Slashdot Mirror
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.
Hope they're putting a big recycling effort in place for used compact fluorescent bulbs.
[Insert pithy quote here]
When incandescent light bulbs are banned, the black market will flourish
I dont think that would happen... if stores are forced to sell only non-incandescent bulbs, that's what the majority of people will buy, if for no other reason than out of convenience.
How much effort are you willing to put into finding black market light bulbs?
Austrialia will do little to curb overall output, North America and Western Europe are the problems.
n _by_Region.png
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Carbon_Emissio
I also wonder what the environmental manufacturing cost of a CFL vs a plain lightbulb is.
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/
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.
My eyes and especially my ears are quite sensitive when it comes to those kinds of things, yet I have had absolutely no complaints about my Compact Fluorescent bulbs. Are you using CFLs, or old-school large-tube bright-white fluorescents that were installed back when Reagan was president?
Christ, if there's one thing I hate about being a geek, it's being lumped in with people who make up dramatic crap like eyes bleeding and ears panicking from flourescent lights. It's as if you're trying as hard as you can to invent shit to bitch about to make yourself stand out.
What is it that makes a noticeable percentage of us complete and utter idiots? Like Dwight from The Office (US).
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?
www.wavefront-av.com
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."
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.
Given that CFLs are in fact a pile of shit that are actually about half as "bright" as the packaging claims and take time to warm up before they produce even that, quite a lot of effort thanks.
Clearly you've never actually used them, just like regurgitating what someone with an agenda wants to tell you.
For your information they are extremely bright (in fact they're probably underrated - I find the '100 watt equivalent' ones too bright for an average room). They also work just like any other light and are fully bright immediately.
They are not fully bright immediately. They take several seconds to warm up to full brightness. It's noticeable. There's a slight delay between flipping the switch and any light at all coming out as well.
They also dim over time rather quickly. 8 years with a "100W equivalent" CFL bulb means 6 months of 100W equivalence, 2.5 years of 75W equivalence, and 5 years of 60W equivalence.
Furthermore, the color of every CFL on the market sucks compared to a GE Reveal bulb. Full spectrum light output just cannot compare with the peaky light output of a CFL.
"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.
Given that CFLs are in fact a pile of shit that are actually about half as "bright" as the packaging claims
So buy ones rated twice as bright as the ones you replace, and you'll still drop the electric consumption by half.
Oh, but then you'd complain that they look too bright and don't work well on a dimmer (the one fault I will grant CFLs still have, though they continually get better and can now go down to about 10% before stalling).
and take time to warm up before they produce even that
Uhh... No. The el-cheapo ones have perhaps a quarter second delay before they turn on, then maybe up to five seconds to "warm up". Better ones have no perceptible delay, and come on right at full brightness.
Y'know, I do oppose outright bans like this. But from reading Slashdot, I'd swear we live in a world where life-and-death hinges on people doing complex color matching within milliseconds of leaping into any and every room of their homes... "Nein! Your sample has 1.4% too much cyan. Your mother dies."
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