Slashdot Mirror
The Light Bulb That Can Change the World
An anonymous reader writes to tell us FastCompany is reporting on the latest and greatest version of the compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL). While CFLs of the past may have been efficient, they certainly were not effective. However, according to the article, CFLs have come as far as cell phones have since the mid 80s while still maintaining that high efficiency. From the article: "if every one of 110 million American households bought just one [CFL], took it home, and screwed it in the place of an ordinary 60-watt bulb, the energy saved would be enough to power a city of 1.5 million people. One bulb swapped out, enough electricity saved to power all the homes in Delaware and Rhode Island. In terms of oil not burned, or greenhouse gases not exhausted into the atmosphere, one bulb is equivalent to taking 1.3 million cars off the roads."
How many light bulbs does it take to change the world? No wait, that's not right...
This guy's the limit!
I have since given away to relatives my extra pre-purchased packs of old light bulbs, and I will never buy one of those oldies again.
What did your relatives do to you?
Why not?
Because they:
- are 3x-10x the cost of an ordinary light bulb
- are a bit dimmer than their stated wattage equivalent standard bulbs
- take a bit of time to warm up
- don't have quite the same color temperature as standard bulbs
- sometimes don't fit under (e.g.) ceiling fan light domes, especially the 100W equivalent models
Now don't get me wrong, I love CFLs and have replaced every single bulb in my house with one, but I can imagine quite a few people resisting the idea based on the list above.
That said, they are rapidly getting better (and cheaper!).
The ones I've been buying recently have been marked "soft white". They're not the same as an incandescent bulb, but they're close enough that my wife doesn't complain about them (like she did with older CFLs).
Look on the package for the color temperature of the bulb. You want 2700 degree ones (which match incandescent bulbs so closely, if you didn't know it was CFL you wouldn't guess it).
Up until recently (ie, the last six months or so) most of the bulbs you'd find in the typical discount stores were 4000-5000 degree.
I've replaced most of the bulbs in my house too, but what I don't see this article addressing is the total bulb lifecycle. These things have mercury in them, which will probably mean people screaming about disposal when they DO have to be replaced. Are there recycling programs in place? What's the environmental impact of making them in the first place, compared to incadescents?
If you RTFA, you'd see that they broke it down very nicely. The fact that these bulbs can last up to 10 years, saves WAY more energy and materials than the regular bulbs they replace. They even go into how many less Walmart trucks will be needed to haul lightbulbs around. Really, sometimes the articles do give important information!
"We need a fourth law of Robotics: Stop Fingering My Wife"
Up until recently (ie, the last six months or so) most of the bulbs you'd find in the typical discount stores were 4000-5000 degree.
... since I installed CFL's over the last two years, I have to wait only about 8 years before I can start replacing them with the 2700 degree ones.
Great
All sigs should be as funny as possible, but no funnier.
Except that they don't last 10 years. I've been using CFLs for at least 5 years (back when they used to cost 10 or 15$ each). I've yet to have one last more than two years, and I'd say most don't last more than one.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
From Wiki:
Note that coal power plants are the single largest source of mercury emissions into the environment. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), (when coal power is used) the mercury released from powering an incandescent bulb for five years exceeds the sum of the mercury released by powering a comparably luminous CFL for the same period and the mercury contained in the lamp.
Given that, and that the Incandescents use 4-5 times as much electricity as Flourescents, that meanst that switching to a Flourescent, even though it contains mercury, will actually reduce mercury emmisions, if you get power from coal.
So remember, if you want to reduce mercury, you should first work to eliminate coal power plants.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Personnally, every bulb in my NY apartment is CF, primarily because I am not charged for heat and electricity costs a ridiculous $0.20 per kW-hr
70% of statistics are made up.
I'll back you up on that - I have them go bad all the damn time, probably faster than regular bulbs in some cases. It's frustrating, seeing a big "Guarnteed to last 7 years" sticker on the box, and only getting 15 months out of them on average.
This sheet may prove helpful. In summary, CFLs prevent enough mercury emissions (from coal power) to offset their own mercury content. A typical CFL contains 4mg of mercury, over 100x less than a typical thermometer and almost 1000x less than the mercury switches frequently used in older thermostats.
I used to be on the board of an HOA for a small 12-unit condominium. The HOA was owner run and we were looking to cut our expenses. One major expense was electricity. In part this was because all the common hallways were lit 24/7/365 by old incandescent flood lights. Replacing about 36 60Watt floodlights with 15Watt CF bulbs saved the HOA over $1200/year. Not to mention that we haven't had to replace a single CF since they were installed in summer 2003. This cost savings meant that we didn't need to raise HOA dues when other condos across town were doing just that. We recup'ed our investment in the bulbs in less than three months.
I've discovered that quality matters a lot with CFLs, unlike regular light blubs where even the off brand guys do a reasonable job. For instance, the "America Something" brand that Wal*Mart sells is complete trash. Their colors are all over the map, they flicker, and they rarely last more than a couple of years. Half of the time the instant on stuff doesn't even work properly with them.
I have been very impressed with the Commercial Electric brand sold by Home Depot however. I installed a ton of them 5 years ago when I bought my house and thus far only one has failed. They aren't even all that expensive, you can sometimes find 6 packs of 15 watt bulbs for ~$10-$15 on sale. I redid my Mother-in-Laws place with a couple of those packs and saved her a bunch on her power bill because she has this annoying habit of never turning lights off. Plus, I was tired of changing half of her bulbs everytime we went over there.
I've also experimented with the GE brand and a few others, but that was back before isntant on was common and many of them take several seconds to light, which turned me off on them.
I read the internet for the articles.
The mistake you make here is replacing like-for-like wattage bulbs. I went through my home and replaced the high usage bulbs with CFLs. And as the low usage ones die I replace them. But I replace them with CFLs of a higher equivalent strength. 60w incandescents get replaced with 75w equivalent CFLs, 75w are replaced with 100w. They only draw about 1/4 the juice of incandescents, so I still save big. But now I have more light in the same area, and the picket fence spectrum problem is reduced. Plus, when I can, I mix Cool White, Warm White and Daylight color temperatures. Looks odd, but only if you look at the fixtures and not the room.
I think it is worth the cost to my pocket and the Earth.
Thank you for consuming more than your share. The rest of us apprciate it.
Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
How many light bulbs does it take to change the world? No wait, that's not right...
The problem is people use these little efficient doodads to feel good about doing something green. Then they go out and buy a power-sucking plasma TV.
Electrical use is way up since the 80's. Possibly because we all have tonnes more electronics bits to plug in and nearly everyone has a PC which adds a certain minimum for the hours its on. If you had a few lamps burning around the house which added up to the energy consumption of most desktop PCs you'd notice it right away and wonder why it's necessary. Alas, we sit at our keyboards and type merrily away (there's that batsard, ackthpt again, oi if only I had the mod points to bury him.) oblivious to the power consumption of our tin box full of CPU, DDR-RAM, HD, Whizzo Video Card De-Luxe, etc. Quite possibly we even have a reading lamp going beside us in the evening (I don't know about you, but at my age I get a headache looking at a glowing screen in the dark.) Plus there's all these little black plastic cubes and rectangles to run all manner of gizmo, which all add up.
On another thought. I've got these wicked little LED flashlights which run for 130 hours on a battery the size of an aspirin. When will I see these in my house, rather than a fluorescent lamp?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Elemental mercury really isn't a problem; combinded to form a organic-mercury compound it's very toxic and most people confuse the two.
It's not a problem to you when it's sealed in the bulb, but it damn sure can't go into the landfill. Once it gets into groundwater, it very easily becomes methylated to become that nasty toxic stuff.
Long-term, elemental mercury is pretty damn toxic too. I'd mostly be worried about it being around kids. Still, if everyone burned CF's, there'd be a lot less mercury released from coal plants.
If you look at the effeciency of one of the best high-power white LEDs, the Luxeon K2, it produces 60 lumens at 1.197 watts, for about 50 lumens/watt. A typical CF bulb (reading off the package) is 900 lumens and 14 watts, for 64 lumens/watt. If you look at a higher power verison of the Luxeon K2, it's 120 lumens in 3.72 watts for only 32 lumens/watt.
White LEDs are NOT seven times more efficient than flourescent bulbs, they are LESS efficient.
Consider the price too. I bought those 900 lumen CF bulbs at Home Depot for about $1.75 each. The white Luxeon K2 is $3.45 each for a less efficient (45 lumens) binning, you would need 20 of them to make a 900 lumen light bulb. And that's just for the LEDs, you'd still need electronics (which are not 100% efficient themselves!) to make an actual bulb. For example, that clearance bulb at ThinkGeek is $25 for a bulb with the power of one 60 lumen K2 LED. 15 of those $25 ThinkGeek bulbs would cost $375 and have the light output of just one $1.75 CF bulb!
The only advantage of LEDs is that they are more efficient the less powerfull they are. CF is more efficient the more powerfull it is. If you look at normal lightbulbs in the 900 lumen range, CF wins by a lot. If you look at something small like a one watt flashlight, there are no 1 watt CF bulbs, so LEDs are best.
This should be modded "-1: making shit up". There are currently ideas to install dozens to hundreds of underwater turbines near the Tacoma Narrows bridges, but it would be a huge, very complex, and very costly project. Currently it's only an idea being studied (or planned on being studied). No turbine project was canceled to save 3 fish, but of course slandering environmentalists and liberals is far more important than truth or facts (which is why Republicans can no longer be trusted).
http://www.djc.com/news/en/11180913.html
http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/story/50
None of this is really relevant to the article, but since this got modded +5 I had to respond.