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The Lifetime of LED.

Benefits of using LED.

Benefits of using LED.

The Lifetime of an LED

If you have been investigating the pros and cons of converting your lighting to LEDs you will already be aware of the two major advantages of LEDs, Power saving and the almost unbelievable, lifetime of the lamp. 

It is this lifetime which I would like to discuss. 
What does 30, 000 burning hours really mean in a lighting environment?

Shopping centres and office areas often have their lights on 24 hours a day 24/7 in this environment one could expect the LED to last for around 3.4 years.
Outdoor lighting is generally controlled by some sort of daylight sensor so having consideration for the differing lengths of a summer and winter days, we could expect an average daily burning time of around 10Hrs per day, therefore in this environment the LED’s expected lifetime should be around 8 years.
In our Home environment the assumptions become a lot harder to make as the time our lights are on varies for room to room and household to household.  However just for this exercise let’s consider that the average burning time for our lighting is around 5 hours per day, as this would even allow for those of us who have their bathroom or passage lights burning all night. 
In this environment our LEDs would be expected to last for up to 16 years.

Above we have dealt with the burning hours of the LED and how that translates into years in a lighting system however there is another aspect to consider and that is what is meant by the “lifetime” of a LED?
The majority of conventional lamps and by conventional lamps I refer to the CFL energy saver, as very few of us still make use of any of the old fashioned incandescent type of lamp, has an advertised lifetime of around 8, 000 hours. This is where “lifetime” needs to be understood. 
With the old incandescent lamp it “went out” therefore its effective lighting lifetime was over. 
With the new CFL type lighting we are conditioned into believing that we are receiving an effective light for the time which the lamp is seen to be working.  This is actually not the complete truth as by the time the CLF is coming to the end of its lifetime the effective lighting is far less than at the outset.
CFLs produce less light later in their lives than when they are new. The light output decay is exponential; with the fastest losses being soon after the lamp is first used. By the end of their lives, CFLs can be expected to produce 70–80% of their original light output.[15]
(Reference http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_fluorescent_lamp)

Lifetime of an LED also measures the depreciation of light output over the 30, 000 hours however with the Star T LED Range we base our 30,000 hours lifetime on the expectation of a 15 to 20% reduction in the lighting efficiency of the LED after that time.  So even after the LED has been in service for the 30, 000 hours we are not expecting our LED to “burn out” but there will be a reduction in the effective lighting output of the LED chip.

Other benefits of using LED