bunsen_h

Last August, I wrote about a free package of energy-conservation-related stuff from Ottawa Hydro.

The package included an LED night-light.  That night-light burned out last Sunday.  The LED may  be good for 100,000 hours or so, but the circuitry lasted a bit less than six months.  I opened the case and found that a power resistor was charred, and the plastic beside it slightly melted.  To replace the resistor would require a certain amount of work with a soldering iron just to get at the thing (solder is used to attach the circuit board to the prongs of the electrical plug), and of course I'd have no guarantee that it wouldn't just burn out again.  The thing might even be a fire hazard, though it's more likely that the resistor would fry too quickly to ignite anything else inside the case.  I do remember that the unit seemed to be hot to the touch when I first plugged it in -- hot enough that I immediately unplugged it! -- but it seemed fine after that.

This doesn't seem to be a very effective way of saving energy.  Nor, for that matter, of reducing waste, which was one of the other supposed benefits of the LED light.  I'm back to using my old incandescent-bulb night-light, whose bulb needs to be replaced every year or so... and that's all that I need to replace to keep it running.

I left a message with Ottawa Hydro on Monday.  They haven't called me back yet.