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Incandescent Bulbs Return To the Cutting Edge
lee1 writes "A law in the US that is due to take effect in 2012 mandates such tough efficiency
standards for lightbulbs that it has been assumed, until recently, that
it would kill off the incandescent bulb. Instead, the law has become a
case study of the way government regulation can inspire technical
innovation. For example, new incandescent technology from Philips that
seals the traditional filament inside a small capsule (which itself is
contained within the familiar bulb). The capsule has a coating that
reflects heat back to the filament, where it is partially converted to
light. The sophisticated ($5.00) bulbs are about 30% more efficient than the
old-fashioned ($0.25) kind, and should last about three times as long.
So they are less economical than compact fluorescents, but should emit a
more pleasing spectrum, not contain mercury, and, one supposes, present
the utility company with a more desirable power factor."
The moment I find these in stores I am IMMEDIATELY buying a few and replacing every bulb attached to a dimmer switch in my house. Ask anyone with a light dimmer who switched to CFL's, and this'll immediately be their biggest caveat with the tech.
I live in Edmonton Alberta, Canada where 8 months of winter is fairly common. Here our old incandescent bulbs have 100% efficiency because the heat generated does not go to waste :-)
The "mercury" issue should be easily solved by disposing the bulbs in the correct way
easily...with a majority of dumb people disposing trash in the very street whenever they can ?
haha....you are so naive it is not even funny.
You would find less overall electricity usage by switching to CFL and using the difference in power to run a heat pump. Worst case scenario, the ground doesn't have any heat to give you and your pump defaults to standard resistance heating, which is where you are now. All other scenarios are improvements on that.
Unless, of course, you're not currently using electric resistance heating as your main heat supply. In which case, by answering the question, "why not," you will also know why you're not saving anything by relying on your lamps as auxiliary heat.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
I agree on your cynicism towards people disposing trash properly. However I do think that governments aren't making it easy enough for people to have no excuses. Don't get me wrong though, I'm not saying it's a complicated equation, but in order for this to work it should be "as easy" to dispose of your light bulbs properly as it is with regular waste. In some places this is true, but that's far, far from all.
I am the lawn!
And what exactly is wrong with variety in the market (and bulbs for which you don't have to wait five minutes to reach full brightness)?
Replacing a $0.25 bulb with a $5 bulb is not a good use of government power. People can do that on their own, if it suits them.
no they can't - no-one in their right mind would buy a roughly equivalent 25c bulb for $5, and as a result, the manufacturers would not even bother trying to make and sell them. Net result: 25c bulbs are the only option.
Sometimes you need some external stimulus to provoke a change in a stable environment, like sticking your finger in still water.
Similarly, saying "the market will provide more power stations", well yes it will - eventually, in the meantime while the market is getting to the point where more power is required, you're suffering brownouts. Besides, it is often in the market's interest to let you suffer like that as they you will pay more.
Sometimes you need more forward planning and organisation than market forces allow.
These 2 factors are why we need and have governments, if only life was as simple as you think, we'd be living in a utopia.
who pays to clean up the pollution caused by the power plants that generate electric power for the bulbs?
It should be charged back to the power plants in question, and therefore be built into the cost of the electricity.
We're a lot further along that than we used to be 40 years ago, the plants capture a lot of the pollution rather than emitting it*. We're still not all the way.
As for the efficiency, I think that a 30% improvement is just enough to keep them available under the proposed bans, like what California proposed.
Can't find a link, but I remember the law requiring bulbs to be something like 30% more efficient, they weren't banning incandescents by name.
Of course, I also saw on a couple of the sites I checked that there was a proposal against CRT TVs. My old 32" CRT TV(Energy Star rated for it's time) takes less energy, as measured by a meter, both as a unit and per square inch of visible screen, than my new 42" LCD TV(also Energy Star).
*And make a bit of change selling the valuable commodities that would be pollution if just released
I don't read AC A human right
The craptons of mercury spewed by the power plant can, in principle, be scrubbed and recaptured.
But hey, the craptons of mercury tossed into landfills by Joe Six-Pack can, in principle, be reclaimed when you end up drinking it. So it all works out in the end, I guess.
Cripes, the infamous light bulb efficiency gimmick again. What's next, we gonna tie light bulb usage to Global Warming?
Seriously, any of you ever actually take a measurement of your electric usage in your house? Instead of screwing with 60W of light you use really only part of the day, take a look at your A/C unit. Older A/C units under 10 SEER drawing 20A or more will suck $80 - $120/month out of your wallet while new ones will draw less than 1/2 of that (7 - 10A). A dryer that runs 2 hours a day (not hard for a family of four) will run over $30/month pulling 20A. Own a pool? Average 1HP pump will suck another $25 - $35/month from your wallet if you run it according to what you've heard is "the norm". Geek running a server farm out of your home powered 24/7? Had a measly el-cheapo Dell headless tower that ran me $10/month by itself.
Point here is there's a HELL of a lot MORE we can fine tune and adjust lifestyles around to save a hell of a lot more than that 60W light bulb that you don't even turn off when you leave a room anyway.
Technology for Al Gores sake is not always necessary.
Compare that to the method for incandescent bulbs:
1) sweep broken bulb pieces into adust pan and dump in the garbage
Plus I don't have to turn off my central air each time I clean the floor after that.
Planting a lawn in the middle of a fscking desert is not using water in an efficient manner, no matter how many days per week you're allowed to water it.
You can never shift the burden away from the Taxpayers for a utility. By definition a Utility is needed by all (or so close to all as to be insignificantly different). Any increase in overhead (Fuel, Taxes, Regulations, Environmental Stewardship, Waste handling, etc) will be passed on to the consumer to pay as part of their utility bill.
Cap and Trade will make my electric bill go up, not decrease the profits or pay of executives at the power company. Now, I'd be willing to eat that cost if everyone else were going to have to as well, but that won't be the case. Manufacturers that can, will move their power intensive operations over seas to countries that don't participate in the cap and trade system. It'll save them money, lose the US jobs, and drive down the business of companies that cannot/willnot relocate somewhere else.
This is the fundamental aspect of business that many in washington do not understand. Any move you make to increase operating costs in the US will simply result in the gradual movement of those industries affect to other countries that are less expensive to operate in.
Unless you can get the UN to jam this system down the throats of every industrialized manufacturing country, it's just going to make the US economy worse while helping the economy somewhere else. Not a big problem while the US was booming, but definitely counter productive under the current situation.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde