LEDs bad? [RE-wrenches]

[Todd Cory, Mt. Shasta Energy Services]

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I have used LED holiday lights since they first came out about 5-6 years 
ago. The brightness and longevity has increased over the years, but from 
the very onset to today, the strings I bought made by "forever bright" 
have had lifetime warranties. Early on I did have a couple of strings 
fail and they were always replaced for free, but I did pay the shipping 
charges to get them there.

The early units from this company had replaceable LEDs but because of 
the mentioned corrosion issues they stopped doing that and now these are 
sealed in the sockets. My oldest string made like this has been outside 
for 3 years now (year round), turned on via a timer for about 5 hours a 
night, and is still working fine... although the lights are not as 
bright as the new strings and there are a few dead bulbs... not enough 
to send them in for free replacement though.

I bought three strings (made by GE) this holiday season and they are the 
replaceable bulb kind so we will see how long they last. While the 
colors are amazingly bright and the power consumption is low it was 
troubling to read about the embedded energy in each string being 10X 
traditional incandescent lamps! EROEI is easy to forget to include in 
energy savings.

Many people think LEDs are so great, but for general lighting we still 
prefer CF's which by the way are also made in colors now. We have 
several red, yellow, green, blue, orange and black-lights ones. These 
are fun for decorations too.

For now it seems the best application for LEDs is in flashlights. My 
favorite is the Surefire U2. Hard to beat a 5 watt LED with variable (2 
to 100 lumen) output.

http://www.surefire.com/maxexp/main/co_disp/displ/prrfnbr/24187/sesent/00

Can you tell I have a light fetish?

Todd




Joel Davidson wrote:

>
> Wrenches,
> Any truth to report that LEDs rust from the inside out and do not have 
> long-life warranties? See EETimes commentary about LEDs replacing 
> incandescent Christmas lights at 
> http://www.eetimes.com/rss/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=204702684&cid=RSSfeed_eetimes_newsRSS 
>
> Joel Davidson


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