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Australia Outlaws Incandescent Light Bulb
passthecrackpipe writes "The Australian Government is planning on making the incandescent light bulb a thing of the past. In three years time, standard light bulbs will no longer be available for sale in the shops in Australia (expect a roaring grey market) and everybody will be forced to switch to more energy efficient Fluorescent bulbs. In this move to try and curb emissions, the incandescent bulb — which converts the majority of used energy to heat rather then light — will be phased out. Environmental groups have given this plan a lukewarm reception. They feel Australia should sign on to the Kyoto protocol first. A similar plan was created together with Phillips, one of the worlds largest lighting manufacturers."
For those with short memories, there's a legislator in California proposing the same idea, though over a five-year period instead of three.
I find the difference in approach interesting, though. The California proposal, judging by the press releases, seems to be about banning sale of incandescents. The Australian proposal is simply upping the energy efficiency standards to the point where incandescent bulbs no longer qualify.
Considering California actually has a higher population than Australia (estimated 36 million in 2005 vs. estimated 20 million in 2006), the California ban, if adopted, would actually have a greater effect.
It doesn't matter if you are trying to prohibit drinking alcohol or paying someone else for sexual favors, prohibition doesn't work -- all it does is create artificial scarcity which then develops a black market for the product or service. When alcohol was prohibited in the U.S., the mob was created. When incandescent light bulbs are banned, the black market will flourish, unless people see a real reason to switch.
We tried CFLs in my household and we hated them. We found some random buzzing issues, hated the color of our walls and furniture, and didn't really see a huge savings over incandescent because we turn off lights we don't use (and we use home automation in the bathroom and bedroom). I don't see how the Australian government can really enforce this law other than going after retailers who try to circumvent it. Putting the onus on the retailer will just make Australia that much less competitive -- you can bet that eBay.com.au will have thousands of listings for the old bulbs -- and there is no way that the Australian customs office can afford to search every box for illegal bulbs.
I'm sure it will work in the short run, but I wonder who is really behind this. It could be Phillips, who is sure to gain a huge profit from the mandate. Maybe it is the mercury disposal company that has a brother in office -- CFLs do contain mercury and need to be disposed of properly (I know there are alternatives, but the seem to reduce the cost-effectiveness of the bulb in the first place). When your CFL bulb dies, you're supposed to return it to the store for recycling or disposal. I'm sure everyone does that, right? *sarcasm* Of course, it is debated that coal-burning plants create a lot of mercury, but I assume that mercury is disposed of properly, unlike the mercury that is in your CFL bulb and ends up in the trash.
I prefer what Wal*Mart is doing -- working to convince the market that these bulbs MIGHT be better for them. I also wonder about the ancillary effect of the incandescent -- namely, heat. In the cold Midwest, I actually like reading under my incandescent lamp over my bed -- the warmth is nice, it is focused, and it is better than overheating my entire house. This way, I get just enough heat that I need when I am awake, as when I am asleep I can tolerate much lower heat requirements.
The other two problems with the CFLs is the ugly light they give off (although it is getting better), and how few of them fit into the lamps I have in my household. I also can't dim them (there are dimmable units now, I've heard), which we utilize all the time for effect, especially when watching movies or for social parties we host.
I'll take a prop bet with anyone here that the black market of light bulbs in Australia after 2010 will be very profitable -- and very easy to maintain.
Hope they're putting a big recycling effort in place for used compact fluorescent bulbs.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Your complaints about compact fluorescents are well-founded. Although, in reality, CF's will be replaced by much more efficient, and much prettier-light-producing, and even longer lasting LED's within the decade.
I don't respond to AC's.
Austrialia will do little to curb overall output, North America and Western Europe are the problems.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Carbon_Emissio
I also wonder what the environmental manufacturing cost of a CFL vs a plain lightbulb is.
Only Aussies will have incandescent bulbs.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
I think that a total ban, as all total bans, is really arrogant and short-sighted. After all, there are many decorative lights that will look simply horrendous with incadescent light bulbs. Aesthetics are important, and forcing people to make their households less appealing isn't going to help anyone live a better life.
Instead of a ban, let's create an economic pressure. Tax the incadescent light bulbs, so that they are significantly more expensive than compact fluorescents, and use the money for conservation. This way, the shift will be natural, and the people who prefer/need incadescent bulbs, can still purchase them, albeit at 10X+ the current price.
Thereby making almost any dimmer switch entirely useless, as well as forcing people to use CFLs in dimmer circuits that could damage them.
Brilliant, guys.
"Environmental groups have given this plan a lukewarm reception. They feel Australia should sign on to the Kyoto protocol first."
So Australia does something concrete, something difficult, by itself instead of signing on to a flawed international agreement with limited enforceability. And "environmental groups" are upset.
I'm shocked, I say! Shocked!
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Tax high wattage bulbs like 100W and up.
Better yet, establish a lumens per watt minimum and tax accordingly.
That way you don't force people away from certain technology, just the inefficent ones.
While they're at it, do the same for air conditioners.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
A tax on incandescnt bulbs would be better. 90% of the lights in my house or CFL. But a few lights are incandescent. Those lights have the fancy shaped bulbs. As a kid I used incandescent bulbs to keep the chickens warm in the winter.There are a lot of niche areas where CFLs make no sense. Don't outlaw incandescents, just tax them more. Then you get the energy savings and the minority of people that need incandescents can still legally get them.
http://www.windmeadow.com/
Unfortunately, there's also the environmental cost, as I see the probability of these being recycled at a high rate as a near-zero probability concept. People only do it with Cans because of the deposit. You'd NEED that to have it happen here, and even then plenty of mercury will be going into landfills. It'd be interesting to me to know what the current rate is with all types of fluorescent bulbs.
Recently I read that some Autistic people dislike fluorescent light bulbs because they can detect the light flickering, where as most other people do not. Although I support Australia's desire for greater energy efficiency, it seems a shame that so many could be adversely affected by this decision. Are there any alternatives for more stable light sources? DC lights and power supplies perhaps?
(I'm not autistic myself, but I hate fluorescent light sources).
Nothing sucks like a Vax, nothing blows like a PowerMac G4
in my Easy Bake oven.
I wonder how many hands people will have to lose before they consider allowing exceptions to this one?
Not a big risk in the home but in the UK at least, the wiring/lighting regs for industrial use say that adjacent flourescent lights must be spread across the three phase supply to eliminate the possiblity of the 'stroboscopic accidents' you suggest.
I tried CF bulbs a couple of years ago, for about three months. Three months (closer to four) is how long it took every CF bulb in the house to stop working. These things are supposed to last longer than regular light bulbs (LASTS OVER FIVE YEARS!!!!1 the packaging said) - but in my experience, they were vastly more likely to die during a power surge, power outage, or other form of "electrical event" than traditional bulbs.
:P
Of course, I rent a Fight Club house with old wiring, but that doesn't change the fact that the rest of my equipment (oldskool light bulbs, half a dozen computers, alarm clock, etc) is still plugging away. But I can't exactly put the ceiling fixtures on a surge protector.
So until I hear for sure that CFs will actually last on a power grid that looks more like an EKG than a nice straight line, I'm sticking with the older technology - I'd rather spend five bucks a year on lightbulbs than twenty bucks a month.
As for the OMG UR ELECTRIK BILLZ!! - I run my lights for about two hours a day, tops. Maybe four. I don't really live in my house, so the utility difference is nill.
"faster"??
sounds like he got the ones made of paper and dry twigs...
halogen? I'm looking at installing dozens of recessed halogen lamps in my home in the next few months. I plan on flipping the home, but I wonder if something like this will cause problems for those in the future. The bulb socket will only accept a halogen bulb. If they are no longer sold because of envromental reasons, the lights become useless and would have to be removed.
Could be frustrating for those in the future.
R.I.P.
Unfortunately, there's also the environmental cost, as I see the probability of these being recycled at a high rate as a near-zero probability concept. People only do it with Cans because of the deposit. You'd NEED that to have it happen here, and even then plenty of mercury will be going into landfills. It'd be interesting to me to know what the current rate is with all types of fluorescent bulbs.
1) People don't need a 'deposit' to recycle. In my area (Fairfax, VA), the trash company just has an extra bin they give us for recyclables. We don't get any money back directly. Maybe indirectly as a lower trash charge rate. It's the same for my relatives in Chicago.
2) When powered by Coal (as is the case in Australia), compact flourescents have less of a net mercury release, when compared to incandescents. This includes both the mercury contained inside of them and the mercury released by burning coal to power them.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Okay, so they ban the sale of incandescent bulbs. Fine.
Now, mind you, I have a house full of CF tubes. Every single bulb socket that can fit one, has one. I have also given presentations on the advantages of CF tubes, including in the presentation what the financial payback is of using these tubes. I believe in this technology greatly.
That said, what are you supposed to do for your refrigerator (where a CF tube will be at the double disadvantage of being cold and not running an appropriate duty cycle), or your oven (where the temperatures will be prohibitively high)? Will appliance bulbs still be available?
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I doubt very much that the preference for warm lighting existed prior to the widespread introduction of incandescent lighting. Before then, most people spent the majority of their time under 5000K light from the sun, and a much smaller portion (relative to the time we now spend indoors) with candles or gaslights. But the "warm" artificial lighting would definitely have been the exception, and daylight the rule. Now, it's almost the opposite way around; people perceive the light from incandescent bulbs as 'normal,' and bulbs that produce light that's actually similar to the big glowing thing outdoors as "cold" and "harsh."
There's probably some deep-rooted psychological link between lower color temperatures and "warmth," and associated feelings of security (because fires produce lower temperature light compared to the sun, fires = warmth and usually, safety), but I think most of it is social, and that we've acclimated to a home life that's lit by incandescent bulbs.
I switched my bedroom and home office to daylight fluorescent bulbs a while back, and after getting used to them, rooms lit with conventional (3500K) incandescent bulbs seem very 'yellow' and seem stuffy in comparison. The light from the fluorescents also blends much better with the natural light from the room's windows than the incandescent light did, and there's less of a change during the day (previously, during the morning when there was a lot of window light, it would seem very blue, then during the day as the sun would fade, I'd turn more incadescent lamps on to compensate, and everything would get yellow; now, when it gets dark, I put on the fluorescents, and it's just like turning the sun back on).
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
In California, the power companies subsidize the CFLs and there are huge displays in the major stores - six bulbs for a dollar. They don't want to build more generating capacity.
I've replaced all mine. Cheap. The instructions on the box say to put them in the recycle bin when used up. Easy.
What was the problem again?
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
All joking aside, the radio-interference issue is a non-trivial one to many people (including myself) who are concerned about mass producing a whole lot of anything that's going to possibly mess up the shortwave or HF radio bands. Luckily, most CFLs don't seem to be too bad. There are a lot of anecdotal reports of ham radio operators using them alongside HF radios without problems, and the manufacturers themselves seem to be cognizant of the problem.
In case anyone is interested in specific figures, there is a chart of RFI versus frequency from a typical CFL ballast here (go to the very end of the document for the graph).
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Actually, you can. When I had my fuse panel replaced with circuit breakers, I had them install whole-house surge supression. (they're installed in two of the circuit breaker slots, one for each leg)
There are also suppressors that don't go in the circuit panel
Either way, you're going to need an electrician, but it is possible.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
What about dimmer switches? Those don't work with energy saving light bulbs or areas of the house you need imediate light such as an attic/loft or basement? The idea is a good one but they need to sell regular light bulbs too.
If you like the idea of replacing incandescents with compact fluorecent bulbs, you might want to take a look at http://onebillionbulbs.com/. They are running a site that demonstrates the aggregate impact of light bulb replacements by groups and individuals.
Are you insane? I've been using compact flourescents for about 10 years. The first one burnt out about year ago. It was so odd I actually checked the breaker before trying a fresh bulb.
Now, the only reason I even knew about this was because of someone I know that suffers from it... http://www.lupus.org/education/brochures/photosens itivity.html
Skip down to the #3 in the "How can you protect yourself against ultraviolet light?" section and you'll see that this law could adversely affect those that have this condition.
Works fine in Ottawa where we've seen up to -40 with the wind chill this year.
They take time to warm up but they've worked flawlessly all winter for me and saved me a TON (read: paid for themselves) on my hydro bill.
The one I've got in the garage takes a few minutes to get bright but I'm not exactly hanging in my garage when it's -20 ya know??
I'm using the Phillips bulbs everywhere in the house, might want to give them a shot...
I Like Pie...
"Bright White" CFLs have a strong greyish tinge.
How the hell can LIGHT have a GREY 'tinge'? Definition: "To apply a trace of color to; tint." Most of the people I talk to who object to CF lights and how they "look funny", don't have a single one in their house. Your brain automatically adjusts to different color temperatures. I used to do theater lighting design, and this is (believe it or not) exploited by designers. One scene's overall temperature influences the next.
"Daylight" CFLs have a strong bluish tinge similar to the backlight of an LCD display. Ugly. Horrible for photography. Looks nothing like real daylight.
Tungsten bulbs have a significantly higher color temperature than normal incandescents. Daylight CFLs have one significantly higher than tungsten bulbs. Would it surprise you to know that photographers actually seek out the high temperature FL tubes for home-made lightboxes?
This is because, unlike you, they know how to properly set the white balance on their camera (hint: you need a grey card.)
This would make you want to slit your wrist if you sat under it all day. Totally useless for anything except killing yourself.
I have a "bright white" bulb in my bathroom, one in my kitchen, and one by my desk. The rest are "soft" white. You'll be happy to know that no wrist-slitting has occured in several months since moving in, and my landlord was shocked at how low my power bill was.
Please help metamoderate.
Yep. I bought them from lowes (american mega hardware store)within the last 6 months or so. In the stairwells with no windows are present and little other direct lighting shows, it is about as bright as a small flashlight for almost 2 minutes. Then everything brightens up and seems to be good.
It's the same in the kitchen that usualy didn't have any light untill someone would enter it. In the first few minutes it is almost impossible to read the directions from a cookbook or something. Then everything apears to get as bright as it should after a while. This was most noticable when going from the outside to the inside with just the brightness of your car lights bouncing around the garage. I actualy think it gets darker in the kitchen when going into the house.
Now i don't think we want to talk about high humdity situations like a bathroom with a shower. I havn't put cf's back in there but after taking a hot shower, if you turned off the lights, they sometime wouldn't come back on until you waited a few minutes (2-10 minuteS)I'm going to asume that humidity problem has been worked out because I didn't have the issue in the kitchen when testing the bulbs in there with pasta or potato water boiling.
Unless recently mean smething like the last couple of weeks, then Yep I have. I don't mean you wait ten minute before seeing the light at all, I mean you only get a fraction of the light until it warms up.
Gels work by subtracting wavelengths from the spectrum of light. CFLs have a spectrum with at most four sharp peaks, they do not radiate a full black body spectrum. There isn't anything between the peaks for the warming gel pack to subtract. Therefore, this is not a solution. The only solution is to add more types of phosphors to generate a fuller spectrum. This both adds to the cost and decreases the efficiency, however.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
There's a lot of incandescent bulbs that can't be replaced with CF. For example, the bulb in your oven, that sucker gets HOT. How about those little night-light style bulbs in the "water in the door" of many refrigerators? Just outlawing bulbs is short-sighted and will cause problems. Don't forget all those incandescent bulbs in cars, there's a bunch of them in there. I'd love to see a CF replacement for the dome light.
I also find it ironic, that other technologies that use lots of power aren't outlawed. There's lots of audio freaks that still use vacuum tubes. I've been known to weld metal which isn't very energy efficient, especially when I make something that sucks and I'll probably throw away.
The answer to this isn't to outlaw things, but to use economic means to change behavior. Make electricity cost more and people will treat it as a more precious resource. If gasoline was $5 a gallon instead of $2, I'd think twice before driving sometimes.
I lived in New Mexico a couple years ago, and they had lots of "save water" campaigns. Yet water was very cheap. Certainly a mixed message. I can see not wanting to raise the price of such a critical resource, but it could be done in a tiered fashion, such that the normal amount needed was cheap, but more than that gets expensive in a hurry.
Sheldon
This is because, unlike you, they know how to properly set the white balance on their camera (hint: you need a grey card.)
A gray card is more useful in terms of getting correct and consistent exposure. They were the tool of choice in film photography (although I still bracketed all my B/W). They are of limited use in colour correction however, it's much better if you know what kind of lights are there and can just adjust for that in the first place (e.g., I know the lights under the tradeshow roof for the auto-show I attend anually are pretty much Tungsten temperature: set it and forget it). Also, what works for the eye may not always match the data (e.g., how you remember the scene vs. how the scene actually appeared), so adjusting one image to 'look right' on a calibrated monitor and then adjusting the other images in a set accordingly may be more appropriate.
as for CFLs, the entire exterior of my house is CFL-lit and they look just fine. I also replaced all the lights in my garage with CFLs and it's actually brighter than the incandescents, with no flicker. I'll be moving inside with them soon with no complaint.
Because the sun is rising or setting, or (in the temperate regions) the sun sits low in the sky due to the season. And although I won't speculate as to why, people like that light. It's why photographers call the hour after sunrise and hour before sunset the "magic hours."
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.