Household lighting is due for a complete refresh. It makes little sense to put a voltage converter in every single LED lightbulb. There should be a dedicated lighting circuit built in to new housing, running at the appropriate voltage for LED lights, and the bulb would be just the LED and heatsink.
I need those old times light bulbs not for their light but also for their heat. How do they expect my lava lamp to function with a LED bulb?
As long as it uses 40-watt appliance bulbs, which are not affected by the new rules, you shouldn’t have a problem. I know the one I have uses them.
It’s a good idea. If it would be DC voltage source it would fix problems with flickering and extend LED life significantly. Most LED bulb failures are due to power supply. The capacitors inside those power supplies are typically rated only for 1000 hours and with no cooling fail very quickly.
Although at 1.5-3.3 volts, the wiring to supply them might have to be pretty thick to avoid excessive voltage drop. It wouldn’t help things if you lost in the wiring all the energy that you’d saved in the light fixtures. I have heard of commercial buildings where the fluorescent lighting is run on a dedicated high-voltage circuit.
That’s very common, at least in North America, where 277V or 345V single-phase lighting circuits are used in buildings with 480V or 600V three-phase supplies. IIRC, 345/600 is only used in Canada.
Two stages of emulation: The original Edison filaments were carbonized bamboo. (He didn’t invent the light bulb, he invented a cheap light bulb that didn’t use expensive tungsten.) In the 1980s, they started making antique-style copy bulbs with modern tungsten filaments. Now they’re making LED copies of tungsten copies of Edison bulbs…
I think that 24V would be reasonable, and with a few LEDs wired in series it would just require current regulator or resistor. LEDs need constant current source anyway.
Being able to actually see stuff is for squares, man.
I mean, anything worth looking at is backlit now anyway, right? /s
My first LED compatible dimmer, wasn’t. I don’t know, but I replaced it and saw an improvement.
My new one, at the very lowest setting, it causes the bulbs in my kitchen ceiling lights strobe individually. It’s like a very very very low light dance party.
I think what gives is, it’s not as simple as compatible or not, yet.
You probably have a phase cut dimmer that’s designed to work with the newest generation of LED lights. The drivers for these have been designed to filter the screwy waveforms from the TRIACs in the phase cut type of dimmer. Replace it with a PWM dimmer of the same power capacity, and you’ll probably be fine. In short, get the old new tech, not the new old tech. 
I have no experience with these items, but: Enclosed-rated LED bulbs of 1,000+ lumens.
Most of them claim 1,600 lumens.Some are A21 size, 1/4" larger in diameter than traditional A19 light bulbs, could be something to look out for.
All of them are considerably more expensive than the cheapies at the big-box stores today, but even if they only last for about half their claimed lifetimes, you’ll spend more on electricity than on the bulb, in the end.
It can’t be just LED and heatsink, because you need to prevent thermal runaway in case something blocks the heat dissipation. (LEDs draw more current when hot, at a given voltage.) There are LED driver ICs that work in a linear fashion, as a current sink. You could use those.
Another advantage of designing this way is no radio noise! Probably the best way to evaluate LED light bulb quality is with an AM radio, heh.
Speaking of mimicking old-school…
Why did the LED bulb in the chandelier flicker?
Answer: Because it was trying to be chandelle-ier [more candle-like].
That was just a little joke.
No hang on, I think thats in a Sia lyric.
CFLs can’t be used near any sensitive electronics like radios. Like I can’t do SWLing with them so I went with LEDs but I might have to upgrade those to better ones since many of the cheap ones use badly designed power supplies. Bleh.
Some LED bulbs hate dimmer switches. I have LED bulbs in fixtures in our main hall which are almost 20 feet off the floor. Sometimes, we have brownouts, and the bulbs start to flicker. The solution is to power them down completely, but the dimmer fixtures always seem to let a little current through. Eventually, i will climb up there and change the bulbs. In the mean time, my solution is to disconnect them completely at the switch, wait (presumably for the capacitors to discharge), then hook everything back up and turn them on. It seems to happen every two weeks or so.
On the other hand, switching to LEDs saves us $100.00 a month on the power bill.
I’m not sure where I’ve been going wrong on LED bulbs. I’ve not cheaped out, but none of the ones I’ve bought have lasted more than about six months before they start flickering.
Oh well, I’m happy with CCFLs, and by the time those die I should be able to get decent LEDs.
