[Greenbuilding] Real cost comparison of xenon verses fluorescent verses LED lighting

[David Bergman]

At 12:39 PM 5/27/2007, you wrote:
>Last year I got the much touted LED Christmas lights for my front 
>porch.  Not only could you not see them
>even just across my 10 foot front yard, but when one light on the 
>string went, there was no way to replace
>it, you had to throw the whole string away and get a new one - which 
>I did twice last year since many of the
>bulbs seemed to go within hours.  Never again . . .
>
>~marilyn

That points up another issue of LEDs. Most (all?) of the fixtures are 
currently designed to be thrown out when the (supposedly) long 
lasting bulbs burn out. One reason is that there are not any 
standards for the bulbs, so you can't really buy a replacement bulb, 
hence they aren't designed to be removed and replaced. Another is 
that the technology is changing so fast that the same configuration 
of bulb is not likely to be in production in a few years.

The thinking seems to be that, since the bulbs will last -- 
theoretically -- 100,000 hours or so, by the time they burn out, the 
user will just replace the whole fixture. (Or the building will have 
been renovated by then.) That kind of "planned" obsolescence 
instinctively bothers me. There'd have to be some really convincing 
life cycle analysis behind that to justify it.

David
DAVID BERGMAN ARCHITECT / FIRE & WATER LIGHTING + FURNITURE
architecture . interiors . ecodesign . lighting . furniture
bergman at cyberg.com    www.cyberg.com
241 Eldridge Street #3R, New York, NY 10002
t 212 475 3106    f 212 677 7291