Researchers Predict Next-Gen Batteries Will Last 10 Times Longer (newatlas.com) 171
Lithium-metal electrodes could increase the storage capacity of batteries 10-fold, predict researchers at the University of Michigan, allowing electric cars to drive from New York to Denver without recharging. Using a $100 piece of technology, the team is now peeking inside charging batteries to study the formation of "dendrites," which consume liquid electrolytes and reduce capacity. Slashdot reader Eloking quotes New Atlas:
Battery cells are normally tested through cycles of charge and discharge, testing the capacity and flow potential of the cells before being dissected. Dasgupta and his team...added a window to a lithium cell so that they could film the dendrites forming and deforming during charge and discharge cycles.
In a video interview they're reporting that dendrites can actually help a battery if they form a small, even "carpet" inside of the battery which "can keep more lithium in play." According to the article, "The future of lithium-ion batteries is limited, says University of Michigan researcher Neil Dasgupta, because the chemistry cannot be pushed much further than it already has. Next-generation lithium cells will likely use lithium air and lithium sulfur chemistries."
In a video interview they're reporting that dendrites can actually help a battery if they form a small, even "carpet" inside of the battery which "can keep more lithium in play." According to the article, "The future of lithium-ion batteries is limited, says University of Michigan researcher Neil Dasgupta, because the chemistry cannot be pushed much further than it already has. Next-generation lithium cells will likely use lithium air and lithium sulfur chemistries."
I say BS (Score:1)
This goes in a slashdot file with cures for cancer and efficient solar cells. And inexpensive housing for the poor.
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and invented in a flying car.
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I, for one, welcome our new flying Tesla overlords
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Yeah, because technology is guaranteed to continually improve, inevitably circumventing any and all physical limits...
It's true. That's why the average automobile today gets 8,000 mpg, the shuttle to Jupiter runs three times a day, and cancer can be cured in an afternoon with an inexpensive over-the-counter remedy.
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Jupiter three times a day, meh. What about the Kessel Run?
And computers can now fit on a single floor of an office building and consume less than 100KW/hr.
Seriously, we have a group of people who think that on the one hand you can lay off people ad infinitium and new jobs will magically appear for them all just because that's the way it's always happened and on the other, we have cynics who think that every new discovery counts for naught.
It might be well to recall that for probably 20 years, the laser was
Battery Moore's law? [Re:I say BS] (Score:1)
There is no observed equivalent of Moore's Law for batteries. If there is, it's a rather shallow curve compared to chips. That may be great for the Class of 2150.
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Okay, you dig the hole and I'll get the ticks.
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Yes, cue the standard "Batteries haven't advanced!" stuff from people carrying around cell phones with significantly more amp hours in a smaller battery profile than the last generation phones that they owned.
News flash: every time a new tech advance makes it into a product, they don't mail a letter about it to everybody who read an article about it years earlier. Example: hey, remember all of that stuff about breakthroughs in silicon anodes several years back? Yeah, they're in batteries now. Even Tesla
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It happens regularly.
Quite a lot of my replies are asking people to stop doing it because it's ignorance, posturing or worse!
Rgds
Damon
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Yes, cue the standard "Batteries haven't advanced!" stuff from people carrying around cell phones with significantly more amp hours in a smaller battery profile than the last generation phones that they owned.
Well in the eyes of the average smartphone zombie, what has really happened is "cell phone battery life" plummeting. My Nokia brick lasted weeks (plural) even when the battery was years old. Earlier this year it finally broke, I replaced it with a smartphone which, depending on usage, has a battery that lasts something between half a day and three days. So what is the obvious conclusion to arrive at? Battery tech isn't improving. Can't really blame them for that.
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It looks like TFS has this wrong though. Dendrites don't reduce a battery's capacity, but lifetime. Reducing the production of dendrites extends how long until the cell fails, which increases the total lifetime, not the capacity. This is good to make batteries that don't need to be replaced as often, which helps reduce the TCO of any battery powered device, including cars.
Also, for those doubting what you say above, I find the best thing is to point them at the facts:
https://www.quora.com/Is-it-tr... [quora.com]
Batt
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No, I meant precisely what I wrote. Every word. Go look at old cell phone batteries and how many amp hours they provide if you don't believe me.
Re:I say BS (Score:5, Informative)
*Sigh*
And I'm telling you that lithium-ion batteries are not a "single tech", that they've dramatically improved in power and energy density (both volumetric and gravimetric) over time. And if you doubt this, I repeat: go find and older lithium-ion battery and compare it to a new one.
As for li-air, yes, the maximum energy density of li-air is about 10x of the maximum of li-ion. Namely because it works by direct oxidation rather than intercalation, so you don't need the mass of the matrix into which the ions get intercalated. It is not a "magical tech". It exists. Like all technologies in all fields, however, you have to reach production specs. This means not only maintaining a combination of safety, reliability, longevity, efficiency, temperature range, power density (charge and discharge) and energy density, but also affordability in mass production. And to be able to guarantee that you can do all of these things to a high enough level for investors to take the risk.
As with all technologies, you start out with promise in one or two fields, but serious problems in many others that you have to deal with. With time you refine them, until all of refined to a state where the product is commercialized. Li-air has actually been advancing quite well. In the early days one of its biggest problems were efficiency and longevity, but they've made huge strides in both in recent years. Lithium sulfur still looks nearer term, but commercialization of Li-air appears to have gone from "possible" to "quite probable".
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Wow, unreferenced rant someone added at the bottom - clearly you've got me there!
Try googling those quotes. The first one is only people quoting Wikipedia [google.is]. The second one, I downloaded the paper and the conclusion says just the opposite ("A huge interest expressed by the scientific community in the development of Li-air battery is the demand of modern automotive industry. We have identified four major areas. If properly addressed, this technology may enter the commercial phase in the near future." (immedi
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Flatly contradicted by comparing old batteries with new, amp hours vs. volume and mass. For the past couple decades, batteries have doubled in energy density once every 8 years or so. Do you perchance have an old cell phone lying around at home? Check out its amp-hour rating and see how big/heavy it is compared to the amp hour rating and size/mass of your current cell ph
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** Ed: Should read "in the discharged state, and significantly better in the charged state". It's heaviest in the discharge state.
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You're focusing on the immediate problem, not the long-term problem. Namely, what does society do with the homeless?
Unless you answer that question, your housing project will turn into Cabrini green.
A lot of the homeless problem comes from education in our country being so expensive; we've created this viscous cycle of biased education where teachers are required to possess masters degree's in order to teach the basics in kindergarten. We completely ignore the fact that teachers unions have an enforced-at
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Homeless generally means both "not a landowner" and "has no money" which prevents the former even if they wanted to go there.
Buy a license, buy a pole, collect bait somehow, weather considerations, legal locations, seasons, specific game fish, prepping, finding wood to cook with...
Buy Axes for the Homeless (uh, hammers, too!) (Score:2)
...Axes are pretty cheap, and most homeless i see have those stashed....
I assume your post is trying to be humorous, right?
Really, on slashdot it is getting to be completely impossible to tell.
Assuming it is a kind of tongue-in-cheek dry humor: ok, LOL.
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Re:I say BS (Score:5, Interesting)
Ah, the smell of fresh crap on Slashdot on a Sunday afternoon:
"Inexpensive housing for the poor has existed since the first axe was used to chop wood and form walls and a roof."
And where, pray tell, do these resourceful Homeless and their shopping carts full of surplus building supplies, build their houses? Shanty towns have been around forever... until the Lords of the Land gets pissed off and levels them. Bulldozers do make it much easier these days, but in Ireland 170 years ago, special iron-tipped sticks were used to tumble the walls of the houses of the evicted, so that they couldn't return. Or perhaps you are more familiar with the thousands of "Hoovervilles" circa 1930. General Douglas MacArthur gained fame and good will by using Federal Troops to burn the ~15,000 Man "Bonus Army" Camp out of Washington, DC, with the able assistance of Patton and Eisenhower.
And then, by any chance did you see that movie with a young Hank Fonda made about a decade later, called "The Grapes Of Wrath"?. Those weren't Sets, that was a real Shanty Town, as was the Weedpatch Migrant Camp, which _was_ built by the Homeless, under Government Support. Damn commies.
"All that's left for that inexpensive housing is for the poor to do what humans with far less did thousands of years ago, and get their asses moving."
To where, you mushy turd of a Human Being? Your Backyard? The Parking Lot at where you work? Central Park in New York City... again? Or maybe you are thinking of some only slightly radioactive Nevada desert now surplus to Government needs, and only maybe fifty miles from the nearest Shopping, Schooling, and Employment? (Note: Even the Shoshone Tribes don't want that land back...) Or perhaps you are thinking of some place further away, where they can go with little chance of ever returning. Much of Quebec and Nova Scotia were settled by some suddenly Homeless; America's solution to the Loyalist Problem. But these days, Canada may object.
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I'm sure many wouldn't mind, but see there's not really open land to just live on anymore. Most of it is either privately owned or public land that forbids camping.
And if you figure you'll hunt/gather? Everyone - even the homeless - are still subject to game seasons. Kinda hard to live off of hunting deer if its only legal to hunt them for a month or two out of the year.
The simple fact is that if you are broke, you can't just go live off the land like our ancestors did without breaking a myriad of laws a
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Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day.
Teach a man to fish and slowly bleed him to death since you own the lake, the boats, the dock, the bait and tackle shop, the poles, and oh yes, the forests so he can't cut his own pole and he has to pay you for any and all of the above.
Oh, and the transportation lines, so even moving away isn't an option. Plus, of course, there's arrears on rent that have to be paid first.
The Real World isn't quite as simple as the soundbites make it out to be.
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Japan has 'capsule hotels'. I figured they could be cheap housing for the poor.
Unless capsule hotels somehow magically cure mental illness and substance abuse, they will do little to solve "homelessness", which is a far deeper problem than mere lack of housing.
I have been to Tokyo many times, and have used the capsules. They are nice, and work well when people are quiet, clean, and respectful. They would not work well with typical homeless people, talking back to the voices in their heads, refusing to bathe, arguing and fighting with each other, and vandalizing the capsules.
I have a
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I lived in a 1960 primer red GMC van in the Bay Area for just short of a year. My employer let me park and use the restrooms after hours (He got a bit of nighttime security out of it), we used memberships at the Y to shower.
Unfortunately moved out of the area just as the tech boom really hit due to a personal tragedy.
If I could of held onto the house another few years, I would have made a killing.....sigh....
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Japan has 'capsule hotels'. I figured they could be cheap housing for the poor. However, crime, and other social problems can become important when lots of poor are concentrated..
The problem is that we don't have Japanese poor. I have seen public housing in Tokyo, same architecture as our own welfare housing, but it's all clean and well maintained.
Progress! (Score:5, Funny)
and Note 7 II's will explode 10x brighter.
Re:Progress! (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, that is a concern. Li-ion batteries don't have lithium metal in them unless something goes wrong. Lithium-air batteries always have lithium metal in them, by design.
In practice, you'll probably see a bit of the energy density given up in order to beef up the casing to prevent rupture/fire.
Thankfully, lithium-sulfur batteries don't use lithium metal, just lithium polysulfides. The max energy density isn't as high, but it's still quite good. They're already on the market, albeit in small quantities for applications that require the absolute highest rechargeable energy density (mainly aerospace).
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I hear the military will be considering them for alternatives to the M84.
Oh Boy (Score:2, Funny)
10 times longer-lasting batteries? Given every other promised battery advancement over the last 50 years that hasn't come to fruition, we're going to be at infinite capacity batters when they all finally hit!
Re:Oh Boy (Score:5, Insightful)
I remember when I was a young boy 40 years ago the batteries in my toys would last just an hour or so, and they would start to leak a very dirty brown liquid a few days after I had put them in my toys. Back then we hadn't even heard about rechargeable batteries, let alone Li-ion batteries. Nowadays I can play around with my Lego toys for a long time before my rechargeable, non-leaking batteries go flat. Li-ion batteries pack so much power into a small volume that they are able to explode all by themselves, or power a phone with the calculating capacities of a supercomputer from the 1990s for many hours on end. So reality doesn't support your claim that batteries haven't improved over the last 50 years.
Re:Oh Boy (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Oh Boy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh Boy (Score:5, Informative)
50 years ago, battery powered tools didn't exist at all because no battery could hold enough charge and still be portable.
The first cordless electric drill [ecmag.com] was produced by Black and Decker in 1961, using NiCd batteries. That's 55 years ago.
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And it was utter CRAP. The NiCads had miserable energy capacity. Battery capacity started to plummet after the first cycle. There was no provision for balance charging the individual cells, or cutting off the discharge when one of the cells discharged before the others and was driven into destructive reverse charge. Memory effect was just awful. Self discharge rate was prodigious.
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Rechargeable batteries have increased about 2x in energy density in the last half century, and about 3.5x in the last century (from lead-ac
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The reputation NiCds got for having lousy energy capacity was due to a memory effect. If you kept recharging the battery before it had been fully discharged, it "learned" the low charge state as its new zero state, and you lost that bottom portion of its capacity (due to crystalline growth).
You mean voltage depression. And it's from overcharging. Easily reversed by discharging the cells individually. Memory effect is something else.
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That's exactly why I used the Lego example.
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Things simply use less power these days. Long gone are the times you needed 2x D batteries to power a flashlight.
No. Flashlights use less power these days. Kids electronic toys of 30-40 years ago either went duf duf duf (there few if any class-D amplifiers in toys, so they haven't increased in efficiency), or they went vreeeeeeeeeeeeeeuwwwww (and small DC motors powering moving toys haven't changed in efficiency in the best part of 50 years either). If you buy a little remote control car now you'll get the same 15minute run time as you did back then if you get a cheap one powered by AA or C cells.
But test your theory.
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I'm 47. When I was a young boy, regular alkaline batteries were pretty much the same as what we have now. I did see some cheap batteries leak, but those were the exception. Almost no one was using rechargeable batteries, that's true, but it was because we didn't care about the environment and found buying batteries and changing batteries more convenient. As an example, in 80s I bought a Sony Walkman F-601 which came with a rechargeable battery giving me about 10 hours of tape and 40 hours of radio, but I st
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Bullshit. Nicads were prevalent in the 70s.
Re: Oh Boy (Score:2)
When you where a boy there where batteries in cars. The problem is in English you have not separate nouns for batteries who are rechargeable (akkumulator) and non rechargeable ones. However, they are different kinds if devices.
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He's bullshitting through and through. He's likely a millennial whose imaging a past that didn't exist so he can pretend battery tech has meaningfully progressed.
It hasn't.
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He's bullshitting through and through. He's likely a millennial whose imaging a past that didn't exist so he can pretend battery tech has meaningfully progressed.
It hasn't.
God damn it, the Baby Boomers have failed us yet again! Is there anything their scourge hasn't touched?!
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Simply not true, see my earlier comment above.
Is this for real (Score:3)
Re: Is this for real (Score:1)
+300 km range and 30 minutes charge time is probably enough that most of us will be satisfied. So in my book we are already there. Now all that will need to improve is the price, and that will come down radically in the next few years as production quadrouples.
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It does and it doesn't.
I wonder how long you could get an old school Nokia phone (thing monochrome display with only characters) to last these days if you replaced the battery with the exact same weight of current battery technology.
Or, take one of the earlier (say 80286) laptops and do the same.
On the one hand, you are right - as battery technology has improved, we've only increased how much power these devices use. On the other hand, these devices are infinitely more useful than what we had back then and
WARNING! OFFTOPIC! (Score:2)
I've been seeing this unrelated thing for a long time (years) and maybe I should ask the question:
Is it just me, or Asian / Indian names appear more often than Western names when this type of articles are published?
By that, I mean "Researchers find/predict/invent/discover" articles.
Disclaimer: I'm Romanian.
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Most electronics are made in the Far East, so I guess most battery research also goes on there.
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"says University of Michigan researcher Neil Dasgupta"
Michigan is not in the Far East, is it?
when? (Score:1)
I hear this story on and on from around 5 years. Nothing has emerged so far.
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That would be the real game changer (Score:2)
Non-electric cars are simply more practical for most people not just because of range, but also charging time. Even Tesla Supercharger stations take way too long for most people to tolerate.
But if you have 1000 miles of range, suddenly it's much more practical to live with a very long charging time because you can wait a day or two to find a good charging solution - plus it would mean you could get somewhere faster than with a gas vehicle since you wouldn't have to stop on a long trip to fill up.
We'll see
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Long charging times are for most people only a problem on vacation. Normally people commute much shorter distances than the maximum modern electric cars can drive and can charge their cars at night. Long charging times are for most people only a problem on vacation, when they have time to wait half an hour for their car to get charged after driving for two hours.
I think this whole 'long charging time' thing is fed by Big Oil astroturfers.
Normal is not what you think (Score:2)
Long charging times are for most people only a problem on vacation. Normally people commute much shorter distances than the maximum modern electric cars can drive and can charge their cars at night.
I love how you say "normally" when the vast number of people who have cars live in apartments where it may not be "normal" to have a plug anywhere near the car at night.
Is your goal to have electric cars for only the elite? Or for EVERYONE? If electric cars are to break out of a tiny niche for the rich they ha
Re: Normal is not what you think (Score:2)
I suspect that you unknowingly confirmed that the desire of the left is to further dependency of the people on either the government or the elites for everything by making home ownership a luxury. Nothing like a society of renter's to be kicked around...
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It will take a long time, but what we need are construction rules that require a parking place with access to power for each new apartment. Some effort has already gone into this but it's still just beginning.
Not Practical (Score:2)
You can't just handwave away the massive cost of proving a charger per parking space, nor even the cost of an outlet per parking space along with the electrical lines buried capable of having every single parking space drawing enough current to charge...
Even if that were practical what exactly do you imagine will happen to someone's personal charging cables or equipment left unattended overnight. Thieves are taking copper pipe out of buildings with the water still on...
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A parking spot should be well under the cost of an apartment. Use aluminum instead of copper for the wiring, or once standardized, put in wireless charging.
If your plumbing getting stolen is a problem you have bigger problems than I can handle. Move out if you can.
It can be solved - the solution is Hydrogen (Score:2)
I've noticed that also in the past when traveling and staying with friends in Europe.
That's why I still think the future for most electric cars will end up being hydrogen, not battery power - though with advancements like these battery may be a higher percentage, especially if you could go somewhere just one day a week to spend a half hour charging.
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I knew someone would start bitching about this. Just because "all those people" you know drive a lot every day doesn't meaneverybody does. Ever heard of statistics?
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Hype (Score:2)
Researchers predicted last 20 of 3 bat innovations (Score:2)
I'll hold out for molecular distortion batteries (Score:2)
You know, if your smartphones had, I dunno, an OFF switch, so you could power them completely down when you're not using them, I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts that the battery would last longer.
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I'm getting pretty fed up with conspiracy idiots like you.
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Sure (Score:1)
quid pro quo (Score:1)
And phones / laptops / etc will need 10 times the power, bring it down to the same situation we're in right now, and were 2, 5, 10 years ago... Big whoop..
Why not concerntrate development on primary batter (Score:1)
Distance from New York to Denver in toothbrushes (Score:2)
How many football pitches/swimming pools/toothbrushes is that equivalent to laid end to end?
Show me (Score:2)
Advertisement (Score:2)
Typical overconfident US advertising. The best part, the word could implies that it could also be zero. It won't be worse as in that case we would use present designs.
Furthermore, 10 times longer is not precise. It could also indicate more charge discharge cycles. So they should have said, the capacity could be 10 times higher.
Yup, better batteries are right around the corner. (Score:2)
And always will be.
Longer than? (Score:2)
Another referenced comparison for the pile.
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err, unreferenced.
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Re:Compact Florescents would like a word (Score:5, Informative)
Fuck knows what shit it is that you're buying, but there's a CF replacement bulb in every socket in my house and I've literally never changed one.
The outdoors one is on from dusk to 11pm all year round and is a CF. Still going.
In fact, all that's happened is that I've started replacing the CFs with LED lights - and same thing there. Not one in the bin yet. In fact I've still got a box of 20 LED bulbs which are just waiting for the CFs to die but I don't get up on a chair to change them unless they do and NOT ONE has. In the same time, I've replaced 12 halogens and about 7 incandescents.
And I'm using the cheapest thing on Amazon that I can buy in bulk and is supplied in a direct-replacement for an existing bulb-shape.
Hell, I even replaced all the tiny little high-power halogens that were popular in light fittings with bigger-but-same-output LEDs that take 1/50th the power.
I honestly don't know what junk you're using or what's wrong with your house electrics, but CF's do what they claim, and so do LEDs.
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Well, I guess you've never bought bulbs from "Feit electric". I am a cheapskate and so, I've gone with the lowest-cost brand (Feit). Both their CFs AND LEDs fail after not much time. Mystery to me how they remain in business.
Mystery solved (Score:2)
And I only have to reorder a few things.
Mystery to me how they remain in business. ~~ I am a cheapskate and so, I've gone with the lowest-cost brand (Feit).
People like you, that's how.
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Then it's nothing to do with the bulbs. If incandescents barely last a couple of months, you have bigger issues.
I'd honestly suggest you get a whole house filter because you're just in a really bad shape, electrically. That's not the fault of any kind of bulb, and you're probably destroying all kinds of hardware.
To be honest, a lighting circuit can generally be UPS'd quite easily and has more than one advantage (less bulbs blowing, and a backup lighting in the case of a blackout). If you replace with LED
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I seem to recall some time ago that Compact Florescent bulbs would be the future and last upwards of 5years. Since those initial promises I have yet to find a CF bulb that lasts any longer than a standard incandescent bulb.
And they do last just fine. I'm going to say that either you're buying them from Aliexpress for 10c per pop (pun intended), or that you're putting them in fittings which concentrate heat around the electronics. Personally the only CFL that's failed on my was one I dropped while getting out of the car.
Plus the CF bulbs are chock full of mercury ..... so you can't even throw them away tho I'm more than sure most people still do.... which makes them a small to medium scale environmental disaster.
Can't wait to see how these next gen batteries manage to over promise and ultimately disappoint.
If by chock full of mercury you mean 800micrograms, of which 70nanograms is in a gaseous phase then sure. If this troubles you don't ever eat fish as you will ingest the same dose of mercury if you eat a nice h
Re:That's not what 10-fold means (Score:4, Informative)
p>10-fold = (2^10)*original capacity. 1024*100 percent increase is a 102,400% improvement.
That's not what tenfold means. Saying something increases tenfold is the same as saying ten times (10x or 1000%).