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LED Lighting As Cheap As CFLs Invented
mcgrew writes "New Scientist reports that a British team has overcome the obstacles to cheap LED lighting, and that LED lamps as cheap as CFLs will be on the market in five years. Quoting: 'Gallium nitride cannot be grown on silicon like other solid-state electronic components because it shrinks at twice the rate of silicon as it cools. Crystals of GaN must be grown at 1000C, so by the time a new LED made on silicon has cooled, it has already cracked, rendering the devices unusable. One solution is to grow the LEDs on sapphire, which shrinks and cools at much the same rate as GaN. But the expense is too great to be commercially competitive. Now Colin Humphreys's team at the University of Cambridge has discovered a simple solution to the shrinkage problem. They included layers of aluminium gallium nitride in their LED design... These LEDs can be grown on silicon as so many other electronics components are. ... A 15-centimetre silicon wafer costs just $15 and can accommodate 150,000 LEDs making the cost per unit tiny.'"
Now Colin Humphreys's team at the University of Cambridge has discovered a simple solution to the shrinkage problem.
Excellent news! Wait, what's this story about?
So I bought a 3 pack of LED lights that were supposed to be the equivalent of 40 watt bulbs...
A 25 watt incandescent bulb is about 10 times brighter. I was pissed. Might keep me from stumbling in the dark, but it doesn't really illuminate a damn thing.
I was so hopeful.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Except I've already switched most of my house to bulbs that last longer than incandescents. Maybe the flourescents will start burning out by the time I can get some good cheap LED bulbs.
Honestly we NEED a led light bulb that will DIM acceptably for people.
most people want to be able to use dimmers and every customer I have wants to use lighting automation.
They need to work on that second right after figuring out how to get the lumens up to that of CFL lamps.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I have a Clapper that I've been unable to use with CFL bulbs. I'd like to know whether these new LED lights work with the Clapper and other remote-switching appliances.
These are going to be awesome in an office environment. Especially since the ceilings are so high and nobody likes changing the lights. But I have yet to find truly warm non-tungsten/halogen/mercury/fire/quartz/evil light for home use. I could not picture LEDs (which are basically antennas radiating a frequency that we happen to see) overtaking the other lights (heat sources that coincidentally give off visible light) in terms of color richness.
Even if they make LED lighting as cheap as CFLs, the light given off is still brutal compared to other forms of lighting(basically 255R+255G+255B=white), and they're still not as efficient as CFLs.
The biggest perk is insane reliability and shock resistance. We won't be seeing LED lighting in our homes any time soon, but I could see white LED lighting replacing incandescent bulbs in cars, trailers, and other applications where you don't want to deal with a burned out light bulb.
And it all came about because it's hard to achieve 1000C in a shed.
A 15 cm silicon wafer: 15x15=225cm2
If they fit 150000 LEDs you get 225/150000=0.0015 cm2 per led.
Aren't they too small to be used for home lights?
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
So what is the energy consumed during production for one of these LED lights?
If we're just using more energy per unit during manufacture, then what is the energy payoff balanced vs. the number of hours these will remain in service?
Aren't we already in short supply of gallium? Do we really want demand for this rare metal that already has so many uses? We have plenty of ways to generate light, let's use one that doesn't require one of our rarest and most useful materials.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Lightbulbs getting out of a pool I guess.
I'm all for getting away from CFLs, as their production alone is NOT environmentally friendly (most of the mercury in the world is mined in China, where HALF of it is "lost" to the environment during production, which means "polluted"), not to mention the ratio thrown out.
But what about the LEDs? How toxic (or not) are the materials they're talking about? And what about the production of such? And heck, back on the pollution thing, WHERE they are produced makes a big difference, since if it's in China, forget any environmental disposal of chemicals used, whereas if it's in a developed country, it'll probably be OK.
Not insurmountable problems, but I do want to know how those things will work out.
Most LEDs are not as efficient as CFL anyway. Not at a good output level.
I'm not sure everyone is completely aware of how big an advance this is. I'm going to buy Philips' stock as soon as I can. I'm sorry people have been screwed by some misleading marketing, but LEDs are the future of lighting... and the big green movement.
And yes, they're really easy to dim, either by converting to DC and modulating current, or by using a PWM - I'm not sure which is more efficient/cheaper.
I can't wait for CFLs to go away. Eventually you'll see commercially available, color-selectable LED bulbs.
Anyone know if the process was patented/sold to a specific company? Pretty obvious why...
The good ole' 5-year technology promise. Close enough to be exciting and get attention, but far enough away that you'll forget about their claim before they miss their deadline.
"Light Emitting Diodes are binary - either all the way on or all the way off"
You're smoking crack. LEDs can be dimmed just fine, by varying the current going through them. How do you think they control the brightness in LED-backlit LCD displays.
Aren't some solar panels made with GaN as well? Will this help them too?
the march to phase out incandescent lights in favor of CFLs has already begun. I personally am concerned about the five years until this product will be released. As of yet we have no plan for disposing of CFL bulbs and even if we did that wouldn't stop many foolish people from simply throwing them in the trash anyway.
The cost of the mercury polluted into the environment from CFLs far outweighs any energy savings they may incur over incandescent lights.
Incandescant dimmers are not simply variable resistors. Look up Ohm's Law for why this won't work.
Dimmers work using Triacs or SCRs to slice the AC waveform in time. This will work fine for LEDs too.
I made my own front light for my bike by embedding 60 3mm LEDs into a standard Cateye reflector, it works well & is nicely bright but I always have this want for more brightness, but not at the expense of increasing the physical size of the light by using Cree's or Luxeons whigh require a collinator to direct the light.
So does anyone have any ideas how I can easily file down a couple of hundred 3mm LEDs so they're identically rectangle or square to pack them tightly together?
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
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This is great news not just for lighting, but also potentially for ILED TVs (basically LED - the "I" stands for inorganic. It would be simpler than even OLED, and the lifetime would be amazing of course.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
I hate those pigtail lights. Makes me feel like I'm still at work or school when at home using that disgusting white lighting.
"A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers." Hayek
Honestly we NEED a led light bulb that will DIM acceptably for people.
OK, I'm down with this. A low energy consumption dimmable bulb would be a useful thing indeed.
...most people want to be able to use dimmers
"Most"? Really? I think your argument ran off the rails here. There is nothing preventing people from using dimmer switches now - they just can't use most CFLs in those sockets. I think "most" people don't really care and the evidence for that is that CFL bulbs, which generally aren't dimmable, are selling like hotcakes and increasing rapidly. Many houses might have some dimmers but usually not everywhere. That's not to say dimmable switches aren't a good idea but let's not overestimate the demand for them shall we?
The real issue is that all light bulbs really do need to have the rating of lumens. Wattage is power use, lumens is light output (obviously). Saying "40-watt equivalent" is empty marketing speak, no wonder they were disappointing. And then there's the whole light temperature issue, which is very difficult for a consumer to determine.
For my LED experience, I went with these LED bulbs for my chandelier (I was looking for a "25-watt equivalent") and have been very pleased. It may help that it's a cluster of bulbs in my fixture. Considering the lifespan of LED bulbs, I'm willing to pay a lot more per bulb providing the light output falls in the appropriate range.
(1) LEDs can in fact be dimmed by running less current through them, however their power efficiency drops, which negates the whole purpose of LED lighting. The most efficient way to dim an LED is to strobe it on faster than the human eye can detect By varying with fraction of the on/off cycle that the LED is on, the human eye perceives this as "dimmer". The number of photons averaged over a second is reduced, but for the milliseconds the LED is on it is at full brightness.
(2) Incandescent bulb dimmers are almost never been rheostats, not since maybe the 1920s. The problem is efficiency again. Imagine a certain current flowing through the light bulb and the rheostat; the power dissipated in each device is then proportional to the resistance. When the rheostat is at equal resistance to the light bulb, it is dissipating as much power as the light bulb is! A 100 watt light bulb at 50% of the normal RMS current dissipates 25 watts, which means your rheostat is getting as hot as a small soldering iron. You'd need a massive heatsink to handle this.
Therefore for many years, dimmers were not very practical. The best dimmers were actually transformers, but they were extremely bulky. They were mainly used in theaters and fancy restaurants to soften the shock of the prices on the menu by relief at being able to find them at all.
With the creation of the solid state silicon controlled rectifier (scr), it is possible to do a trick with incandescent bulbs that is rather like the LED strobing trick. What you do is you take the sine wave power and you clip out the parts of the waveform on either side of the peak. So rather than having power delivered to light bulb all the time, the light bulb is only powered for a fraction of the cycle. The difference is that an incandescent filament glows because it is hot; it does not flicker on and off.
Now with respect LED light bulbs, I'm not sure about what circuitry they contain, but they do contain circuitry. If you just plugged enough LEDs in series to plug straight into AC, they'd flicker at a very noticeable 60Hz. If you put a full wave rectifier into the circuit, they'd flicker at 120Hz, which might be fast enough you wouldn't notice the flickering. You'd certainly be able to use the a solid state dimmer to dim such as circuit, but flickering might be noticeable.
There are relatively simple tricks you could use to maybe double the frequency, in which case you probably would not be able to perceive the flicker. On the other hand, there might be fancier circuits that know how to do the right thing. One of the problems with LEDs is that they age, their brightness varies. If the LED bulb achieves its white color by using several different colors, you need a compensating circuit to maintain the original color.
Of course you could use white LEDs, but most of the bright ones are very harsh; I've seen warm white LEDs advertised, but I've never had one.
So there you go, the straight facts on dimming that every geek should know.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
CFLs suck. Their horrendous blue-tinted light is known to trigger migraines in some. Plus, they contain mercury, so any claim to be green is nullified when the consumer throws them out with the regular trash. And if you accidentally break a CFL, you have to open all the windows and leave the room for like 15 minutes to let the mercury vapor dissipate. LEDs are where it's at. You can tune the wavelength of the light they emit to be a more natural color. I'd rather my living room didn't look like it had the same lighting as a Dollar Store.
This research seems very similar to what came out of Purdue six months ago. I guess having two methods is better than one, but this article isn't quite so dramatic given the Purdue research.
Five years. It's always five years.
Tomorrow would be nice for once.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Why do we still measure light bulbs by power draw? Why can't we measure them by brightness in candelas, or peak power output in joules?
Those using pirated Tinysoft signatures(TM) are a real threat to society and should all be thrown in jail.
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You inverted your units for the 60 watt incandescent.
Plus, they tend to start off dim and take like 5 minutes to get to the brightness that they advertise.
You're buying the wrong bulbs then. Mine are at full brightness instantaneously.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
I'd rather my living room didn't look like it had the same lighting as a Dollar Store.
But how can you judge how your beloved trinkets are going to look in your house if the lighting doesn't match the store you bought them from?
plan on taking all your light bulbs with you as you move. Since the cost is high and the lifespan nearly infinite, bulbs will be too valuable for people to leave behind. One more frigging thing to pack and fool with.
BZZZT, *WRONG*!!!
According to Energystar.gov:
Incandescent lights are on their way out in Australia. The only trouble with a complete ban, is that a lot of people hate CFLs, they can't be dimmed, they contain mercury, and they can't be used in extreme environments, like inside kitchen ovens.
Can LED lights be made to work inside (very hot) kitchen ovens? I know that some semiconductors can be engineered to work while white-hot, and wonder if it's so hard to design an LED light light that'll work inside an oven or kiln.
Most of the lamps and chandeliers are based on designs used for candles and have slowly changed with newer tech. It will be interesting to see how lighting designs will change when LEDs mature towards a standard.
What will they use to power their easy-bake ovens once we switch over to bulbs that don't waste 90% of the input energy as heat?
No, but seriously, sweet.
ecodirect.com
that sells 7 and 13 watt LED's and these perform MUCH better. I use them for 60 and 100 watt incandescent replacements in hallways and my home office. They also use a lower multiplier for calculating the replacement bulb wattage. For instance their 3 watt bulb is stated to replace a 20 watt incandescent (the Sams Club bulb said a 3 watt was a 40 watt replacement). I think quality LED light bulbs are a great investment. The payback period is less than for solar panel installation and they are better for the environment than CFL's.
Commercial GaN on Silicon has been available for a years now. The commercial vendors have overcome this cracking problem due to thermal expansion using an AlGaN buffer since about 2005. One problem growing on Silicon is dislocations which limit lifetime, not cracking.
Actually sapphire substrates surprisingly are not that expensive.
I'm not sure why this press release is considered news.
Because that would reveal CFLs to be shit!
You're flat out wrong, unless the incandescent bulbs you buy were created in a factory that didn't use electricity, and you never plugged them in.
But, given your generalized name-calling, I suspect you don't bother to really understand how anything works.
[Ego]out
Good ventilation is enough, but there's a reason most halogen bulbs are open-bulb outdoor or free-standing installations. You don't want that kind of heat output in an enclosed space-- that'd be the reason most lighting fixtures have a maximum wattage rating, and it typically isn't the wiring they're running to the bulbs.
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
...but inefficient plasma bulbs are shittier.
Those using pirated Tinysoft signatures(TM) are a real threat to society and should all be thrown in jail.
Never has been, and probably never will be.
Indium and Gallium Sustainability â" September 2007 Update
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Granted this is an as yet unrealized technology, but I really wonder what the lumens per watt will be.
For reference a standard 48" T8 fluorescent is about 80 lumens per watt,
Compact fluorescent is around 65 lumens per watt,
and a 60w A19 bulb (the "normal" light bulb) is about 15 lumens per watt.
Cree has some Gallium nitride LEDs that (they claim) produce a record breaking 130 lumens per watt,
but they also have some 100 lumens per watt LEDs and they're also gallium nitride.
Cost of production isn't totally meaningless, but over it's 20 year life, 5 watts means more than $100.
And although those that care know sinds they were at school that 4x 25W gives off less light (lumens) than 1x 100W this results in only a marginal difference in cost.
Ovr here in Europe shops have to display the cost of goods per standard unit, why not enforce the display of lumens per watt on light sources?
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Sounded like bullshit, so I tried it. Used a cheap Walmart CFL and a two outlet clapper (one controlled by two claps, and one by three claps). Worked fine. Worked fine on my TV, too.
What I've seen on LED bulbs is that they tend to be rather directional in nature. They don't produce as much of an omnidirectional light as other bulbs do. I also don't much care for the "white" lights having more of a blue spectrum quality to them, vs the incandescent yellow spectrum glow. The reason I haven't bothered to use them in any of my holiday lights.
In the big hall there are two switches for the overhead lights. One turns them on at half brightness, the other full brightness. If both switches are on, you get full brightness.
There are four fixtures rigged in a parallel circuit, with four edison sockets per fixture also rigged parallel and arranged in quadrilateral symmetry, like a "plus sign". So 16 sockets are all fed from a common wire.
With four incandescents in each fixture, all the lamps are equally "dim" or "bright" depending on which switches are on.
With two incandescents and two flourescents in each fixture, on the "dim" setting the two incandescents are almost entirely off, just barely glowing, and the two fluorescents are at full brightness.
With four fluorescents in each fixture, on the "dim" setting two of them directly opposite each other in the fixture will light full brightness, the other two will not light at all.
What the hell is going on? This is not a theoretical question, this is observed data.
The non-tech people say "two out of four lights are on, that's half brightness, we're good, no need to worry".
The tech people say "how do we know the building isn't going to burn down from ballast abuse?"
In many applications they use Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) to dim an LED *and* to conserve power at approximately same brightness output. You can set the PWM for something like a 70% duty cycle (extending battery life significantly) without noticeable dimming. It should be easy to build a circuit into the LED driver which converts the dirty chopped output from SCR driven dimmer switches to drive/control the appropriate PWM signal for the LED's...
There are a lot of places where the majority of power comes from nuclear and hydro.
Yes, and both of those power sources use a lot of energy to build. Then for nuclear there's pollution from mining as well as the waste.
Also, the real risk of CFLs is caused by the fact that any pollution from it is local and concentrated as a point source
Over a period of years I replaced almost all of my incandescent light bulbs with CFLs. As one burnt out I got a CFL to replace it. A point source of mercury is easier to handle than air born mercury. As for possibly breaking one, I try to use measures to reduce any possibility of breakage.
Also, consider that the plumes from garbage dumps invading your water supply
CFLs are supposed to be recycled and not thrown in the trash. Of course some people do throw them away, either because they don't care or because they don't know better. Even so, that's still less mercury in the environment than the amount of mercury that would be emitted to produce the power to light today's incandescent lights.
Which is why I hope these LEDs, or others, that are good for area lighting come onto the market within a couple of years.
trace mercury emitted into the atmosphere a hundred miles away from the city....
Not all power plants are 100 miles away from the city. There's more than one power plant in South Bronx. NYC has 25 plants serving it. The first ones built by Con Edison, used the used steam to heat neighborhood buildings.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
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I use CFLs, though I've had 3 out of the 8 I installed go bad within the first 2 years of use and still haven't found the time to "properly" dispose of them.
I too use CFLs. Like you I have 3 that burned out, however one lasted about 20 years. I don't know how long the others lasted. Also like you, I haven't disposed of them either. I put them in a room nobody uses in the packaging some of the CFLs I bought came in. When I find out where I'll take them in for recycling. I heard Home Depot was starting to accept them for recycling but I haven't seen my local store with a place to put them.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Nuclear power isn't clean.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
The Home Depot near me, less than 5 miles, does not a place to recycle CFLs. Unless it's hidden.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Most light packaging lists lumens and watts these days. It's probably required by regulation, but even if not, who would buy unlabeled? You'd have to know you're probably getting crap if your bulb doesn't advertise its input and output.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
I have crappy globe shaped ones in my bathroom that start out, how shall I say... dungeoneque, and take a couple minutes before you'd say the room is lit.
In the middle of the night it would be a blessing to start off dim and wax to full brightness. It saves the searing of the retinas that a full on bright would cause. The (normal) fluorescents in my bathroom have a tendency to go Flash-Flash-off-Flash-ON, which is not pleasant when nature decides to call at 3AM. Imagine those multi-flash anti-redeye camera flashes and you'll get the idea.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Electricity is only generated from coal because we're not allowed to go nuclear. It's the ONLY viable option, it's perfectly safe, and it's clean as a whistle.
Nuclear power is NOT clean.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
If you just plugged enough LEDs in series to plug straight into AC, they'd flicker at a very noticeable 60Hz.
That must be what's going on with those strings of LED Christmas lights. The flicker is very noticable, to me anyway. (I have always been sensitive to flicker. Did you ever ask someone whose CRT monitor was set to 60 Hz, "Doesn't that flicker bother you?" To which they reply, "What flicker?") Between the flicker and the bluish hue, the LED Christmas lights of 2008 are Not Acceptable to this consumer.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
hehe
Nothing is, but at least it's renewable energy with no emissions.
Dam's aren't renewable, or emissions free. They depend on water and water flow changes, even in the biggest rivers. And unless the lake created behind the dam is dredged periodically silt will pile up and eventually clog the intake manifolds or pipes. And because that lake increases the surface area of water more water will evaporate. Water vapor itself is a potent Greenhouse Gas, it's more potent than CO2. Dams also require vast amounts of concrete which uses Portland cement as the main ingredient. Portland cement is made by heating limestone to 1450C in a kiln which requires a lot of energy. Along with the concrete dams also require a lot of steel which like concrete requires a lot of heat.
However some of this can be reduced. A few years ago /. had an article about a type of hydro power that didn't require dams. Instead of blocking the flow of water a platform with blades like egg beaters is lowered into the water and the flowing water causes them to spin generating electricity. I haven't heard anything about it though, I wonder what happened.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I'm sticking with incandescents. Even if you pack several color LEDs together, you still get a light spectrum that sucks.
Yes, it is.
Please explain how it is not.
Let's see. Uranium mining which is usually done in indigenous communities, and who usually opposes [.doc] the mining, is dirty. The Navajo found about that. The nuclear power plants themselve require vast amounts of concrete and steel. Portland cement, which is used to make concrete, requires limestone to be heated to 1450C in a kiln. That takes a lot of energy. And like concrete steel requires a lot of energy as well. Then there's the waste. The amount of waste can be reduced if it's reprocessed however that makes the remaining waste even hotter. Reprocessing also leaves a lot of toxic chemicals. Lastly once a power plant has reached it's lifespan, the land isn't useful for much if anything. It might be possible to dispose of the waste by drilling into a subduction zone but no demonstration has been done showing it can safely be done.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
One caveat... you best have good muscle memory to line up ole one eye Willy--lack of stereo vision hampers rangefinding.
LEDs are very nice for reading. They were invented by Einstein, IIRC, and are finally just about ready to make the big time. CFLs are like old steam locomotives. The future is LED.
Ever fired a rifle? I don't suppose you used both eyes to line that up, and you don't have gravity pointing the general direction either.
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
LEDs have not yet matched the output efficiency of CFLs. To produce the same lumens, it takes more power.
Eventually LEDs will become more efficient than CFLs, but making them cheaply is not solving the issue.
Following is an email I sent in to a radio show about a year ago, after they had a discussion on the "dangers" of CFL mercury.
This TRULY IS A HORROR STORY!
- -
Thanx Mike, for that pertinent, and timely warning on Monday's Daybreak about those extremely dangerous CFL bulbs .
Here is my own brief story about a CFL bulb that broke in my house, and the hell that ensued. - About two weeks ago, one of my cats, "Tigger", knocked over a small table lamp containing a CFL bulb, which subsequently smashed.
I quickly evacuated the house, except for poor Tigger who had broken the toxic bulb.
We made sure that the house was sealed- all doors and windows closed - and I then dialed 9-1-1.
Within an hour or so ( I was amazed at the quick response!), a group of professionally trained "Hazardous Materials" (HazMat) specialists had been dispatched from Health Canada, and arrived on my property in a large white step-van. Yes, it even had a yellow flashing light! Maybe two- I don't remember. Seems exciting, huh? The house was quickly cordoned off with those yellow ribbons that you see on TV all the time. Men in exotic Hazmat suits with specail breathing devices began to file into the house and professionally seal all the windows and doors. We were warned that the house would be "off-limits" while it was disinfected of the extremely poisonous Mercury. We gratefully spent two nights at a friend's house half a mile down the road. The Hazmat team set upon clearing the house of any residual Mercury. A day or two later, they finally said that the house was safe to re-enter. Alas, the poor cat had been "put down" by the Health Canada team. I told them that I would bury Tigger in the flower garden, but they refused to permit this. I was told that the cat was now considered toxic waste, and would have to be removed to a special waste site somewhere in Ungava. I was heartbroken, but did not question this.
By now, you are probably suspecting that there seems to be something terribly amiss in this story.
Well!
I'm sorry but some of the above facts must be set straight.
Yes, Tigger did indeed knock over the lamp and break the CFL bulb.
But after this incident, things actually happened somewhat differently than reported above:
I quickly.. no, slowly- procured from the cellar stairs (while swearing at the cat under my breathe,) a device commonly referred to as a "dustpan". The hazardous broken glass was then swept into it with a special Hazmat tool known as a "brush". Once all the glass was thusly secured, it was dumped surreptitiously into the very small household garbage can. (hey- we recycle and compost extensively) And any residual glass shards were then eradicated with the standard household Vacuum cleaner.
No droplets of the dreaded toxic Mercury were ever detected (read further below)
The cat, (Tigger) I might add, watched silently from across the room, perhaps realizing he had committed a faux-pas (or is that a Fax-paws?.) And!
So far, I am ahppy to report that we are all still alive and seemingly healthy. Including the miscreant Tigger.
I am fairly certain Tigger is still alive, due to his jumping mightily onto my chest (OOF! be still, my sleeping heart!) at 7AM this morning, and then staring boldly into my face and crying to let him outside.
Of course, when he jumped on me, I woke up, turned on the radio, and...
Guess what?
Heard you discussing the above CFL disposal conundrum with some airhead from Heath Canada: "Hey, Mike, I hear what you're saying", "Ok, Mike, Like I know where you're coming from!", "I'm glad you asked me that question, Mike!" etc etc Nice to have a sinecure,huh?
Anyhow this is my testimony that, somehow, both the cat and I survived this terrible accident. Gosh, there is hope for modern Canadian 21st humanity yet, in spite of these worrisome CFL incidents.
An addendum:
HALF a century ago (no, perhaps even more), as high schoo
.
- aqk
F U
I had wondered why LEDs were so expensive, for example Acriche LEDs that can be run directly off 240/110V AC were about $US 40 the last time I checked.
I guess they're cheap enough for torches (which translates as 'flashlights' for you American geeks who don't know about the outside world) but lighting a home is still something for the extreme enthusiast, especially as all the projects I've read about use an AC-DC converter for every individual array (eg. kitchen, bathroom, front porch etc.). Would take many years to pay off I imagine.
I would like to save power as much as the next guy. But we all know that the power company would make up for the lost revenue by simply raising rates. It seems that the more we conserve, the more they arbitrarily raise rates to keep the stockholders happy, NOT the paying customer.
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
A nice bulb which doesn't spit out a mess of EM garbage and which doesn't add mercury to the local landfill like the much over-hyped CFL's which are guilty on both counts.
Though, I must say, CFL's have come a long way wrt color quality. Though. . , they still feel sort of creepy. --I like what LED technology has done for flashlights, but I'm not sure I'd enjoy living under something which feels like moonlight. I think you need some ambient heat in order to feel comfortable. Sun and Fire have a long love affair with the Human body and its sense organs. When the heat goes out of that relationship, what are you left with?
Call me a sentimentalist.
Sadly, it seems to be just a matter of time before governments outlaw incandescent bulbs. I just love the government; always working hard to serve the people the best way it knows how. You can pretty much bet that whenever governments and industry team up to hard-sell any legislation, you're being screwed in some way not immediately obvious.
-FL
Because your electric bill is for watt hours (actually kilowatt hours). Your toaster, refrigerator, etc are all measured in watts.
Light bulbs should also have brightness measurements, I agree. But if you only went by lumens or candelas, incandescant bulbs would be best. As it is, most of us didn't get millions of dollars in performance bonuses for running a company into the ground and thus have to watch our spending.
Free Martian Whores!
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Nobody I know of will take them for recycling, and I refuse to store garbage.
Well as I said, the room is largely unused, though I hope to set up a darkroom in it.
Most all cleaning agents are incredibly toxic or they won't work.
I don't use most cleaning agents. Generally I use baking soda, borax, citrus fruits, hydrogen peroxide bleach, and vinegar. And they work fine. For dishes and laundry I use organic cleaners. The one thing I use that is dangerous is Diatomaceous earth.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
But... Is there currently a dimmable LED bulb that effectively replaces a 100 watt A19?