LED Light Bulb Manufacturers Are Solving the Problem of Excessively Long Life

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

A Shelby Electric fire station in Livermore, California, has had a light bulb that has been on almost continuously since 1901, for over 1 million hours. In 2015, it was included in the Guinness Book of Records as the longest-lasting light bulb.

On December 23, 1924, representatives of the largest lighting companies met in Geneva, Switzerland and agreed to create the Phoebus, probably the first ever industrial cartel on a global scale. The companies discussed the problem of product quality. The problem was that incandescent bulbs had increased too much and their lifespan threatened business. In other words, the lamps were in service for so long that sales began to decline.

As a result of the contract, the standard service life of incandescent lamps was reduced to 1000 hours. This contract is considered one of the first examples of planned obsolescence on an industrial scale, and a service life of approximately 1,000 hours has survived to this day.

It is noteworthy that with the start of sales of new models of lamps, manufacturers explained: the decrease in operating time is due to the fact that it is necessary to establish quality standards for the level of illumination and energy efficiency. But historians who study Phoebus' archival documents say there was only one significant technical innovation in the new models: shorter filament life. The bulbs just burned out earlier.

Today, LED lamp manufacturers face the same problem. A typical LED lamp has a lifespan of 25,000 hours according to the standard, after which they lose more than 30% of their brightness. Under the condition of continuous operation, this is 1041 days, that is, a little less than three years. In a typical American household, a light bulb does not operate around the clock, but an average of 1.6 hours a day. Thus, the resource of the LED lamp will last for about 43 years, while there are also LED lamps on the market with a service life of 50,000 hours. What sustainable business can you count on selling such products?

These days, the planned obsolescence of products has become a normal technological practice not only for light bulbs, but also for consumer electronics, smartphones, computers, cars and other goods. Moreover, the planned obsolescence and the cult of consumption are considered stimulus for the economy and is supported nationwide. During the Great Depression in the United States, some economists called the planned obsolescence of products a "new god" for business. Since about then, the thesis of the need to support "re-consumption" through planned obsolescence has become a practically immutable economic axiom. It formed the basis of the entire consumer economy of our time, without which it is difficult to imagine modern society. Now people work for years for 10 hours a day without vacations in order to be able to buy new products to replace old ones that are planned to be outdated.

Before the 1924 cartel agreement, incandescent bulbs lasted longer than many modern products. The light at Fire Station # 6 in Livermore is an outstanding example of product reliability at the time. With a rated power of 60 watts, this hand-blown lamp now operates at about 4 watts, but still provides night lighting for fire trucks at the station around the clock. Although now it performs more of a decorative function, but before the lamp hung lower, and when a fire alarm sounds before leaving, each firefighter considered it his duty to slap it for good luck.

The lamp was made around 1900 by the engineers of the small American company Shelby Electric from Ohio, by the design of the Franco-American inventor with Russian roots Adolphe Chaillet. The exact design of the record-breaking light bulb has not been thoroughly studied. It was one of the many experimental light bulbs. Shelby Electric was testing many different types of designs during this time. It is only known that it uses a carbon filament with a thickness similar to that of modern filaments, usually made from tungsten.

In the near future, the "old woman" from the Livermore fire station will be sent to rest and given to storage (possibly to a museum). But it still hasn't burned out. This light bulb has already become famous, and its glow is broadcast to the Internet by a special webcam.

Shelby Electric was bought in 1912 by the large corporation General Electric, one of the participants in the 1924 cartel agreement, in which the Dutch Philips, the German Osram and the French Compagnie des Lampes also participated. The agreement between corporations ensured their financial prosperity for decades to come. Many of these manufacturers are still in business today. LED bulbs are now the immediate threat to them.

As households increasingly purchase LED bulbs instead of conventional incandescent bulbs, large corporations are now approaching the same danger line that their predecessors approached more than 90 years ago: sales are threatening to start declining. Now LED lamps occupy about 7% of the world market. According to analysts, their share will increase to 50% by 2022. In the first quarter of 2016, sales of LED lamps in the United States grew by 375% compared to the same period last year, and their share in the US market exceeded 25% for the first time in history.

To say that manufacturers are in panic would be an understatement.

There are some hints that firms are trying to apply the old Phoebus life-limiting trick with cheaper products. For example, Philips sells 10,000 hour LED bulbs for $ 5. Chinese manufacturers generally do not think too much about durability, releasing a lot of cheap low-quality products that are sold almost by weight.

But in our time it is impossible to arrange the same cartel agreement as in 1924, too many manufacturers are involved in this business, and the LED lamp life of 25,000 hours has become practically the standard. Therefore, manufacturers have to come up with something else, writes New Yorker.

One of the logical tricks is to make conventional LED lamps part of another, larger product, for which it is possible to maintain the planned obsolescence. Manufacturers are counting on conventional light bulbs of the past to become part of smart home lighting systems. For example, Philips manufactures the Hue line of smart LED bulbs and controllers. These light bulbs intelligently change the brightness and temperature of light (16 million colors), and are also networked. They operate on the standard Zigbee network protocol, so third-party Zigbee bulbs can also connect to a single network.

Philips Hue LED Bulbs

Six months ago, Philips showed an example of another non-standard trick, which gives an idea of the ways in which light bulb manufacturers intend to fight for their place in the sun. In December 2015, it released a firmware update for its proprietary network bridge, which began blocking access to the Hue API for any "unapproved" light bulb. Favored are those who have received the Friends of Hue certification. The rest will have to disconnect from the Philips branded background lighting network and work autonomously. Among the rejected are Cree, GE, Osram and others.

Thus, light bulb manufacturers began to use to their advantage the legislation on the protection of intellectual property, and specifically - the notorious DMCA law.

Perhaps manufacturers are hoping that on the Internet of Things, laws like the DMCA will allow them to implement something like modern digital “planned obsolescence”, where old lamps will not be compatible with more modern electronics / software / interfaces. Although physically they could work for many more years, de facto consumers will be pushed to buy new models, as now, for example, smartphone buyers are forced to do due to the constant modernization of the ecosystem, the constant release of new versions of the OS and software that is not compatible. with older OS versions. Studies in Europe have shown that consumers change their smartphones, on average, every 2, 7 years. This is the perfect role model for lighting manufacturers. Light bulbs should also be part of the rapidly evolving and aging hardware / software ecosystem of the Internet of Things.

In any case, one thing is clear: a company cannot survive if it produces products with a service life of 43 years. Competition from the same Chinese manufacturers simply forces Western corporations to figure out how to transform their business and make a new “product” based on ordinary light bulbs. They simply have no other choice but to promote intelligent lighting systems and concepts such as the Internet of Things, smart home and others.

It seems that manufacturers have resigned themselves to the inevitable. A month ago, Philips spun off the lighting business into a separate company, Philips Lighting, which is preparing for an IPO. Germany's Osram, another of the world's largest lighting lamp manufacturers, has also spun off its $ 2 billion lamp business to an independent company, Ledvance, which is now up for sale. And last October, the American General Electric, the third participant in the 1924 cartel agreement, did the same by founding a subsidiary company G. E. Lighting that will be easy to sell.

LED lamps are perhaps the first mainstream commodity of the 21st century to challenge the established concept of planned obsolescence.

Let's see what happens. Economists say society's transition to quality, long-lasting goods will require radical, systemic changes in the consumer economy that are likely to slow economic growth in the short term. “This may be unacceptable for governments that use economic growth as a primary indicator of productivity,” wrote Professor Tim Cooper, research team leader on sustainable consumption at the University of Nottingham, in his book Longer Lasting Products. But he believes that sooner or later humanity will be forced to abandon consumerism in its current form and switch to the use of products with a long service life, repairable, with replaceable parts. This will inevitably have to be done simply for the reason that the ecological and material resources of our planet are limited and cannot provide an endless increase in consumption.

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