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GE Announces Advancement in Incandescent Technology
finfife writes to tell us that GE has announced an advancement in incandescent technology that promises to increase the efficiency of lightbulbs to put them on par with compact fluorescent lamps (CFL). "The new high efficiency incandescent (HEI(TM)) lamp, which incorporates innovative new materials being developed in partnership by GE's Lighting division, headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, and GE's Global Research Center, headquartered in Niskayuna, NY, would replace traditional 40- to 100-Watt household incandescent light bulbs, the most popular lamp type used by consumers today. The new technology could be expanded to all other incandescent types as well. The target for these bulbs at initial production is to be nearly twice as efficient, at 30 lumens-per-Watt, as current incandescent bulbs. Ultimately the high efficiency lamp (HEI) technology is expected to be about four times as efficient as current incandescent bulbs and comparable to CFL bulbs. Adoption of new technology could lead to greenhouse gas emission reductions of up to 40 million tons of CO2 in the U.S. and up to 50 million tons in the EU if the entire installed base of traditional incandescent bulbs was replaced with HEI lamps."The California legislature may want to revisit the wording of their proposed ban on incandescents (AB 722). How about mandating a level of efficiency rather than assuming that innovation can't happen?"
There are times when you *need* incandescent lighting, photography for one. Fluorescent is not suitable in all cases. And initial costs of fluorescents are more because you need the ballast etc.
The fact that these lawmakers don't understand enough of the technology to make it workable really gets on my chimes.
Now, people may get another option in lighting. CFLs cause an annoying flashing in the corners of mine, and other peoples, eyes. Not to mention, some people like the "warm" yellow colour of common incandescents. Could be an intriguing development of lighting technologies.
I didn't know you could do this kind of thing on a schedule!
Make a difference: move to a swing state.
I wonder how long they've been sitting on this!
Sounds good and all, but when is this new stuff going to be at stores? If it's going to take 1-2 years before we see anything at the stores, won't CFL technology in turn have improved that much more by then?
Here's why. These are INCANDESCENTs. Glowing filliments. You can try to reduce the radiation in the UV and IR, but you aren't going to get rid of it. Running hotter (the Halogen way) ups the UV content which gets filtered out or flouresced down (and if you have a flourescent coating, why not just have a compact flourescent).
.14 kwh power cost), so that at the register you actually see what the bulb will cost.
This is mostly a Political Marketing statement, trying to forestall bans or taxes on incandescent bulbs, as although incandescents costs more in the long run, they are cheaper when you pay at the register so people still buy a lot of them.
Personally, I'd not want a BAN on incandescents, just a "wattage tax" on lightbulbs, say $4/100W tax on bulbs regardless of the mechanism (LED, CFL, incandescent). Just something equivelent to 1 hour a day use for 1 year (assuming
Test your net with Netalyzr
On the one hand, GE is the market leader in CFLs (thanks to Wal Mart) & is building another plant or two in China so they can increase production.
OTOH, each and every CFL is handmade, which is why they're so much more expensive.
My guess is that these HEI bulbs will be significantly cheaper, even if they don't have the same lifespan, which should make them a net plus. And you can put them into fixtures that CFls are either cosmetically or technically untenable.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Any clue, anyone? The press release is awfully skimpy on the details, and a quick search of GEs site reveals no additional documentation.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Good god I hope California does put in a minimum efficiency rather than just outlawing Incandescants....
I decided to be a good citizen and replace the burnt out bulb in my bathroom this weekend with a Daylight CFL that's rated at "42 watts but gives off as much light as a 100w incandescant". I put it in, turned it on, and could get the damned thing out of there fast enough. The light color just sucked... was far too "flourescent" for anyone to stand. I'm sure *someone* out there likes the sterility and coldness of flourescent light, but it sure ain't me and my wife. I went back to Home Depot, returned the bulb, and bough a high effeciency Halogen that takes 27 watts but puts out as much light as a 100 watt bulb. The perfect color of light, higher effeciency than the CFL, and lasts two years.... and it's an "incandescent" that would be outlawed.
How about mandating a level of efficiency rather than assuming that innovation can't happen?
How about charging for the abatement costs ($3 per ton of CO2 or whatever) and let people decide for themselves what activities are still worth it?
Remember efficiency is the ratio of value provided per input required. I accept that you can know the latter, but since you can't know the former, you can't really know what's inefficient for any on person.
Charging by the *output* you want to get rid of would cover all existing uses of energy and all future as-of-yet unknown energy uses, instead of scapegoating those who like incandescent light for the high energy consumption of Mr. and Mrs. Howmuchamonth in their giant home in suburbia.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Governments should not try to micromanage. They may want greater efficiency, but when mandating specific technologies, they risk stifling innovation. Bottom line, ratchet up the minimum efficiency level and leave it at that.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Well, the Aussies ought to go incandescent that their recent forward-looking legislation was a waste...
Hey, is this mic turned on?
So no mention of when they might go to market? Or if the pricing would be comparable to current incandescents?
While I realize there are certain instances where people want/prefer/need to have incandescents, I think a factor for most people switching to the CFLs is $$ upfront.
Or did I just miss that in TFA?
How much will they cost though....CFL's are about twice as efficient...but the majority of people still buy incandescent bulbs
"I have a 33 kilowatt modem."
LED's are the way to go if you ask me. Long life span, great performance, more color availability (more "soft" colors/natural looking lights). LED flood lights put out 200-300 lumens @ 7-11 watts of power. I replaced 16 external lights with LEDS and while it was a bit upfront cash my power bill has dropped drastically and no more whipping out the ladder every 2 months to replace burned out bulbs or ones damaged in the weather.
less garbage over the lifespan, less electricity, less footprint. Seems a dollar short and a day late if you ask me.
Looks like a scramble attempt to save their market, considering their competitors seem to have better control of CFLs. Either they have been sitting on the technology and are losing their bet on waiting to bring it to market, or they are close to it and are scrambling to delay the legislation to keep their cash cow.
This came along too quickly after the threat of a ban on their products for GE to have innovated this recently.
So why did it take the threat of a ban on their products before GE made this technology available?
Could it be that the cost of a tooling change was more important to them than our environment?
Everything is relative ...
... if you like the alternatives.
It might make sense to ban incadescent light bulbs in an area that is air coditioned.
It is just plain silly and pointless in an area (ie Seattle) that is primarily electrical resistance heating. (the "waste" heat of the bulb is NOT wasted.)
and I detest flourescent lighting.
LED lights are an interesting development but still too expensive.
Not necessarily. I have heard quiet running diesels that put out far less sound than a comparably powered gasoline engine -- and are cleaner burning and less vibration intensive as well. What can't be compared is an average engine in each power range -- there are way too many design variables to simply look at noise as an engine constraint.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
If memory serves, there is mercury in flourescents. So an improvement in the old bulbs would negate a new problem.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
assuming that inovation won't solve a problem* is the safest bet. because assuming it will is like assuming you will win the lottery so you can pay the bill for that half a million dollor boat you just got using your credit card.
*note i do not define global warming as a problem, but as a human induced change of the enviroment that we must adapt too.
If this is so wonderful, why is GE closing one the two remaining Incandescent light plants in the US? http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/business/stories. nsf/story/8D30EC3A4F735E358625728C000EE86C?OpenDoc ument
If these bulbs can be as energy efficient as they claim, and they can keep the good qualities of incandescents, then CFL's may become obsolete. The two major benefits of CFL's are reduced energy usage and increased life expectancy. These bulbs promise the same energy savings while keeping the benefits of traditional bulbs (instant on, color sprectrum, ability to dim, bulb type varieties). The only thing not mentioned in the article is the life expectancy. Newer CFL's last anywhere from 4-10 times longer than traditional incandescents. If these new bulbs can last 2-5 times longer than current incandescents and cost less than CFL's, then they may eliminate the need/desire for CFL's.
Somebody go! Somebody go! God almighty, somebody go!
Just tossing out this sort of paranoid conspiracy idea for the hell of it since it just popped into my head as I was reading.
What if there is some big elite conspiracy sitting on all this technology already but refusing to release it to the public? Like say efficient light bulbs, maybe some alternative to oil that could allow us to be independent but for reasons of power and control and profit taking this stuff is withheld. Then California comes along and enough people have some resolve to say screw it, We want electric cars, we're getting rid of incandescent light bulbs. Then with the most astounding and convenient utterly coincidental timing: "Hey guess what we just discovered/innovated.... efficient incandescent light bulbs" Wow isn't this great? Golly gee shucks ain't this great for all of us?
And with the profits from all these light bulbs GE can make more military tech so we can go have another adventure for the sake of "Freedom" etc... But I'm getting off on to a tangent, check out "Who killed the electric car?"... I'M feeling too lazy to dig up an IMDB link but it's probably on a torrent near you.
I'm just so jaded and cynical in my old age. I just can't believe it's innocent or dumb luck. I just have a feeling that somewhere there are a bunch of dirty rats and we need to call an exterminator.
The California legislature may want to revisit the wording of their proposed ban on incandescents (AB 722).
Anyone else find it curious that the timing of this announcement comes so close after California's proposal was announced? Is it really coincidence that these two things happen together, or did California's proposal create motivation for these guys to actualy do something with this tech that's been laying around going nowhere, perhaps it was thought to be too expensive or something for consumers to go for it without some "encouragment" such as what California is talking about? Was it found a while ago, and not developed to it's full capabilities, but now it's suddenly worth taking further?
W. has given a series of tax breaks to Coal and Oil and has our troops guarding major pipelines where the oil companies are having issues (Iraq comes to mind). In addition, he has dropped a number of needed environmental protections and possible fines. IOW, he has artificially lowered the costs of Oil and Coal. He is pouring money into hydrogen research, while trying to cut all other avenues.
OTH, there has been damn little incentives for nukes or Alternatives. Now you have states offering incentives for highly unprofitable solar or even ethanol production (which is still unprofitable)and saying that they will ban products. What is needed is for gov. to drop all the incentives and the playing games with picking techs. If they want to encourage us to move away from imports and dirty items, then simply increase the tax on a good in such a way that it encourages alternatives. In particular, rather than banning incandescents, a simple tax based on energy usage would have a much higher impact on creating alternatives. In fact, if they go the route of taxing the energy, then they should tax the pollutants such as the mercury. But this approach of gov. encouraging a particular tech is fool hardy and will lead us down the same road. Basically, it will put the west on a single type of tech which will give us the same damn problem.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Of course there should be skepticism, because it sounds like GE pulled some amazing innovation of out their subsidiaryhole just in time to fend off legislation.
Of course any legislation that talks journey rather than destination is misguided -- it is efficiency and other measurable metrics (e.g. amount of waste per unit, for instance) that matters, not how you get there. Putting specifics into the wording sounds more like some lobbyists got their money's worth.
Having said all of that, anyone who walks into a store and buys an incandescent is either a) stupid, b) very stupid, or c) they live in an apartment with unmetered electricity. I have a house full of CFs, and have had them for half a decade now, and not only is the colour pleasing with the modern ones, and there is zero flicker or start-up lag, but in the entire time I've owned CFs I've changed two whole bulbs, one being used outside in -25C temperature when it was only rated for indoor use.
I think the cost of proper disposal of any of these things, tires, batteries, bulbs should be built into the cost as a tax and kept as waste management fund. There should be an indenpendant agency to pay out from the fund to waste disposal companies who document the number of batteries, tires, bulbs properly handled by them.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
30 lumens/Watt. Thanks for coming out. Here's your little yellow "I Participated" ribbon.
There are prototype white LED's at 150 lumens/W, supposedly to hit 200 lumens/W by years end.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
True, Diesel's have come a long way in the noise department...but still, when you have pistons the sizes of a small child's head, it's difficult to make a Diesel quiet:-)
That said, I wish the US would switch over to more diesel engines...of course, what with the way American car manufacturers design their shit to die in 3-5 years, I don't think they want engines that last three to four times that sitting in their cars...
Living With a Nerd
Nice press release. Could this be low-pressure sodium vaporware?
"GE has announced an advancement in incandescent technology..."
It's amazing how quickly the threat of losing your core business to a new technology can drive innovation! Light bulbs have remained largely unchanged for how long? Suddenly there are promises of huge efficiency increases.
Are corporations that manufacture incandescent lights also invested in electricity producing companies? That would be about as good for efficiency as automobile companies owning stock in the oil industry...
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
"How about mandating a level of efficiency rather than assuming that innovation can't happen?"
How about letting *me* decide what kind of lightbulbs I can put in my own damn house?
I worked on a research project 25 years ago where they were trying to perfect applying an infrared-reflective coating to the outside of the glass. It would reflect the heat back to the filament and thus need less power to produce the same light. At the time it reflected about 35% of the IR but also absorbed about 20% of the visible. There were geometric issues as well as you need to reflect the IR back on the filament, not on to the other parts of the lamp. Also, the absorption of the visible caused heatiing of the glass whcih could lead to catastrophic bulb failure.
Probably this is a combination of that technology with a quartz-halogen cycle (which already gives about 30% better efficiency).
Because taxes are a much better mechanism than an outright ban. There are still reasons for incandescents (there are NO good chandileer style CFL bulbs, CFLs are less weather resistant, etc), and if those uses are worth something, they are worth an extra buck or two a bulb.
Test your net with Netalyzr
I agree that wording does make a difference when it comes to giving "progress" a chance. However, the 30 lumen per watt falls more than 50% short of what CFLs can produce today. It's just not good enough giving the state of our environment. Therefore, "improved" incandescent light bulbs are NOT the answer. Let's rather improve the production of LED's and cold cathode light bulbs so that they are available and affordable for the general public. Gerald
One thing that neither the article nor GE's own press release mention is if these bulbs will last longer than their traditional incandescent counterparts. I have owned one particular CFL bulb for over four years. It has been one of my primary light sources—in operation for tens of thousands of hours—and still works almost as well as the day I bought it. Traditional incandescent bulbs don't last anywhere near that long.
In buying the CFL, I've saved not only in electricity but also in replacement parts. If HEI is more efficient than incandescent but just as short-lived, then this is just another attempt by bulb manufacturers to continue their practice of selling a product that is almost designed to fail—only now they can increase the cost because it's "energy efficient." Until I see data on how reliable HEI is, I'm not investing in the technology.
At our school, we don't earn a degree when we graduate—we earn pi/180 radians
Looking at patents this is the only one that seemed like it might be the proposed technolgy.
http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT6967443
Essentially reflecting the IR portion of the light back onto the filament to reduce power requirements.
Anybody else have any ideas about the technology?
This is a case of awkward good timing, given California's and other's desire to ban the incandescent light bulb entirely.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Because the bulb physics are VERY well known, its classic black body radiation.
You can make them more efficient by running them hotter (its how halogens work), and this breakthrough is probably a similar high-temperature filliment strategy, allowing you to get the halogen efficiency (better than a standard incandescent but worse than a CFL) out of something fitting in the standard incandescent form factor. But you can't beat direct radiation technologies (CFL, LED).
Likewise, I'd bet that these bulbs are deep in the blue, hardly the "warm light" (which is a cool color temperature) that people profess they like better about incandescents.
Test your net with Netalyzr
For about a century, three companies have largely cornered the market on incandescent light bulbs. And what a great cash cow. Fragile, short-lived consumable commodities - found in every home and business. You can't live without them and you can't make your own. Captive market.
But now, new companies have finally broken into the market and newer technologies - like compact florescent and LED - are finally take off, in a big way. CFL sales are throught the roof this year. Looks like the market is no longer cornered and captive.
And lo, at this moment moment, one of the original Big Three presents a more efficient incandescent bulb. Patented, of course.
What amazing timing. What a coincidence. Somebody up there must like GE. I just wish it happened a few decades earlier.
I have tried some modern CFL bulbs quite recently. They suck. I for one welcome our efficient incandencent patent holding overlords.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
The press release makes no mention of how long these bulbs will operate. Historically, high efficiency and long operating life are a design trade-off with incandescent filaments. You get one at the expense of the other.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
True, Diesel's
Diesel's what? His engine?
have come a long way in the noise department...but still, when you have pistons the sizes of a small child's head, it's difficult to make a Diesel quiet:-)
I'd beg to differ. A Lexus RX330 we have stabled here has obnoxiously noisy gasoline injectors which are far louder at idle than a friend's Jetta TDI (Volkswagen Turbo Diesel). Not all Diesel engines are built by Caterpillar.
Primary stumbling blocks to Diesel adoption her in the states have been our strict particulate and NOx emissions rules, particularly in California and other states that have adopted California Air Resource Board rules. Urea injection will help to solve the NOx problem, and ultra-low sulfur and advanced fuel injection technologies will do the rest.
Audi's Diesel-powered direct injection race cars are loud - but they also won LeMans this year. Diesels look to be on the verge of a very big comeback, and a lot of money is being dumped into these efficient petrochemical engines.
Like the Diesel engine, the incandescent bulb is a product which can be made far more efficient and competitive while retaining it's inherent advantages - but only if the makers of these products are sufficiently goaded into investing in the R&D to make these advances happen. Australia and California, by proposing CFL-only laws to save energy are providing that incentive.
Okay, they'll cost less than the $1.50/ea that GE CFL's cost in six-packs at Wal-Mart today. Will they last as long too? Just how will their overall cost of ownership compare to CFL's is what I'd like to know.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Can you say 18:1 compression?
That's not what makes the noise. The noise is because diesel combustion is extremely rapid and violent - the characteristic diesel clatter comes directly from the explosion - this is why the parts for diesel engines are made so robust. Modern car diesel engines control the combustion much more precisely and produce very little clatter, which can mostly be heard at idle when there is no road noise.
when you have pistons the sizes of a small child's head, it's difficult to make a Diesel quiet:-)
I know of no diesel car engines with pistons the size of a small child's head. We're comparing diesel car engines with gasoline car engines, not heavy truck engines right? Even the Cummins 5.9 in the Dodge pickups doesn't have pistons that big. My friend's VW diesel has pistons that are quite small, but once again the sound comes from the combustion event - not the engine parts.
What we're waiting for now is diesel car engines that meet the new emissions requirements, and after reading technical papers about the after-treatment systems required, I'm not sure I'd want one. Once system (to be used by Mercedes and other makers) requires a separate tank of some nasty liquid like urea which is injected into the exhaust - if the car runs out of this stuff, the computer won't let you drive the car any more.
Probably California and other places who want to ban incandescents causing GE to put more money into this type of R&D. They probably were looking into it a little while CFL's were first starting to gain real marketshare, but this is probably pushing them well along.
CFL's have been doing their little turn on R&D as well, with Full Spectrum and dimmable now available, incandescents have only a few advantages left over CFL's, and CFL's have some notable advantages over incandescents as well so the choice quickly turns into either price or preference. I'd gladly pay a few extra $$$'s just to not have to replace the light bulb so often, and with the CFL's I have I haven't replaced them in years.
[quote]The California legislature may want to revisit the wording of their proposed ban on incandescents (AB 722). How about mandating a level of efficiency rather than assuming that innovation can't happen?"[/quote]
maybe because these bastards have probably been sitting on this technology for years and only brought it out when their business was threatened. Because they did not let the market decide, they deserve what they'll get if the CA legislation goes into effect. ie, replaced by a bunch of CFL manufacturers who've put their money where their mouth was.
Tax tax tax, that's all some of you people seem to want. Yet another way to take money out of our pockets, most likely to spend of programs the majority would never agree to in the first place. (Hint: If the majority did agree it was a wonderful idea, we'd probably already be doing it.
Where your hasty plan fails is that it doesn't take into effect the different lifespans of the different lighting technologies. If someone wants to burn 40W incandescent for whatever reason, instead of 40W CFL, why should they have to pay TWELVE TIMES AS MUCH (given the relative lifespans of the two technologies) for one over the other? You can't tell me that's fair.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
There's a very well established bit of physics about the spectrum of a hot object. If the spectrum has most of its power in visible light, like sunlight, there will also be a significant tail of ultraviolet (which is why you need sunscreen), and the source will be so hot it vaporizes.
There are some workarounds, like halogen bulbs that recycle boiled-off tungsten and have a quartz envelope to block UV. But the physics is fundamental.
Except there's a key assumption behind that curve, which is that the material itself emits and absorbs all wavelengths completely and equally. The term is "black body". Alter that assumption and the results change. What if GE's found a material that emits poorly in infrared? Then it won't have a black-body spectrum and there's an opportunity to move more output into visible light at any given temperature.
That would certainly help our trade balance with China a bit, since current CFL tubes are mostly made by hand over there.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
How about a law that prohibits the whitholding of new advances in tech. Such as a car company or an energy company waiting till it becomes controversial or profitable to release "new developments" in technology.
In my neighborhood we have weekly recycling pickup for all kinds of paper, cardboard and for plastic, steel and alum containers. The trash company provide collection containers "free" of charge. They also charge extra if you have more than one of their wheeled trash cans.
Less than half my neighborhood recycle and are obviously happy to pay extra (for more trash capacity) to avoid doing the right thing. More than half of our waste gets recycled and we're just bought a compost bin to reduce that even more.
People will show up in droves to protest the expansion of the local landfill but when it comes to actually cutting their own landfilling they don't seem to care.
Sounds good to me. You should always legislate for the effect you want, not the method of getting there.
Of course, if they did mandate the same level of efficiency as a CFL, then the first generation of these new incandescent still wouldn't qualify. I know there are uses where incandescent is preferable, but for everyday use, alternatives really should be used. After all, standard incandescent bulbs are only 5% efficient. (That means 95% of the energy going in comes out as heat instead of light. And since it's supposed to be a light bulb not a heat bulb, that's pretty darned inefficient.)
Heck, even CFLs are only 20% efficient. I want a 50% or higher efficiency bulb!
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
A 40 watt incandescent bult typically puts out about 500 lumens.
I ordered a couple of LED light bulbs to try out. The tech just isn't there yet except for accent lighting and other applications where relatively dim lights are acceptable or the light is directional (spot lights, flood lights, etc.).
It's a shame, though, because they're supposed to last 3x to 4x as long as CF bulbs which last a heck of a lot longer than incandescents.
I feel that both GE's weak attempt at politically influencing a delay in the inevitable transition to CFL's and the spin on this 'story' by slashdot staff; are more about greed and desperation then anything else. CFL's use way less energy, last longer, and are just plain better all around; from almost every perspective..... people nowadays just aren't careful, motivated, or smart enough to act on it.
Look, you may need to take a few hours some week and find out for yourself exactly what the deal is. Read, Interpret, Decide, Act RIDA, suka.
I'll make you a deal. You pray to God for help and I'll stop the moment he shows up.
It's amazing what can motivate you when the world's largest retailer doesn't want to carry your product anymore.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrasound/
Typical tungsten bulbs are about 15 lumens/Watt. The HEI described get only 30 ln/W. Your old stand-by T12 fluorescent tube in the drop ceiling troffer of a old style cube farm get 50 lm/W. Currently available T5 tubes get 100+ ln/W with improved performance on the way. There are dimmable CFLs out there. Controlling fluorescent brightness is very simple in modern high frequency electronic ballast with PWM. The reason you do not see more dimmable CFLs is due to the small increased cost. In the long run, CFLs are a less optimized solution compared to separating the ballast from the bulb as you might see in many commercial (and some residential) recessed can fixtures. Why replace the ballast every time the bulb goes (hint: CFLs fit into existing sockets)? Also, the old color, flicker and lifespan issure are a tthing of the past with modern electronic fluorescent ballasts. While great tings are promised in LEDs (>150 lm/W), the best LED bulbs that I've seen are only 25 ln/W, but I'm sure there are better out there.
. . .a Beowulf cluster of these?
"If your parents never had children, chances are you wonât either." -Dick Cavett
Recent, name-brand CFLs have mostly acceptable color rendition. Where you will notice their shortcomings is with deep red objects, like red velvet. These usually appear as brown or magenta under triphosphor CFLs, because there is simply no real red in the spectrum.
Now, there are halophosphate and mixed halophosphate/triphosphor lamps which achieve > 90 CRI, but they trade off brightness. Chroma 50 tubes come to mind.
People like to mention LEDs as a solution. They're great for low-intensity lighting, but if you want something truly bright, you'll find you have problems with heat dissipation.
For those who like truly ugly AND wasteful (but retro!) lighting, try an uncoated, self-ballasted mercury vapor lamp. 160 watts and slightly less efficient than a standard incandescent.
TANSTAAFL
If all the incandescents were changed to compact florescents not only could every home in amercia charge their electric cars without needing more plants and their electric bills would actually go down.
So your saying all the incandescent bulbs in a house use more electricity then charging an electric car?
http://Lenny.com
It's PERFECTLY fair.
What the tax is doing is placing the hidden costs of a product back squarely in the lap of the original consumer. Instead of getting something cheaper based on what it's going to do to the rest of us, they get to bear the full cost of what they're doing themselves upfront so they can't weasel out of it.
"Bill" it as their share of the environmental cleanup or extra power generation associated with their product choice.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
From the article: "GE has invested more than $200 million in the last four years on the development of energy efficient lighting, including reduced-powered Miser® light bulbs"
:P
The Miser series are nothing more than lower-wattage incandescents. Their marketing for them was something like "Here's a 68 watt bulb, it uses less energy than a 75 watt bulb!" It's great that they've got this new technology and I certainly will give it a try once available, but I sure hope that most of that $200 million they spent was used on this developing new bulb and not so much on just marketing a dimmer bulb
Would GE have even bothered had it not been for the flourecents breathing down their neck?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Sometimes you don't want fair - that's why income redistribution is so popular in all civilized countries. I prefer to drop my standard of living a minor amount to not have my neighbours living in squalour. It's not about fair.
While I happen to know Compact Fluorescents Lamps are not rated over 50,000 hours, I do get over 50,000 hours.
The trick is to not turn them on and off.
In my office I let them burn 24x7. Here is why... I have 3x13watts. That is 39 watts total. 39*24 = 936 watt hours per day which costs me under 5 cents. This is $1.50 per month.
I need the lights on when I am in the office and I'm in and out at least 12 hours a day. So the max I could save might be 8-12 hours when I'm not in but when I'm not in is not all that predicatable.
Next, since I live in Canada I'm in a heating area and this house has inadequate insulation. The waste energy from the bulbs helps offset some of the gas bill.
This offset is greater than 50% in fact. So I would save maybe 25 cents per month by turning the bulbs on and off.
So... I am energy inefficient ( a little ) and splurge the light. I offset this by not using a screen saver on my computers because screen savers don't save screens - they drive the electronics at probably pretty close to full tilt and wear out the screens. Instead my screens go blank after 5 mins. I get similar life on my screens... over 50,000 hours. As for my computers - well - they are probably getting close to or over 100,000 hours and I don't turn them off ether. But then I don't use silly hot processors like the P4's either.
My point... an incandecent will get maybe 1000 hours. I'm getting more than 50 times this on the CFL's.
If each incandenct costs $1 buk then it would cost me in capital about $50 bux for a single incandecent bulb over 50,000 hours and then I need to consider the energy use.
Capital costs for 3 incandecents is going to run $150 over 5 years and 50,000 hours. However they can be flipped on and off without reducing life so maybe its only $100 bux total costs. (and maybe more too since my incandences never seem to last 1000 hours!)
With the CFLs over 5 years = 60 months so the electricty cost is $1.50 per month for the 3 bulbs in my office for a total (not discounted) cost of $90 bux. Energy costs for 3x40 watt (new high efficiency) would be expected to be 3x greater than the CFL's which is about $270 bux.
Since the CFL's cost me under $30 bux to buy - it looks to me they are about 1/3 the cost or less.
To be very honest a nickle a day is a bit under the radar so I didn't do the calcs in a great deal of detail.
Fluorescent lighting can trigger migraines for some people.
I don't understand it myself, but Google is starting to pull up older results lately. Last search pulled up an old reference on Nov 30, 2003 to "getting on my chimes". Strangely, no results at all in Google Groups (Usenet).
Most references I've seen have lacked any context to warrant such a bizarre turn of phrase leading me to believe that this is some kind of troll across multiple forums, possibly some obscure cultural reference perpetuated by people only just getting it.
It's highly suspicious that it is Anonymous Cowards doing it here. I have to wonder if it is being done to increase impression revenue for whoever has registered "chimes" as a Google AdSense word.
In any case, if I had mod points right now, I'd be modding these chiming trolls as such. It's clearly disruptive as it's spawning discussion of the phrase instead of the articles.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
I don't think you know what that word means. They don't "start instantly." Every time I turn one on in a darkened room I have time to wonder if it is burned out before it begins to produce light. The delay is short but very irritting. Even after "turning on" the bulbs take almost a full minute to reach full brightness. That has to improve before CFLs are acceptable replacements for incandesants.
By the way, are Californians being forced to use CFLs in car headlights and flashlights, too?
> Having said all of that, anyone who walks into a store and buys an incandescent is either
> a) stupid, b) very stupid, or c) they live in an apartment with unmetered electricity.
Lots of reasons to buy an incandescent light. Lights that see very short on cycles, i.e. closets, second bathroom, etc. Anywhere the cost of the actual power consumption is small compared to the cost of replacing a much more expensive light that has a service life that depends far more on on/off cycles than power on hours despite the ad copy on the package talking about how many years it will last.
Any application where the spectral qualities of the light source matter, i.e. photography is another must use incandescent light situation. I can promise you that if idiot Democrats outlaw incandescent lighting they will either make an exception for professional photography/cinematography or watch a large black market operate in the open in Hollywood and Madison Ave.
Now about that 'smarter than thou' attitude of yours? Why don't you just STFU ya ignorant savage.
Democrat delenda est
...where best intentions meet ill-conceived ideas--at least where legislation is concerned (social security, education funding, and many many more areas come to mind). Now they've mandated the use of a specific technology (fluorescent lighting) to address a general concern (reducing energy consumption). I know that in general politicians tend to be short-sighted but the good people of California seem to actively search out the most short-sighted and generally dense people on the planet to install into government. "The Governator" has been fairly capable in office however he doesn't have to achieve much to stand out amongst the rest of the mental midgets surrounding him.
It would've been much better to craft a law mandating WATTAGE LIMITS on residential and commercial lighting (per fixture, or per-square footage to meet minimum brightness requirements within that space) such that it would be impossible for traditional incandescent bulbs to pass regulation. Without naming specific technologies the law would allow other technologies such as this new "high-efficiency" incandescent technology, LEDs and so on to be more easily adopted.
So what makes Fluorescents a poor choice for mandated low-energy lighting? How about:
1. Fluorescent bulbs require relatively complex circuitry to be dimable. There are a lot of places that use dimmer switches on lighting that are not compatible with CF bulbs. Not only do these people have to buy expensive CF bulbs but they also have to buy and install significantly more expensive dimmer switches as well.
2. Fluorescent ballasts can be noisy--they can buzz like large power transformers. CFs, especially newer ones, are very quiet but in a large area where many are on at once there still can be a perceptible noise.
3. Fluorescent bulbs flicker--much the same way as CRT monitors and televisions do. Some people can actually perceive the flicker of fluorescent lights and CRTs and extended exposure can cause eye fatigue and headaches. The technology is better now to reduce the human perception of this flicker but it is still far from acceptable in many applications--most notably in film and video production. The flicker is nearly impossible to reduce to a point where video and film equipment will not pick up at least some interference.
4. Fluorescents cannot put out very "pure" light--this is again a problem in film and video work. Regular fluorescents make everything look green and new "warm" bulbs are just as unbalanced--just in a different part of the spectrum. Incandescents are much superior for such work as the light from them is more "wide spectrum" and can be made more balanced.
5. Other technologies that are emerging seem to have more long-term potential. LEDs do not need a ballast and are even more efficient than CFs, and now incandescents are being made to consume much less energy and also require no expensive components like the ballast of a fluorescent bulb.
Australia competes with California for having the densest politicians as well it seems--they want to mandate the use of fluorescents as well. I've heard somewhere that there is a state in Australia that requires you to get a permit to change a light bulb, or else have a licensed electrician do it for you. Is that really true? Perhaps it was the same dim-wits that came up with that idea who are at it again.
I remember reading, quite a while ago, about some incnadescent lights that were about the size of a golf ball, yet just as bright, if not brighter, than those big 'ol metal halide or mercury vapor lights they use at stadiums and convention centers. I don't remember what it was called, but it had a very efficient miniature magnetron in it.
I really wish I could remember what it was called. I saw them used a a convention hall somewhare and they were as bright and white as anything else I could remember seeing. They were *TINY* but oh-so-powerful!
Any engineers out there who could recall hearing about the same sort of thing?
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
They might be using tungsten photonic lattice technology. Note that this is an article from 2002, and claims a similar efficiency.
That sounds like a match for the claims.
At first I thought they were talking about another, lower-tek way they've had for decades to get the same boost - also by trapping the IR until it happens to come back out as visible light - but that one makes the bulbs more expensive to fabricate. (It didn't deploy because the power savings didn't justify the extra cost. But if the basic bulb was banned by cost-is-no-object legislation it might make it a practical alternative to shutting down the production lines.)
The older device consisted of a spherical bulb with the filament at the center and a layered dilectric coating that reflected infrared and passed visible. The reflected infrared focuses back on the filament, heating it (and thus replacing the power that would have been wasted making infrared that just flies away). Neglecting inefficiencies, heat energy can only radiate away in the visible, rather than mostly as useless heat-lamp infrared.
Same basic idea, except that instead of trapping the IR in the filament in the first place this older system returns it after it leaves.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
> How about mandating a level of efficiency rather than assuming that innovation can't happen?"
... it's also to uncouple the gasoline from the drive train so that the car becomes agnostic about its energy source and the gasoline part can be replaced more easily with a fuel cell or battery or whatever other technology. The hybrid has room to grow and improve whereas a non-hybrid car getting great mileage is still stuck on gasoline. It's just a band-aid to cling to an old technology like gasoline or incandescent bulbs.
The reason people assume innovation can't happen is that it hasn't happened in incandescent light bulbs.
Anyway, twice as efficient is bullshit. Incandescent light bulbs are so outrageously inefficient that you are still wrecking the planet even with these new vaporware bulbs.
Banning incandescent bulbs will only spur innovation in LED and other modern solutions. Complaints about the quality of light are very valid, but when you have an LED bulb that is generating the same brightness as an incandescent and the LED is using 1% of the power and has 1000x the lifespan then it is time to get the incandescent bulbs out. You can replace an incandescent with an LED and still have power left over for a notebook computer with dual processors.
These new incandescent bulbs make me think of a non-hybrid gasoline car that ekes out 50 mpg so "you don't need a hybrid" but the point of the hybrid is not just to double the gas mileage today
This poses an interesting issue for the marketers to tackle once this goes to market. Hopefully they will be able to properly convey the "light output" as the deciding factor rather than the wattage.
I guess it's a good thing we try passing a law outlawing Incandescent Lightbulbs. Oh wait, we did. An I got modded as a troll for tagging (beta) it another example of a kneejerk (emphasis NOT on Knee) idea.
Perhaps we don't need to create a law to force people to do something without first giving it a lot of thought. Shame on slashdot for not jumping all over this right away. Imagine, slashdotters supporting a law that protects company profits without considering a technological solution.
I wonder if this story will teach us anything? I'm pretty sure I've discovered the secret formula to getting -1s and 5's. Just make fun of corporations using the legal system to force people to buy certain products they feel are important nets you +5. Make fun of the government trying to force you to buy certain products they feel are important nets a -1.
And here I thought being forced to buy anything was bad no matter what. Silly me.
"I'm not for a ban, but a tax that gets people out of vehicles which are too large for them to competently drive can only be a good thing."
Tax windows users. That should get them "off the road". Anyway all these "taxes" for the purposes of social control is why the tax code is as complicated as it is, and it conflicts with the "flat tax" idea.
In particular, rather than banning incandescents, a simple tax based on energy usage would have a much higher impact on creating alternatives.
I already pay such a "tax" - and so do you. It shows up on your electric bill.
More energy, more bux.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Ha, great point about marketing and Miser ;)
;)
;)
I'm curious why it took 125 years to rework the light bulb -- no one had any bright ideas?
The linked story isn't detailed enough to gauge if GE was sitting on the concept and recently pulled out the design papers because of government _or_ if they have been actively trying to discover new design and production methods. I'm curious what GE's level of R&D actually is or if the story isn't simply PR hiding that they've only now (reluctantly) decided to develop previously known research because regulation (not market pressure) forced them.
It is an important distinction because it helps to clarify the difference between efficient and lazy markets vs. useful or bad regulation as either relate to innovation.
Best,
Joey
ps: I know it didn't take 125 yrs to rework the light bulb and there has been light bulb innovation since then, especially those wider spectrum bulbs
I've gone through a bunch of different CFL bulbs, trying to find one I liked. I'd been using the GE Reveal bulbs, and found them a minor improvement over "regular" bulbs, and I didn't want to take a step back with CFL.
The best ones I've found so far are the Sylvania "Daylight Extra" bulbs. They're marked 3500K, so they're really not "daylight" bulbs, but that's okay, since I think the 5600K bulbs all look way too blue. I don't really have a lot of red stuff in my house right now, so I haven't noticed how well or poorly they render reds.
I actually slightly prefer the color of these bulbs to the Reveals, or the Phillips Natual Light bulbs, thought they do have a little start-up lag, and they need 30 seconds or so to warm up. Plus I liked that I could replace 300w of incandescents in my dining room fixture with 65w of CFLs.
It's _not_ available, and won't be until 2010. The threat of bans may have been a reason for the press release, though.
It's also a good reason to rehack the legislation as GE would like: Mandating efficiency levels but not technology.
If they suddenly can't sell ordinary incandescents in, say California (with something like a fifth of the US population), but COULD sell twice as pricey high-efficiency bulbs (which aren't a good deal in competition with ordinary types), bet on a crash program to get the fancy-dans into production.
And once you're selling 'em by the millions you can justify spending some bux to improve the process and reduce the cost.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
So why didn't you ask to see your "bulb of choice" in action? I've been to Home Depot and they have a big lighting section with all manner of bulbs and fixtures on display. And if they don't have your bulb on display, they can screw one in for you and turn it on.
CFLs create light from phosphors, each of which emits a very narrow band of light. Mixing three very narrow bands of light to give "white" is not the same thing as having a continuous spectrum. For instance, a direct beam of pure yellow light hitting your eye may look exactly the same as a mix of pure red and pure green light. But shine those beams against a yellow background and you will see the difference. The yellow pigment absorbs all but yellow wavelengths and reflects those. Trouble is, there are no yellow wavelengths in the mix of red and green light. The red and green are absorbed, and the yellow pigment looks like dark gray, not yellow.
You can get CFLs in any color temperature, but a warm CFL is not the same as a warm incandescent. Incandescents give off a black-body spectrum.
Unfortunately, adding more phosphors to make CFLs emit a more balanced light makes them much less efficient.
There absolutely is a downside. Many people won't notice the difference, but some will, and if people are willing to pay a fair premium to offset the cost of their energy inefficiency, they should be able to. And they WILL be able to, thanks to the wonders of the free (black) market.
Ubuntu Dupe has me marked as a foe but I don't really care. He's right. He has a good plan that will actually work and a very valid reason for not wanting to use CFLs.
P.S. a little research on the web shows the best CFLs have a CRI of 94 and use six phosphors, not just three. The best possible CRI is 100, from full spectrum incandescent bulbs or the sun. 94 is pretty damn good, so now I am now thinking UbuntuDupe's major beef is more along the lines of "You can't tell me what to do!"
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
We developed these bulbs many years ago, but since these bulbs require us to retool and have a lower profit margin for us we decided not to introduce them until we had market pressure. Welcome to capitalism.
DK
They may not be out to get you, but they are out to get your money.
Groovy! Smashing! Yay capitalism!
Your mind is squeezed by a blast of pain!
I would think we'd also want to take manufacturing energy resources into the picture as well; do CFLs need many more resources that aren't necessarily reflected in their final retail price as compared to incadecents?
;)
Though, I'm not entirely sure how relevant the answer is because any amount of production energy to create something which uses less runtime energy is probably desirable in environments where non-renewable resources provide the energy (coal; though, there's still a lot of that dirty stuff). It is similar to the idea of "using the remaining oil to make plastic solar cells so that we still have power when the oil runs out"
Where do you see that in my logic???
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
I don't know the relative energy costs per unit of manufacture for the two technologies, it may be that these newer globes will be cheap enough per unit to manufacture, but if it did work out that incandescents cost twelve times as much over their entire lifetime including manufacture, it would be completely reasonable to tax them twelve times as much.
If you argue against banning incandescents _and_ taxing them, it suggests that either you are naive enough to think everyone will stop using them out of the goodness of their hearts, or you are entirely selfish and have little regard for your country or the future of your society.
Incandescant globes are an inefficient 19th century technology and are known to be an unecessary drain on the worlds electricity production at a time when our energy production appears to be having dangerous effects on weather patterns. If it is better for people to stop using them, how is that achieved if not through either a ban or taxes?
A ban disadvantages people who have a ligitimate need to use them, such as photographers, or creates loopholes and unfair exceptions. Taxes create a disencentive to buy and run them and puts money back into society through the government, through tax cuts elsewhere or incentives for major works to build clean energy generators, for example.
In the long run you get the benefit, as does your state or your country. Crying foul about taxes like the one proposed by the GP shows a distinct lack of a social conscience and actually appears incredibly unpatriotic. To take an extreme view, it suggests you would prefer to do away with government as a check on capitalism, to go the anarcho-capitalist route, which if you really think about it, legitimises terrorism as an instrument of political power. So quit whining about taxes.
As for the tech in TFA, brilliant (pun intended). It looks like it'll still be less efficient than CFL, but it's a step forward and makes applications that require incandescants more efficient. It creates a good argument for a tax on energy to my mind.
I don't therefore I'm not.
Actually, the proposed Australian laws are based on efficiency levels. If incandescants can achieve these efficiency levels, they will be legal. Hence the incentive is there for incandescant research.
The flip side, however is that you can't just wish problems away or ignore them. Good engineers actively seek out the problems and figure out how to address them or work around them.
The trade press etc is full of all kinds of hype suggesting that there are silver bullets: "Use Product X and all your development problems will go away". The good engineer is no more fooled by this than the Good Housewife believes that Brand X detergent really gets your whites whiter than white!
Often the devil is in the details. A good engineer will know this.
Those of us who've been around a bit have seen a lot of activity from companies both large and small where the PR is better than reality (MS is an obvious candidate here, but almost all companies etc have a vested interest in what they are doing and telling us about). Is Bill Gates really a philanthropist or is he trying to buy karma?.
So, forgive me for restating your 3Ps in a more positive but meaningful terms:
Detailed (previously pissy): Ignore the details at your peril.
Cautious (previously pessimistic): Sure there are potential advantages, but look at the whole picture. Don't get sucked in without a healthy appraisal.
Skeptical (previously Paranoid): Why are they telling me this? What are they not telling me? What's their game plan?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
would be to deposit wavelength-selective reflective films on the inside envelope surface to direct IR and UV energy back to the filament, allowing visible light to pass through. This would cause the filament to run hotter than it otherwise would for a given amount of electrical power input. It follows that you could then reduce the amount of electrical power needed to attain the "normal" incandescent filament operating temperature.
You would need a directional reflector to get the reflected radiation back to the filament. You could do this by patterning the envelope surface with small corner reflectors. Orthogonal corner reflectors direct incident light right back to its source, regardless of the incident direction (so long as it's within the acceptance angle of the corner pit).
The corner reflector technology is used in such common items as traffic reflectors. Dielectric bandpass mirror stacks are old news as well. Given that around 90+% of the radiation from a hot filament comes off beyond visible range, you could recover a large chunk of power if you picked off this waste radiation and sent it back to the filament to reduce the electrical input requirements.
Sorry, today was not a good day for maths for you. Candela and lumens are not the same.
20mA!? Real high-power LEDs quote actual lumens, not useless candela. As of 2006, they are more efficient than CFLs. e.g. the Cree XR-E claims 80 lumens/W at 350mA (and much more in the latest prototypes). About 4 times the efficiency of a halogen. But that is with just over 1W per LED, which works out to a prohibitive amount of money for room lighting.
You can drive at LED at up to 5W, but efficiency drops. LEDs are best for torches (aka flashlights), bicycle lighting etc, but not yet for general room lighting.
OTOH, for coloured lights, LEDs are clear winners.
GE's just shitting their pants because of California and Australia working to ban the wasteful little buggers.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
The old incandescent bulb technology killed two birds with one stone. It took over the lighting market by being dirt cheap to produce and then consumed massive amounts of energy (guess where the profits show up from that? Back at GE obv.). Now that energy consumption is becoming a consumer criterion GE has to be competitive to stay in the lighting market because they realize efficiency will increase with or without GE's involvement. I'm sure there have been a bunch of lighting revolutions that GE has bought up and smothered not much unlike the shameless killing of the electric car.
It's amazing how fast a corporation can move when one of it's products is about to be outlawed.
http://science.slashdot.org/science/07/02/20/16322 04.shtml
http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/ 31/1826230
Why couldn't they have done this 10 years ago? 20 years ago?
Here's why:
Light-bulb manufacturers, who sell millions of incandescent lights at Wal-Mart, immediately expressed reservations. In a December 2005 meeting with executives from General Electric, Wal-Mart's largest bulb supplier, "the message from G.E. was, 'Don't go too fast. We have all these plants that produce traditional bulbs,' " said one person involved with the issue, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of an agreement not to speak publicly about the negotiations. -- Wal-Mart Puts Some Muscle Behind Power-Sipping Bulbs, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/02/business/02bulbThey're making a nice profit on those old bulbs and they had no reason to rock the boat.
Now the game has changed. They are facing extinction unless they change fast.
Windows Vista is better than individually packaged pepper-jack flavor imitation cheese slices. Hell, sliced bread doesn't even edge it out.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
Why would GE sit on this technology? If anything, they'd want to be the *first* to do this, and to do it so quickly as to destroy the competition.
People need to realize that corporations aren't all bad - that technology does, in fact, take time to develop. Personally, I think a ban on incandescents is the most ridiculous thing I've heard of, and it scares me that the government should even think it's their business to dabble in such a way.
I know the fluorescent and incandescent production processes in and out. While there's mercury created due to power production from incandescents, do you see us banning SUV's because they, in turn, produce more greenhouse gases than a pontiac vibe? Please! I think a little more logic needs to be demanded from our legislators. What about the mercury created from shipping CFL's from overseas? What about the added energy and materials in a CFL? Has that been assessed? If you have doubts, I dare you to find a CFL that doesn't have 'Made in China' stamped on it. Just try. None are made here in the good ol' U.S. of A.
In the end, it turns out that Average Joe is simply ill-informed, and the government and lobbyists are cashing in on it. When's the last time you questioned data and did the background digging to actually prove your point?
Just my two cents.
Quiz: True or False -- On a scale of 1 to 10, what is your middle name?
If they ban incandescent lightbulbs, how the hell will I dry my paper so that the sheets don't go together to the printer?
The reason Slashdotters are suspicious is that a large number of, (if not all) corporations are out to deceive the public. This is not conjecture. It's cold fact. GE is a great example, btw. You should look into some of their criminal activities.
Although I keep hearing about CFLs that have a better yellow/red ballance, I still have not seen any that look right to me. My solution is to use a CFL in the same multi-light fixture with an incandesant bulb. I use an industrial incandesant that is derated, so it produces less light and uses lower current. These bulbs also have longer lifes then regular consumer grade bulbs. You can buy them in bulk at places like Home Depot. This way I reduce my electricy consumption and get a pleasing color balance.
LEDS are around 50-60 lumens per watt right now, and advancing fast.
DOS ID107 DEMS GONNA STEEL MA INCANDESENCES
Give me a fucking break. The proposed law has a gigantic list of exceptions that are very broad: the only target is residential room lighting. And that proposal is state-of-energy-hungry California specific, and it merely adds sin taxes to incandescents for room use.
Big fucking deal. It amounts to big swinging dick, but looks nice on a voting record. And it'll probably get the CFLs out in the open and noticed.
Sorry to discontstruct your predictions for a liberal Madison Avenue / Hollywood joint conspiracy.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Because we can all agree that certain light bulbs are evil and destroying the environment. After, all, you don't NEED a wasteful incandescent bulb when a perfectly good CFL alternative is available.
Yes, let's have another social engineering tax to help remind us the right way to live our lives. I am so glad our lawmakers know best how people should behave, and they are all such stellar examples.
How will our wise and benevolent leaders help us save the environment next? Let's see, here are some other random things we can tax;
You don't NEED a big car.
You don't NEED fast computer.
You don't NEED deep fried food, so tax all those energy-hog fryers
You don't NEED an iPod, they use electricity and end up in the landfill.
You don't NEED Tivo
You don't NEED a hair dryer.
You don't NEED a TV.
Bah, the list could go on forever. You might even agree with some things on this little list. When it comes right down to it, you don't need anything more than basic food and shelter. And that's begging the question as to whether you even need to live. People are doing so much harm to the world maybe we need fewer of them?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
One thing GE will not do is reduce profits with this introduction. GE and their competitors carefully set prices on competing products so that they make the same profit per consumer. If a bulb lasts ten times longer their margin needs to be ten times greater. They have been overpricing fluorescents for years because although they aren't that much more expensive to build the consumer needs fewer of them per year. They don't care which you buy. They make the same off you per year. If they had priced fluorescents based on their costs fluorescents would have overtaken incandescents years ago and we would be buying much less oil today. Regardless of the benefits of the new technology GE is not one of the good guys.
...just a "wattage tax" on lightbulbs...
If you check your electric bill you'll see all kinds of wonderful little taxes (many based on usage) tacked onto your basic energy price. Seems to me those qualify as a "wattage tax".
Primary stumbling blocks to Diesel adoption her in the states have been our strict particulate and NOx emissions rules,
You are half right. The NOx of the high compression engines have been a stumbling block. But now that low-sulfur diesel is now mandated, the higher efficiency catalytic converters can now be used. And that was a stumbling block inserted by the fuel makers (Exxon and such) who, for whatever reason (perhaps to keep more inefficient gasoline cars on the road) fought every attempt to lower the sulfur limits in diesel. However, the particulates from diesel are still way above gasoline. They don't spew black clouds, but they carcinogenic particles are sprayed out in much higher concentrations than gasoline engines. Because diesels were so rare, the standards are not as tight on them. Look at the tailpipe of your friend's TDI. It points down. Why? Because the known deadly particles spewed out in unsafe concentrations might (according to VW) precipitate more quickly if the exhaust was aimed at the ground. If the particulates weren't still spewed out in such high concentrations, there wouldn't be a need for such measures. No really. Go look at his tailpipe and let us know if it points down. We'll wait...
Learn to love Alaska
They scare me a little too, and they generally can't deliver anything like the flow rate of a huge wasteful American hot water heater, since they have to heat the water as it goes. However, a lot of European houses use them for secondary showers, added in later. And they ARE cheap.
I piss off bigots.
Diesels look to be on the verge of a very big comeback, and a lot of money is being dumped into these efficient petrochemical engines.
Wake me up when Mazda comes out with a turbo-diesel rotary (Wankel) engine. There's nothing like high RPMs with a nice torque curve.
I can dream, can't I?
Signed: Another roadster/sports car enthusiast.
Life is not for the lazy.
They are so common and safe that I can only consider your comment as very ignorant. Even Retarded.
R -SHOWER-HEAD_W0QQitemZ160089373049QQihZ006QQcatego ryZ115967QQcmdZViewItem
The two in my house look close to this one:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ELECTRIC-TANKLESS-WATER-HEATE
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
Only the major portion of the human contribution (e.g., there's still deforestation which is killing the things that are trying to mitigate the effects of greenhouse gases). And, there's still lots of volcanism that adds greenhouse gases to the atmosphere that would happen even if there were no humans at all.
And that was a stumbling block inserted by the fuel makers (Exxon and such) who, for whatever reason (perhaps to keep more inefficient gasoline cars on the road) fought every attempt to lower the sulfur limits in diesel.
Coincidentally, I'm doing a contract stint for that very company...and you know how much sulphur they pull out of crude every day at our plant?
Me neither. But, there's a 200-foot square pond (raised containment berm enclosure) six feet deep with sulphur at our refinery. And they melt and send away several tanker trucks full of that stuff every day. We process nearly a half-million bbls of crude a day (you should be able to tell where I am now) - sulphur is a by-product, and there's a lot of it in oil - even the sweetest crude.
While I can't say what XOM's motivations for stalling on low S2 Diesel fuel are, (Shell sponsored Audi's LeMans car and seems to be taking low sulphur leadership) I'd think it has more to do with the upkeep and plumbing of a 50-year-old, finely-tuned refinery rather than a lack of technology or sheer cost. If one process goes off kilter in a refinery like the one I work at, the price of gasoline goes up twenty cents nationwide. Note the recent problems in Texas at a refinery there. We've seen gas prices shoot up 20 cents over two weeks with no equivalent movement in crude prices or demand.
Possibly because of the massive labor and upkeep costs, big oil has taken centralization to an extreme, concentrating most resources among several key refineries. When you tinker with a process, you can perfect it in the lab. But when you try to take that process live, it has to be done on a working unit. There are no "practice" refineries. Production is impacted in a serious way when a reformulation is mandated, and that's part of the reason why reformulations are fought tooth and nail by oil companies.
Noted about the tailpipe. Interesting. Diesel city buses are the same way, and the last straigh-out Diesel exhaust I remember seeing was on a 1981 Audi 5000S Diesel.
My statement about particulates was relative; of course Diesel particulates will be higher; the combustion in a Diesel is not as complete for several reasons - chief among them being that the fuel is not as volatile. The higher viscosity of the fuel is another factor, and one that direct high pressure (25k PSI!) injection looks to ameliorate with a finer, more controlled mist of fuel that is more precisely timed.
Note that micro-flourescents contain mercury that if not re-cycled ends up in landfills. Any legislating that mandates the use of mercury devices shall also mandate a recycling by manufacturers and consumers. In this instance (though I also have reservations about GE "timing) I say GO FOR IT GE. If incandescents can match or come close to mercury devices we should have it.
cursethedarkness
I live in Canada, where we have cold winters. In winter, my home is heated by electricity, with plenums in each room. If I turn on an incandescent, the heat from the bulb displaces the heat required from the plenum. That is in winter, when the sun sets early. Net benefit from energy savinsg is zero.
In summer, the sun sets late, so we hardly use the lights before bedtime, and then, for very little time. Net savings around zero.
Repeat. In winter florescent bulbs really dont save energy for us. In summer, they do, but their hours of use are short.
Give me a more efficient home air conditioner, and I will be happy. Couple that with a well insulated home. Then we can really make gains in energy consumption.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Jack Donaghy ? This little bastard is on fire ! first the 3 way-oven.. now this !
Millions of tons of CO2 is a drop in the bucket. Much less than a percent of what we're putting into the atmosphere. This whole debate is a complete non-issue. Trying to fix our greenhouse gas problem by limiting the use of incandescent bulbs is like trying to put a band aid on a gaping battle field wound. It's all about distracting the consumer and milking them for every last cent while large corps continue to rape and pillage the atmosphere.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
I'm not surprised to see comments by people who didn't read the bill, as it was linked. I am surprised the editor couldn't be bothered to:
See, there is the efficiency standard. If you make a 25 Watt incandescent bulb, and it looks like 75 Watts, you can sell it. No problem.
Further, one commenter mentioned the need for incandescents in photography. Well, thats where you can use a 200W if you need that much lighting. I'm sure there's other helpful exceptions, if one would simply RTFB.
KLAATU, BORADA, NIh*ahem*
There are times when you *need* incandescent lighting, photography for one.
The first thought I had when reading this article was what effects they would have on photography. One of the first assignments I had in photography class in college was we had to shoot one set of photos with incandescent lights and another with florescents.
And initial costs of fluorescents are more because you need the ballast etc.
Today's CFLs don't need an external ballast, one is built into the lights. And the prices have gone down a lot as well. While they are still much more expensive than incandescent lights the price isn't too bad, just a few months ago I bought some CFLs for less than $2 a bulb and they last several tymes longer than incandescents.
The fact that these lawmakers don't understand enough of the technology to make it workable really gets on my chimes.
California screwed up when they passed the law banning incandescents. Instead they should of passed a law encouraging energy efficient lights, say by levying a new tax on inefficient lights and maybe reducng or eliminating tax on efficient lights.
FalconShould there be a Law?
For framing a house, concrete blocks were cheaper than wood, and insulated so well that no A/C was needed.
I grew up in a concrete block home in Florida and if we hadn't had a/c then the inside would of gotten as sweaty smelling as a gym locker room. As it is I used to get up off the bed and lay down to sleep on the concrete, trasel (sic), floor because it was relatively cool but the house itself would be hot. The bed sheets would be soaked with my sweat so I'd put them under the faucet to soak them then wring them out to spread on the floor to lay on.
FalconShould there be a Law?
The best ones I've found so far are the Sylvania "Daylight Extra" bulbs. They're marked 3500K, so they're really not "daylight" bulbs, but that's okay, since I think the 5600K bulbs all look way too blue.
Guess I'm unusual in that I prefer bluish tinted lights under normal circumstances indoors. In part I guess it's because it's a cooler colour, which I prefer because I won't get as hot myself. Now outdoors it's another matter.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Not to be too obvious, if you live in a cool climate like I do, having location specific mini heaters that turn on with the lights when you're using a room and turn off safely with the lights when you leave, and aren't required when the weather is warm and sunny, this is a good thing. It promotes less use of central heating, which is good because central heating is not nearly as efficient (heating the whole house, leakage, venting, etc). The only time they're not ideal is when it's dark outside and the weather is warm and I don't want to sleep -- which happens seldom enough where I live, and less and less every year that goes by.
So, the short story: I think the CFD gestapo needs to rethink their strategy. Air conditioning. There's a big energy sucker right there, and "less toxic than CFC's" is hardly a ringing environmental endorsement. There is no reason why every home and car in Southern California requires air conditioning. Except for maybe Death Valley, it just doesn't get hot often enough to warrant it. While we're at it, all forms of unnecessary features take energy to produce but are never used. The luggage rack on your SUV. Mud Tires. The firewire jack on your digital cable box. The three fourths of your desktop tower computer that's empty space for expansion capacity when you know you don't dare open the case. Floppy drives. The "energy saver" nonfunctional setting on a dishwasher, clothes dryer or desktop computer. Just in the lamps of engineers burning the midnight oil to design the next great CD Jewel case there is a huge energy savings to be had. Software development! Why the quality of software update that's coming downstream right now could be produced more efficiently by a random code generator. Not only would a great deal of energy be saved, but an entire coffee plantation could be replanted with forest.
Enough for now. You get the picture. They should stop solving the wrong problem. This post custom crafted entirely from 100% recycled electrons.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The first problem is that the CFLs only last 6 to 12 months in my house. I suppose I have pretty poor power, since I live in the country, but the incandescents seem to handle it much better. This failure rate adds significantly to the cost of CFLs, and makes mockery of those little marketing charts that show that CFLs last 7 times as long as incandescents.
There must be a problem with your wiring or power, I've been using CFLs for more than 15 years and in that tyme I've only replaced two of them when they burned out. The first was several years ago and the second a few months ago. Looking at my lights now I see I need to replace a third one, and I have 12 CFLs I use.
Even the new "instant-on" CFL's are not as fast as I am.
That's one of the two problems I've run into with CFLs, some take some minutes to fully come on. The other problem is in how CFLs affect photo shots.
I now feel that the solution is to move to individually generated solar or wind power. If I want to use more power, I obtain more solar panels. That way, any limitations are self-imposed, and the State does not have to tell me what kind of light bulbs I can or can't buy.
In a way I agree, I was designing a home I eventually wanted to build that was totally energy selfsufficient. Two of my fav mags are Homepower and Solar Today . I also think government, whether local, state, or national shouldn't be banning anything. However they can take steps to encourage energy efficiency.
FalconShould there be a Law?
And what is the energy output in Canada compared to the US and the EU? I'd look it up, but it's not my point to justify. In the southern US, I would guess that this will have a huge impact all year around, and where I live (Seattle area) it will have a pretty significant impact in the fall and spring, where it's warm enough that you don't need heat, but dark enough you can't read without a light source of some kind.
"He may be mad, but there's method in his madness. [...] It's what drives men mad, being methodical." G.K.Chesterton
When you say “need incandescent lighting”, I presume you're speaking of the quality and responsiveness of the light source, not of the need for an excited wire filament inside a vacuum-sealed glass orb. (clearly more efficient as a heat source than a light source... evidenced by the common Lava Lamp®)
I mean really, what's the need about? Is it about a strong-and-steady flow of photons? Is it about a light source that can be analog-controlled to dim and brighten in smooth steps?
I may not be speaking for everyone, but for those of us that are prone to the affliction, enduring the 60-66Hz “hummm” and the barely-perceptible flicker of fluorescent is a condition I will trade-in for just about anything.
I've seen a lot of lighting fads come and go. Fluorescent seems to stay just because it's so ergonomically attractive against vis-a-vis Heat Lamps. CF is about the same, just in a smaller package. Cold-cathode lamps are nifty, but they're about as useful as Xmas Lights, and cost ten times more. (with current Consumer Offerings) My bet is on up-and-coming technologies like bright LED and HID (High Intensity Discharge; the son of the Arc Lamp) lighting.
Just this past year, I've noticed an abundance of LED lighting technologies— not in the news, but in my hand. To me, that means a lot more than “coming soon”.
Butane lighters with a small LED flashlight are now common give-away items, as are just simple promotional pocket-lights. Battery-operated LED Xmas Lighting is now just about everywhere, and in many colors. (most popular, of course, is pure-white) When a technology becomes commonplace, that is when you know its about to come into its own.
Look at cellphones and GPS; both were considered Luxury or High End at first, then the price dropped enough that everyone found a reason to buy one. When everyone on the block has the same technology, the industry is pressured to make it better. As soon as cellphones became common, it was a race to make The Best Cellphone. Though there are clear leaders, that race is still on.
You watch; this will come to the Lighting Industry as well. As the knock-off CF and LED lighting floods the market, the leaders have to come-up with innovations to make their offering (seem) better than the others. (Note the implied reservation) Though I don't doubt their ability to innovate, I do doubt their veracity in purporting innovation.
There's already a remarkable offering of Consumer LED Lighting. Compact Fluorescents already have their well-earned niche, although I personally have distaste for them. As for high-end needs, such as photography and “spectacle” uses, (WARNING: token Wiki articles) HID is slowly emerging into its own. Your street may soon be lit with HID, rather than sodium vapor. (for example)
If General Electric can make a better light bulb, I say let them. If Australia never makes it legal to use one in your home when it would be just as viable as CF, it's their loss. I think a greater question is, how long is the “better light bulb” supposed to last? (LED “bulbs” are edging towards offering Lifetime Guarantees—and by that, meaning the lifetime of the consumer! W
This post © Copyrite Duggeek, all rights reversed.
It's funny - an Australian consortium is in the news today speculating about buying some of the dinosaur GE nuclear designs that are alluded to above - it is those ones because they haven't produced any new designs in many years.
The guy is obviously full of it. He is lying through his teeth and trolling at the same time. I figure offhand that the light output of his CF is the equivelent of a 170-200 watt long life bulb that has been used a bit.(for those that don't know, long life bulbs are even less efficient than normal incandecents, and the longer you run them, the dimmer they get)
Then he comes up with the BS story of this halogen bulb that I have never seen, emmitting more light than 3 normal halogen bulbs of its size.
Hmmmm.... Yep, he is the worlds biggest idiot, or a troll.
I think you'll find it is return on captial that holds up these sort of process plant additions. I worked on a catalyitic hydro desulfurisation (CHD) unit installation at on of XOM's refineries. If you have to spend $80 million or so on an additional process that doesn't add any meaningful value to the product, then you won't spend that money till the government tells you to.
Additionally, when you're running a 50 y/o clunker of a refinery, with a book value of about $300 million, then any additional new process unit will substantially increase the captial employed, so if you can't increase throughput, or significantly increase the value of your product, then your return on captial takes a big hit.
These projects are "stay in business" projects.
The industrial behemoths often play both sides of the field and have no (profit) incentive to change their ways until forced to do so by (the threat of) legislation. GE and their ilk could have kept improving the incandescent technology for decades while coming up with better alternatives but the status quo and all the lobbying to maintain it was deemed more profitable, regardless of environmental consequences.
Should invading one's peaceful neighbours be opposed, or rewarded with trade deals?
Here's a basic summary of how light bulbs that you screw into sockets work.
The electricity in your house is vibrating at a frequency of 60Hz, or 60 times per second. (basically one pulse of 60hz, then off, followed by a pulse of 60hz, then off, etc)
The lights vibrate at a frequency of 120hz, to create a mean wavelength of 60hz. (Fluorescent have their own ballast which can alter this frequency much more dramatically, but this is standard for halogen or standard incandescent bulbs)
LEDs at 120hz, you notice a very distinct flicker. This is because there is no light generated in between the pulses, because there is very little heat created. The heat in a halogen or incandescent bulb releases photons on the off pulse, making much more consistent, continuous light.
Man am I ever cynical... Maybe I need a vacation... from humanity...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I keep trying to switch to CFLs but I can't find any decent ones. I've tried Ikea, Tesco and B&Q... all of the ones I've found so far have 3 problems that make CFL a no-go for my home and 1 issue that is annoying, but not a deal breaker.
:D
1. They are too white. I can't find anything with decent colour temperatures.
2. They are 50-60Hz which gives my wife serious headaches and I can't find anything that is marked as being higher frequency
3. Most of them from all three locations emit an extremely high-pitched whine from time to time that is just infuriating
4. They take between 30 seconds and a minute to get to full brightness, which is a pain when you're trying to take the dog down the stairs at 04:00
Pedantic. Because Overgeneralizing doesn't start with a P.
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
How about not mandating anything and letting demand for more efficient products drive the research (just like what happend here).
-K
"In part I guess it's because it's a cooler colour, which I prefer because I won't get as hot myself."
Is that a joke?
"a comparably powered gasoline engine"
What's that, a gasoline engine that's louder? Diesels can be quiet but saying they put out "far less sound" is an absurd generalization.
"...and are cleaner burning and less vibration intensive as well."
Now that's bullshit. Diesel engines are not cleaner burning that gas though they can be clean (depends on your definition of clean). They are certainly not "less vibration intensive". Diesels operate under constant detonation whereas gasoline engines specifically avoid detonation. Diesels, by definition, are "more vibration intensive".
"...there are way too many design variables to simply look at noise as an engine constraint."
While that is true, you've proven that you don't understand those variables sufficiently to comment.
There was a news story on TV here in Australia, about one or the other political parties proposing a ban on incandescent bulbs.
Yeah, we have a Federal election this year.
I had a think about that, and realised we didn't have a single incandescent bulb in any light fitting in the house, except for the refigerator.
Every light fitting including my desktop lamp, has a CFL (aside from two flourescent tube fittings in kitchen and laundry).
I bought them because I got sick and tired of changing burnt out incandescents.
I bought two LED bulb torches, one about 2 years ago (3 or 4 sets of batteries), one last year (no battery change yet).
I don't care what GE does about developing incandescent technology, if they can't match that sort of life-span/convenience.
If the refrigerator light burns out, I'll have to hand the little man inside a candle and matches!
Don't blame me, it's usually 2 in the morning when I post
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
You're kidding, right?
I'm not an expert on LED lighting, but most of the white LEDs I've seen are the result of an LED pumping fluorescent compounds to produce a "white" light made up of discrete bandwidths. That's the same problem we have with current fluorescents - they produce lousy color rendition. The "warm" ones end up either too pink or too yellow. You can't buy a consumer CFL with better than an 85CRI, and most are in the 70s. Okay, that last part is a guess, but when the manufacturers won't even quote a color temp or CRI, you know it's going to look like crap.
LEDs can be efficient, but they are limited by some of the same problems as fluorsecents when it comes to color rendition. And, just like fluorescents, as the CRI goes up, the efficiency goes down.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Nice try gumshoe. I've been doing engine work since 1997, so I do know what I am talking about, and IC gas engines are NOT the wave of the future. Although I will acknowledge should have used the word variations, not variables, i.e., there are way too many design variations...."
The fact is that gasoline engines are only about 20-25% efficient at turning fuel into power, diesels are quite a bit more efficient because they pack more oxygen and fuel into the piston at the same time and in closer molecular proximity, resulting in a better burn AKA the diesel is inherently producing energy at higher "stochiometric combustion ratios". Which is why in general diesels don't put out much carbon monoxide, instead the problem is NOx which forms because of the high heat of the engine.
Secondarily, to say that gasoline engines and diesel engines operate on a hugely different basis is misleading. Both gain power by creating a controlled explosion with wavefront patterns that allow a piston to drive a crankshaft in a rotary manner. One uses a spark to provide the high heat necessary to achieve a burn using lower compression, the other uses the heat of compression itself to trigger the burn. Both are designed to maximize the extraction of energy from the wavefront created by the explosion/detonation of the fuel when mixed at high compression inside the piston.
Anyway, to speak to the noise, think about this:
take an unmuffled high quality turbocharged diesel engine of say 200 hp. Take an unmuffled high quality turbocharged gasoline engine of equivalent power. Chances are very good that it will be the gasoline engine that is louder on a meter because that engine is probably cranking at 5000-6000 rpm to produce the 200 hp, where the diesel engine is probably turning at 2000-2500 rpm, i.e. with less than half the detonations.
Capisch?
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
Then I would say that the optimal solution is incandescent bulbs and nuclear power. So let's get the move on! Mandate nukes, not some stop-gap measure that requires a whole new level of the old recycling boondoogle.
Isn't nuclear power a stop gap measure? And one that creates and leaves more problems than they solve? In the US the Bush admin wants to use Yucca Mountain as permanent storage, well for 10,000, when the halflife of some of the waste is millions of years. On top of that Yucca is a seismically active region, having had earthquakes in the area, and has a volcano not too far away.
Someone can then say the waste can be reprocessed, as the French do. IEEE's magazine IEEE Spectrum has an article in the Febuary 2007 issue, Nuclear Wasteland by Peter Fairley asking "The French are recycling nuclear waste. Should other countries follow suit?" He brings up problems reprocessing creates including reprocessing concentrates high level waste that's hotter and harder to handle than waste that isn't reprocessed.
FalconShould there be a Law?
"In part I guess it's because it's a cooler colour, which I prefer because I won't get as hot myself."
Is that a joke?
No, it's not. Colours, especially of light, can have a big impact on how warm or cool and other feelings I experience just as it does for others. Red hot, cool blue, green with envy, et alia.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Dr. Diesel developed his engine to run on user-produced vegetable oil, not petrochemicals. He first demonstrated it running on pure peanut oil, and most veggie oil engines today are diesels.
The use of petrochemicals in diesel engines is really an abomination, but oil companies have found it convenient to dispose of their nastier fractions in home heating plants and diesel truck engines. It's a total perversion of Diesel's idea, which was supposed to enable farmers to produce their own renewable fuel (thus insulating the farmer from fuel price fluctuations and reducing external operational dependencies).
So they should be allowed to muddy the water with a bulb only half as good, so people who would be saving the planet use those instead.
Errr, do you realize that the federal government encouraged the use of PCBs?
Okay, so let's compare corporate misdeeds against government misdeeds. How's about we start with the Iraq War?
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Troll doesn't mean "anything with which I disagree". But then, you probably knew that, and you were just being an asshole, like the person who called me (and many of you) stupid for wanting good light. I hope you get ebola and die like a salted slug.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
or GHZ??
It's simple just tell them the truth, we capped out on MHZ, so now were going to more cores / diferant die size etc...
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
It's not the light.. it's the BIG BAG OF MUSHROOMS you ate before turning them on.
----------------------------
Esobofh - Currently drinking fresh mango juice.
A typical unshielded CFL puts out more electromagnetic radiation than your TV set, your microwave oven, and certainly your cell phone.
--Though, cell phones can afford to be low-power emitters, since you have to hold them right up to your head for your nervous system to be affected.
Yes, there are a hundred and one arguments out there which tell us that cell phone EM is non-ionizing and therefore totally safe. This is only half true. Low power EM won't cause heat damage to your brain, but this certainly does not mean that they are totally safe. There are more ways to have an effect upon the nervous system than to simply burn cells with microwaves.
Humans are affected by EM radiation. There is more information available on this now than ever before, but many still resist looking at it. The arguments I have seen against have been, without exception, flawed, limited by bias and willfully ignorant. Fair enough. While the arguments for include hysterical and scatter-brained claims, it is silly to throw the baby out with the bath water, so to speak. There are many far more serious studies which show that the brain is indeed affected by EM. (Here are a few from a simple Google search.)
The question in my mind is not whether EM radiation can affect the behavior of brain cells and perception, but how CLF's are doing it. --Because, given GE's long, long track-record of psychopathic tendencies, health and environmental violations and lying to the public, and above all, their long standing association with the military, it would be foolish to assume that they are not deliberate in their efforts to flood every Western household with harmful EM. --Granted, all their technicians and engineers need not be 'in on it', but that's how you make secrets work. You compartmentalize. I would be surprised, for instance, if many employees at GE were aware that the basic wall socket electrical current was a source of trouble.
Robert O. Becker wrote a definitive book which deals with EM pollution and its effect on the human mind and body. I have taken the liberty of scanning the pages which I think are highly relevant in terms of social engineering, specifically, the notes on , which illustrates how 60 htz AC current plays a role in keeping people lightly medicated with Lithium on a nearly permanent basis.
Population control is entirely real, and it has been around for a long time. Science has known for many decades that reality and certainly human awareness are entirely the results of electromagnetic wave forms, and that manipulation within the EM spectrum is a great way to control people.
What is your point?
Okay, so let's compare corporate misdeeds against government misdeeds. How's about we start with the Iraq War?
Who is making all the money in Iraq right now? The U.S. Government and Corporate America are very tightly linked almost to the point of being the same beast.
-FL
Why would you want to compare corporate misdeeds against government misdeeds?
Just because you compare one criminal to a bigger criminal, it doesn't make one of them magically *not a criminal*.
It's amazing how the second that California wants to ban the 100+ year old technology that suddenly a solution is found.
The reality is that they know for decades how to make longer-lasting and more efficient bulbs. Just look at the average stoplight. They last for up to ten years with needint to be replaced.
Except for the ESBWR, the most likely candidate for new reactor construction in the US and abroad...
I'm sorry, but I really do not see nuclear electricity generation as a mature technology yet - perhaps too predjudiced by talking to Russian turbine engineers that worked in dodgy nuclear power plants that won awards but did not live up to promises.
I think wikipedia answered my question - that design is not sheduled for construction anywhere yet, it is a canditate design, and Australia is too conservative to be the first to buy an untested design of anything like this. We would be better off seeing what is developed in China or India where active development is proceeding. Any new nuclear construction in the US many well be infuenced by the recent revival of the weapons program and hydrogen generation and dual use compromises are a waste of time if you don't want the bomb.
Wake me up when Mazda comes out with a turbo-diesel rotary (Wankel) engine. There's nothing like high RPMs with a nice torque curve.
Moller, the guy behind the Skycar and Supertrapp mufflers was awarded a contract by the Army to research developing a small rotary diesel some time ago. They had limited success, the engine they developed burned diesel fuel, but was spark, and not compression ignited. It didn't develop enough compression to operate as a diesel, the apex seals routinely shattered at those pressures. Engine speed was significantly impaired because diesel fuel burns much more slowly than gasoline. If it rotated too fast it would blow diesel vapor all over. The problem is basically the same with cylinder engines.
I think your best bet for something which is diesel powered and having high RPM and high torque is to wait for a diesel hybrid with a decently sized power plant. Electric motors are well known to exhibit both of your desired characteristics, and the diesel can purr away all day with no worries >:)
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
Where exactly do you mean by "abroad"?
In the known construction pipeline for commercial nuclear power generation plants outside the USA there are no less than six projects to AECL design and at least two to the European Pressurized Reactor design, and at least three to the Westinghouse AP1000 design, seven to mixed Indian-AECL design, one sodium-cooled fast reactor to a Japanese design, and four to Russian designs.
GE is trying very hard to sell ESBWR to organizations who are in the proposals stage, and they may well move some of the ~200 possible sales there, but they are facing competition from well-established and demonstrated designs, and as yet there have been no firm orders.
Even in the USA there is greater traction for EPR and AP1000, and there is likely to be one PHWR reactor constructed in cooperation with CANDU. ESBWR's two demonstration sites are certainly plausible, but they are not yet anywhere near construction.
So, to suggest that it is "the most likely candidate" for anything other than GE's sales staff is simply inaccurate.
The parent is correct, I work in the industry and the ESBWR is the primary candidate for new reactor construction that would begin around 2011ish. The pebble bed and CANDU designs were never seriously considered due to licensing issues. The next reactors to be built will be ESBWR's or AP1000's, with the ESBWR currently leading. By abroad I assume he is talking about China and Japan, both of which are also interested in new BWR's. While Toshiba recently acquired Westinghouse, making new AP1000's more likely, Japan already has the infrastructure and experience with BWR's making the ESBWR a competitive candidate. I believe China also expressed interest in the ESBWR design but I'm not really familiar with their commitment level.
"Any new nuclear construction in the US many well be infuenced by the recent revival of the weapons program and hydrogen generation and dual use compromises are a waste of time if you don't want the bomb."
I don't know where you are getting this from. We already have the infrastructure for enriching Uranium for currently operating plants, how would building new plants affect proliferation in any way?
If you think nuclear electricity generation is not mature then you are grossly mistaken. Nuclear produces more then 20% of US electric power, and has been around since the 1960's. We have gained huge amounts of experience in designing and operating plants in that time, plants today are much cleaner and are exceeding 98% availability. There is no comparison between western plants and soviet plants.
It disgusts me that PR and lobby money is expended in orders of magnitude more than research and developent - you get the situation where a dinosaur design possibly less advanced than something in eastern europe is getting lobbied for construction becuase PR is more effective than having and actual good design. South Africa (pebble bed) and India (accelerated thorium - still early days yet) are a full generation or two ahead of the designs getting pushed by US companies that are left far behind.
It's the other way around - the current expansion of the weapons program may give newer bomb designs with requirements for different materials which will affect which dual use reactors designs are chosen - or it may not. The weapons program is big news in places like New Mexico and a source of a lot of jobs so it is in the news - I'm not saying building new plants in the USA will add to the number of nuclear weapons - that is a seperate issue and the numbers of weapons will increase depending on policy. It's only places like Iran, Israel, Indonesia, etc that are just starting out that need reactors to get the materials.
If it was just a matter of choosing a way to generate electricity nuclear would not be on the list, if it's a way to generate electricity with low CO2 emisisons it's time to get moving on funding productuion of a viable design instead of just spending money on advertising and lobbying. You can't just act now with a large thermal plant of any kind - it can take five years just to get a turbine let alone finish the plant, and five years of intensive R&D can get a long way especially if you go from a team below the size of ten.
I'm sorry but your statement is demonstrably incorrect. Western nuclear power plants are not dual use in any way, there is no way to extract weapons grade fissile material from light water reactors. You could, at great expense, extract the reactor-grade plutonium from the spent fuel but this plutonium would have to be enriched in the same way that natural uranium is enriched. It is a pointless effort since you could have just enriched natural uranium to begin with if you already have the capability. The only power plants that actually are dual-use are the soviet graphite-moderated reactors, of which few remain operational around the world. I'm not sure where your criticism of availability comes from, I work in the industry so I can tell you that our power factors are in deed almost always above 90% and often above 95% for our plants. This is typical for other utilities.
Don't do a Segway ( the scooter that was supposed to be an anti gravity device) thing on this GE light bulb annoucement. Incandescent can't produce more light than a fluorescent source but they can perform a lot better satistically. NASA invented a soft-start technology decades ago which can significantly reduce total power used by high start-up current devices like incandescent light bulds. If a light bulb is on for a few minutes the first second uses more power than all the time it is typically on. So if you soft-start the typical light bulb you can make the statement that you have reduced energy use of the device by 50% or 100% or even more if the you don't state the how long the bulb is actually on. Also you can reduce the total power used by a incandescent bulb by clipping the voltage waveform even more than the 60 cycle sine wave does now. A 25 watt light bulb actually uses a lot more power using pure DC than AC because when the bulb is powered by AC it is off or in a dimming state most of the time. You can clip until the human eye can perceive a flicker. These energy savings devices have been sold as accessories for years but when light bulbs were sold as commodity items it was not possible to add a "driver package " to a standard bulb and compete in that market. Now that people are wealthy enuf to buy $3.00 coffees, $8.00 compact fluorescent light bulbs and $100,000 Tesla electric automobiles good ole GE has the market space to add cost and "improvements" to this ancient technology.