The mystery of LEDs and the forgotten world of Fluorescents and the incandescent lamps

When LEDs (from mid and low priced range) claim to have 50, 000 burning hours, have you ever analysed that, either driver or LEDs fail. Fail here is defined as turning pale, flickers or non-functional after about 20,000 burning hours.

When the purchaser approaches the seller claiming the warranty and the commitment, in 50% of the cases the seller or the reseller tries to keep the commitment, however for the rest of 50% buyers do not get that support because of the various reasons like,

1. The seller before making the sales conveys to the purchaser that since the LED of low quality it might fail. The customer weighs the price of the low priced LED and calculates that since the lower version or the mid versions are three times cheaper, so even if the customer replaces it two time he / she still saves money. WHO is AT FAULT FOR THIS KIND OF EVALUATION – purchaser or the seller or the influencer (the specifiers)?

2. The LED world is progressing so fast, that the respective components are or going to be unavailable after certain months / years from the date of selling. Even if the components are available there will be a gap in lumen package, size of the drivers or the fixture. Just imagine if you make a purchase for 50 luminaires and after 3 years 20 luminaires are to be replaced, even if you get those under warranties, then aesthetically and technically it might not gel.

3. The world of electronics so interdependent that the components are vanishing very fast depending upon the new, creative, out of the world etc.. etc demands and push or pull for the sales.

4. The reseller or the seller or the manufacturers shuts their respective businesses.

Apart from this, a bitter fact is, that no one over the past one decade would have experienced 50,000 burning hours of the product which he or she would have bought and might still be using that. (A food for thought, where are we, what are we doing, do we even know what are we claiming?)

Apart from this the frequency of failure rate in the respective components of a LED based luminaires is much higher than a fluorescent based luminaire. That derives the mismanagement, the quality and the overall impact on circular or sustainable economy along with the preservation on biodiversity is at a great risk.

Hence, if logically we compare these kind of scenarios with the scenario of the year between 2002-2010, when we were in the world of Fluorescents the Lumilux from Osram or Trulite from Philips or T5 used to have burning life of 30,000 burning hours with 90 lumen /watt, which exactly we are using now a days with LEDs. (Exceptions are always there but those exceptions are too expensive).

The fluorescents were so easy to recycle (though there were certain protocols). They had good UV in them, they had a better version of balancing luminance/illuminance. Whereas LED waste easy so carcigenous and landfilling which is against circular economy.

LEDs are giving us migraines, retinal fatigue and many other disorders. Nevertheless LEDs have far more advantages too. (Again I am referring to office, healthcare and residential lighting sector only)
However, my point is that, we still have places where we can use Fluorescents and incandescent lamps which are very beneficial for human physiology and our circular economy.

We need to balance the demands and the design between LED, Fluorescent and incandescent lamps. No one is going to be murdered, no one should be ashamed of specifying the combination of these. Let’s stir the history, present and the future with respect to circular economy, physiology and the scenario.

There can be long incessant debate or discussion on this. I might have missed out many points because of paucity of time of writing this abstract, but I am convinced to the core, that Fluorescents and incandescent have to come back to our office and residential sectors.

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Girish Bhardwaj is a renowned wellness and sleep specialist and also a founder of Theralicht llp company which specializes in lighting consultancy, Indoor air quality consultancy, circular economy and product design.