I have been running nothing but 12 volt led outside lighting at my solar
powered Baja getaway shack for a few years now. All of the original
multi led bulbs are still in use with no dead leds that I know of in
maybe 1000 hours of use. These are yellow to reduce bug attraction and
are left on all night every night we are there.

I also have put white multi led bulbs in the inside fixtures with no
failures.

I recently replaced the single old style bulb in a rechargeable
flashlight with some yellow leds I wired up in parallel. I bought a
large quantity, prewired with a resistor, specified for 12 volt
operation to use in my Vanagons and decided to try some in a 19.2 volt
flashlight that I otherwise planned to discard. The light came as part
of a rechargeable tool kit, circular saw, drill, reciprocating saw.
Using a white flashlight at night in a desert like Baja can quickly lead
to unpleasantness. I worried that 19.2 volts would kill the leds but so
far so good. I left it on all night a few nights at home to test it
before relying on it down there.

I am not a fan of fluorescent 12 volt lights as I can often hear them.

Mark

Richard A Jones wrote:

>>Keep in mind that the ideal design may have little meaning for the
>>application intended. 100,000 hour life of leds for use in flashlights
>>for example. How many sets of batteries would you need before you
>>approached the 100,000 hours of the bulb?
>
>
> Also, these "lifes" are statistical averages--like "mean time
> to failure" for disk drives.  I bought a 36 LED light for the
> Mountain Club cabin:
> http://store.sundancesolar.com/12v36ledbudi.html
> which has an advertised "approx 60,000-hour life" and it
> started failing very quickly--a few LEDs out, then more,
> then more.  When I sent it back ~1/2 of the LEDs were out
> or flickering.  Granted, this was not a single LED, but
> more complex.
>
> Maybe they are not "statistical averages" but "statistical
> predictions"....
>
> Richard
>