On Sun, 18 Sep 2011 14:57:25 -0700 (PDT), Andy
wrote:

On Sep 18, 1:47 pm, George wrote:

That would be true if the "whatever" were purely resistive. But this is
"more complex...". Capacitive reactance is involved. That causes a
phase shift between the voltage and current (voltage lags behind
current) which lowers the instantaneous power.

Andy injects:

In the blue LED nitelite that I have, it is a 0.33 uf capacitor.....
The LED had a diode across it in the other direction to keep
the cap from charging up on the half cycle. A couple of
resistors for inrush limiting and cap leakage... That's it...

The anti-parallel diode keeps the LED from becoming LED vapor when the current
in the other direction. ;-)