5v where presumably they should be getting 3.5v or less. They have all started to fail right up at the connector which is also where the PSU is tucked tight inside the heatsink the LED's are mounted to, so my guess is that the combination of being over-driven by 0.3v and cooked by the heat given off by the PSU is causing the first few sets to fail, and they must either be failing closed circuit because the rest of the string is remaining illuminated even when a few sets of 5 have gone out. Of course, this probably means that the remaining lit ones are being driven even harder.

I need a shorter LED lamp for my storage shed so I am going to cut down two of these failing battens to 2 lengths of 12 series and drive them from a single driver to give about 3.1v across each cluster of 5. Hopefully the driver will cope with the extra load and it will save me a few quid not having to buy an extra batten.

EDIT to the above I need to go back to school. Each batten actually has 145led's which is 29 sets of 5 not 19, giving 2.5v across each set of 5 in parallel, not the stated 3.8.

I'm still going ahead with my plan to under-drive two cut down battens though.

 

[blackolive (Ste)]

This is whats in those led panel lights, along with reflector and diffuser panels