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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.
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 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.
You do realize that given the amount of light bulbs over there, swiching to CFL is actually a huge energy saving
Ave Maria
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!
Yet more government intrusion into our lives. Perhaps next they can tell us what to wear and eat too.
Using lights as heaters is silly. Heat rises. Most lights are at least halfway up the wall -- floor level lights are very rare. Besides, were talking CA here, and while significant parts of the state have 4 seasons, a lot of the population is located from LA to San Diego where cooling is more of an issue than heating. Seriously, would someone in Maine leave their refrigerator door open all day to cool the house in winter (not that it would work because the cooling elements release heat back into the house -- but play along here)? Why would someone in a hot clime intentionally use lights to heat their house in the summer?
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
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.
This is the dumbest goddamned thing I've ever heard of.
I use CFLs here at home. Have for years. But the idea of making incandescents illegal is ridiculous.
What will studio photographers do? How about people who are sensitive to the noise many CFLs make? What about legacy fixtures that CFLs don't fit into?
Run a public information campaign instead.
Now we have to wait for the ballast to warm up before inspiration strikes!
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?
Three words:
Bright white LED's.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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."
http://www.bulbs.com/eSpec.aspx?ID=11344&Ref=Categ ory
I'm sure there will be exemptions for professional purposes, and of course, street lights, if you can call sodium or mercury vapor lamps "incandescent". I wouldn't mind seeing just regular old vanilla incandescent lamps banned, but better let me keep my halogen for my desk lamps.
I also think they need to make the local beverage container recycling places take your old CFLs to keep the mercury from leeching into the water tables via the landfills. Maybe even give you a dollar each (of course there would be a CRV-type fee assessed at the time of purchase).
Does kind of make one wonder though, does Lloyd Levine have any friends that own CFL companies. From what I've seen, even though the big guys like GE and Sylvania are starting to enter this space, I more commonly see off-brand companies on display. What a boon it will be for these smaller companies.
cat
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.
Three words:
Ouch, my wallet!
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.
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.
Raise the taxes on incandescent, reducing taxes on LED and CFLs.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
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.
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.
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.
While I agree you should have the choice, you can easily replace your 100W halogen and your outdoor spotlights. I replaced ours. In fact, the CF replacement for the halogen bulb is brighter at about a third the power usage. The spots were off-the-shelf replacements for the big outdoor reflector spotlight bulbs, and with the reflector housing you'd never even know they were CF.
As to your turn signal, there are obviously applications (like blinking lights) that are terrible for CF. And good for LED, which is what you're starting to see on cars.
This would be awful for holywood. Film is either color balanced for incadescant light, or sunlight.
Three words: you don't experience my consciousness, so don't presume to tell me what does or does not bother me.
... yet that's not good enough, so you have to make my home's lighting unpleasant as well? Now, I can't even relax at home. Thanks, assholes.
What is with this focus on whether or not I follow some rote process for reducing energy usage? Why not focus on how much I'm actually using?
I average 300 kwh per month and drive a small car
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Bright white LED's.
That's 5 words
Homme petit d'homme petit, s'attend, n'avale
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).
They'll pass a new law requiring people to recycle them, and to pay a fee to do so. And then of course you'd need a law fining people for putting them in with their normal trash. And all of this will induce people to chuck them in ditches like old tires and batteries, so you'll have to fine people for that too. And all this enforcement doesn't come for free either, so if they're not collecting enough revenues from the fees and fines, the rest will come out of your taxes.
When in doubt, throw a new law at it.
Liberty in your lifetime
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
"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
Cheap CFLs tend to break easily. Cheap CFLs are the only kind the poor can afford. Thus all those who do not have money pouring out of their assholes will be breaking CFLs left and right. How many of those do you think will go into the recycling queue? You can't currently put that kind of thing in your recycling bin, you have to actually take it to the landfill.
This is not a solution to a problem, or even a solution looking for a problem. It's a problem looking for a solution.
If LED lights weren't so damned expensive, we'd probably want to use them, because they have characteristics that make them superior to incandescents in every way but price. CFLs have many drawbacks.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Campaign funding records for Levine. Anyone recognize any of the names of people or companies in there being in the CFL business?
Liberty in your lifetime
LED's dont produce a full spectrum of light, and it is hideously expensive to get decent power output out of LEDs. Studio photographers can just use flash, but moviemakers need continuous light.
My english is sow-sow. Sowhat?
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.
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.
People don't have the right to control the sexual habits of others - but we prohibit sex with minors because it's in the public interest. People don't have the right to control the actions of others - but we prohibit drug trafficking because it's in the public interest. People don't have the right to control the purchases of others - but we control gun ownership because it's in the public interest. Those are fairly 'extreme' cases, granted, but there are hundreds of others; licenses, migration laws, noise control...
The government has the right to control things that are harmful to the good of the people. Pollution is harmful to the people, and so the government has every right to control it. Whether this law is a good idea is debatable - there are obvious problems, but since I haven't seen the actual text I reserve comment - but it is every bit the government's right to restrict the use of overly damaging appliances.
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?
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
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 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.
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.
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.
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.........
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?
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.
However, recording studios do not use BNC connectors, multi-shielded cable, or GHz RF receivers. Pray tell, how do you shield the pickup on an electric guitar with 100% effectiveness? Or an open frame tube-based amp? Tape machine heads? You don't. You keep the environment quiet. It's the only way.
Noise supression on GHz class receivers is easy, since the offending signal is only a few harmonics out from the nonsense generated in a CFL, and the whole chassis is solid metal, without so much as a vent hole.
I got some 14-watt compact fluorescents in November when my porch and backyard lightbulbs burned out. Since it's cold outside, when I turn one of them on, it's incredibly dim for a minute or so, but after that, the lights get incredibly bright, much much brighter than any of my neighbors' lights.
I have compact fluorescent bulbs in every bedroom, in my kitchen, in the bathrooms and closets, and outside. The only room where I still use incandescent bulbs is in my living room in two halogen-shaped lamps. For that room, I couldn't find compact fluorescents that weren't either much too bright or much too dim. I have used 40-watt equivalent, 60-watt equivalent, 75-watt equivalent, and 100-watt equivalent bulbs.
I've been impressed with the change in the quality of the lights. When I first bought compact fluorescents, their light was very yellowish, and made everything look strange. But as the incandescent bulbs have burned out, the quality of each new package of compact fluorescents has been noticeably better. And they last forever. None of the compact fluorescents I've purchased(20 or so) have ever burned out. The only reason I've replaced any has been because the newer ones produce nicer light.
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.'"
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.
I believe not all CFL's are quite made the same. Instead of looking at what they say they are "equivalent" to, check their Lumen output. Compare that number to your current incandescent lumen output. I have found that "60W rated" CFL's (light wise) have varying lumen outputs between different brands.
I've gotten 60W replacements with lumen outputs higher than the incandescents they replaced and they are indeed brighter (once they fully get going in 15 seconds).
Another thing to look for is the light temperature rating. 'Bright White', 'Soft White' & 'Daylight' are just some of the different light temperature ratings out there. The temperature of the light can give a different feeling of brightness for a particular room. For instance I replace the can bulbs in my kitchen with 65W equivalent CFL bulbs that were Soft White type temperature. They rather sucked. I then replaced those with the same lumen output but with temperature of Bright White, and the results were much better for that type of room.
Things to think about for sure.
I recommend the CFLs from Ikea - they are rated at 6W - and claim equality to the output of a 50W incandescent. They have a globe around them to look like traditional bulbs, and except for the color of light they cast, I was quite impressed with the quality and brightness- it was greater than many cheap ones I have around. They are about $3.50 each, but last forever under the right conditions in my place. The only thing is that they don't fit in some fixtures I have.
Most importantly, though, I noticed a drop in my bill immediately - greater than the cost of the 4 bulbs in one month.
Dammit Otto, you have lupus.
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.
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!
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.
Psst. That's because the incandescent it replaced was burned out.
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.
It depends on how you perceive light. An incandescent has a constant stream of photons whereas a fluorescent has spikes as the arc passes through the tube. Some fluorescents when new are 60Hz, some 120Hz, some ~10kHz. So depending on the density of rods vs cones in your eye and other genetic variants in their response time, and the way your brain interprets that data people can perceive far different quality of light coming from a fluorescent.
Some people see 60Hz fluorescent light as a solid white where others see it as a really fast strobe light. Also, as fluorescents age they start 'missing' and have a lower and intermittent Hz.
Like color blindness, if you don't have 'fast' eyes it is hard to believe that the bad fluorescents can make others physically ill when all you see is solid white.
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.
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.
Mythbusters did a test on this. For incandescent, compact fluorescent and LED, the turn-on power was so low as to be inconsequential for any normal use. Old-style fluorescent tubes did suck a lot of turn-on power, but IIRC it was equal to leaving the light on for about 12 seconds.
*raises hand*
I hate fluorescent lights because I'm prone to migraines and the constant flickering irritates me. I can tolerate 72hz or 75hz CRT monitors but can still see the flickering. I find 60hz CRT monitors downright painful after a few minutes - but have no problem with televisions. The reason I don't have problems with televisions is that they likely use a higher-persistence phosphor than computer monitors, plus I typically do not typically sit 18" from a television.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
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.
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.
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.
Tips & tricks:
1) CFLs don't typically work well on a dimmer switch or any faulty wiring. I've found two instances of faulty wiring in my home because of constantly blowing CFLs.
2) In Washington State, many companies (Lowes, Fred Meyer) have coupons for $2 off a CFL, up to 8 per person per trip. Albertson's, Lowes, Fred Meyer, Wal-Mart, etc. sometimes have sales with bulbs running about $2 each - free light bulbs! Stock up as you only have to pay the tax on them - comes out to aobut 18 per bulb depending on local tax rates. 3) The CFL coupons are available through various electric companies nationwide - not all areas have them. 4) CFLs contain a starter just like any fluorescent bulb. This is what makes them wear out when used with a dimmer. 5) Be careful about using CFLs near infants and children. The mercury CAN cause significant health issues. CFL, dimmer at night for the night light - can add to the mercury content for a child if the light blows up.
This is the problem with having legislators rule us. They don't always check the facts or dangers but require us to obey.
With electric rates being Federally deregulated in 2008, CFLs help NOW, but when consumption drops, then the electric companies can charge just a little more for less power. Seems like a good idea until you realize you pay just as much for 1/4 the consumption. Ingenious way of raising electric rates.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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 ----
A firestation in Livermore, California maintains the world's longest lit lightbulb http://www.centennialbulb.org/. Some things shouldn't be legislated.
So in other words, 'Do not taunt happy fun bulb.'
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
Just a thought...
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
No. Movies - as in, films you see at movie theaters - are 24 frames per second, which is doubled to 48 frames by flashing each frame twice. Television paints 1/2 the frame 60x a second, and every other frame is displaced one scan line up or down from the previous scan line. Film has no scan lines; just full frames that flash by at 48/second, really 24x2/a second.
Conversion of film to television does result in television scan lines and refresh rates.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
Physics gets in the way. We won't ever have anything that can replace incandescent bulbs. Discrete spectra will never be the same as a continuous spectrum, and the only way to generate a continuous spectrum is to heat a solid, liquid, or ultra-high pressure gas/plasma up to an extremely high temperature. Oh, yeah, and that's the definition of "incandescence."
Basically, what this law would mean is that instead of fixing the real problem (which is that we don't have enough clean power production and don't have enough power distribution in this state because our power production and distributions is run by a bunch of greedy corporations who are pumping that money into the pockets of the rich instead of recycling it back into infrastructure), instead they pass the buck, creating new problems for other people in the process. Ever try to take photos/video of your family in a house lit by CFLs? It looks like crap.
For that matter, can you imagine what a ban on incandescent bulbs would do to Hollywood? They'd have to move to another state. No, really. They would have to move to another state. While Videssence does make some special floods that are fluorescent (with a much larger number of peaks), my recollection is that they still don't produce colors as vibrant as old-fashioned halogens do. IIRC, the light also doesn't carry as far, so you need more of them, closer to the talent. Works fine for a news set where you can hang them three feet above the always-sitting anchors... not so much for a movie set.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see laws requiring manufacturers to come up with solutions that reduce power consumption for electrical appliances and electronics... but mandating the replacement of incandescent bulbs with those damn CFLs is NOT the right way to do it. That's the way to make every remotely sane person order incandescent bulbs by mail order and flip a big bird in the direction of Sacramento, thus resulting in MORE greenhouse gasses from the extra trucking.... So much for their "big savings."
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
"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 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.