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California Proposes to Ban Incandescent Lightbulbs
zhang1983 writes to tell us CNN is reporting that California Assemblyman Lloyd Levine wants to make his state the first to ban incandescent lightbulbs with the "How Many Legislators Does it Take to Change a Lightbulb Act". The act will promote Compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs) to replace the inefficient incandescent lightbulbs. According to him, "Incandescent lightbulbs were first developed almost 125 years ago, and since that time they have undergone no major modifications, meanwhile, they remain incredibly inefficient, converting only about 5 percent of the energy they receive into light."
California Assemblyman Llyod Levine wants to make his state the first to ban incandescent lightbulbs with the "How Many Legislators Does it Take to Change a Lightbulb Act"
It takes a vote of more than half of the legislative body considering the measure. The full Assembly requires a majority vote of 41 and the full Senate requires 21, based on their memberships of 80 and 40 respectively.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
If you want to save energy, ban SUVs.
As extreme as this legislation is, I hope it goes through, as long as there are provisions so that incandescents can still be used under certain circumstances. But as for everyday home lighting, the incandescent should be abolished.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Hey! I'm counting on the incandescents to be inefficient--I use them to heat my home!!
If they want to target something, let them ban electric heaters. People ought to be running P4 servers as space heaters. At least *do* something with all that electricity!
Nothing interesting to say...MUST...NOT...REPLY...ohtheheckwithit.
I hope it also encourage the use of LEDs
Ave Maria
But what about the automatic light switches which only work with incandescent bulbs? In any case, incandescent bulbs are not really inefficient if you think about it.
I had to look at the date and make sure this wasn't April 1. Then the snow outside had me worried about global warming.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
I don't like this at all. My eyes hurt with fluorescent bulbs. They give me a headache. I prefer the more natural look and less-flickering of the current bulbs. Unless they fix the fluorescent bulbs to not be so intrusive, I don't like this.
While it's great they want to promote CFLs, I think this is excessive. What if you want to light an art room or something? Maybe there are exceptions for cases like those, but wouldn't it be better if they created incentives to use CFLs or maybe tax incandescents?
Yeah. Would you choose a neurosurgeon who pokes around people's brains in his spare time? I wouldn't.
Don't most CFL's contain a small amount of mercury? What are we supposed to do with them when they go bad/break/whatever? Maybe this should also come with a CFL recycling bill.
They may be inefficient, but they can be dimmed... Any house that uses dimmer switches will have to have it's switches replaced, not only that, you lose the convenience of being able to change a room's lighting.
Also, I had an electrical engineering professor, that turns off his overhead florescent lights when he reads and uses an incandescent because a lot of his peers who read under mainly florescent light have had problems with cataracts.
I believe that there needs to be more R&D into florescent lighting to make it compatible with dimmer switches.
Specific technology mandates or bans are a bad idea. However, rules requiring a certain efficiency of lighting would make sense. This could effectively ban incandescents and lead to replacement with CFL, but without getting unnecessarily stuck on a particular technology. For example, LED bulbs will probably soon be better than CFL. And of course we must believe in the American corporate ability to manufacture some sort of Hummer of CF bulbs that still manages to use 1 megawatt per room, while complying with a technology mandate.
I have never found the harsh character of fluorescent light to be useful for long term study sessions, programming, etc. Whether it is due to a paradigm ingrained in my head or not, I prefer incandescent lighting. Halogen lamps are great too. Am I alone in making this comment or do others agree with my take?
I'm going to be pissed if I have to change every individual light bulb on my Christmas lights.
my family has been ussing them (not exclusivly, but in most places) since the late 80s I think.
However I have a few questions:
1) any one got some actualy information on the bill? (TFA is rather light on details...)
2) What about Flourecents and other types of bulbs? How efficent are they? Will this bill say anything about them?
Do Or Do Not, There Is No Spoon, There Is Only Zuul. Everything in the above post is probably opinion.
CFLs are just starting to get a reasonable color output, and dimmable options are appearing, but they do not come in enough sizes, shapes and fittings. The cost of dimmable CFLs also needs to drop considerably. LEDs do not give out anywhere enough light, and are not dimmable.
What other options are there? I'm sure the requirements most of us want are:
dimmable
nice light color
efficient
fit existing light fixtures
Politicians were invented over 2,000 years ago, and still spend only about 5 percent of their time writing legislation. I say be ban these inefficient politicians!
As a lad, when it got really cold, we used to put a bulb inside the wrapping around our water pump to keep it from freezing. What do they propose people use after this takes effect?
Yet more government intrusion into our lives. Perhaps next they can tell us what to wear and eat too.
Hope the legislators have a plan on how to dispose of all those CFLs, since they are toxic when broken.
I lived in a condominium where half of the lights were on dimmer switches. I have yet to find a CFL bulb that works with dimmer switches. Plus, I've read that CFL bulbs should not be put in high-humidity areas like bathrooms. On the other hand, in all places where I am able to put it CFL bulbs, I have. I don't know how much it cuts my electricity bill, but it sure does cut down the heat. Now, if only I could unload my displaced conventional bulbs on some schmoe for $1 each...I'd have $15! Whee!
LED is the future!
compact fluorescent have mercury in them and arent as efficient...
go california! show us how its done!
also those fiber optic lights for directing sunlight in from the roof would also be a good idea... maybe time to invest if the bill passes.
This is completely infeasible. There may be an CCFL equivalent for the 60W lamp in your living room - but what about the 100W halogen I have over my workbench? The spotlights that light up the outside of my house? The turn signal blinkers in my car? The bulb inside my microwave?
This guy is an idiot.
Besides, CCFL's suck. I like the warm yellow glow of an incandescent. And don't tell me that they have fluorescents with the same color temperature now. I've tried them, they still look like fluorescents.
If I lived in California and this law was passed, I would seriously consider moving. Fluorescent lighting is depressing, and I would hate to live somewhere where the government forces me to use it.
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What about things like the stove and refrig lights?
:(
;)
Or the half of my fixtures where they don't fit?
How about the small bulb in my desklamp?
They don't say what they banning that i could see.
Not to mention i generally don't like the color of most of em and i want a break from pure fluorecent lights after work
I am all for CA pushing the enviromental envelope but keep it real folks or no one will follow
1. CF bulbs are an appropriate replacement for incandescents in some, BUT NOT ALL, applications.
Much more importantly:
2. It is none of the government's business. Any lawful powers a government can have must have been delegated, directly or indirectly, by the people. But people do not have the right to control the purchasing decisions of others - only their own. Since that right does not exist, it cannot be delegated, and cannot be among the lawful powers of the California government, nor of any other. Of course all governments exercise illegitimate, usurped powers all the time, but it is not right, it is not lawful, it should not happen, and those responsible should, at a bare minimum, be removed from office, and held civilly and criminally accountable for any harm they may have caused.
Nonaggression works!
But I havnt found a florescent bulb that dosnt slowly drive me crazy with the quality of the light.
What next, outlaw electric heat as inefficient (personal experience, gas is better for furnaces and water heaters)? How 'bout SUV's? Recreational watercraft/atv's/aircraft? I know - how 'bout CRT's? LCD's/plasma displays have much lower power requirements than CRT's.
Incidentally, how well will one of these flourescents work/hold up in my oven? How will it work in my granddaughter's E-Z bake oven? Also, I can see the flicker from flourescents - it gives me headaches on some days. Can I get an exemption on health grounds? Never mind that it'll make visiting my friends problemmatic.
Even if it passes, this law will be unenforceable. The state of California will be sued (further) into oblivion if this passes.
I predict in the future they will be able to pull you over if driving with incandescent lights on when children are in the car.
What is this Incandescent Lightbulb you all speak of?
If i wanted to hear bullshit, i'd go to church.
Yeah, for home use in regular 120v sockets, CFL lightbulbs are more efficient than regular incandescents. Unfortunately, most CFLs contain mercury so disposal becomes an issue. Also, for larger applications, CFL bulbs are not practical. Take street lights for example, they use Metal halide or sodium bulbs which are in some cases considerably more efficient than fluorescents.
CFLs are nice, and regular incandescent bulbs are on their way out for a number of reasons, but CFLs are far from perfect. Try finding a CFL replacement for a 40 watt chandelier bulb which offers good light without a ballast hum or warm up period for example. I've replaced most of my bulbs with CFLs now, but finding a good replacement for a 40 watt incandescent chandelier type bulb is damn near impossible.
Oh yeah, and CFLs are still expensive as hell, which a lot of people don't like (even though they may save money in the long run). Replacing all the bulbs in my small house cost a few hundred dollars.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
Freedom. Its whats for dinner.
And my wife wonders why I am resistant to moving to California.
I'm no defender of the tungsten light bulb - I have CFLs in my kitchen, for instance. But I'm not putting one in my closet where the bulb is used for 2 minutes a week, tops. And I won't put one in the bathroom, where the fluorescent light makes your face look like even more of a splotchy mess than it is. And I still haven't tried the dimming fluorescents, so I can't say whether or not I'd be willing to replace the energy-atrocious halogen lamps we have in the living room and bedrooms.
If you really want to go the government interference route, and you want people to use less electricity, either make it more expensive or ration it. This is just stupid. Next the government will be regulating the temperature of our homes.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I hate the light given off by fluorescent bulbs. I only buy the Reveal incandescents; they give off a much nicer, natural light. I'll put the fluorescents in storage rooms or areas I don't use often and need only temporary light, but I can't stand them otherwise. Additionally, you can't install them with nice dimmer switches.
So we get to replace all those PAR-64 lamps and Leko's and Fresnel lamps with intelligent fixtures like I-Beams, or Vari*Lites, or TeleScans or whatever...
Sounds like a great idea.... for the manufacturers of automated lighting fixtures...
Ron Gage - Westland, MI
I've often wondered how much energy could be conserved if municipalities re-examined the overuse of streetlights. It seems that many streetlights are used to illuminate sections of road that don't need such illumination. I can understand the benefits at intersections and crosswalks, however I know of stretches of urban highway between intersections that are fully lit, with no benefit that I can imagine. Automobiles have headlights for a good reason. The occasional vehicle driving along without its headlights on (I know I've done this myself accidentally) is probably ample testimony that there is too much illumination of many urban roadways.
Furthermore, what effect would it have if a municipality required all outdoor lighting to illuminate only the area of interest? That is, mandate that parking lot lights, lights above entrances, along sidewalks, streetlights, and such use reflectors/shields to ensure that only the parking lot/entrance/sidewalk/intersection is illuminated, and nothing else. It seems if this was required they could get by with lower-power lights, and as a beneficial side-effect reduce the light polution in urban areas.
Personally I'd also like to see some measure to reduce business signage illumination, however I doubt that's a realistic hope.
Cyrano de Maniac
Well more accurately.. I hate lights that oscillate at 60hz, such as the neon tubes they use in all offices and those low-power bulbs, because I can see the oscillation and it gives me a stress headache.
Thank god for uibquitous LCD panels, because the problem was especially bad when sat infront of a CRT because its frame refresh(often at a higher frequency) causes the visual equivalent of harmonics which for me lead to frequent migraine.
Now we have to wait for the ballast to warm up before inspiration strikes!
1 in 4 Maine children in struggle with hunger.
I have a couple of ceiling fans with a light fitting underneath them. They are designed to take incandescent size and shape globes. Fluoro lights will not fit, even the newer twirly compact ones are the wrong shape. These ceiling fans are still sold so I hope the legislators will also check and ban any light fittings that don't take the fluoro globes.
The memories of a man in his old age are the deeds of a man in his prime - Floyd, Pink
As I mentioned in the last post on this topic, the vast majority of fluorescent fixtures I have come across in the last decade are horrible polluters of the RF spectrum. I have a recording studio in my house, and I *cannot* run fluorescent fixtures because of this problem. Despite using all balanced connections, there is a marked increase in the volume of the noise floor whenever I replace the incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescents, or when I use the long-tube traditional types.
Not that I expect California's legislators to worry about this, even though CA probably has the largest concentration of movie, music, video, and television studios in the country, but what are they going to do to force the manufacturers of fluorescent fixtures (who are largely Chinese companies serving the megabox stores of America nowadays) to clean up their emissions?
Yeah, because it'll save so much gas when I make two trips in my car (30 MPG) to pick up what I could in one trip with my SUV (25 MPG).
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
Every time I break one, how much manufacturing energy and material resources do I waste? Probably more than the energy savings...
Ovens and Fridges have lights in them that are usually incandescent.
;-)
Does anyone know if they make compact fluorescents that can actually work in those situations? Can you imagine trying to warm up a cold fluorescent when you open the door to a fridge??
I bet there are other situations in which only an incandescent bulb will work. Hell, try to make something in your Easy Bake oven with a fluorescent light.
Just a thought.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Why don't you just get a heating pad or small electric heater? Most pads can be switched between 40/80/100W, and wouldn't leave you with an insomniac dog. :)
Alternately, and probably a better option, are actual purpose-built dog house heaters, switchable wattages, usable with a timer or rheostat, and designed for use with pets.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
The sound of a CFL inside a microwave oven exploding!
Great idea!
http://www.bulbs.com/eSpec.aspx?ID=11344&Ref=Categ ory
Who was it that said, "every time they pass a new law, they create a new 'business' opportunity for someone?"
ed
An outright ban would be hard to enforce, better would be to provide some kind of incentive to phase out incandescents over a period of years. Maybe a rising tax on incandescents coupled with some kind of credit on fluorescents. And to set a good example, the state should act first to change over the lighting in its various buildings, which all alone would save the taxpayers some money.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
LED's don't work particularly well with conventional dimmers. Most LED brightness is controlled by varying the pulse width (PWM) of current sent through them, rather than applying resistance ( as in a conventional dimmer. ) There's a sweet-spot where resistance variance works, but, for low-light, I believe pwm is the only reliable way to achieve half-brightness or less with conventional leds. Any EEs that can validate that for me?
--- Little Atomo - The Amazing Thinking Robot from Atomocom! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIP9KisHi4k
I live in a duplex with electric baseboard heat in a corner of Canada with a relatively mild winter. The amazing thing about my incandescent bulbs is that for several months of the year, they function with 100% efficiency: 5% produces light, the other 95% produces heat, which spares my baseboard heaters the trouble of burning off the dust. When I'm working long days in the short days of winter, I'd rather have my heat producing extra light as a by-product.
And I don't mean people's homes. I mean the legislature. Require them to use other bulbs beginning in 2008. Then we'll see if they want to hold consumers accountable for the same thing.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
Scissors were invented well over 150 years ago, and they can be used as a weapon. Maybe we should ban them too. Cotton hasn't had any major advancements in quite a while, and people make cloth from it and dye it gang colors. Dihydrogen monoxide is as old as the hills, and causes hundreds or thousands of deaths each year. We, as responsible people, must petition to get these dangerous products off the streets. Who's with me?
After one week of looking at their surgery-hacked faces in the imperfection-enhancing glow of fluorescent lighting, the aging movie stars will revolt.
The ensuing rampage throughout the blook-soaked streets will be spectacular, and when they reach the homes of the poor legislators who put through this motion they will skin and eat them alive.
Of course, they will immediately make themselves throw up afterwards.
A good portion of the Mendocino and Humbolt county population are burning a combination of High-Pressure Sodium and Metal-Halide High Intensity Discharge lamps indoors. Some even for 24 hours per day. It is not too uncommon to find a room with 6 1000W lights burning for 24 hours per day for a few weeks, then a switch to 12 hours on/12 hours off for about 8 weeks.
These homes usually have a very musky odor teamed up with the occaisional U-Haul or Ryder truck parked out front.
I always thought so too, but I'm a convert now. I recently put them in all our bathroom fixtures. The wife never noticed a difference. I figured, what the hell? Let's do all the non-dimmer-equipped light fixtures. Same result so far. I'll probably keep incandescents in my favorite reading lamps, though.
Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
CFL bulbs have a different spectrum from incandescent bulbs. This is what keeps me from using them anywhere but the garage/outdoors. There are also issues of flickering, shape, etc. My house uses Reveal bulbs everywhere people are.
Simply put, CFL and incandescent bulbs are not functionally equivalent. You might as well mandate people use pogosticks instead of cars to get to work; they are both transportation, but the pogo is better for the environment.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
What's next from the People's Republic of California? Will they make it illegal to leave a light on when you're not in a room? How about making it illegal to keep your home warmer than 65 degrees in the winter, or cooler than 80 in the summer?
Perhaps it should be illegal to drive instead of use public transportation? Illegal to drive a car that gets less than 20 mpg, or carries only two people?
Perhaps they should ban CRT monitors and TVs, since flat-panels take up so much less power? Perhaps they should ban TV altogether, since it's a waste of electricity?
Maybe they'll start prosecuting people who take warm showers, or stay in the shower too long.
All you Democrats who complain about the administration's wiretapping, warrantless searches, and other invasions of our privacy, what do you think of this?
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Somebody had to point it out. Not all CF bulbs are dimmable, but dimmable ones are fairly easy to find if you look. I have a few recessed dimmable R30 reflector CF bulbs. You can find a replacement for nearly anything.
How can they ban a device that I am willing to pay the energy costs to use? Maybe I want to the heat? After all if the weather is cold, the heat produced by an incandescent won't cost me any more energy than what the heater uses. (All energy is either converted to light or heat).
This is insane that laws would be passed telling people what they can't use in their own homes that don't affect others.
And don't gimme BS about energy use harms the environment. Then freaking put a cap on pollutants or heating the atmosphere or something. That is, put a cap on how much pollutants or earth resource consumption an individual is allowed.
I decided to give CFLs a try. The first one I tried it on is my nice lamp in the living room. 3 lights I can position anywhere. So I took out the old one, and realized the energy-saving ones don't fit. Just after the screw-base, it gets really wide on the base. That means it refuses to fit any tight-clearance light sockets.
So I moved it to the light socket(no space restrictions, just a socket) downstairs to the laundry room. It worked, but it didn't seem to light up a room well at all! Oh well.
I'm one of those people who are sensitive to the output of fluorescents -- I can stand being under them for a little while, but being in nothing but fluorescent light causes me to become physically ill. If specialized tubes are used (designed to output a close-to-natural-light spectrum) i can usually last a bit longer, but even so, I still have trouble. My personal preference is actually halogen light bulbs -- good for dealing with Seasonal Affective Disorder amongst other things -- but they're hideously expensive and not particularly efficient either. You know, what I need is a couple of dozen blocks of Slow Glass....
you get enough legislators, uhhh, "motivated," and there are Enough Legislators To Change A Lightbulb.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
standard CFLs flicker at 60 degrees quite badly. to use them outside or in a garage in my neck of the woods, which will have lows of -16 Fahrenheit for a week at least, is totally out of the question.
fix that, and we CAN outlaw the incandescent lightbulb.
besides, all kids have to have access to a source of mercury to play with. if folks were serious about that (and all fluorescents and neon sign lighting has mercury,) they'd be legislating LED lightbulbs into use. which DO work in the cold.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
It's a wash if and only if you are using resistive electric heating as your home's heat source. Light bulbs (and resistive heaters) have a Coefficient of Performance of roughly 1.0-- a watt of energy makes a watt of heat.
Modern heat pumps have COPs in the 2-4 range for air-coupled units, and higher for water or ground-loop units. A watt of energy pumps 2-4 watts of heat into your house from outside.
And lastly, gas heat doesn't suffer transmission loss to the degree that electricity does, since it is burned on-premises instead of being burned far away, used to make power (at a loss), pumped over transmission lines (at a loss), and *then* made into heat in your house.
Encapsulated in this debate is the issue of light pollution.
Any avid astronomer, amateur or otherwise, will agree that the growing plight of the skies is the hazy glow that makes all but the brightest of the celestial bodies visible.
Although not as pressing as the environmental concerns, since simply switching everything off causes the problem to go away (as any blackout demonstrates), the reality of it is that a large percentage of big city dwellers will seldom experience the joy of simply slowing down and appreciating the beauty of our universe!
Aesthetic benefits aside, I feel that such moments would help us put our problems into perspective, thus inducing the calming effect we require to get through this rat race. Quite a natural alternative to 'party supplies'.
Strangely enough, they do -- mercury. Has CA considered the cost of mass noncompliance with recycling regulations when people are forced to buy CFLs?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
You can get CFL's in a range of color temperatures nowadays. They still do not have a perfect color index, but it is pretty darn good. I noticed that proofing tables have fluorescent bulbs in them, so it must be possible to get a good color index out of fluorescent bulbs if you really try.
You may also want to look into Metal Halide bulbs. MH bulbs are like a mini-arclamp. It would be nice if those fast start xenon ones they use in cars could made their way into homes. The only MH fixture I could find was from a company called MicroSun. The only disadvantage is the slow start, but since this is the living room, I am in it most of the evening. Going from 300-watt halogen to a 68-watt MH was a very nice upgrade. The MH is slightly brighter than the halogen and has a very good color index.
Ah, the removal of incandescent, high power-dissipitating bulbs -- To the extent that natural gas is used more for heating than it is for electricity generation in California, chalk one up for natural gas interests. Now they won't have to compete with those darn ubiqitous 100W heaters that give off light as a side effect.
BTW this is more tongue-in-cheek than anything else. What is the break even point between electricity cost per BTU generated vs. natural gas? Where do Californians stand on that balance?
Powering an incandescent bulb is within reason. What's next? No P4s allowed since they waste so much energy too?
Besides banning a particular type of bulb is totally stupid, it would be better to just have regulations on efficiency. As long as we're all being jerks about it just tax inefficient bulbs.
Arrr.
Aren't they pretty close to 100 percent efficient?
Yes, but a plain old air-coupled heat pump is 200% to 400% efficient, since it's just *moving* heat instead of creating it. One watt puts 2-4 watts of heat in your house.
Those ninnies in California government won't be happy until they are able to tell us exactly what to eat, when to eat it, when to drive, what to drive, where to work, who to hire, who to fuck, who not to fuck, what to read, what not to read, who to make friends with, what to watch on TV, who to vote for, what kind of TP to wipe your ass on, what the dimensions of the toilet you are sitting on should be, what kind of lightbulbs should be in your bathroom, how many bathrooms you must have, how each bathroom door must have a lock on it and be X inches wide for the crips you invite over, how your stairs must X inches wide and not rise too steeply...
In other words, EVERYTHING. They would tell you how to do EVERYTHING if we let them. And at this rate, it's just a matter of time before the sheeple allow the gubment to dictate EVERY GODDAMNED THING WE CAN DO.
Fuckers.
It's been established that consumers have recognized the advantages of CFLs. Wal-mart, an excellent market indicator in the USA, is selling them by the truckload. Yet we have this egotist who wants a zero-tolerance jihad against incandescents? You'd think light bulbs were killing thousands each year, with the urgency of eliminating them by 2012. Instead, we'll fill the landfills with expended CFLs that do carry small amounts of mercury and actually might kill someone (unlikely I know... just getting the envionmentalists' goats). The Democrats fancy themselves as the champions of the lower class... has this genius thought about the economic impact of his brilliant legislation? CFLs last several times as long as light bulbs, but you're also paying several times so that initial outlay is going to hit someone who's living paycheck to paycheck. There are going to be a few dark rooms in the welfare recipient's house. We have this thing called a free-market economy: let it work, and CFLs will become popular and cheap. Force it, and the technology will remain high-priced and shoddy.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
The American philosophy: if everyone can't be rich, everyone has to be poor. Thus you have almost everyone renting dumpy apartments. There's no incentive for landlords to install anything but the cheapest, least efficient appliances in their dumpy apartments. There's no incentive for renters to install fluorescent bulbs because they don't own the property. You end up with almost every progressive decision being forced by the government.
Can I make a business of smuggling in old technology from adjacent states and profit from the rarity and nostalgia factors?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I use CFLs wherever I can at home, but I don't think it's possible to completely ban incandescent bulbs. They still are useful for lights that are used infrequently (e.g. closet), lights that need to turn on instantly, or need to survive extreme heat, cold or humidity.
A tax on incandescent bulbs might be more workable, like 50% of the excess energy used compared to a CFL (for a 60W bulb vs 15W CFL, that's 50% of 45kWh over the 1000hr life of the bulb, or $2-3).
I have a couple of CFLs designed for outdoor use that work quite well at 20F. I havn't had any -16F nights around here to test it with yet though. For reference, the bulbs were manufactured by Philips and I bought them 3 years ago. They are the old "slow start" variety of CFL, but temperature doesn't seem to bother them much.
I read the internet for the articles.
I live in Minnesota and use CFLs in my garage. They work fine. The cold merely increases the delay before the light goes on. Even with that, I've never seen it take over a second for the light to come on even in sub-zero temperatures. There is also no perceivable flashing at all (and I'm quite sensitive to fluorescents flashing).
I can't remember the brand of CFL I bought off the top of my head but they were just standard ones (I think GE) you can get at Target.
I seriously try to replace as many incandescent bulbs as possible with florescent. However, on more occasions than not, the florescent just doesn't shine bright. In addition, for those applications where I turn the light on and want it bright now, I cannot use florescent. For example, my outside lighting is all florescent. When I turn them on, the bulbs (7w) all shine a dull yellow. It takes a few minutes before they are bright white.
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
I may be a minority, but I get nausious, light-headed, disoriented around most CFLs, or at least most that you find for ceiling lights and lamps for houses.
I have several friends that swtiched over and I lost balance and was sick within about 10 minutes.
Heck, for one lamp I went into convulsions, spasms and pretty much blacked out.
Office lights bother me, but I find that covering them with approximately a 50% transparent cover alleviates the effect enough, although I still get bad headaches. Or most of the time I keep them off.
This would be awful for holywood. Film is either color balanced for incadescant light, or sunlight.
The other thing is that these lights are bigger than incandescents. I have installed lights that need the candelabra bulbs and if you put one of the fluorescent versions of those light bulbs in, they will look funny. IN one case, it looked like there were lighted dildos sticking out of the fixtures.
So, there are some reasons for not using these bulbs. I am all for them myself. Oh, and I' have heard real estate agents telling clients to take them out because, "You are selling a house not a lifestyle." Of course remember, those same folks think you need to paint all the rooms in your house beige in order to sell the thing.
"Rheostat" would mean that you have a variable resistor in front of the load. Dimmer switches use a potentiometer connected to a triac, which controls the duty cycle of the voltage supplied to the load. Inane nitpicking I know, but it's slashdot... what do you expect? LEDs are a little more complicated because they don't run directly off line AC power (or, not usually). Neither do CFLs, by the way... most new ones have an electronic ballast, and the old ones have a magnetic ballast.
However, LED dimming is really easy. LED power supplies rectify the AC, then convert the resulting DC voltage into a controlled DC current output. (If your LED power supply has a voltage output, you're either inefficent or you're going to run into lots of problems). LED power supply controllers come on really cheap chips that have a connection for a dimmer control. Unfortunately, most of them dim the LEDs by producing PWM current output rather than simply reducing the current output, causing the LEDs to flicker when dimmed. This can be mitigated if the frequency is high enough, as the LEDs have a little bit of capacitance.
I didn't like the color of flourescent blubs at first, but I've found that you get used to them just fine.
I wouldn't pick them in an A/B comparison with an incandescent, but after a couple of days you stop noticing/caring. Its not really that big a deal.
Plus, a nice, full-spectrum, lower-wattage incandescent can be used in a desk-lamp or chairside. This would just be on as-needed. And the warmer color makes reading seem special. Mmm, reading...
The night is supposed to be dark—that's why the sun sets. I advise you to put some candles (or maybe a small lamp) on your desk, rather than light up your whole house, which is wasteful and obnoxious. Just the same, this law, like many American laws of the past fifty years, is suited to a people who put a low price on their liberty.
I wonder where the CFL manufacturers are located...CA?
It's worth noting that California is still dealing with fallout from the 2000-2001 electricity crisis. The deregulated electricity market was vulnerable to gaming, resulting in skyrocketing prices and insufficient supply. Suppliers were scheduling deliberate blackouts in order to avoid overloading the power grid.
Think about that: California, a state with an economy comparable to some first-world nations, was going without electricity on a regular basis.
Fallout included the collapse of Enron, and the 2003 recall of governor Gray Davis, and subsequent election of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Southern California Edison continues to run a "Flex Your Power" campaign encouraging people to conserve electricity. In my latest bill, I got a flyer offering something like $200 in savings if I agreed to let SCE turn off my air conditioner temporarily during peak demand this summer (no, I'm not sure how they intend to do that). As it is, I only use the AC when absolutely necessary, so I'm probably saving more by not using it than I would by letting them shut it off -- but seriously, how often do you see a company begging you to buy less from them?
When I read that those bulbs last for years and are extremely efficient, I decided to be enviro friendly and save a few bucks over time so I replaced about half the bulbs in my house (the other bulbs are similar to the clear vanity mirror bulbs). But, the blue glow and the dimness kills me. The one on my porch looks pitiful compared to the old bulb and the one in the garage provides about as much light as the moon.
I don't think they would fall under this ban. Up until a few years ago, HIDs were even more energy efficient than flourescents!
Blar.
...like posting the amount you save per year on big billboards? People will see the amount and think "hey, that's about the same amount I get by looking for loose change between the cushions of my sofa".
A public information campaign would sound rediculous, which is why they are looking for a beefier weapon like legislation.
Fluorescent light bulbs... a solution in search of a problem.
A better idea would be to tax them. An even better idea would be to increase the energy tax. That way you force people to make more energy-efficient decisions about all products, not just one particular type of light bulb. This is a case where economics can work for you, not against you. Bans like this also get complicated: What about cases where incandecent is the only option? What if someone makes a hybrid bulb? What if someone makes a more efficient incandecent? It all comes back to legislating technology (light bulbs), instead of legislating the real problem (energy use).
I will not be buying any more incadescent light bulbs for my home. They generate way too much heat. They cost me more than twice the energy as florescent replacement bulbs and burn out a lot faster. Worse, I have to pay again to cool my house via air conditioning in the summer. I am no tree hugging green. I just want to save money and forescent bulbs just make good financial sense. It is best to buy them when they are on sale at Home Depot. If I could I would use LED lights that would use even less power and generate less heat than florescent but they are not really on the market yet. As my incadescent bulbs burn out, I am replacing them with florescent rather than just replace them all at once. Now if solar power would just drop in price by half or more...
(1) CFLs are fairly efficient light sources, but their light output per watt is way overstated. Those '60W equivalent' 13 W CFLs are more likely equivalent to a 25 or 40 watt Halogen light. I find that to get equivalent useful light over time I need to use a 42 watt CFL (claimed 150 W output equiv) in place of a 60 W Halogen. Until the latest generation of 40w+ CFLs came along, I could not use a CFL anywhere I really needed any light. Yes I understand the lumen ratings and so on. I'm talking about useful light on a book, kitchen counter or whatever, after the light ages in a few months. The initial light is often good, but by the time they are six months old, they lose brightness. That's why all my kitchen work surfaces are illuminated by 150 W halogens. When I can buy a CFL that puts out the same quality of light, I will gladly change. But none do. Those 42W CFLs which claim 150 W equivalent are less than half as bright, lumen rating notwithstanding.
(2) Their lifespan is *WAY* overstated. I just replaced my third CFL in my gazebo light set in a year. You know, those 'guaranteed' to last 9 years? BAH. If I get a year or so from a CFL I consider myself lucky. At best, they last about 1.5 times as long as an incandescent. And cost 10x as much. The 'cheap' $2 to $3 models at Home Depot tend to fail quickly. I have had fairly good luck with the really expensive ones. I just bought some that cost $16 each for my gazebo. And filed the receipt away because I intend to claim the warranty when they fail. I hope they will last at least a couple of years. But I doubt it. Incidentally, the 150 W Halogens in my kitchen are all 7 years old (installed when the kitchen was remodeled) and still going strong.
(3) The color spectrum sucks. They do not look anywhere near as nice as a halogen. Yes, I know that some claim to do so, but they don't. Plus they flicker.
(4) All of them are broadband RF noise generators, making radio and TV reception impossible as I live in a weak signal area. Also, CFLs disrupt infrared control signals for remote controls.
(5) Most do not start nicely. They blink and flicker, come on dim and then gradually brighten over 30 minutes to an hour. This gets worse as they age. If you enter a dark room and want instant light, forget it. The newest lights are much better, but even the best still brighten up slowly.
(6) You can't dim most of them with a dimmer, and those that you can are even worse flickering noise generators when dimmed.
If this stupid law passes I will buy a truckload of good quality Halogens and make a killing selling them at inflated prices to people smart enough to appreciate the difference.
Stony
I guess since in California all light bulbs are clear glass and
use carbon filaments they haven't had the major modifications that
incandescent lightbulbs have had in the rest of the country. I wonder
if that is due to over-regulation in California? Since incandescent
lights in the rest of the country have had at least two major
modifications in the last 60 years; the tungsten filament and the
soft white flourscent internal coatings.
Maybe a more productive law would outlaw the current state
legislature in California since it hasn't undergone any major
modifications in 100 years. In the rest of the world we realize
that marxism doesn't work and is wastefull of people and resources.
Northern California and higher altitudes, I imagine, do still get cold. Banning CFLs for indoor use would be a bad thing; fluorescents in general do not perform well, if at all, in unheated spaces.
/. decided to keel over for a minute, so you get the shorter, no links version.]
CFLs with their electric ballasts do manage to compensate somewhat in colder temperatures, roughly up to freezing. Still, the lower the temperature, the longer the delay is before the light even lights up, at minimum 2-3 seconds. Also, it can even take minutes if at all before a CFL turns fully on. This can be a true safety concern, both in terms of entering a room (tripping over something) as well as personal safety (you're being robbed, the lights are dimly coming on....).
For unheated garages, basements, crawl spaces, shops, and detached livable/usable spaces like barns, in addition to most outdoor lighting such as on porches, CFLs are going to be insufficient. If you ban incandescents outright, there are few options left. Yes, there are CFLs made to perform at colder temperatures, but they still have problems, not to mention are largely unavailable at most hardware stores as well as quite a bit more expensive (anecdotally from what I've seen) than the typical CFL.
Makes me wonder if this assembly person has even used CFLs, worked in a cold shop, or changed a lightbulb recently.
I also have to wonder how this is going to be enforced; are neighbors going to be calling on neighbors? Or like the ban on spray paint cans in Chicago city, are people simply going to order them online or go across the state or city borders and buy the stuff anyways? If an outran ban occurs, are people going to have to choose between breaking the law (by using or importing from other regions incandescents), or end up heating those unheated (and often uninsulated spaces), thus wasting a crapload more energy than the move from incandescents to fluorescents?
[I had a longer, more detailed posting but
So with the waste heat from millions of bulbs, we are contributing to extra heat on the planet?
The TV show mythbusters tested the power consumption of a variety of bulbs in a practical test. The results:
0 0_foot_fall_lig.html
* Incandescent 90 w/hour
* Compact Fluorescent (CFL): 10 watts/hour
* Halogen: 70 w/h
* Metal halide 60 w/h
* LED: 1 w/h
* Fluorescent: 10 w/h
http://kwc.org/mythbusters/2006/12/episode_69_220
I've already replaced most of the bulbs in my home. The government should find a way to reduce the cost of the good fluorescent bulbs. Subsidize the cost maybe. A ban of incandescent bulbs is going too far though.
besides, all kids have to have access to a source of mercury to play with. if folks were serious about that (and all fluorescents and neon sign lighting has mercury,)
Yes, CLFs have mercury but then the mercury they contain is less than the mercury emitted from coal power plants that produces the electricity needed to light incandescent lights. Unfortunately they are point sources of mercury and the bulbs need to be properly disposed of, and how many places have such programs setup? I bet not many. If CA is going to require CFLs then maybe they can go another step and require sellers to collect used CFLs as well, and setup a proper disposal system. This would be a bureaucrat's dream come true, think of all the paper they could require.
they'd be legislating LED lightbulbs into use. which DO work in the cold.
While LED lights use only a tenth the power needs of incandescent light bulbs, they are only good for point or spot lighting, LEDs aren't good for area lighting as of yet, whihc most lights are used for. Of course more research into them may solve this problem.
FalconShould there be a Law?
... the reply to the article on the page you linked to says they weren't rheostats and probably couldn't have been due to the amount of heat generated by a true rheostat in a wall switch box.
I've replaced old failed dimmer switches that were at least 25 years old, and they were clearly "choppers", not rheostats. I've worked on several very old houses and never come across an actual rheostat.
I got 6 fancy energy saving light bulbs. They cost $10. The packaging assured me that they would save me a fortune in energy costs and be easier on my eyes.
But they're very fragile, and one of them broke when I tried to arrange my light fixture on it.
And the power here in this building isn't very good, so in relatively short order, two more blew out.
3 of them were in the garbage inside of a month. Wonder how much energy they cost to make?
I got 6 old school bulbs to replace them. They cost a $1. And they last longer.
That's why I personally haven't switched.
Next time I pay $10 for six light bulbs, I want a warranty.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
I'd give you a funny point (well earned, IMO) but wouldn't it be easier to just buy a new string of lights?
:)
Or maybe your Christmas lights are rather more elaborate than mine, and "a string" won't cover it.
'Course, LED lights do have their issues: the white ones sold in stores are more often blue, they flicker (no full-wave rectifier, just LEDs on AC), and they throw spots rather than a more uniform glow. (I actually like the spots they throw on the wall, though...)
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
that that bulbs are an incredibly poor way to heat an active space. Most of the heat is wasted, through the roof, and you use them even when you don't want more heat. That means a fan or AC unit will run more.
The enregy and money saved mean you could turn up your heating system.
Of course, England is the place that had central heating, then forgot about it for 500 years.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
There is this thing called summer when lots of people need to COOL their homes and incandescant bulbs only make that problem worse. Also as pointed out by other posts, there are much more effecient ways to generate heat than through light bulbs.
History shows that when politicians decide to wrestle the market, their constituents lose. And the result is always felt in the pocketbook, often by those least able to afford it.
It seems axiomatic that politicians all fail to learn from history, but are they all complete idiots?
--- Bill
Flourecents tend to inject a 60hz hum into whatever circuit they're connected to. It makes your electric guitar sound horrible in quiet passages.
Deltron 3030 - Virus (music video)
I'm in Minnesota as well, and have CFL "flood light" bulbs on the outdoor lights behind my house, and the long "shop light" bulbs in my garage. The CFL's outside come on instantly, and are at full brightness within a few seconds (even these past few nights!). The shop lights DO flicker badly for about a minute, but after that they're fine.
This is like buying a new car because your old one is not efficient enough. Creating new ones takes much more energy than continue using your current car. I feel they kind of forget that creating those new light bulbs probably takes more energy than the classic ones. Also, the amount of material (maybe containing mercury) is also higher. There is a lot of factors to take into consideration before saying that these are the answer to stop global warming!
Reduce the CO2 cap. California is implementing a cap and trade system for CO2 production. This'll make electricity a bit more expensive as the producers are required to trade CO2 emission permissions. People will automatically switch to cheaper technologies as they see the savings they can make.
Deleted
Yes it is dumb and beside it is just a great big communist plot komrade. They are all made in China and are all rigged to slowly radiate us.
"In 20 or so years people will dying in flocks." he said with tongue in cheek.
Seriously, has there been any studies done on these? We've seen this in the past where something was the greatest thing since sliced bread only to find out it was not. That wonder drug (when I was a kid) women took during pregnancy comes to mind and little babies with just hands and no arms or arms and no hands.
Asbestos, home insulation...
"People [Incandescent lightbulbs] were first developed almost 125,000 [125] years ago, and since that time they have undergone no major modifications, meanwhile, they remain incredibly inefficient, converting only about 5 percent of the energy they receive into light."
Thus and so, I recommend that all Californians be unscrewed.
Or screwed some more, I haven't decided yet.
They Live, We Sleep
Uhhh, what about heat lamps to keep the food warm?
These are the same clue-free individuals who screwed up their power infrastructure by deregulating AND price-fixing simultaneously.
Is it really that hard to think that intellectual diarrhea like this emerges from Cali legislature?
This is the sort of idiocy you should expect from people who don't even nod acquaintances with reality when it comes to power infrastructure?
Give incentives? NO! That'd mean less revenues for pork projects! Just a blanket ban! THAT'LL WORK!
Regardless of the fact that CF does NOT cover the full gamut of lighting applications out there, is not recommended in some applications, and is completely inappropriate for others.
If I were a resident of California, I'd be pissed to the point of hunting these imbeciles down and staking them out for the vultures (the birds, not the politicians).
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I built some high intensity white LED lighting for...well, it's odd but a tent. I have a 18' tent that I like to go camping in. And my wife for medical reasons has almost no night vision. But I'm a BSEE - so it's no problem to come up with something.
My end result was a system with 60 high intensity LEDs. The power source was a 12v car battery that goes into a simple switched capacitor buck-boost converter that takes it down to 5v. I also added in a variable resistor to the converter trim that allows you to adjust the output voltage from 5v to somewhere around 1.5v.
Works like a champ. Your conversion efficiency drops from 95% at full load to around 75% when you dim, but it looks great. And you don't get that annoying PWM flicker that some cars have that have LEDs as their brake lights (which looks AWFUL, btw). And the whole system will work in heavy usage for two weeks without a recharge. And the whole tent is light enough to play Euchre in or read a book.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Using 1/20th the energy of an incandescent, and now able to provide true white light, an LED is the next wave in energy savings for the home. So be nice to your neighbor who left up their Xmas lights, because they're trying to lead by example.
When I moved into my new house, it had tons of incandescent lightbulbs and a few halogens - I replaced about 80 percent of the incandescents with compact flourescents and my electric bill was about one-quarter what it was before - and now in the summer my kitchen isn't a sauna from all the lights.
But I've noticed if you buy the cheap ones - like at WalMart - instead of good 4-pack or 6-pack ones at Home Depot or Costco (which are frequently 4 for $6) - they burn out more quickly.
Also, don't put them in the fixtures right next to your washing machine - the vibrations from that kill them a lot more quickly.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I hope the CFL bulbs you bought had handling/disposal instructions on them: CFL bulbs contain mercury. Mercury damn it - mercury! Can you imagine how many of these CFL bulbs break every year, and how many of those weren't handled properly during the cleanup? I wonder how many people are just chucking the CFL bulbs in the garbage (in Brampton, ON, they're supposed to go the community recycling centre, which has a hazardous house waste disposal facility too). I really like that CFL bulbs use little power, but the mercury content is a problem. I'm surprised no one talks about it.
they want to outlaw the sale, not use, of incandesent bulbs. Just have some shipped from another state.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Of course not, no more than the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has conisders the outcome of increased overpopulation and the ensuing political, social and environmental chaos that will be caused by curing endemic diseaes in third world countries.
This is what ALWAYS happens when someone seizes upon a single good idea and then decides to make it manditory; CFLs save tons of energy, but they contain mercury. The intelligent people who use them know this and dispose of properly; the masses won't, so the "solution" they eliminates mercury emissions from power plants ends up INCREASING mercury in the environment from millions of illegally disposed of CFLs.
In true California fashion, they will probably institute manditory $10 deposits on CFLs as well as creating a massive new lightbulb disposal infrastructure which will use more resources, produce more CO2 and cost billions more than just keeping incandescents.
CFLs contain mercury...we definitely dont want those in the landfill! Actually, a great thing to come out of legislated move to CFL might be a proper recycling program for spent bulbs...
Replacing all the incandescants for CFLs cost me £16.20 for 20 bulbs at 81 pence each. Each is 11W, replacing mostly 60W bulbs. Tesco have a permanent "half price" offer on all CFL bulbs. I bought the "Tesco Value" ones since they had the same advertised lifetime and spectrum as the more expensive GE ones (which were about twice the price). I read somewhere that the amount of mecury released from burning coal when using an incandescant bulb is greater than the amount used to manufacture and power a CFL, but I don't remember where this is from.
I find it disturbing how quick many people resort to coercion to accomplish their goals. CFLs so clearly out perform incandescents that their eventual triumph in the free market is assured. Why do we need to hold a gun to people's head to drive their adoption? Will the use of threats of state power really accelerate the rate of adoption enough to justify it?
Moreover, the coercive policy will almost certainly fail in its goal of reducing CO2 emissions. Since it takes more energy to construct CFLs, forcing their adoption will generate more CO2 emissions in the short run. History has shown that making a technology more efficient causes people to consume more of it usually to the point that the increased usage offsets the efficiency gains. Contemporary incandescent bulbs are orders of magnitude more efficient than Edison's bulbs yet we certainly do not use less electricity per capita for lighting. I doubt that CFLs will change this fundamental dynamic.
Can we really justify imposing fines or even imprisoning people to enforce a policy that will almost certainly fail and would provide only modest benefit even if it worked perfectly?
Building bidrectional LED lights is easy; you just take two LEDs in parallel, and orient them in reverse from each other.
When current flows one way, one LED lights. When current flows the other way, the other LED lights.
They've been doing it for years with two-lead bicolor LEDs. There should no problems with dimmer switches, either; you're just reducing the current flow. (The voltage drop across the LED is constant.)
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
I find myself feeling like I'm confined in an underground cavern with insufficient light (see C.S. Lewis' The Silver Chair, 2nd last chapter), whenever I'm in a room lit up entirely by CFLs. Weak fluorescents and/or bad ballasts may flicker but flat fluorescent output with Hg-spectrum spikes is a short sweet way of turning us all into disgruntled trolls.
Of course, Californians won't notice much because their winter days don't shorten by as much as those from Whatcom County, WA, Maine, or Alaska (and I'm broadening things because As Goes Cally-4-nia...) but I think they'd best get ready to face crankier neighbours from the rest of their grand country if this goes through. Either that or candle consumption that goes through the roof to make up for the lack.
beware of unintended side effects!...ank
ps: I admit, black-body radiation is a REALLY inefficient way to produce light. Trying to improve this is a good thing.
pps: then again, there's always the white-LED-array solution -- with its built-in dimmer-switch analog: how many lights are on now?
Still hoping for Gentle Treatment...
I recently made the switch to compact fluorescents in my basement (MY BASEMENT, not my parent's) and I have to say that it's been a disappointment from an aesthetic point of view. I actually ran through all three types from Home Dept (Daylight, Bright White and Soft). Daylight really blows since it's got a very strong bluish cast that makes everything look really depressing. Bright White makes everything look gray. Soft was the one I went with because it's the only one that came sort of close to regular light bulbs. But it's still too pink and has a tendency to make skin look yellowish. But it's the best compromise possible. The wattage change is great though. I bought the equivalent of 100W bulbs but they only use 27 watts each. That's four bulbs so I'm using only slightly more power than one regular bulb to power four bulbs. I sure hope they improve the technology.
But just to put people in their place, I want to point out that fluorescent light technology isn't that much newer than incandescents: read this Wikipedia entry on fluorescent lights. They are anywhere from 110+ to at youngest 80 some years old. Frankly, I am putting more stock in LEDs myself. For one thing, if the LED technology is improved, you'd be able to have bulbs that could be tuned to the correct color. Just imagine instead of having a dimmer, you have three RGB sliders that allow you to set the lights to ANY color you want. That's the way it SHOULD be. Aesthetics + efficiency. My personal interior design catch phrase is, "Lighting is EVERYTHING dahling".
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
For that matter - what about electric furnaces?
I understand that in the summertime, incandescent lighting contributes to the heat-A/C-electricity shortage problems; however, in the wintertime, their "electricity waste" is contributing to the heat of buildings that they're in, which are sometimes heated using electricity anyways.
My chicken henhouse is heated in the wintertime using a heat lamp on a rheostat; said heat lamp is, of course, incandescent.
If they want me to switch, they need to make it more compelling than what they're offering right now.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
But we have empowered these idiots with our votes in the past. They passed smoking bans and we all applauded. They told us we had to buckle up and wear helmets and we gave them a pat on the back. Lately they have been trying to protect us by banning the very same tranfats that they forced upon restaurants several years ago to get rid to saturated fats. So why shouldn't they further save the world by banning the light bulb. Next stop... who knows.
This is just a pet peeve of mine, but I get sick of seeing smoking bans rolled in with a bunch of nanny laws which only protect you from yourself and your own stupidity.
SMOKING AFFECTS OTHER PEOPLE. There's this little thing called second-hand smoke. I seem to recall it being actually worse than first-hand smoke, since the first-hand smoker at least has a filter.
I'm all for repealing drug laws and such in general - it's none of anybody else's business what you put in your body. But what you put in our, collective air is our, collective business, and as such it is the legitimate domain of state regulation.
And back on topic again... yeah, banning incandescent light bulbs is stupid.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
I have yet to see "warm" fluorscent bulbs that didn't ultimately make me feel like a cave dweller. Thank goodness there're options -- as you did mention. Then again, perhaps you have access to a supplier that I do not. I'll keep looking, I suppose...ank
Still hoping for Gentle Treatment...
California might have quite some sunlight but still not during the night. Classic energy saving bulbs are imho still not a good replacement for incandescent or halogen light bulbs. The light is cold, weak and flickers (it is a fluorescent tube after all) and gives me a headache.
I would use halogen everywhere if I could, I like a lot of light. Maybe if someone took some time (and money) to improve the existing LED lighting (power-led's like Luxeon 3W come close but still not enough) AND make it cheaper, would be a better improvement.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
I agree with the silliness of mandating this.
r y_use_environment.svg
I did want to point out, however, that CF bulbs result in less mercury dumped into the environment after about six years compared to incandescents. Wikipedia has a handy graph:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:CFL_bulb_mercu
Burning coal releases lots of mercury. Using a CF bulb uses less power, which releases less mercury, and after about six years the savings offset the mercury in the bulb. The bulbs last a while-- I'm still using the first ones I bought in 1997, although they are dimmer than when they were new and have been relocated to the basement.
I bought a pack of two 15W compact florries. It said on the packaging that they are equivalent in light output to a 60W bulb.
They're not.
Each lamp produces roughly 1/3 as much light as a 60W incandescent bulb.
I have a son who is on the Autistic Spectrum, and while I would love to solely use CFLs (they are more efficient), my son is extremely sensitive to the flicker that these lights produce. This is just not an option in my household, regardless of the benefits.
I really like the idea of saving the earth by changing habits by using CFL's (and I do use them), I just wish that the retail packaging for them wouldn't be the big plastic encasements they come in (which I think are probably just as bad to the environment, as well as a hassle to open.)
What ever happened to efficient packaging (not $ efficiency) - I mean we are already paying 10-20x to get a CFL, give it to me in a recycled box for $.20 more. Be green all the way, not just half way.
So that means all the energy is now useful... So given efficiency is useful work out / work in then for the above usage (which is common) incandescant bulbs provide 100% efficiency. Given the cost to produce and the polutants in the so called high efficiency bulbs is it really a good idea to switch?
It make absolute sense when you have the ac on longer than the heat is on. As for house, building, heating needs I'd like to see an RIO, Return on Investment, or lifecycle analysis as I don't beleive the heat from incandscent bulbs is as efficient as other methods of heating.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Many 'compact florescent' light bulbs contain significant amounts of Mercury, one of the most deadly elements for humans.
As long as his bill BANS all compact florescent light bulbs containing Mercury, or any toxic elements, good.
Otherwise - he is just stupid. Trading one environmental problem with another environmental nightmare.
I had a plasma TV and I was having a problem with bad buzzing noises coming from the TV. I thought it was DOA at first, but my electrician told me to remove my CFLs because they create harmonics that travel through the wires in the house. I removed them and the problem was solved. I don't see CFLs as a practical replacement for incandescent bulbs.
I can't be around Fluorescent bulbs for more than 30 minutes tops. anything more gives me a migraine.
Some of us out there can SEE the refresh rate of a fluorescent.
I am not amused.
The wheel is thousands of years old, and is very inefficient as it requres force to move it... A: "I got a citation today, for $122" B: "Why?" A: "I didn't buy new lightbulbs"
Not very many people know this, but the first draft of the Bill of Rights contained an amendment that read: "The right of the people to choose which light bulb to install in their homes shall not be violated". But I think it was Jefferson who said, "That's BS. The stupid little people surely can't be trusted to make informed decisions on such weighty matters as this. Is it not the government's moral obligation to tell people exactly which light bulbs they must use? What higher purpose could government possibly have? It is only the public good for which I am concerned". Chip, chip, chip...what is that sound I hear. Oh, it is only the sound of the nanny state, pay it no mind.
I work for an organization that promotes energy efficiency and we encourage people to replace standard bulbs with CFLs. The new ones are much better in terms of the quality of light, ability to fit inside common fixtures, reduced flicker and noise.
There are, however, still many applications where CFLs just aren't a good choice.
1. There are dimmable CFLs but they only dim so much and not very smoothly
2. Not recommended for enclosed fixtures (trapped heat shortens life of electronics)
3. Not recommended for use with photocells
Another problem with CFLs is that quality is very uneven and people tend to buy the cheap ones. They should avoid CFLs without an Energy Star label.
One good thing about CFLs is that they can produce quite a wide variety of light from a soft warm light to something very close to daylight. People often end up disappointed though because they don't know what to look for and they end up with a light that's too harsh or too dim looking for their tastes.
A ban on incandescents doesn't make sense. You can't really ban them because they are still needed for certain applications. You could however tax them which would make CFLs seem more attractive.
Wrong - The payback time for traditional fluorescents is 23 seconds and much less than 1 second for CFL. There are probably better links to prove this but http://kwc.org/mythbusters/2006/12/episode_69_2200 0_foot_fall_lig.html was the quickest I could find.
--- Liberty in our Lifetime
And brace for California making it illegal because of more efficient processors being on the market.
So much for 8000 hour gurantees.
When incandescent bulbs are outlawed only outlaws will have incandescent bulbs. I wonder if there is a lobbyist group for the CF bulb industry and how they paid this guy off? CF bulbs are great and all that but they are not the solution for all illumination. Granted this is not a CA example, but CF is not a viable option for the door opener in my unheated pole barn when the high for this coming weekend is projected to be 0 degrees F.
Yeah, while well meaning, this bill is stupid. It assumes a number of things, such as CFL bulbs that FIT a fixture... I tried to replace my yard flood lights with CFL, but the huge-assed base wouldn't fit in my fixture. I also have some motion sensors that explicitly state that they do not work with CFL. So I went Home Despot and Lowes, and found that they don't carry any motion sensors that work with CFL. Nice.
I also tried to find dimmable CFL's. Not in my town - only on the internet for 5x the cost of a standard CFL bulb.
When all CFL's are dimmable, and the bulbs are the same form factor as regular bulbs, or we have cost-effective LED lamps that are also dimmable and fit, then this could work. I think this bill is a few years too early however. Maybe if it was one of those "reduce over the first 5 years, eliminate in 10" it would be viable. You can encourage reduction by putting a "penalty tax" on standard bulbs, and use that money to subsidize CFL / LED.
The article indicates that they are trying to ban incandescent light bulbs. They are not legislating any particular replacement.
Well, you can do the math, but here are some conversions:
This one might be more useful, though:
1 therm = 29.3 kW-hr
The second conversion uses both unit typically found on a residential utility bill. 1kW-hr is equal to lighting ten 100W incandescents for a period of one hour. So, a single 100W light bulb will produce 0.0034 therms for every hour it is on.
I'll use my rates to do a calculation:
On my last bill, I paid almost $0.10/kW-hr and about $1.30 a therm for gas.
1 therm / 0.0034 therms/hr = 294.1 hours of on time for the bulb to equal one therm.
294.1 hrs x 0.1 kW = 29.41 kW-hr consumed by the bulb to generate one therm.
29.41 kW-hr x $0.1 / kW-hr = $2.94 worth of electricity used by the bulb to equal one therm.
I'm assuming that the 5% light energy will eventually end up as heat as well once absorbed by its surroundings. As you can see, it's more than twice as expensive for me to heat with electricity than it is with gas...even when considering heat loses in the inefficiencies of my high-efficiency furnace with a little heat going out the PVC stack.
Even with all of this said, I still think that incandescents are appropriate, even necessary in some applications, including one's personal desire in lighting type. An outright ban on incandescents is quite short-sighted as other comments have outlined.
It's a little impractical to have a dedicated mini lizard-size heat pump. A heat lamp is a reasonable solution, and since I assume you have the light configured to heat his relatively small cage rather than your entire house-- it's a whole lot more reasonable than using ceiling-mounted lights to heat the top six inches of your living space at a rate 2 to 4 times more energy intensive than a garden-variety heat pump.
The ban is silly. It means well, but it's technology-specific, not result-specific as it should be to best achieve their intent of reducing power consumption by lighting.
I work in a satellite control center, and we use CFLs everywhere. We have signal levels down to -120dBm, which is about 0.7 microvolts, at the receiver input. The only time we have had any RFI problem was when a contractor used a crappy cable instead of the one we specified. If you use double-shielded cables and BNC connectors, RFI should be no problem.
For using an EZ Bake Oven.
For for God's sake...why not give incentives to do good things, and not ban them or tell me I can or cannot do them!! I don't need the nanny state to protect me from myself or dictate my shopping decisions. Make the new lights tax free! Hey, if they're cheaper, I might try them out. If I want to ride my motorcycle without a helmet, I'll pay the extra insurance. (I'm sorry, but, the wearing helments to save $$ paid out to for medical on helmetless wrecks is bogus, after they reinstated the helmet law in LA, I for one did NOT see the insurance rates drop in conjunction with riders now being forced to be more safe).
Anyway, I'm just getting tired of being told "bad adult...you can't do that anymore". If they want to give some type of incentives for not buying and SUV, or a regular light bulb...fine. But, don't tell me I cannot make a choice, even a dumb one on my own.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
How am I supposed to make brownies?
Actually, I do use an incandescent in a home-made food dehydrator.
Yeah, I *did* say nearly. I've replaced every bulb (outdoor spots, recessed, lamps with shades that clip on the bulb, torches, ceiling fixtures, dangly paper lamps, small-socket ambient lighting, etc...) in our house except the light bar in the bathroom. It's on a dimmer, and takes G25 globe bulbs. I can find dimmable CF bulbs, and G25 globe CF bulbs, but no dimmable globes. We never actually dim the thing, so one of my future projects will be removing the dimmer so I can replace the bulbs.
from the state legislature. If he really wanted to do something to save energy, they'd pass a bill mandating water-cooled air-conditioning units, especially in desert locales.
Dog is my co-pilot.
Get ch3@p C@nadi@n L1ghtb\/lbs!
Warm lights, n0 flicker.
Discr33t Shipping Guaranteed!
I'd add more, but either you get the gag by now or you'll never get it.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
I live in California. Just yesterday I dropped off a bunch of dead fluorescent tubes at my local recycling center. They had a special bin for them. No charge. Easy.
I think where you live is ahead of the tymes then. Unless it's new where I live doesn't have a recycling program for CFLs though I wish it did. I've been using CFLs for more than 15 years, and in that tyme I've only needed to replace three CFLs, I have 12 sockets where I live now.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Most of the fixtures in my house are not CF friendly. I try to find ones that will fit but they are always a tad too tall or too wide for everything but the really old cieling fixtures in the bedrooms. Which brings up an interesting point...why is it that out of an entire wall of new lighting fixtures and Lowes/HomeDepot, only a handful of the new fixtures available to buy are designed in such a way that CFs will work?
This from the same state that wanted to ban dihydrogen monoxide. (http://shallowthgts.blogspot.com/2006/09/dihydrog en-monoxide.html)
O.K. fine, one community in the state but still....
Okay, here in my state the coldest it ever gets (and this is rare) is down to 15-20 degrees F - 30-40F is the normal range of lows. The cheapie CF bulbs I've used outside do need some warm-up time, during which they are somewhat dim and do flicker slightly; but after a few minutes they seem to operate normally.
#DeleteChrome
In the chance that you'll forget to close the vent, California legislated it away. Now rather than risk some gasoline dribbling from the vent, the integrated spout/vent is guaranteed to pee fuel all over the garage floor, car trunk, your hands, the lawnmower, etc...
Even 3000 miles away, I can't get a decent gas can.
Non-childproof lighters, strike anywhere matches, gas cans, and now lightbulbs.
Banning incandescent lamps would have minimal effect on electricity consumption. Electrical heaters, air-conditioning, and industry all use so much more power.
If California's leaders really think that their citizens are using too much electricity, then they should raise the tax on electricity. That, however, would require political courage.
Banning filament lightbulbs will unfairly inconvenience some people; it will increase consumption of dangerous and rare materials; it will have little positive effect. But it'll look good, and that's what counts.
When will people learn that government is the problem, not the solution.
So there are laws againsts throwing CFLs, thermometers and everything else containing mercury in the trash. But honestly, who is going to know? I could put all kinds of stuff in my trash (though only generate one bag a week) and have no idea what is and is not legal to put in there. I don't, and I recycle everything I can too. But no way in heck am I making a $10 per visit trip to the dump just to drop off the one CFL that broke or old battery that died. It is just much easier to toss it than keep it separated in a separate box/place for that visit, and I suspect that is what most people will do. Have you seen the atrocious recycling rates we get in the U.S.? People would rather just toss it. We have the same problem here with SUVs... until it hits people directly, they'll choose to ignore it since their own personal impact is so minute.
This post brought to you by your friendly neighborhood MBA.
I agree that taxes can't solve all problems but I know from experience that many people balk at buying CFLs because the initial cost is so much higher relative to incandescents. Even if they do buy some CFLs, they tend not to keep spares around so when a CFL does go bad, it often gets replaced with an incandescent that they have handy (because they are cheap enough that people will keep extras). If incandescents weren't so damn cheap, this problem wouldn't be so pronounced. I don't have a problem with tax incentives for making better products but there's a lot more bureaucracy and red tape around setting up and administering something like that vs a simple sales tax.
Ban on selling light bulbs? Ban on importing bulbs from another state?
Or the dreaded light bulb police?
"Freeze $%$##&!! Put down the light bulb and step away from it!! Do it!! Now!!"
I'm all for encouraging people to switch to more efficient lighting where it makes sense. Don't much care for having the state require it.
[Insert pithy quote here]
I noticed you typed an 'a' in the second word. You could have moved your finger a centimeter to the left and made yourself look much more intelligent. But then again, it is an AC...
Go to www.goodmart.com and buy a case of QT4X32T8/120-ISN-SC ballasts (or any other high frequency (~40kHz) 4 bulb units.. I prefer instant on, since my bulbs tend to be on for many hours in a row), then purchase a case of FO32/865/XP/ECO 6500K (my preference is 6500k as it looks cleaner, but you might prefer 5500K, where there will be some more bulb choices), high CRI (85 in this case) T8 4" tubes. Then go to your local hardware store and pick up segments of plastic rain gutter, and several 6" long 1/4" toggle bolts.
A little bit of solder later, (I solder the ballast right to the bulbs, which does make failed bulb replacement somewhat slower)....
Finally, enjoy lighting that doesn't suck:
http://72.165.205.81/img_9979.jpg
I hate to be all Ayn Rand in your face, but if energy prices were proportional to the amount we needed to save, then your tax would be unnecessary.
+5, Truth
As usual, the Mythbusters experiment is inadequate and does not actually represent science. They tested no devices over 10W. The page does not say if they were using electronic ballasts or not. In fact the lowest-power CFL I own is ~20W. The dual-ring flourescents mounted in every room of the home we are renting (which was fairly intelligently designed and equipped) are, IIRC, 23 and ~40W, with one ring cool white, and the other warm white. In the kitchen we have four 40W tubes.
This doesn't mean you're wrong, it just means that I'd prefer a useful citation.
I also have to wonder about the penalty for frequent restarts on lamp life as opposed to incandescents. Is it better, or worse?
Regardless of these issues, we would have to determine the overall cost of such a change to determine if it would be worth it. Besides energy consumption, we have to consider the cost of manufacturing these lamps, both in money and energy; both will necessarily be many times that of making an incandescent, which is far simpler. Then we have to consider both the cost of recycling those which are recycled (since they have Mercury in them it is vitally important to recycle them) and the energy cost of environmental cleanup to deal with all the lamps which are not recycled - and I suspect they will far outnumber those which are.
All in all this is a pretty pathetic alternative to just building a couple nuclear plants in California, and letting technology solve the lamp power consumption problem.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Is there any reason to think this won't work itself without legislation? Why wouldn't it?
-Dave
Does anyone make a fluorescent bulb that doesn't make that high pitched noise?
I've got 10 cfls and none of them make noise.
There's also the issue of dimmer switches. Do they make fluorescents that can be dimmed? How can I dim the lights to create a romantic atmosphere if doing so causes the light to burn out?
There are some CFLs you can use with dimmers though you may have to look for them.
FalconShould there be a Law?
You see, many n00b cannabis growers use incandescent bulbs without realizing that the color spectrum that they produce is completely off.
Instead of incandescents for growing your weed, it's much better to use CFLs (or fluorescents, really). Better than that would be HID (High Intensity Discharge) bulbs.
So, with this bill, we get lower energy costs, smarter growers, and less 'bad' chronic going around.
I'm moving to California...
((damn it! some geeks smoke w33d too))
I read somewhere that environmental experts say that CFLs are better for the environment because the amount of mercury in them does less damage than the amount of pollution added to the atmosphere by power plants to provide the power difference between CFLs and incandescent lights.
They are NOT an option.
OKAY!
It's also worth noting that fluorescents of all sorts are a very bad idea when working with fast-moving (repetitive) tools like lathes and drills, since Very Bad Things (tm) can happen if the RPM of the tool hits the same number of beats per minute as the ballast on the fluorescent light. That is to say, with the light flashing at the perfect rate, your eye will suddenly see the tool at the same point in its rotation on every rotation, instead of a motion blur, and if you're having a bad brain day, you might forget you have it turned on. Bye bye fingers.
Fluorescents are also a pain for photographers, for the same reason -- flip your shutter at a faster frame rate than the ballast on the light and you'll see very bizarre things, like having two pictures in a row, one lit and the other not.
anywho...not to say I'm against CFL's -- I'm not, I love them -- but there's a time and a place for "legacy" tech, and a ban would be dumb.
This is why letting politicians invent science isn't a good thing.
Both Home Depot and Lowes carry dimmable CFL bulbs. The selection is pretty sparse but they do carry them. And you have to look very closely at the package to determine which ones are dimmable and which aren't.
And if your particular stores aren't carrying them...did you ask them why not?
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Yeah, there are some places CFLs just don't work well. Every light in my house is a CFC except the ones in the bathrooms. We found that CFLs didn't come on as quickly as incandescents, and when the whole purpose of the light is to make sure you hit the toilet, it doesn't help if it takes 30 seconds to become bright enough to take aim. For every other purpose I've found in our household, CFLs are great - they last longer and save money, but when you need a quick response, CFLs don't have quite cut it.
Hell, they could have given people a 1:1 tax break (1 dollar spent on CFL = 1 dollar off taxes, not taxible income), which would have worked like gangbusters for organizations like hotels and other businesses. Probably less so for individuals, but it still would have had a definite positive influence on the consumer's decision which light bulb to buy. But its always much easier to hold a gun to somebody's head to get your agenda across. Thanks, government!
If doing something is good (installing energy saving bulbs), then it is only logical that the government throwing anyone who doesn't do the good thing in jail is also good! After all, a police state is a small price to pay to save a little bit of energy!
Up next, I propose manditory minimum sentences of at least five years for people who don't floss (poor dental hygene hurts all of us! Including the children!) And only one of those gosh-darned extremist Libertarians would oppose the reasonable action of sending in a paramilitary SWAT team every time someone leaves their faucet running too long!
And, without a doubt, reading blogs like Slashdot is harmful to your health... it keeps you from being outside and getting exercise! Not to mention the millions of lost man-hours to our economy caused by people reading Slashdot at work. And don't get me started on the energy wasted running the Slashdot servers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week! Only someone totally brainwashed by the Capitalist system to destroy the enviornment, and someone who hates Democracy and Social Welfare to the core, would suggest that we don't criminalize Slashdot!
Thank god for the progressive state of California to realize that personal freedom and individual choice is simply a barrier to be smashed and destroyed in the struggle to make a better world!
What you say is true, but how much do we need to save and who's gonna decide that?
I keep buying compact flourescents in the hopes that they'll work out for me, but the darned things seem to have a half-life of about half a year. They get dimmer and dimmer until we end up switching back to incandescents so that we stop bumping into furniture.
I've been using CFLs for more than 15 years and in that tyme I've only had to replace three of them because they went bad.
Or maybe there's something else wrong that I just haven't diagnosed yet, or I haven't found *the* magical brand (I've tried a number of different ones).
Maybe that's your problem, something else. Maybe it's the wiring, I really don't know, however I've never had problems with CFLs, well there is one problem. Some bulbs I got took awhile before they were fully lit.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Taken from http://www.nema.org/lamprecycle/epafactsheet-cfl.
So, if you add the 4mg intrinsic to the CFL(being pessimistic here and assuming NONE get recycled properly) and the 2.4 mg from electricity production you end up with 6.4 mg of mercury released to the environment, as opposed to the 10 mg for regular incandescent bulbs. About 2/3 the mercury our regular light bulbs are giving off, and some of the CFLs will get recycled eh? Sounds like a good tradeoff to me.
Just more evidence that California is the land of fruits and nuts.
Ichthus
Google is your friend. Check page 7.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
CFL's can wreak havoc on electronic control systems - i.e. X10 etc
I have a digital timer that loses it's mind controlling CFL's - I've replaced many times
I've heard something about CFLs disrupting anything more complicated than a single pole switch
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
Is who'd be a big mistake as many workshops have Incandescent Light bulbs, cause its dangerous to have CFLs in milling processes ( any spinning object at the same frequency as the light looks stationery, bad idea in a loud workshop)
Then don't go there? I'm kinda tired of prissy lil piss-ants crying about "but what about ME and MY rights"... Bar owners have rights to determine what type of patrons they want. You have the right not to patronize that establishment.
Stop trying to control everything, you only end up pushing guys like Hitler and Stalin into power in the end.
Don't believe it? I don't really care, its just a shame that people can't yet realize that as they try to control others, they only end up forcing totalitarianism.
Opinion:=TMyOpinion.Create(Me);
Cheaper, older CFLs have this problem, newer models hit full brightness very quickly. Look for models that say "instant on"
We have the best government that money can buy.
I'm in favor of most of the things you mention in your post.
What I will never understand about people like you: Wiretapping, warrantless searches, and other invasions of our privacy are all explicitly illegal under the constitution (for good reason), and yet, freaks like you think you have some kind of god given right to a particular type of LIGHT BULB!!??. People like you are the modern equivalent of "let them eat cake."
Everyone is freaking out based on an obviously sensationalistic headline. Has anyone seen the actual bill? Does it propose to ban incandescents for everyone, or just for government purchases? I googled for it but couldn't find anything.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Except most people are far too stupid to percieve the hidden
costs of their actions. They will run a house full of
incandescent lights in Vegas and wonder why their cooling bill
is so high.
Mebbe someone should have made Ann go to engineering school
where she would have been forced to take an econ 101 class.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
CFL's make no sense in applications where the lamp is only on for short periods of time.
Short, frequent duty cycles will vastly shorten the life of a CFL making it much MORE
expensive to use than an incandescent lamp. Such as in places like garage door openers,
closets, etc. In places where the lamp is almost NEVER turned off (exit signs, night lights,
hall lights) they will be great money savers.
It's a heat pump not a heater. It moves thermal energy from outside your house to inside your house. It can do so even if it's cold outside, because "cold" to people is still a long way from too cold to extract usable heat from.
It's just like running your air conditioner in reverse, except that the waste heat produced by running the pump is also useful when you're heating rather than cooling.
In this part of North Carolina, Home Despot and Lowes only have dimmable CF floods. Walmart, despite their CF push, don't have them (although they do have non-dimmables in trippy colors). When I say "dimmable compact florescent" to the folks at the hardware store, they look at me as if I had said "Cò an caora sin còmhla riut a chunnaic mi an-raoir?"
Speaking of floods, several years ago I tried a few outdoor CF floods. Within a few months, the silvering had degraded off the flood reflector, leaving me with nothing more than a standard CF twisty-bulb inside a flood-shaped clear envelope. I was sorely disappointed....
This sig has exceed its monthly bandwidth allotment.
I'm open minded to the idea of government regulation in this sort of area. However, I'm against hamfisted solutions like simply banning/taxing incandescent, or giving a credit to compact flourescent. Instead drive at the source: penalize lighting fixtures who are less efficient than X. The article claims that incandescent bulbs only convert 5% of the energy they consume into light. Assuming that's accurate, say something like, "any lighting fixture/bulb/whatever that converts less than 10% of the input energy into light is gets a tax penalty." This means that if someone somehow invents a super efficient incandescent bulb, it will correctly get the same benefits that CF bulbs do. Conversely, a company can't make really cheap but grossly inefficient CF bulbs and avoid the penalty. Even better, if you make it a sliding scale, it will continue to encourage increasingly efficient bulbs.
(This is similar to the stupid tax credits for hybrid cars that leads to insanity like a hybrid SUV that gets 27/32 MPG gets a tax break while the traditional gas engine compact car that gets 32/43 doesn't. Don't reward the technology, reward results.)
Search 2010 Gen Con events
The vast majority of car headlights are still incandescent.
So, everyone with incandescent car headlights would need to replace them.
I don't know of a single LED or flourescent manufacturerer of car headlights, so this means they would probably need to be retrofitted with HID light, which will probably be very expensive.
Why do legislators believe that they HAVE to DO something? Here's the answer: Our system is built such that everything is permitted EXCEPT that which is prohibited. Essentially, the job of lawmakers is to prohibit things. So everytime they pass a law in the US, they are banning something, or requiring someone to stop doing something, or, if they can't get away with that, they TAX it instead. At some point, so many things will be banned that it will make sense to change our constitution to prohibit EVERYTHING except that which is permitted. Then, when our lawmakers make laws, it will be to permit things instead. Don't get me wrong, I don't want it to come to that - I'd rather see the current system, with lawmakers REPEALING laws that no longer make sense. But that won't happen. See, lawmakers are always smarter than us, more insightful, have the bigger picture... in short, they are better than us. At least that is the way they see it. So they ban the light bulb because I'm apparently not smart enough to see that putting in a CFL will save me money, result in me changing the bulb less often, and generally takes one more nuisance - that of changing a light bulb - off my plate of things to do. I'm glad the government is there to think for me. Otherwise my wife would have to spend even MORE time thinking for the both of us!
Brawndo: It's what plants crave!
I'm sure a CF bulb will work really well in my oven. How about the little night-light type bulb on the icemaker door on my fridge. Speaking of fridge, how about the bulb in there? How long does it take to get the ballast warm in there...
CF's are useful, but they are a LONG way from replacing all incandescent bulbs.
I am of the opinion that government regulations should cause manufacturers and service providers to internalize as many of the externalities as possible.
In this case, charge all bulb manufacturers for the disposal of their product. Combine this with a per-ton charge for all emissions from power plants and include the cost of mitigating other power installations' effects on the environment. This way, the true cost of the electricity and the bulb will show up in the price, which will allow the market to more accurately regulate itself.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
Rheostats as the primary means of dimming lights have long since gone away over a 100 years ago. The overwhelming vast majority use a low current potentiometer that sets a time in a simple RC time circuit for a SCR/Triac to switch on on circuit (light bulb). The Triac switches on when the RC circuit charges up to the threshold voltage and remains on until the AC waveform crosses the zero voltage point in its cycle, shutting off the SCR/Triac. Basically, the larger the potentiometer value, the longer the RC charge time is set to, and the shorter duration of time that the circuit is on. Check out a typical circuit diagram on Wikipedia
Incandescent bulbs don't care about this chopping of the AC sine wave, since they are simply heating elements that glow brightly...they can smooth out the flicker somewhat effectively. Fluorescents don't like this at all, since they are the product fluorescing gases from high voltage excitation provided by a transformer. However, dimmable CFL bulbs are available. They pretty much reconstitute the voltage through the use of a solid state ballast (instead of a simple transformer), and adjust the "drive" of the bulb excitation based on the input from the wall switch.
How Many Legislators Does it Take to Change a Lightbulb?
What are legislators doing changing my light bulbs?? Are they going to change the toilet tissue rolls and vacuum the floor too? Are we going to have government agents from BATFL (Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms Lightbulbs) come inspect our houses for compliance?
I was thinking the same thing about how incandescents are still good in some situations. I know the CFL, which I think I have in my bedroom, is getting so dim, that using it alone doesn't provide enough light, so I turn on an incandescent on the other part of my room. I should either replace it with one of those cheap 99 cent CFL bulbs they sell (I think they are CFL), or just buy an incandescent.
I agree with the tax. Don't sales tax it though. Instead, you would want a unit tax on the lightbulbs, among other things. To encourage people to be environmental, you could essentially force them to avoid buying incandescents and high flow toilets by putting a tax per unit. 25-50 cents per incandescent bulb would probably convince some people. $100 per toilet for high flows would probably convince people to go over to low flows.
As for the tax revenue, that could be used to help low-income families purchase/receive environmental-friendly goods.
All my bulbs are CF (except the ceiling fan I bought not knowing it was a freaking heat-lamp, er, halogen bulb). I've never had a problem with them turning on quickly enough. The longest any of them take to turn on is about 2 seconds, which is less time than it takes me to get into firing position.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
Not sure I would agree that it is vitally important. The amount of Mercury that they prevent from going into the air over their life is far more than the amount of Mercury that is in the bulb since Coal plants dump a lot of Mercury into the atmosphere. http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/06/what_about _merc.php There are plenty of other sources as well.
Still, it would be nice to recycle so you are correct that it should be included in the cost.
Now there is something we can agree upon.--- Liberty in our Lifetime
I have sisters in law (my wife's sister and my brother's wife) who are both sensitive to UV. My wife's sister has lupus, and will become (literally!) deathly ill if she spends too much time in the sun or under fluorescent lights. My brother's wife probably won't die from it, but becomes ill under fluorescent/sun light as well.
This would be a really bad thing for people like them - it's not just an aesthetic issue, it's their health and life. It's a good thing neither lives in California.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
I don't think that's a very good argument. In fact I think it's a logical fallacy. It's like saying "You've just been shot... so who cares if you get stabbed?"
I do think it's more important that we shut down the coal plants, or force them to somehow clean up their output. Even with scrubbers, they don't remove everything. At least nuclear waste is predictable and containable - there's none of it going out of the cooling stacks or anything like that.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Incandescent Light bulbs in the tail lights of cars.
Incandescent Light bulbs in the traffic control lights.
Incandescent Light bulbs in low volt homes.
Incandescent Light bulbs in explosion proof fixtures (CFL's are not rated for that).
Incandescent Light bulbs in porch spot/flood lights.
Ohh wait
All of that is exempt the only ones that matter are the ones in your home.
what do you bet that if your home is 10,000 sf and up or your a state official you are exempt.
Thanks California you going to double the price of them here
California, home of Hanoi Jane.
-- I am the NRA, enough said...
Are you disagreeing with me? Your documentation seems to back my points-- it says, rather clearly, and with nice charts what amounts of energy are required to produce heat in various ways. Those are:
Gas/Electric heat (electric fans and gas heater): 68% source-to-delivered
Air-source heat pump with COP=2: 58% source-to-delivered
Ground Source heat pump: 111% source-to-delivered
Advanced GS heat pump: 167% source-to-delivered
Pure electric heat: 30% source-to-delivered (see his assumptions page for this number-- he is using a 70% loss estimate for electrical generation and transmission.)
This is exactly what I said-- resistive electric heat (which is the category you'd put a lighbulb-as-heater in) is the worst of the bunch. Gas is better, heat pumps are better, etc... and how much better your heat pump is depends on its COP. 2 is pretty low-- you can get 4 from an air-coupled unit without even going crazy with ground-loop stuff.
I don't know about the lathes you've worked on, but in my experience, they are kind of loud....
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
The home depot near me is now selling CFs that are compact enough that they would (hypothetically) fit inside a standard edison bulb.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
The problem with this idea (as with much other stuff by "political pundits" and similar bloggers) is that it doesn't and can't take into account future generations. Since they aren't available at present, they can't buy commodities and can't influence the price of those commodities. An ideal market now would leave very little for them (basically a few rich people would be able to care about their grandchildren, a few others might care about their own children, the rest would watch television).
The Modern Incandescent blub is really based on the research and patents of Irving Langmuir who worked for
u ir.htm
General Electric Research Laboratory in Schenectady, New York.
His invention of gas-filled incandescent lamp in patented in 1913 is the one we use today.
He was awarded the 1932 Nobel Prize for Chemistry.
Langmuir's lamps gave up to 20 lumens per watt which was a very large improvement for that time.
http://americanhistory.si.edu/lighting/bios/langm
http://www.invent.org/hall_of_fame/92.html
Anyhow there is a whole back story where J.P. Morgan the main investor in the Edison General Electric company realized the Thomas Edison's Electric lightblub and DC current system was inferior, removed Edison from the company. Then aquired there biggest compeditor Thompson-Houston and changed the name to General Electric in 1892. Irving Langmuir was really the first true hard core scientist that went about perfecting electric lighting for the General Electric company.
Anyhow I am all for eliminating incandescents at this point and I do live in California.
RF lighting such as (Microwave-powered sulfur lamps) and LED lighting are the most efficient and make Compact Fluorescent lanps look just as obsolete as incandescents...
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
"LEDs aren't quite there yet when it comes to indoor lighting. They make great flashlights, unless you want to see a long way off, but they tend to suck for general interior lighting."
You know we have this discussion every once and awhile and no one mentions halogens. HIDS are also in there as well, but they're mostly good for lighting large spaces. e.g. backyard.
"2. Not recommended for enclosed fixtures (trapped heat shortens life of electronics)"
So very true, and at least in my experience a cheap CFL in an enclosure can also be a fire hazard. I had one in a bullet shaped enclosure that started flickering a bit more than usual one day so I watched it for a few minutes. It started to glow where the glass tubing meets the ballast and then it started smoking so I cut the power to it -- I feel lucky I was in the room at the time. The ballast is noticibly scorched and needless to say I have swapped all my CFLs out into open fixtures as I have otherwise had good experiences with them.
Love or hate energy drinks? Express your opinions at enogee.com
People are okay taken two or three at a time. Beyond that number they tend to choose up sides and wear armbands.
- George Carlin
So... what's the answer? Can you point to any specific resources I can use to buy CFLs that look good? Retail stores frequently have poor selection, but online stores with a lot of choices seem to be geared towards institutional buyers and don't provide much consumer-friendly info.
I have been buying CFLs for a long time, but am frequently disappointed by the light quality / color, and thus keep incandescents in a lot of places where it's nice to have warm / cozy light.
-R
Q: How many legislators does it take to change a light bulb?
A: None. But get a rich lobbyist from the fluorescent light bulb industry into it and it only takes one.
Banning incandescent light bulbs is kind of like a nerd dumping Halle Berry. Everyone would wonder how it happened in the first place, and then think you're a complete idiot.
*bam bam bam* Open up, in the name of the law!
What the hell?
*glass shatters, tear gas canisters begin to hiss.*
Move in, now! *door breaks down. A California SWAT team swarms inside* Just as I thought. *checks under a lamp shade* An incandescent bulb. Do you know the penalty for using incandescent? *another officer rips the cord out of the socket* That is just sick. You're going away for life.
*press release next day* It was one of the most horrible crime scenes I've ever witnessed in fifteen years as a police officer. So many incandescent bulbs...so much wasted energy...at least five cents a month. I'm thankful to our fine SWAT team for bringing this to light. Months of investigative work led up to this raid. Tomorrow, we're going to be invading private homes to make sure no one is running Windows Vista, because that's even worse for the environment.
Well, that would be funny, given that most flourescent tubes have better color fidelity and, at least for white light, any LED lamps you can buy for a reasonable amount of money are going to be about as efficent as an incandescent.
I suppose this depends one what the person calls "a reasonable price Places like TheLEDLight.com has LEDs for $20 that use 10% of the power of incandscent lights and last for 10 years. And like CFL prices, I bought my first one for about $20, price for LEDs will come down. That $20 I spent can now buy about 10 CFLs, a few months ago I paid less than $4 for a pack with two bulbs. Having said that, the problem with LED lights is that they are not good for general area lighting, currently they are only good for point or spot lighting.
FalconShould there be a Law?
The dangerous stroboscopic effect only occurs if the fluorescent light source is using a magnetic ballast, which drives the light output to oscillate at the same frequency as the alternating current (60Hz in the USA). Electronic ballasts increase the oscillation frequency to something above 20000Hz, eliminating flicker and increasing energy-efficiency at the same time. Magnetic ballasts have been outlawed in commercial and residential applications, but are still allowed in some cheap "shop light" fixtures meant for garages and such, so watch out.
Be aware that LEDs operated on AC exhibit worse flicker than the cheapest fluorescent. At least with a fluorescent, there is some light from the phosphors between cycles -- an LED goes completely dark between cycles. I recently examined dozens of brands of LED holiday lights -- every single one flickered like crazy. At least they made some cool effects when you swung them around.
Odd, no one ever mentions the mercury CFLs contain. It's a small amount, but given how we Californians already recycle (which is not good) and that curbside recycling doesn't usually accept light bulbs of any kind, most of that mercury will ultimately end up in landfills. Any law that mandates a technology must make sure that technology is disposed of safely.
What always drives me up the wall when I go to CA is that there seems to be a race as to who can have their air-conditioning unit set to the lowest temperature. How about adjusting them up a couple degrees, folks? I always get a cold when I go to California due to the HUGE difference between inside and outside temperature.
Don't people ever ask you why you have rain gutters in your house?
Canadian footbal... oh you mean those stupid micro-neons ? Yeah they suck too.
I hate how they're spun as economical energy savers. All the CFLs I've tried not only cost at least 10x more than a standard bulb, they're also dimmer and well, they're neons so they inherently flicker. Some people don't mind, others like my spouse and I get massive headaches. We're also the kind of people who run our monitors at 100hz because even 85 is a little flickery to our eyes. The worst about CFLs though, is that they don't even last as long as a standard incandescent bulb. Ok let me get this straight: this thing is saving me money by costing more upfront and dying younger ? Gee that makes sense. Maybe if electricity cost 10 bucks per kwh, but where I live it's all of 5 cents.
My view is that if these CFL lamps were really that great, we'd all be using them by now. They've only been around for what, 20 years ? I think in 20 years just about every lightbulb has needed to be changed at least once, so why didn't those old tungsten-glowing energy hogs get upgraded to CFL ? Maybe because CFL is shite, hyped up by people who are trying to cash in on the whole "environmentally friendly" craze... that's my theory! Besides, I'd much rather see an LED lamp than a neon. At least LEDs don't give me migraines!
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Bingo. When I moved last year, The movers weren't allowed to move the lights with the bulbs installed and so removed all of the bulbs and handed them to me... which I forgot in my rush to get on the road. Anyway, I decided to replace my forgotten light bulbs with CFLs. It was a great idea, except the CFLs seemed to be just tall enough in two of my lamps that they protruded above the lamp shades. So much for diffused light.
CFLs aren't perfect for all purposes yet. A bill that would outright ban them is a little short-sighted, IMO.
If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.
It simply isn't the proper role of government to influence light bulb sales. If you want people to buy CFLs then figure out a way to appeal to people and market it as such. People will always buy what's best for them with the understanding they have. You may need to educate people, but once you show them that it's in their best interest then they will buy the CFLs.
Taxing something just to influence people's purchasing decisions is not the way to run government. When government gets used to the tax revenue and people stop buying incandescents then the government will close the loop hole that allowed CFLs to slip through the "light bulb" tax. It's not in *anyone's* best interest to use government to fix things that can and should be fixed without the government. Anyone that asks for the government to fix things for them is too lazy to take responsible for themselves and is refusing to increase their own abilities to accomplish their desires.
Welcome to socialism/communism. As crazy as it sounds, that's what
people are saying when they want government to fix things that aren't
a part of government's role.
Still not excuse not to recycle them properly IMO (but then I'm one of those weird Europeans so what do I know).
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
Guess what - they're already illegal. And guess where - in DPRK ("North Korea"). Ring any bells?
From our FAQ:
"Perception of brightness depends upon wattage and color. To make sure you are purchasing a CFL with equivalent light output to your existing incandescent, divide the incandescent wattage by four (ie. 100-watt incandescent = 25-watt CFL). To match the color of an incandescent look for CFLs that say "Warm White" or "Soft White". CFL colors may also be defined by Color Rendering Index (CRI) and Kelvin temperature. To replicate an incandescent buy a bulb with a CRI higher than 80 and a Kelvin temperature of 2700K. The higher the CRI and Kelvin temperature, the "cooler" the light feels and the bluer the effect. The highest CRI and Kelvin temperatures replicate daylight."
Well, environmental impact clearly, but what the actual study said was that it ended up releasing less mercury into the atmosphere. The 4mg of mercury in the CFLs is more than counteracted by the amount of mercury regular power plants would spit out over the length/time/efficiency of the bulb. So net mercury should actually be reduced.
Ofcourse, in 10 years they will be telling you that those filthy CFLs have way too much mercury and that if we don't switch over to LEDs we are trying to destroy the planet!
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
Shut Up Dude. I'm sure there is at least one of their staffers reading slashdot right now, and you are giving them more ideas. SHUT UP. They don't need any more wacky ideas.
... why the sky's the limit!
I mean they are out to ban spanking for crying out loud. These are the same people who cry "stay out of my bedroom" or "my body" or whatever at the drop of the hat, but when it comes to everyone else
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Consumer Reports gave Lights of America's CFLs the extremely rare "Not Recommended" rating, because they did not perform as advertised. Stick to light bulb companies you've heard of; GE, Sylvania and Philips all were recommended in the same issue (January 1999).
If I buy a pair of headphones at the dollar store, I'm not surprised when they sound crappy. Same goes for CFLs, people.
No argument there. It's like the radiation released from coal power plants vs. nuke plants. Nuke plants make less per watt, but it's all in one place and highly toxic.
If they can legally ban inefficient lightbulbs what's next? High-end cpus; gaming rigs in general; SLI. Just wondering
If you had read the packaging, you would have noticed that nearly ever CF lightbulb comes with a warranty, and that rather than throwing them away, you could bring them in for free replacements. I have never seen one in the store without at least a 3 year warranty, sometimes 5.
Legalize recreational marijuana. Seriously.
Wow, a state full of people driving what amounts to Sherman tanks is now sanctimoniously telling people what type of lightbulb they can legally use? Will there be teams of lightbulb inspectors descending on homes in their black SUVs to insure compliance by the peasants?
Here are a few free suggestions. If you strongly feel that CFL should be used instead of incandescant then buy them for your own damn home amd business. If you think it would be a useful application of public funds then propose that the state purchase and distribute CFL's for free or a much reduced price. But don't use the police power of the state to enforce your own fashionable whim of the moment. If this proposal does succeed then good luck dealing with the mercury poisoning.
"CFLs are nice, but something about the 60 hz pulsing makes my eyes want to pop out of my head."
Do you have a video of this?
Don't leave the light on for 24h, you'll get better grow rate with 18h/6h of light/sleep. Even plants need some sleep. I kid you not, just try it out. As for the 12h induced flowering, you'd be surprised by the impact of cutting the light to 12h. The flowering starts only a few days after you cut to 12h. You'll never spend 8 weeks on the flowering cycle; at most 14 days and you can harvest. The response is just amazing. I'm of course talking about tomatoes...
Sue your power supplier. I still use the same fluorescent bulb after 5 years. It is weird that they are so low quality in the USA, probably because you didn't have to conserve energy up until now?
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
is 25%, curiously equivalent to that of the CFL.
whether the reporter failed to ask the obvious question and used this honored dodge to conceal the fact, or asked and the politician obfuscated around this obvious conclusion, is unknown.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
The quality of light of CFLs is actually much lower than that of good incandecent bulbs. And from what I'm aware of, only special incandecent bulbs like the Solux ones can get very close to a solar spectrum (example spectra at http://www.outsidein.co.uk/images/solvfs.gif ). The tube fluorescents are even worse. While I was doing my degree, I'd turn them off when alone in the office so that I could use a desk lamp and avoid the eye strain the crappy fluorescent light gave.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
Unfortunately what's in the people's best interest is often obscured or hidden by those who just want to make a sale.
People often make purchase decisions based on advertising and cost. Neither of these necessarily work towards the consumer's best interest.
The role of government is something reasonable people can disagree on.
I would guess that most people in my state don't know that the majority of electricity generated here comes from coal, -one of the dirtiest sources still in use. The local utility actively opposes legislation that would make that information more readily available.
Although what do the Californians care about -16 degrees.
My garage bulbs are very dim at 50 degrees or lower. They do get better as you leave them on and they warm up. I usually have to combine a florescent and an incandescent gor some fixtures.
I went to best buy and got a linksys router. I got home, plugged it in, and the damn thing didnt work. All routers must be bad. I'll just use Internet Connection Sharing instead.
We used to have a little demo at work: 3 table lamps, two with CFLs, one with an incandescent bulb. Rarely could any visitor pick out the incandescent. The few that did usually admitted they were guessing. Our aversion to fluorescent lighting is all in our prejudices. Everything from "Joe Versus the Volcano" to R.E.M.'s "Daysleeper" tells you that fluorescent light is ugly and bad. Well, yes, 40 years ago it was. The technology evolved, but our myths didn't.
The opposite is happening now with LEDs. People LOVE the idea of lighting their house with LEDs. They're so COOL! But guess what, they actually suck at lighting a room, and they flicker worse than any fluorescent lamp in history. But it isn't personal experience that guides our taste: it's hype.
There are many reasons to continue to use filament bulbs. Filament bulbs are cheap, effective heaters, work well over a very wide range of temperatures and are available in far more form factors than CFLs. For example, I cannot begin to imagine where I might get a CFL to replace the oven light.
That said CFL is a no-brainer for ordinary household lighting especially in a hot climate (where you have to pay twice for every watt*hour...once to use it and once to get rid of it).
The "quality" issues (flicker, color, output control etc.) are resistance to change pure and simple. My living room is exclusively lit with CFL so I have had some good laughs hearing my friends complain that you can't get "this kind of lighting" with flourescents. My GF objected to CFLs but I insisted on installing a few (entry, hallway and one of of living room floods). After a month with them and seeing the change in her hydro bill, she now plans on changing them all.
Don't get me wrong. There are issues: some do have very cold light (incandescent filaments of course produce a wide variety of yellows). Some don't work with dimmers. Some are laggy when you turn them on (especially if there are several in parallel). Some take a while to reach full brightness. Some are expensive. Some have a non-standard shape that doesn't fit in some shades. No CFLs are very good for focussed lighting (though the people who care about that are almost certainly already using FL for everything else because of the color control).
Perhaps, instead of trying to create some byzantine legislation that makes it illegal to use IL except everywhere (which is what the law would have to be), they should just give a CFL bulb to every household along with a little pamphlet that says
"each of these can save you 60c/month." ((100W-16W) * 4hr/day * 30day * $0.055/kwh). They could also roll more of the admin fees into the hydro rate: it is pretty tough to try to convince someone that they are "saving" when their bill has not changed. As it stands, the basic charge (at least here in BC) subsidizes the heavy users at the expense of the most efficient consumers. Small systematic fixes like that would be a lot cheaper than trying to enforce some legislation with more loopholes than a knitted doily. Finally, CFL is winning. When something is so obviously beneficial with such a limited downside, it will win. It may just take a while.
Since we are on the topic of making things illegal to save energy, how about massive passenger trucks? A Pacifica consumes power at the same rate as 2000 100W light bulbs! Just a thought.
The difference is one bulb blows off mercury in your home where you breathe it, whereas little of the coal plant's emissions will end up in your house. You really do not want mercury in the air of your house because nearly all inhaled mercury enters the blood stream. Even if the power plant's emissions ended up in your food, most of that just passes right through you.
In that case, you'd want your X10 system to control a relay that controls the CFL -- probably a solid state relay in your case.
After all, I am strangely colored.
Yeah, because it'll save so much gas when I make two trips in my car (30 MPG) to pick up what I could in one trip with my SUV (25 MPG).
Very good point, and an argument missed by the sort of moron who believes in banning incandescent light bulbs - they are the same people as who want to ban SUVs, of course.
An adjunct to your point, we must remember that real SUVs are based on pickup truck chassis, making them a hell of a lot more durable than unibody cars and poseur SUVs (like the RAV-4 and CRV). Let's say I'm building a deck. First time I load enough bags of cement into the back of a Corolla, the back doors won't close anymore because the structure is bent. With a real SUV, pickup or van, the suspension bottoms out, and no permanent damage is done.
The SUV is ideal for several reasons, the least of which are the "need" for 4x4 drivetrains:
As for me, I'll stick with my 1976 Dodge Ram pickup truck, both for fun and for hauling. For daily driving, a little Neon is all I need: from the sparse field of cars into which I fit, that is one of them.
Now, back to CFLs: *they* should be banned. Sure, their electrical efficiency is far greater than incandescents, but what about the energy consumption and environmental damage from manufacturing? Fortunately, this universally occurs in China; since it's not in California, the Sierra Club doesn't know what goes into the ballasts, or ignores the pollution and energy consumption because it occurs in China. Furthermore, the arts majors who typically get involved with such dubious groups also tend to lack even the most basic understanding of technology or chemistry, like the fact that all fluorescent lights contain mercury, and mercury is bad.
Want a decent law? Force these people to wear helmets.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
A simple solution would be to demand that incandecents be sold together with fluorescents.
So to buy an incandescent, you have to buy a fluorescent too.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
There are, however, still many applications where CFLs just aren't a good choice.
1. There are dimmable CFLs but they only dim so much and not very smoothly
True. But it doesn't seem as though this legislation would cover low-power halogen lights, which are typically ~20-30% more efficient than tungsten filament incadescents (IIRC), and are ideal for use in dimmable installations.
2. Not recommended for enclosed fixtures (trapped heat shortens life of electronics)
Bah. I've had CFLs in enclosed fixtures for 4 years and they're all still going strong. It might reduce the lifetime, but the lifetime's high enough that it doesn't matter anyway.
3. Not recommended for use with photocells
Or with timers. I understand that both of these issues are solved with new designs, I believe by arranging the switching circuitry so there isn't a low-voltage trickle through the lamp when it is switched off, which was present with (some) old designs for incadescent lamps but which damages the circruitry in a CFL. At least, my local electrical shop is selling an externally-mounted light with a full enclosure and combined photo-sensitive cell and timer control unit to allow evening-only activation, and it's supplied with a CFL.
Of course, you would probably have to save the store receipt(s), track WHICH "bulb" correspnds to which receipt, and retain at least part of the packaging to document the warrantee, again, cross-refernced to the indiviual bulb.
...and start the process over again.
Then there is the time and hassel to go to the store (probably burning several liters of Refined Liquid Hydrocarbon Fuel), stand in line, document the purchase...
Of course, perhaps the "bulbs" could just be returned to the manufacturer for replacement. This would involve shipping costs (money AND time), indeed , possibly HAZMAT shipping costs (6mg Hg OMG!).... The after a mere 12 to 18 weeks (in the dark...) you ge replacements back (freight COD?)...
But these costs are borne by individuals (rather than by 'society', 'the environment/planet' or heaven forbid Corporations, so they are costs that need not be counted.... right?
Note that in Santa Ana CA, USA you are 'permitted' to dispose, (as hazardous waste) four 'flourescents' at a time. I beleive this can be done 2 times a year. For any more than that an unspecified disposal fee is required.
Incandescents DO suck in many respects, but so do the alternatives!
i love it that california is leading the race, especially since all of their tree hugging has resulted in little production of energy in california. they even have to buy their electricity from other states.of course, they are so far from my state of texas, at least we don't have that many visit....
"you may disagree with me, but i would lay down my life to defend your right to do so..."
Read up, a little over an hour before your post.
You might find interesting info here, and checkout the follow-up posts too, especially this one.
The slow response can be a plus sometimes. When your eyes are adjusted to the dark the CFs are a lot less abrupt and disturbing when they come on.
Energy Policy Act of 1992 (EPACT). It made magnetic ballasts and T12 fluorescent lamps illegal in most lighting applications. THE GOVERNMENT TOOK AWAY YOUR T12 LAMPS! And they made you buy the newer, more efficient T8 lamps, damn them!
And much energy was saved, and nobody died.
My one worry here is that CFLs create a higher inductive load on the mains power, and therefore a considerable phase difference occurs for the Voltage and Current in the circuit to which the CFL is connected. Many high-tech sites (such as University Campuses, Eng Facilities) experience this problem already thanks to the PSUs supplied with most desktop computers, and this "voltage lag" can result in firms in this sector paying higher than expected power bills. (Power is sold in kWh for domestic, while industry pays for "kVAh" -- thus phase diff. results in inflated charges). One solution to this problem is for each firm to place a large capacitor somewhere near their sub-station, but this can be expensive, prohibitively so for a startup/SME firm. Was wondering if any EEng's out there would be able to fill me in on the implications of a change to CFLs to the power sector. Would there need to be a drastic change in the way power is delivered, or would it only be a problem (potentially) for the end-user? Cheers, Rich
California Assemblyman Lloyd Levine proposed a ban on using incandescent lightbulbs in all comic strips. When a character has an idea, the proposed legislation would require cartoonists to instead draw a series of fluorescent tubes powered by a solar array.
"I'm from the government and I'm here to help."
Could you please donate a kidney? Thanks.
...considering that almost 20 percent of COLLEGE students think MLK's dream speech was about abolishing slavery: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2007/01/14/AR2007011401026.html
You can preach to people all you want, hitting them in the wallet is a much better way to get their attention. I do agree this particular law is a waste of time, from my casual obseration the supply of CFLs has gone way up and prices have dropped dramatically. New advances in LEDs will probably have them overtaking CFLs within a few years. The incandescent bulb won't disappear but economics will dictate that it become much less prevalent.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Most people who know what they're referring to pronounce LED as "el-ee-dee." I wouldn't assume he's doing otherwise.
...because "hacker" sounds way sexier than "code drone."
It is not malformed at all. It is perfectly acceptable to use an apostrophe to clarify pluralization of acronyms, etc. (e.g. "DVD's", "1980's").
You can punch someone all you want and as long as it's not me, I won't be physically hurt by it.
Whereas when all the inconsiderate smoker freaks at my work stand at the entrance in 0 degree weather huddled together puffing their cancer sticks, I have no alternative other than to take a deep breath and try to walk through it before I run out of air.
Ban smoking forever everywhere. Screw smokers. Inconsiderate bastards.
Every time I try to use the "new" bulbs they never fit in the fixures with the current shades...the bedroom, outside...what gives, I'm not going to go by new shades!
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. ~Albert Einstein
Now they just need to hope that no one starts a filimentbuster.
I hate banning anything... except for stupidity. Rather they should make more economic sense to get these bulbs replaced with more efficient bulbs. However being a electrical engineer there are many types of incandescent bulbs, maybe several thousand, that are in use today and banning these bulbs will be dangerous since most of these bulbs are indicators for trains, dams, airports, and other very important locations. The home incandescent bulbs market is fairly small in comparison. Until they they can get replacements for all of these bulbs then I can say safely "remove" them from California. Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFL) are limited in size and application for now and LEDs high output lamps are taking hold but will take a long time to replace all of those incandescent bulbs.
I've switched my whole house to Compact Flourescent (CFL) and have been really pleased with the result. The bulbs I bought came with a 7 year warranty and didn't cost only a little more than what you paid (I paid $13 for a pack of 6 at Home Depot). The company that made these is "Commercial Electric". I will say that brand seems to make a big difference with these bulbs. I didn't buy enough to do the whole house so the next time I bought more I was at a different store and they didn't have the Commercial Electric brand. I bought some Sylvania bulbs and while they eventually light the room well, they take a long time to warm up, where the Commercial Electric bulbs were instantaneously bright. I will say that I replaced both my front flood lights and back porch light with some 23 watt CFLs (100 watt equivalent light output) and they're great when it's warm, but take several minutes to reach full brightness when it's cold out (and I mean cold as-in Texas cold, I don't know if they would ever reach full brightness in say, Michigan or someplace where it gets REALLY cold) so you might consider something other than CFLs for outside lights. Did it make a difference on my electicity bill? It's hard to say since our electricity rate keeps going up, but I assume I would have had an even bigger bill had I not changed the bulbs. Especially when you consider that all my ceiling fans have 4 bulbs each and they all went from 60w incandescent (total of 240w) to 12w CFCs (total of 48w) it's probably making a difference. BTW: I did this about 2 years ago and have not had even one of the CFL bulbs go out or break (out of about 65 bulbs).
Because you are not paying the true cost of the energy. Fossil energy has externalities, or hidden costs to society.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
And how do i avoid ever going there. Geeesh. Why dont they just succeed from the union? They have already succeeded from reality.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Whale oil.
Have gnu, will travel.
What about my niece's easybake oven?!? No way a CFL gives off enough heat to "cook" with. After all that's pretty much the point of the CFL, convert energy to light instead of losing it as heat...
:-/
Anyways, I don't know about the California legislators, but I for one am _not_ in favor of screaming/crying kids on Christmas morning...
I'm a fan of using the right tool for the job. When CFLs get cold, they can take a long time to get bright. I have one in my portch light and it takes quite a few minutes to get up to a reasonable brightness.
Also, sometimes you just want different lighting for environmental effects... I want to be able to dim some lights low without them flickering and such and CLFs just don't seem to handle that.
OK, I have to counter this with another anecdote.
I have bought CFLs once in my life, a 'variety' pack of 8 in different sizes (4 "100W", 2 "60W", 2 "40W"). That was just over 5 years ago, when I got my first apartment. 1 bulb blew that day, and I returned it for a replacement (never seen a CFL with less than a 2 year warranty, where do you shop?). 1 got broken in a move a few years ago. And I am still using 7 of them today. They cost me $20, and I expect they have saved at least $100 in electricity over that time.
A firestation in Livermore, California maintains the world's longest lit lightbulb http://www.centennialbulb.org/. Some things shouldn't be legislated.
Psst.. Hey buddy.. You wanna light?
Um, yeah, I've never done this before, um, how do we do this?
Chill chill man. You can get three 75's for $100, or three 3-ways, for $150. If you want the GE Edison or Revels, that'll cost ya, and I'll have to talk to my supplier.. find out when they're coming in from Mexico man..
Step 3 - PROFIT!!!
Yes, I know that MH is not fluorescent. I was just giving yet another lighting option. I love MH lights. But they do have drawbacks that the CFL's do not have. The main one being the re-strike and start times. Car's with MH lights in them use higher voltage (4,000volts) to get the re-strike time down. It would be interesting to see if the headlight variation could be adapted to home lighting like MicroSun did with standard MH bulbs.
For rooms that are lit for long periods of time, a MH light works just fine. But for rooms like bathrooms I wouldn't work that well.
What I do like about MH is that they are very bright, low power, and have great color index. They can be purchased with almost any color temp from 3,000K to 10,000K. I hear the 10,000K ones are using in salt water fish tanks because it not only produces wonderful light for the fish and plants, but also creates sharp ripple effects in the water. This is due to the small light source (an arc) compared to fluorescent tubes.
As a new Californian my answer is always the same when the People's Republic gets its panties in a knot over something-- Nevada.
Forgive my spelling from time to time. I'm often posting during short breaks.
they are kind of loud....
and when around something loud for a sustained period of time, people who care about their hearing are wearing earplugs or similar.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Assuming that by holywood you meant Hollywood, much of North American filmmaking is moving away from film toward high-definition digital production. White balance is easy to correct post-production.
Hmmm... Never had that kind of problem. Odds are if CFs die a lot for you, other electronics may not be lasting as long or working too well either. Things like not having full continuity on an AC circuit, noisy lines, not recieving full voltage, etc. All those can damage a CF bulb.
Seems silly that they're planning on regulating out the use of incandescents, but perhaps before they make that move, they should consider making a 'clean' electricity act first. So you're guaranteed electricity of proper voltage, Hz, and free of noise as it connects to the household. People shouldn't be forced into buying an expensive power conditioner for reliable lighting or replacing CFs that have significantly shortened lifespans.
Then there are still situations where CF bulbs don't work well. In dimmer circuits or appliance applications (oven, refridgerator), you're not going to find a working CF at a reasonable pricepoint (if at all).
Best we can hope for in replacing the ol' filament bulbs will probably be the LED, but they're still a bit too expensive and have issues with providing a full color spectrum or decent light spread.
So in other words, 'Do not taunt happy fun bulb.'
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
In Europe, there has been legislation to encourage energy efficiency - one of the targets has been incandescent lights.
The building codes now specifiy a minimum efficiency (lumens per watt) for the lighting installed in rooms where lighting is going to be frequently used (e.g. lounge, hallways). To ensure that this lighting is used, the lamp holders must be designed so as not to accept low-efficiency light bulbs. As this is part of the building code, any newly built home must meet this code, and be inspected to ensure that it meets it.
The same code applys to significant renovation work, which requires construction inspections.
Unfortunately, there has been a problem, in that there isn't an established standard for interchangeable high-efficiency lighting. This has led to each manufacturer of fittings developing their own fitting, and their own lamps to go in them. There are now a profusion of different fittings, and as the legislation is only very recent - these different types of lamps haven't made it into the stores. In fact, I tried to get some for my grandmother, and the only way to get the appropriate CFLs was online, and at a huge price (about $35 per bulb).
In the end, it was easier and cheaper for me to remove the proprietary light fittings, replace them with standard ones and standard CFLs.
Any recommendations for a particular brand?
When you hear "negawatt", you're not watching a blaxploitation film. Paying people not to overconsume power and cause a shortage happens more often than one might expect.
You wrote "It's also worth noting that fluorescents of all sorts are a very bad idea when working with fast-moving (repetitive) tools like lathes and drills, since Very Bad Things (tm) can happen if the RPM of the tool hits the same number of beats per minute as the ballast on the fluorescent light."
Now let's see, modern CFLs have ballasts that cycle at 22Khz. That would correspond to a machine tool running at 1,320,000 RPM. I'm not aware of any machine tool that can run at those speeds.
So if we switch from coal fired plants to nuclear energy, the CFL will be emitting 4mg while the incandescent bulb emits none.
We need to plan ahead better, CFL lights are a bad long term choice. You provided the evidence for that.
Wow, you have been to every Home Depot and Lowe's and know what they carry? I checked a local Lowe's and two local Home Depots last week and none had dimmable bulbs. I also found only one package that listed the actual lumens output instead of some made-up "like a 60W bulb". I bought incandescents instead.
That reminds me of that joke with the workshop newb, a blower fan shaft coupling, and an RPM test strobe. Here ya go, here's a wrench, now loosen that. Ping! (Plenty of fun until he figured it out. Mostly harmless as there was nothing rotating that stuck out as to cause injury.)
There are so many subsidies on CFLs in California that most times of the year they are cheaper to buy than incandescents. I've bought them as low as a 3-pack for $1, and they last much longer.
One issue is that there are places you might not want mercury vapor released if one were accidentally broken, like your refrigerator. And other places where they do not work well (moisture and cold), again, like in your refrigerator.
They are pretty ugly to put in an overhead fan, and it's almost impossible to find CFLs that are small enough for many fan units.
They are less of a fire hazard than incandescents, so I think they should be mandatory in closets where low voltage DC lighting is not practical.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
It is NOT governments job to legislate my, yours, or our legal behavior...they allow cigarettes so that they can charge ridiculous taxes on it... I cannot believe the idiocy that comes out state and federal legislature...get out of the way of my life, if I want to waste electricity then I will...arrrrgggghhhhh. I pray daily for government gridlock then they aren't as damaging to our rights and freedoms. They need to get out of the behavior modification business!!! Flippin morons, I don't how anyone can stand to live in California.
(sorry...couldn't help myself)
Here goes his logic:
Politicians were first developed more than 5000 years ago, and since that time they have undergone no major modifications, meanwhile, they remain incredibly inefficient, converting only about 5 percent of the money they receive into useful law.
It's the sound of illegal lightbulb traffickers warming up their engines, and getting ready to cross the border. Put 'em on top, guys--right next to the high-flow toilets and tax-free cigs. Keep your weed handy in case you need to toss it out the window. [sarcasm]Woohoo! More ways for Al Qaeda cells to raise money trafficing stuff that doesn't arrouse much suspicion in most states.[/sarcasm]
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Seriously: why isn't something advertised as an X-watt replacement as bright in lumens as what it is supposed to replace? How is this not false advertising?
I play Nerd-Folk!
Isn't the silicon in LEDs doped with arsenic or something like that?
Don't get me wrong, I love CFLs and have them in every location I can in my house, but they just don't work everywhere.
The bulbs you got didn't have a warranty? I'm not completely informed about the different brands, but here in BC, Canada, the most common brand of CFLs is Noma, which all have a 1-8 year warranty on them. If it breaks for whatever reason, bring it back, no questions asked.
I see someone failed elementary chemistry. Hint: try getting your "scientific knowledge" from an actual source, rather than some envirowhacko scare site. Ingested mercury compounds in food do not "pass right through you", and inhaled mercury does not "nearly all enter the blood stream". Compounds and elements are two different things. Don't believe me? Then you must believe that putting salt on your fries is the same as inhaling chlorine gas.
In fact, metallic mercury, while not particularly healthy, isn't nearly as hazardous as the scaremongers would have you believe. It's not "soluble in the blood stream" (sic). Mercury compounds (as would be expected to be found in food) are FAR more hazardous than elemental mercury.
Do they work like that outside because I moved into a new place and up here in Canada it gets really cold and they take a couple minutes sometimes to startup. Normal lightbulbs don't seem to have the same problem in the cold.
Welcome to America, home of The Bureaucrat in Your Shower.
/. crowd, afraid of the slightest inconvenience or intrusion in the War on Terror, gladly allow the government to come into their homes when it is a cause they approve of. Please stay out of my home, bureaucrats.
It's amazing how the lefty
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
You don't need a breakthrough, just a continuation of the high-speed progress of the last few years.
Compact fluorescents are 50+ lumens per watt, with 75 being really good. Last year, the pre-production state of the art was 131 lumens per watt in a white LED. LEDs were shipping (mass production) at 40 lumens per watt in 2004 and are now more like 60.
The cost of LEDs is crashing. The bulb over my stairs which I paid $32 for is now available for $12. A compact fluorescent is more cost-effective today, but if the bulb is difficult or dangerous to change then an LED is already the right choice.
And I'll be going into the incandescent lightbulb smuggling business.
I've had the same experience. I tried putting CFLs in about a year ago only to find they wouldn't fit in about half the fixtures in our house. I've also had trouble finding CFLs that produce as much light as a 100W incandescent bulb. Until CFLs actually fit legislation like this makes no sense. Larry
I've been using the ones that Costco sells, and they turn on very quickly, and have not given me any problems so far.
"The future can only affect the present if there is room to write its influence off as a mistake." - Yakir Aharonov
I can see it now. My parents are eating dinner at their home in Orange County, and then the battering ram bashes their house in. "We know you're running those 40-watt incans in the kitchen! Come out with your bulbs up!"
This sig no verb.
I tried 6 Ikea bulbs last year when they were on sale. All of them are dead by now, one of them because the ballast caught fire! Perhaps they were not made for vertical burn position, but there was nothing on the box that said that.
Not only that, but they were rapid-start rather than instant-start (try waiting 3-5 seconds in the dark for any light at all from a bulb, and you find it annoying fast) and took ~10 minutes to warm up. I would not buy them again. For the record, i'm an electrician, and checked for any problems that may have caused them to blow, no such luck. It was all the bulbs' fault.
On the other hand I have several Phillips bulbs going on 5 years old with no failures. They are instant start and warm up to 90% in under a minute.
On dollars per hour of burn time alone, the Phillips bulbs despite being a little more expensive take the prize easily. Not to mention that they are way better bulbs.
I haven't been to IKEA in ages though, so they may have improved their bulbs.
My first thought was "Oh no, how would I demonstrate a blackbody spectrum without incandescent light bulbs!"
Yup, I'm a physics teacher. (And now someone is going to suggest a simple alternative and tell me what a terrible physicist I am. And I acknowledge that, in a cheap spectrometer, the solar spectrum appears continuous.)
i've worked around them for a bit... we just talked loudly and turned the radio up. no earplugs. of course we also turned the machines off unless they were in use at that moment in time. never had machines just running. it was also a 2 man shop. so at most, 2 machines running and we weren't usually chatting while they were running. so there was no chance of forgetting that they were on, regardless of light flicker (the shop had fluorescent lights) because if it was on, we were actively cutting wood, drilling, sanding, etc.
please me, have no regrets.
I've heard of those but can't get them around here. Are they limited as to max wattage? Sounds like they'd be perfect for my odds and ends miniature desk and readings lamps (which I use 40 watt oven bulbs in currently) but I'd like to see one in action, first...
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
Geewiz, doesn't any government know what it's supposed to do any more?
:T:R:A:N:S:
I live in Texas where the summers are very hot and expensive. Before this last summer I replaced all 145 incandescent lights in my house to all compact fluorescent ones, which I bought on ebay for a song (Greenlite). The difference between the two years (with factoring the different cost per kwh between years) was roughly 35% in the dead of summer. Most people don't notice how many bulbs stay on at all times in most large homes.
:)
They may be fragile and flicker when they come on, but ffs I save a fortune every month. I can deal with the minor inconveniences.
When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail
sweet. business has been dwindling on my sale of high flow shower heads - soon I'll be able to diversify my inventory.
ôó
You need to make sure that you do select the right 'output' type. I had a couple in the kitchen and dining room.. and they simply didn't throw enough light (single lights, in the middle of the room, medium (4x4/5) sized rooms). Due to the level of brightness (even though it was rated the same as the incands they replaces) we found that we couldn't read or see properly. We moved these to the hallway and (small 2x3ish) bathroom in the new place.. and it's excellent - just the light needed.. for the small area (it does help that it bounces off of the walls within 1m around the light).
I didn't know about these differences when we first bought them to replace our incands.. but it is the first thing I check now. Unfortunately, due to brand differences, in many cases it is a matter of try one.. see if it suits.. and if it doesn't use it in a smaller room / different situation.
You have a sick, twisted mind. Please subscribe me to your newsletter.
I was wrong, I have 14W CFLs
.9 for foot-candles)
.9 for foot-candles) (it was momentarily less, stabilized after about two seconds, after power was off for approximately 11 hours, ramped up so quickly it's difficult to pin down an initial brightness)
.09 to .1 lux in southern New England with a slightly hazy sky. Basically, light enough to clearly read by. As an aside, if buying a surveillance camera, keep in mind that if it's not light enough to read, your average .3 lux home depot or Radio Trash camera is not going to cut it.)
OK here is one comparison:
(measured at 1M, I forgot to bring my multimeter home so I do not have precise voltage info. Same fixture, same measuring position, I stood in the exact same spot (to prevent clothing color from tainting measurements due to varied reflection))
(divide lux by
60W Phillips DuraMax lamp: 112lux (divide by
n:vision soft white 14W CFLs, rated output 900 lumens, lamp # 61Y6
0 sec: 23 lux
15 sec: 46 lux
60 sec: 127 lux
120 sec: 136 lux
180 sec: 136 lux
It stabilized right around 120 seconds.
(For frame of reference, the full moon is about
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
because compact fluorescents will create noise in their systems. Besides, fluorescent light is irritating compared to incandescent.
If you want them to do something useful, ban TVs with picture tubes bigger than, say 17". Huge energy waste.
Now I'll go back to listening to my vinyl records playing through my Class A tube amps while reading under incandescent light.
"The difference is one bulb blows off mercury in your home where you breathe it, whereas little of the coal plant's emissions will end up in your house. You really do not want mercury in the air of your house because nearly all inhaled mercury enters the blood stream. Even if the power plant's emissions ended up in your food, most of that just passes right through you."
What!?!
You are very mixed up. The only way the mercury from the bulb goes into you is if you eat the bulb.
The solution is very simple don't eat CFL's!
On the other hand the mercury from coal goes in the air, I suppose you could avoid that mercury by not breathing, but that's hard for most people.
Did you somehow imagine the CFL releases mercury while it runs? It doesn't, the mercury stays in the glass.
And your thing about eating vs breathing: you have it exactly backwards. Breathing mercury vapor is far less harmful then eating mercury contaminated food.
Why? Because elemental mercury (i.e atoms of it, rather then mercury containing molecules) AKA the mercury vapor, has very little biological activity, so will just pass right out (most of it anyway). On the other hand mercury in food (like fish) is Methyl-Mercury, WAY WAY WAY more harmful, and very toxic.
-Ariel
Quite a few - but I'm sure the mercury released would still add up to less than that in the fillings in my teeth (although not in as safe a form). The pressure in these things is very low. I'm not sure how many hundreds of thousands of them would add up to as much mercury as a thermometer.
In related news your car batteries contain toxic chemicals and metals - you just have to handle things sensibly like cleaning up a break properly.
Unfortunately that is a rather stupid argument as well due to coal burning plants having pollution controls that would condense the mercury vapour to a liquid. If the pollution controls are not there the acid rain would be far more noticable - paticularly in the USA where the coal has a lot of sulphur.
Actually a light bulb is an excellent way to get you warmed up. Your sensation of warmth comes more from radiant heat than from the air. That's why you feel warm in the sun on a cold day. So rather than waste energy heating the walls, just heat the surfaces.
Let's assume you replaced four 60W incandescent bulbs with the 6W CFLs. That's a savings of 0.054kWh per hour of use. Now let's assume that you used those bulbs 24 hours a day for 30 straight days. That's:
(4)(0.054kW)(24 h/day)(30 days) = 155.52 kWh
You said you saved more than the cost of the 4 CFLs or ($3.50/bulb) * 4 bulbs = $14 in one month. That means you'd have to be paying at least:
($14)/(155.52kWh) = $0.09/kWh
That seems a little on the high end to me. That's assuming you had all four bulbs on 24 hours a day for 30 straight days, and that the incandescents you replaced were 60W (more than the claimed equivalent output of the CFLs). If you used them less than that, you would have to be paying even more per kWh to break even in one month. It seems to me that either you lowered your lighting level significantly, or the savings cannot be attributed entirely to the CFLs. Now I'm not against fluorescents, but I can't ignore the math.
If you can read this sig, you're too close.
Yeah, while well meaning, this bill is stupid. It assumes a number of things, such as CFL bulbs that FIT a fixture...
Not necessarily. California is a huge market. When California comes up with new standards for car exhaust, car manufacturers jump through hoops to make sure their cars can be sold there.
If California suddenly bans incandescent bulbs, there's going to be a heckuvalot of money thrown at solving the remaining problems with CFLs, because there's going to be a heckuvalot of people in the market for CFLs. Representatives proposing this are probably big users of CFLs, so they're probably well aware of the limitations.
Sometimes setting unreasonable expectations is the only way to see what's really possible. Without Kennedy, how long do you think it would have taken to put a man on the moon? (Me neither.)
I do, however, agree that this bill is stupid. I hate it when the government bans a specific technology. Better to simply mandate a specific efficiency for light bulbs -- if you can make an incandescent as efficient as a CFL, we shouldn't cut off that branch of technology altogether. They're confusing *means* and *ends*.
I for one welcome our new Compact fluorescent lightbulb overlords
My easy bake oven won't work with those! http://www.toysrus.com/sm-the-new-easy-bake-oven-- pi-2297810.html
s -selling-solar.html
----
Run YOUR oven on solar: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
People like me who don't have clothes dryers find this sort of well-intentioned legislation offensive. By not using a wasteful electric clothes dryer, I save more energy than I could possibly save even with fictional 100% efficient lighting.
Don't get me wrong; I'm all for conservation, and I do have efficient lighting installed everywhere possible, but this is silly.
Quality control on the mass-produced compact flourescents is terrible. They suffer from "made in China" syndrome and the packaging is often deceptive.
I spotted some in Fry's a few weeks ago that loudly advertise "Guaranteed for 9 years!" on the package. What that "guarantee" means in english is undetermined, because, incredibly, if you read the fine print, they only offer free replacement for 2 years, and of course you have to mail in the actual bulb, along with original packaging and store receipt. How you can claim a 9-year guarantee without actually offering one is unfathomable.
Read carefully -- the cheap Chinese-made bulbs _always_ have deceptive labeling like this, the actual replacement warranty is way less valuable than you think, and the bulbs won't last long.
Mandate full-cutoff streetlights that focus light where it's needed instead of spraying it every which way (this will eliminate glare and reduce light pollution as well as save energy). Also set a brightness limit for gas stations, car lots, etc. - there's no need to light these up brighter than an operating room table.
There are some situations in which CFLs are unsuitable. In particular, colour workflows demand balanced-spectrum environmental lighting that neither CFLs nor conventional incandescent lights provide. Banning incandescents doesn't much bother me, but room must be allowed for specialized lighting needs.
Well, so long as you want your magazines, newspapers, films, etc to look good.
Good idea - didn't think of that -
X10 had promised to be so cool too - I hooked it up and it refused to work with my CFL lamps
X10 told me no dice - CFLs screw with the singaling used by X10
I'm guessing that X10 will work to lobby against this law
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
You have: 22kHz
:)
You want: rpm
* 210084.52
(still, 200000rpm is rather fast
That's all fine and well, unless you're powering them via a green power source. Consider that your solar cells or wind turbines don't put out any mercury (or any pollution at all, after manufacture, until you dispose of them), you're actually doing more damage to the environment with these bulbs than with incandescents.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
I thought CFLs were best when used for more than 15 minutes at a time. In other words, fluorescent lighting is great in offices where lighting is on for several hours. But don't put CFLs into a bathroom or hallway where the light might be on for just a few minutes.
I had a light tree in college by one of my doors. Unfortunately, if you apply shock to a traditional filament bulb while hot, the filament breaks. I kept going through bulbs until I replaced the traditional bulbs with Compact Flourescent. CF bulbs can be shocked, dropped, etc while hot without major problem. Once switching over, I didn't have to change any more.
I'm sorry you had a bad experience with some bulbs, but in my experienct it isn't representative.
The ______ Agenda
A tax on old style bulbs may seem like a more sensable and less heavy handed option, but may not be posible in this case. Why? Under California law a new tax or tax increase requires a 2/3 majority, but a ban would only rejuire a simple 50%+1 vote. As our squabling legislators can't seem to agree that the sky is blue, and "no new taxes" is a religious mantra to this blue state's conservative minority, getting to 66% is slightly more difficult than a moon landing.
The wild card? I imagine that Hollywood would object to an outright ban as directors (and stars) insist on the most flattering lighting available. Look for a Governator veto.
So a conservative initiative (prop 13) makes a ban more likely, and Hollywierd make one less so. My head hurts.
Google. Rotational Symmetry. You're feeling lucky.
...will be an exception for my Jiffy-Bake Oven (http://www.jiffymix.com/).
It's -2 degrees Farenheight outside right now. I'm a big fan of the CFLs, and I've installed them all over the house. Well, when it's this cold out, it takes about 2 minutes for the outdoor bulbs to turn on. Can't wait until I need to scare an intruder away with that lightning quick latency!
I am not left-handed, either!
I wonder why everyone assumes the choices are CFLs or incandescents? They have these new things called LEDs.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Wasn't there something out a little while back about CFL & Flourescents causing people to sleep less as the type of light emitted ends up alterating the body's sleep clock or something? I could be wrong, but I thought there was something. If so, won't this be a problem in addition to all the other stuff listed here?
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
And two other limitations on the package label.
Do not use below 50 F (some are good to 30 F, neither will start in the shop at 10 F.)
Not for use outdoors, I assume the electronics are not water tight.
LED lights may solve both problems, but I haven't actually seen one for sale yet.
This will probably make a market for low wattage heaters. Now one or two light bulbs can heat a small space quite well. But if you can't buy an incandescent light, then I will need a small heater for the cold frame.
I assume the CFL is putting lots of noise on the power line. I looked at the X10 specs, and it looks like X10 communications are sent on the wire at 120 kHz. My proposed relay solution would work, provided that the circuit the CFL is on is isolated from the circuit X10 is on. This is unlikely. Your best bet would be to put a simple low pass filter between the X10 control module and the CFL lamp. Something with a cut off frequency between 80 and 100 Hz.
I don't know enough about a CFL's noise characteristics to tell you if this will reduce the CFL's efficiency too much, but I wouldn't think so. Maybe an EE will tell us.
After all, I am strangely colored.
Usually, as a longtime slashdotter, I only reply to the some stuff lol. But i am replying as an AC coz I'm too lazy to signon and I doubt it can be traced :) . Anywho, they work. In 3-4 years I have yet to replace the new bulbs. Biggest problem is in my garage where the temperature is cold. The CFLs take about 30 minutes to warm up and give good light (/me checks if wifee is seeing what I type heh). (and "buggers" as a test to see if I am a bot? I am not an ozzie! lol
California should ban state government. That would be progress!
I'm reminded of Ayn Rands "Anthem" where it took committee authorization to switch from torches to candles!
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
I believe it's elemental mercury is ok to ingest bad to inhale. Compounds.... it depends on the compound. Wikipedia says that the HgO_2 is the stuff that screws you up in the air and Methyl Mercury is the stuff that fucks up the water.
Also, just as a curiosity check out this article too: Karen Whetterhan dies after a single exposure to HgC_2H_6 through her latex gloves
Modern flouresents are many, many times better then the old style. As another poster noted earlier, the biggest difference is in the ballast. A magnetic ballast will flicker the light at 60hz, which is very visible-- especially if you're using a CRT set to a similar refresh rate. Those ballasts aren't sold anymore, so the refresh rate of modern flourescents is much higher. The light quality is also much better, though it very much depends on the bulbs you buy. Like most things in life, the cheaper bulbs serve their basic purpose fine, but leave a lot to be desired aesthetically. You can now buy flouresents at just about any color temperature, as well as full-spectrum bulbs, though the latter are expensive & hard to find (look in gardening stores for grow lights).
I find it disturbing how quick many people resort to coercion to accomplish their goals.
I find self-centered people disturbing. There are three strong reasons to push for greater energy efficiency through regulation: reduce dependance on foreign oil, reduce strains on the power grid (remember the blackouts California had a few years ago) and global warming. Regulations like this aren't passed for shits and giggles, but because waiting for the marketplace to decide on it's own simply isn't good enough.
Government is not the solution, it is the problem.
Ronald W. Reagan, Inaugural Address, Jan. 20, 1981
A few years ago, I chose to put every overhead (room) light on dimmers. At $30 each, I'd spent several hundred dollars on dimmers in each hallway, bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, living room, and dining room. They help me save electricity because I can set them to barely light a room, or give full brightness only when I need it. But they DON'T work with fluorescents at all. Not standard magnetic-ballasts nor CFLs. As a matter-of-fact, a CFL on the dimmer literally burns up.
I use motion sensors to activate fluorescent lights in the laundry room, the carport, and even the fluorescent security lights outside. Contrary to the advice of some, I use CFLs in both my refrigerator and freezer sections (why heat up the very space that you're trying to cool?) very effectively.
I use compact fluorescents in the table lamps, under the house, over the stove, in the attic, on the porch, and at my desk. In each of these applications, I either need the light ON or OFF, and I choose an appropriate brightness for the task.
Most of my lighting comes from fluorescents. But until someone comes up with one that's dimmable, they're not going in the ceiling fixtures. I sincerely applaud the efforts of anyone who thinks seriously about his or her energy consumption and makes practical changes in their home to drop their consumption and make what they DO consume do so more efficiently.
My own electric bill is 1/3 of what it was when I bought the house. I've doubled the insulation in the ceiling and floor, used dimmers, motion sensors, dropped the nighttime temperatures in the house, used electric mattress warmers instead of electric blankets, dropped the hot water temperature, insulated pipes, and other measures. Sure I'd like to do more, but I'm neither rich nor willing to live like a hermit.
If Llyod Levine were as bright as he thinks he is, he'd realize that fluorescents are fine for many jobs, LEDs are fine for many jobs too, but incandescents have their place as well. In some climates and locales, it might even be better to have incandescents which provide both light and heat than the colder fluorescents. And are there CFLs to light up the [living] Christmas tree next winter?
If incandescents are outlawed, only outlaws will have incandescents. Maybe I'll have to buy them in another state and import them to California.
Doesn't every chemist know that latex gloves don't protect you much against chemicals?
-- Cheers!
O yes, once those LED lights are available I will be one of the first to get them. They're nice, and a Dutch invention too IIRC.
-- Cheers!
Do you have any fruits, vegetables, or incandescent light bulbs to declare?
Organization: alphabetical, sometimes numerical or messy
Why is it that the California legislature feels the need to legislate everything?!? Do they feel we Californians are too stupid to figure out the economics of "green" or "energy-saving" technologies? Yes, we are dependent upon dozens of technologies developed over a hundred years ago. From indoor plumbing, to incandescent light bulbs, to fossil-fuel burning motors, to the stucco on my house! Are they idiotic to the point where THEY don't understand that most of these devices have engendered this dependence simply because there were no good alternatives being developed? NOW that there are alternatives (mostly because of the technology folks like the slashdot community have make accessible), instead of simply waiting for the economic and/or ethical benefits to be attractive to the point where they override buyers' habits, they take a high-handed, arrogant approach of enacting legislation because "it's what's best for you". F-YOU!
I buy CFLs because they're more economical long-term than incandescent bulbs, and provide the same brightness of light despite the higher up-front cost. My experience is that they are just as reliable, just as "easy to use" and help reduce my electricity bill. I would not act any differently if there were legislation passed to force the issue.
Besides, how stupid is this moron. Are Phillips, GE, and other incandescent-producing companies going to roll over and watch millions of dollars annually disappear overnight? This reeks of a campaign-contribution shakedown to me.
I think it's safe to say that it's simply a physical impossibility for incandescents to improve their efficiency significantly. You've got electricity heating a filament, with the vast majority of the radiation being produced outside the visible spectrum.
So in this case, I think mandating against a specific technology is reasonable. OTOH, demanding a certain energy efficiency rating for lightbulbs would therefore do the same thing.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
It's stupid to make this a law. Yes, advertise the cost savings and allow the consumer to decide. BUT allow those who want to continue with real lightbulbs continue using them.
1. CF bulbs do not produce a pure while light, some people with SAD REQUIRE full spectrum white light.
2. CF bulbs do not produce a constant degree of light, they pulsate. It's especially annoying if you are watching TV or a computer monitor.
3. CF bulbs (at least the ones I have tried) are noisy, they BUZZ.
4. CF bulbs are full of toxic chemicals.
Any coincidence that UCSB is one of the biggest researchers of GaN and GaN-based devices eg white LEDs?
I think it's a great way to inject money into LED fabrication and technology and push their price down.
Um.. how is heat in enclosed fixtures an issue with CFLs? Fluorescents give off less heat than incandescent bulbs...1/3 as much IIRC. If the old bulb works in a fixture, a fluorescent should too.
I just found the box to change my sig. Um.... [timeless witticism].
Californians who want incandescents can go to amazon, where the cheap ones are running about $8 for a 24 pack.
Then let's go back to the caves! Oh, that would mean we would have to burn lumber, which could pollute even more because we would need a minimum light and heat, specially to cook.
Some say that if you want to do something for Earth, have less kids. Or don't have kids at all! Earth's natural resources are not enough to make all us 6.6 billion people to have nice, comfortable lives... at least not with our current technology (and neither with any in the near future). Maybe if we were 2 or 3 billion instead of more than 6 billion, things would be different.
So say we all
There is a disease that some kids have which ruins their defenses again normal sunlight. Incandescent bulbs are safe for their parents to use as they don't produce ultraviolet light like flourescents do. This legislation would make life a bit shorter for them. They usually don't live that long to begin with.
I wonder if the state folks know about this or care?
dzimmerm
Jumping to correct solutions slowly is better than jumping to incorrect solutions quickly.
I say be ban these inefficient politicians!
Bell said!
I personally hate flourescent light for it's very unnatural spectrum. It just makes my eyes hurt, like all the CRT displays. I will stay with incandescence as long as I will be able to do.
"Can't use them on a dimmer controlled circuit"
/ h tm
Yes you can!:
http://www.grist.org/advice/ask/2006/06/07/dimmer
http://www.eartheasy.com/live_energyeff_lighting.
The only way to get to that point, having dimmers for these bulbs, having enough models for most fixtures and perhaps even having more kinds of colours/shades available, will be by creating a bigger market for them.
You can bet your bottom dollar that a dimmer-company is not interested in developing a product for these bulbs while 97% of the market is for either halogen or incandescent.
It hurts to be an early adopter, but for some reason on slashdot it's more common to find early adopters for PS3s, Wiis, Linux based PDAs and various other gadgets than something as mundane as a bulb.
If you can't remember your power tool is turned on, it might be a good idea to have your hands removed.
It's good to see that the great state of California continues to think that the government's job is to protect people from themselves...
Dont worry. California legislators will simultaneously propose a bill to ban CFLs, because they contain a chemical
known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects or other reproductive harm.
I saw the same label on an EXTENSION CORD that I bought from Fry's. It gave the standard warning and then said "Please wash hands after using".
WTF!
I was just thinking about this, I was going to start a thread about this, then I saw yours. Yes, this is a serious problem. There is probably even less of an effort in the US to get people to properly dispose of the lightbulbs. Yes, the indacescent bulbs are inefficient, but I do believe that the environmental toll of millions of flourescents ending up in landfills could offset any environmental benefit we would receive from the energy savings. If I am not mistaken, the CFs also include a transformer which uses quite a bit of rare metals such as copper and so forth, mining copper isnt exactly an environmentally friendly operation. I think the US should have laws passed which would require recycling of CFs, and while we are at it, car batteries, computers, electronics, motor oil, and so on, and penalties on violations. I think if we are really serious, we would make the disposal of these items free so that there is no excuse for people to do it, and even offer roadside pickup of these items. I would like to see people who put computers and CFs into the trash given warnings and then tickets and required to properly dispose of these items.
The Assemblyman must not have any dimmer switches in his house.
Personally, I like the CFL's, and use them wherever possible.
Alas, until they work with a dimmer switch, they'll never be universally adopted.
I have a CFL bulb in a motion-detector light that specifically says "don't put CFL bulbs in here." It turns on and off dozens of times a day. It has a cheapo lowes six-pack bulb in it that probably cost $2, and it's been running for three years without issue.
There's one in my garage door opener, too. It goes on and off with the door, as well as via a motion detector in the control pad, so it sees more cycles than most of our lights, too.
These are cheap indoor CFL bulbs in outdoor environments with temperature ranges from 0F to 95F in rough-voltage circuits with motion detectors and repeated short on/off cycles-- and they've been going strong for three years.
Of course, your mileage may vary. I had one go in two weeks in a ceiling socket over the dining room table.
Silly me. I bought 5 of them (at an extremely high price, $15.31) to replace the "inefficient" bulbs that burned out. Two of them didn't even last 3 weeks. One went dead after about 31 days. One started flickering after about 2 weeks so I replaced it with a more reliable "regular" bulb, and the last one went into a permanent 'dim' mode so I replaced that one too. On average, these bulbs last for only about a month (at $3 each) so it's costing ME $36 PER BULB per year to save $4.00 in energy. I don't think so! Never again!! And I remember when the electric companies used to give us FREE replacement bulbs (just bring in the old one). These bulbs were made to 'ruggedized' specifications so that they would last forever. Of course that was until the meddling liberal courts forced them to stop giving away FREE bulbs. Until they come out with long-lived versions of these bulbs (and at a more reasonable price) it just doesn't make economic sense to do so. You want to save energy, get a programmable thermostat, stop running your water when you brush your teeth. Screw the tree-hugging 'hippo-crats'. These are the people who whine about "global warming" (there isn't any - the sun is just getting warmer. even the polar ice caps on Mars are receding at a rate expected for it's distance, and there aren't any SUVs on Mars) Almost ALL of these 'huggers' drive vehicles powered by internal combusion (polluting) engines. I don't see ANY of them riding bicycles. And the WORST ones are those who flaunt us with their energy-efficient Prius pieces of junk. It's like they're saying, "We're poisoning our drinking water less than you." Pretty outrageous. Wait until they find out that the trade-in value for these expensive albatrosses is almost ZERO because of all the EXPENSIVE BATTERIES that will need to be replaced. You guys were suckers, just like Hillary. How much confidence can you have in a politician who says, "I was deceived" - admitting that they can be EASILY DECEIVED?
Ignore the photographs in that "review". Anyone who doesn't mention the exposure settings and uses an editing package that doesn't preserve EXIF data in the pictures can't be expected to take comparison photographs with any meaningful results. I suspect those photos were taken with a cheap digital camera with no proper manual control, and the difference in brightness is largely due to the colour-sensitivity of the auto-exposure algorithms.
The ones at my store go to 75w equivalent (17 watt? I think, actual).
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Try reading the *entire* post, eh? He specifically said "If your particular stores don't carry them..did you ask them why not?"
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Would the drive-by moderator who modded parent a troll please explain their logic?
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Yes, I bought two of the "super compact" ones that are supposed to fit. And guess what? They were still just about 1/4 inch too big. Not to mention looking kinda dim for their "75W equivalent" rating. Still looking for ones that support photocells and motion sensors.
CFLs give off less heat but the electronics in the ballast, just like in your computer, will fail sooner if not kept sufficiently cool. I've had CFLs in an enclosed fixture and they get plenty warm.
Is is short-sighted/ill-conceived? Sure. But you're also misinformed,
CA has the highest number of hybrids per capita. Are there wanna-be
cowboys driving inappropriate vehicles? Sure, but you've got them in
almost any state of the Union.
Were that I say, pancakes?
Not such a good idea when working with ANY sharp edge, since they soften/blur what you see just enough that they can be a hazard. Frex, kitchens and bathrooms are really not good places for fluorescent-only fixtures. This is especially so for people with any sort of visual deficit.
A workaround for this is to use one regular and one fluorescent in each fixture. That gives you enough hard-edged light to see properly by.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
What percentage of those hybrids are also mammoth SUV's and similar extravagant vehicles? Just because a vehicle uses hybrid technology does not mean it treads lightly. Also much of California has been set up to make life without intensive use of a car quite challenging. I'd still say that attacking greenhouse gas emissions as a phenomenon best addressed by outlawing incandescent lightbulbs in a state so devoted to the cult of the automobile is more than slightly amusing.
Damn STUPID!
I never said it was the most efficient mechanism. However, transit (that includes
shipping goods) and residences each account for about 1/3 of american energy use;
~30 and 40 quads respectively. Personal vehicles make up about 1/2 of the transit
energy consumed, and that again is 50/50: cars and pickups+SUVs. Roughly 5 quads of
residential energy use is electrical. I don't know how much of that is lighting but
that along with heating and refrigeration are traditionally its major uses in the
home. Also, in commercial buildings lighting is about 40% of energy use IIRC. AFAIK
no cars (excluding electric, and they indirectly) are running around powered by coal.
Finally, consider that there is far less tied up in light bulbs than cars and trucks.
All numbers (except for commercial lighting) are cribbed and rounded from
"Sustainable Energy: Choosing Among Options," Peter, Drake, Driscoll, Golay and
Tester (2004).
Were that I say, pancakes?
In related news......
Montana lawmaker Stephen P. Nobody is proposing a bill that would ban the federal government from operation in ALL 50 states. His reasons: "The present system of government has been in place for over 200 years with no major modifications; meanwhile, they remain incredibly inefficient, and at least 95% of the energy is only converted to hot air."
It is not a problem.
I say this because I do machine work every day at my job and for my small business. All of our lights are fluorescent and I've never seen this happen with the fixtures that I use. Even if you match the RPM exactly, the drill will still look blurred because the "pulse" of a fluorescent is long and blurred, and the motor is still making noise.
If you can point me to an peer-reviewed report or OSHA mandate that says otherwise, then maybe I'm wrong. But most machine shops are using fluorescent lights that I've seen.