Electric lighting is one of those engineering systems of a modern home, which is almost impossible to do without. In the process of its creation and subsequent operation, it is necessary to decide to give an answer to a number of questions, one of which is the choice of the type of lamp.
At the moment, the choice of the type of luminaire has actually come down to an alternative: LED or fluorescent lamp. The latter are often quite difficult to find on sale, since all store shelves are filled with “promising”, “modern” and “environmentally friendly” (if you believe advertising) LED products. Is everything so clear on this issue? Let's try to look at this issue with an open mind. Is everything really so good with LED lamps?
1. Glow brightness
One common misconception is that an LED light source is brighter. Meanwhile, a simple observation clearly indicates that if you use a high-quality fluorescent lamp, incl. even with a classic "pipe", drawing 1 then, to the subjective opinion of most users, the brightness of the light emitted by it with a slightly lower power consumption turns out to be higher compared to LED.
Moreover, LED lamps are characterized by a fairly rapid and visually noticeable degradation of brightness during operation. Luminescent sources operate in a much more gentle mode, and their degradation occurs much slower and not so deep.
2. Emitted light spectrum
One of the characteristic features of LED sources is the imparting of an unpleasant bluish-green tint to typical residential interiors. In this sense, fluorescent lamps, whose radiation in their spectral composition is close to natural sunlight, is noticeably superior to their competitor.
3. Operational reliability
Across the entire complex of texts for the compliance of the provided parameters with the requirements that must match household lighting fixtures, fluorescent and LED lamps approximately are equivalent.
However, the unstable network, which is found in some residential areas of the old buildings of the prestigious central part of the city, destroys the LED source much faster. The reason for this is the high steepness of the energy characteristic, i.e. the dependence of the power of the emitted light on the magnitude of the applied voltage.
4. Maintainability
A high-quality light source consists of the lamp itself and its electronic control unit. Mechanically they do not have a rigid connection, Figure 2, i.e. the latter, if necessary, can be replaced by a similar one.
The LED source is practically a complete semiconductor electronic circuit. The task of repairing it requires a fair amount of qualifications, special knowledge and a set of specific tools, incl. for desoldering unpackaged elements from a printed circuit board, Figure 3. Locating a failed component and finding spare parts is often more difficult than repairing itself. This de facto means the disposable character of the LED lamp.
5. Life time
The natural desire of our fellow citizens to save money has led to the fact that the bulk of LED lamps are Chinese products with primitive control electronics. If, with a high-quality electrical network, they at least work out the period declared in their technical data, then at the slightest deviation of the parameters from ideal, even within the permissible tolerances, LED lamps burn out due to an insufficiently efficient, and often simply absent system protection.
Conclusion
The above considerations indicate that it is too early to put an end to fluorescent lamps and they represent a full-fledged household light source. It goes without saying that all their positive qualities apply only to quality products. So when choosing a type of lamp, you need to be skeptical about aggressive advertising and do not forget about the wise rule of our ancestors in relation to almost guaranteed overpayment with thoughtless savings.