I had a time year when five SBC (small beyonet cap) compact fluoro and LED bulbs failed in about 3 weeks. I have six of these in two light fittings in living areas. This coincided with the time that my solar panel inverter was cutting out due to high line voltage. The line limit voltage for the inverter is 255V so it must have been going higher than this. I sat and watched the inverter line voltage readout at this time and it was over 255 volts whereas before this it didn't go over 250 volts. I guessed that this was the reason the sbc bulbs had suddenly died, and since then none have.

Poking around forums I found that a solution to this inverter cutout issue was to go inside the inverter and increase the limit to 260 volt. I wasn't inclined to do this not being an electrician, and anyway I think it would be irresponsible. After a couple of weeks of this the line voltage suddenly dropped to about 245 volts and hasn't gone much above this since. So I assumed that a transformer tap had been changed somewhere.

So it is worthwhile checking out your line voltage if bulbs start popping off.

it is worthwhile checking out your line voltage if bulbs start popping off.

Agreed, but in my case none of the other incandescents in my house blew out, just this pair of Indonesian Philips from the same box.

I once had an incandescent bulb loudly launch itself out of the bayonet socket upon switch on. Luckily it was within a closed spherical light fitting and was safely caught. Gave me a hell of a fright.

No other bulbs went except the SBC lights in my case - two different types of CFLs and one LED. My first thought was there must be something wrong with the wiring of these two luminares. Then I guessed that the electronics in these small lights must be more vulnerable than the larger bayonet cap lights.

The LED globes are normally a bit hardier than that. I have them right through the flat I live in - there's even an SES cap candle globe in the fridge and it doesn't seem to mind the low temperature.

I also take a few of the standard BC cap LED fancy-round globes camping, as they are much easier on the inverter than incandescent globes due to the much lower wattage.

If you insert a rectifier diode (without any filter cap) in series with an incandescent light bulb, it would last much longer. Albeit at less brightness and power to visible light efficiency. A 240V bulb would look like it's running off 170V. AC of course.

Those bulbs that popped immediately upon powerup may have been meant for the USA or Japan market (120 or 100V) and mislabelled...

There'd also be a noticeable mains flicker in the light output, though if it is a globe with a heavy wattage it'd be less noticeable.

Flicker, especially in 50Hz land. But if you have twin light bulb fittings in living areas, use one diode to pass the positive portion of the mains sine wave for one of the bulbs, and another diode to pass the negative portion of the mains sine wave for the other bulb. At a distance, lit surfaces would not flicker. I did this here in 60Hz land to run a pair of LED bulbs at half brightness, and to avoid flicker light on surfaces in the room. At least the particular LED bulbs I used here, seems they don't have a filter cap inside to store charge long enough to keep them lit more than something like 10% of a cycle of 60Hz.

Might experiment with that some time. It reminded me of the old days with rapid-start fluorescent light fittings, in particular the old six and eight foot tubes (80W and 100W respectively). In workshops it was a common practice to wire in a condenser in series with one of the tubes in each fitting to put it out of phase with the other tube. This helped get rid of the stroboscopic effect that made moving machinery appear stationary - grinding wheels, saw blades, etc.

Brad, you're not thinking of power factor correction caps?

They are a power factor correction capacitor but wired in series with one ballast rather than wired across the whole fitting. The fittings we placed these capacitors in were already the HPF type so they ended up having two caps instead of one.

"The LED globes are normally a bit hardier than that."

Sorry I didn't respond to this but the other one of these I had disappeared into a bedside light where I noticed it last night. It was from Aldi, Muller Licht 5.5W 230V 470lm. So this one survived, though with less usage than the failed globe.

The failed globe would have been in service the same time as another 5W LED of the same make which I took out when the 5.5W globe failed and I twigged it might be due to the high line volts. This 5W globe was in service about 3 1/2 years from Mar 13 to Oct 16 in a high usage position and survived.

Line volts hangs around 240-245 still, and no more failures.

I have LED downlights installed in my kitchen/dining room. I found they cause a lot of static interference when I listen to my restored AM radios. I presume this is from the switchmode power supplies. I have the same issue with my Telstra wifi modem. I find to receive good AM reception I have to switch off my LED lights and my wifi modem. I purchased a lamp with a halogen globe to use so I am not in the dark when I listen to an AM radio.