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Light Bulb Replacements
LoveOO writes Boston.com has a story about three companies which are trying to replace the Light bulb. I say it's about time and what about hydrogen powered vehicles? Two things that annoy me are filling the gas tank and changing light bulbs. It's time we did alot less of both."
Two things that annoy me are filling the gas tank and changing light bulbs
/. articles complaining about people worrying about optimizing the wrong sort of time wasting activities. Oh wait...
OK. So how much time are you spending changing light bulbs per year? And was the total time spent submitting this news story longer?
To be honest I don't think that changing light bulbs is a major household time sink. (Different story of course for people who deal with traffic lights, and hence the move to LEDs). I must spend minutes per year changing light bulbs, I waste far more time replying to
John.
I don't know about you, but im realizing the same benefits as they claim you get from LEDs, but my bulbs cost a whopping $2 for a lamp bulb and $3 for a fixture bulb. Flourescent! Cheap, no heat, hard(er) to break. Think about it.
Jeff
Additionally, you can't go wrong with nuclear power if you're looking at least polluting power sources. Many people look at solar as if its some sort of panacea, but the amount of energy that goes into making a tile is far more than you'll ever get out of it -- turns out that at the end of the day the thing everybody's been complaining about is the best option because all the pollution is contained.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
The thing is, no matter how cheap they make LED lightbulbs, I doubt they'll ever get as cheap as the incandescent bulb, as the incandescent bulb is just plain out cheaper to make as it is much more simple. Therefore, the Wal-mart crowds will still buy the standard bulbs for years to come.
What they should do if they want people to adopt these new bulbs is make it so all lightbulb packages have to display the average cost of the lightbulb over its lifetime. People may see that the LED or flourescent lights sitting on the shelf right now cost a lot more and don't buy them, but I bet they will when they see on the box that the bulb over it's lifetime costs a fraction as much in electricity used.
Florescent lights work just fine, are more efficent (especially if you want white light) than incandescent bulbs or LEDs, and are cheap and well developed in comparison.
They've got a whole spectrum of colored tubes using the same technology as they use to make neon signs, if you so desire.
The only thing that you get with LEDs is the ability to get small amounts of light from very small amounts of power.
They are great for microlights and flashlights and medium-sized jumbotrons and a few special purpose applications where normal lights just won't work. The LED manufacturers are getting sick of just making indicator lights, so they are trying to push their new toys as much as they can.
Gentoo Sucks
Great!! I'm not against the concepts of patents, but this just seems crazy, this can only hinder innovation not promote it.
overly broad patents + full time patent lawers != good business
There is no dark side of the moon really, matter of fact it's all dark
Unclear to me how this constitutes patent abuse. If someone is investing major resources in R&D and coming up with nonobvious inventions, it seems entirely proper for that person to seek patent protection.
Ahh, good point, but you ahve to admit that it DOES HELP to move the combustion phase farther up the chain - because a power company can use oil or coal much more efficiently than your car can. A gas-fired power plant that produces hydrogen will probably be 5 or so times more efficient than your car is at extracting energy from fuel.
Personally I think they should switch the socket to the spring-loaded bayonet style used in countries like Britain. I intensely dislike the normal screw sockets her in N. America. So much more effort, and I've had a few occasions were the glass unscrewed and left the metal base jammed in the socket (corroded or just double-threaded). I don't think the extra strength of the screw sockets is really worth it.
Your grandchild will ask you about that glass ball over someone's head. You'll have to explain that back in the old days, right after the incredibly disastrous Y2K, people were still using "analog light"
-- Leeeter than leet
Please mod my previous message away, I hit submit by mistake, it should read...
The 40% assumption is based off a total power bill which includes things such as airconditioning , appliances, computers, and lightbulbs. Lights, however are a relativly small portion of the bill (in an average house) so that is why the number is 40% instead of 80%, they actually used real math instead of fuzzy math or Riaa math (almost the same thing except fuzzy math makes small number bigger where as riaa math just has a problem with double counting)
There is nothing wrong with being gay. It's getting caught where the trouble lies.
Gasoline is not that explosive, maybe, but it is highly flammable. And when you mix it with oxygen it can really get going. The thing about oxygen is that the air is full of it.
Personally I wouldn't feel comfortable driving at high speeds on roads with SUVs and a big tank of highly volatile gasoline in the tank.
What I'm interested in is that oily fuel that is known as Diesel. It has 8% greater energy density than Gasoline, and Diesel engines are more efficient than traditional Gasoline engines. As an added bonus, diesel fuel is much less volatile than gasoline, and isn't explosive at all at normal temperatures! It also takes quite a bit less refining than Gasoline, so that means Diesel is cheaper!
What I'm REALLY interested in is that wood pellet stove/stirling powered go-kart we heard about afw months ago. I mean, for gosh-sakes... Wood's not flamable or anything. Right?
And what?
For any measure you do make, incadescent light bulbs are just yellow. Not a bit yellow, but quite yellow.
There are also these new fluorecent bulbs which use is increasing in my country, they are a bit greenish - not the long cylindrical ones, I mean the ones that fit in incadescent sockets, they also consume up to 70% less electricity than their incadescent counterparts.
Funny thing they are not mentioned in the article, or around the comments.
-><- no
Last time I checked by electric bill wasn't in kiloamp-hours...
Energy is the product of power and time. If you use 40% less power for the same amount of time, it will cost the electric company 40% less to produce it, and you'll get a 40% smaller bill.
There is no way the two bulbs would have the same resistance - they would then consume the same power. The current pulled by the bulb is just V/R - if you don't change V and you don't change R...
I^2R is a cute formula, but I've seen it misused more often than I've seen it used correctly... Your house doesn't run on a constant current power supply - it runs on constant voltage. Instead of thinking I^2R (gee, if I increase resistance, I use more power), think V^2/R (gee, if I increase resistance, I use LESS power). Both formulas give the correct result, but the first obscures the fact that if you increase R on a constant-V power supply you'll also decrease I proportionally. So you double the R and 1/4th the I^2 -> less power.
That, and making passing on the right a capital offence.
While we are slinging hyperbole, I think that being in the left lane while not passing should also be a capital offence.
No -- they're investing major resources in lawyers. Read the article... you do not need 100 patents on controlling LEDs, nor do you need two full-time patent lawyers in a 75-employee company.
I would be surprised if more than one or two of those patents is nonobvious; certainly the major one mentioned in the article (blending LED colors to make -- gasp -- many different colors) is obvious. Even the author of the article complained about it.
I'm not interested...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Hydroelectric has it's associated negative aspects, too... Environmental problems, displacement of wildlife, sediment buildup, etc, etc.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
but... he's saying that you have to burn stuff that produces carbon monoxide... to produce the hydrogen.
So. Yeah. Producing (and therefore consuming) hydrogen adds to the net level of CO.
I remember reading about central lighting, a sort of light equivalent of central heating, or central a/c. Have powerful, super-efficient central lightsource, and then cheap fibre/fiber optics to pipe it around the home/office.
That seemed a much better bet to me, especially as some of that light might be piped from the roof into inner parts of the building...
Partly, to do with people using their cars unnecesarily, but also to do with how we transport goods. Production of many products is centralised, and then requires huge transportation costs.
The USA produces I think about 20% of the world's pollution. How much could you reduce this if people walked more and stopped driving huge SUVs?
discarded [fluorescent] bulbs release approximately 2-4 tons of mercury per year in the United States...
And that sucks. But you have to balance that against the 49 tons that are emitted (directly to the atmosphere) by coal burning power plants annually.
I don't have time to do the arithmatic right now, but the reduced atmospheric emissions may make fluorescents a wash in this department.
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I don't know about the 5 times as efficient, espeically if we add the drive line losses back in to the hydrogen powered car, the main advantage I've heard of is that it is now worth the very expensive or fragile pollution contol technology that would be too costly or break regularly on a moving car. All the environmentalists better not kid themselves about where the hycdrogen is coming from, it isn't the ideal clean renewable water based stuff yet, it's going to be cracked off of coal and natural gas for many decades to come, but it will allow many better methods of centralizing the dirty combustion which means we get one superfund site rather than a bunch of nasty cities with smog.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
I agree, but isn't it easier and more cost-efficient to put pollution controls onto a relatively small number of plants than it is to put them on hundreds of millions of cars, trucks, homes, etc.? And isn't it more economical to keep those controls up-to-date with the latest advancements?
In a radio interview, a representative from the Air Quality Management Board in Southern California said the challenge is that most of the pollution now comes from sources beyond their control (industry, interstate trucking, lawnmowers). Modern cars pollute tiny amounts compared to lawnmowers and these new gas-powered scooters. Sure, there are millions of cars, so they add up, but it's hard to squeeze out any more efficiency at the leaf nodes.
maybe you were trolling, but please enlight me: besides getting to where you're going somewhat faster, why would you need something like this? This without mentioning, of course, speed limits and packed roads.
And from your "I am not interested", one can get to his/her own conclusions: I guess a cleaner environment, not depending on the middle east tyrans and cheaper fuel, between a lot others, are not enough reasons for you to want to change your vehicle. Yeah, I guess a sporty looking car for you to get girls and cheap thrills you cannot get in any other way is really worth not switching to electric cars.
if most people would just be smarter about what they purchase, it would go a long way in saving energy and $$$. Compact Fluorescent bulbs use about 1/4 the power and last much much longer than incandescent bulbs. A front-load washing machine uses about 1/4 the water and again, less energy than a top-load washer. And talk about automobiles; Honda and Toyota have hybrid vehicles on the road today which get over 50MPG and put out about 1/10 the emmisions of a similarly equipted car. Toyota will have a van and SUV soon that'll have the same setup and still plenty of power when you need it.
So the trick is to use what's available today and HOPE that some of these other dreams, like hydrogen powered cars, make it to the showroom floors. Because there is way too much politics playing in the game of next-gen automobile propulsion systems.
New light bulbs are great but what about what's already available. IMHO, we need to start using that first instead of waiting for the next great thing to not happen.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
I keep seeing people say this, but it just isn't true. The reason stuff from the 50's seems to be well-built and last forever is because the crap is already broken and gone. All that's left is the good stuff. In another 53 years, nobody will remember the $40 VCRs that died in two years. But there will be people hanging onto commercial video-editing decks that really were built to last. And everyone will run around saying things like "i wish they built things as well as they did back in 2003!"
In theory its a good solution. In practice we run into the simple fact that it takes a full growing season for the plants to absob the solar energy, convert it into chemical form, then we convert to a different form, and finally burn it for a fraction of the original solar energy input.
You can get about 290 gallons of ethanol per acre per year. That will convert to around 9,483 killowatt hours per acre. Todays solar panels are horribly inefficient, yet when we assume six hours of light per day an acre of solar panels produces 886,261 kilowatt hours in a year. The solar panels, of course, have a much higher initial cost, but overall I'd rather use them than run things through plants...
Ultimately of course, we need to be using fusion, or even properly done fission. I'll point out that one acre of solar panels doesn't even produce a single megawatt of power, which is pathetic. We need better.
Put simply, bio-fuels just aren't all that useful, take crop space away from food. And also require that more crop space be dedicated to them.
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
1. Find out how many edison bulbs were manufactured, ever.
2. Find out how many are still working.
3. Grab a calculator, and do some quick math to figure out what percentage that is.
But seriously-- there are going to be counterexamples on both sides. Some things today are made to break. Some things back then were made well. The converse to both is also true. But the trend is still valid. Crap breaks and goes away, good stuff (AND bad stuff that was waaaaaay out on the edge of the bell curve for reliability) lasts long enough for people to mistakenly assume everything comtemporary to it was well made.
I think you failed to think things through all the way with your post. If Edison bulbs were good, and lasted this long, they are exactly the sort of thing I was referring to.. If they had broken, and been forgotten about, you would have posted about something else that still worked as an example of "good things from back then." Your dad's slide rule, maybe-- or a microscope you bought at an antique store.