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GE Closes Last US Light Bulb Factory
pickens writes "The Washington Post reports that last major GE factory making ordinary incandescent light bulbs in the US is closing this month, marking a small, sad exit for a product and company that can trace their roots to Thomas Alva Edison's innovations in the 1870s. What made the plant vulnerable is, in part, a 2007 energy conservation measure passed by Congress that set standards essentially banning ordinary incandescents by 2014 but rather than setting off a boom in the US manufacture of replacement lights, the leading replacement lights are compact fluorescents, or CFLs, which are made almost entirely overseas. GE developed a plan to see what it would take to retrofit a plant that makes traditional incandescents into one that makes CFLs but even with a $40 million investment the new plant's CFLs would have cost about 50 percent more than those from China. 'Everybody's jumping on the green bandwagon,' says Pat Doyle, 54, who has worked at the plant for 26 years. But 'we've been sold out. First sold out by the government. Then sold out by GE.'"
I loath CFL lights. They don't last ANYWHERE near the reports say they will. Yet the power LED on one of my computers is still happily running (after 24 hours a day for 10 years).
And LEDs don't require you to use a hazmat suit to pick up pieces if you break one (since they contain Mercury).
UPS Sucks
"The Washington Post reports that last major GE factory making ordinary incandescent light bulbs in the US is closing this month, marking a small, sad exit for a product and company that can trace their roots to Thomas Alva Edison's innovations in the 1870s.
Debatable about the innovation (read some of the comments)
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
This is just a symptom of the operating focus for GE. They no longer have a consumer interest. There are several companies working on high efficiency Halogen bulbs using IR reflective coatings to reflect heat back against the filament. In addition there is a significant amount of work updating the tungsten filament itself, basically sputtering the wire to texture it. GE has put little effort into updating their manufacturing technology, just milking it for profit. I recently swapped my 75 Watt PAR 30 lamps for 48 Watt lamps with the same Lumen output. Philips brand, though I have no idea who manufactures the coated capsules for their bulbs. The light output is excellent quality. Most of my general purpose lighting is CFL, modern CFL is very good, but I find that direct tungsten is more comfortable for reading, and these high efficiency Tungsten bulbs are very nice. Certainly less efficient than 18 Watt CFL, but much better than the 75 Watt Halogens they replace.
I am not going to fault GE for their shift in focus to commercial, that is just the way it is.
Of the bill, maybe, but of energy usage, it's about 12%, of a residential pie that is itself about 20% of U.S. energy usage. So residential lighting is about 2 1/2% of U.S. energy usage, and from the best category of energy usage (electricity).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Even with the most conservative estimates for mercury output and the proportion of power generated by coal and the most unforgiving ones for CFL mercury content and power savings, the power saved by CFLs results in less mercury being released into the environment than they could themselves release.
http://www.energy.gs/2007/05/cfl-mercury-myths.html
http://www.energyrace.com/commentary/more_on_mercury_coal_and_cfls_updated/
http://www.popularmechanics.com/home/reviews/news/4217864
We've all been duped on the CFL lights. I think they are dead-even with incandescent lights as far as "carbon footprint"; here is why: I switched all of my bulbs to CFL about 2 years ago. I have had 4 of them "burn" up. They get really, really hot, emitting that burnt electronics smell and go out.
Regular filament bulbs:
Glass and metal
CFL bulbs:
A little mercury vapor
glass
phosphors
printed circuit board
resistors
capacitors
metal
solder
transformer
Ok, the CFL save some energy, but they sure add more pollutants (the circuit boards and mercury) to the system WITHOUT the long-life promised.
In 3 to 5 years when all the CFLs start dying, there will be a huge furor over the mercury they contain leeching into landfills.
Or not.
In the United States, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimated that if all 270 million compact fluorescent lamps sold in 2007 were sent to landfill sites, that this would represent around 0.13 metric tons, or 0.1% of all U.S. emissions of mercury (around 104 metric tons that year.) Compact fluorescent lamp
ap.
Anybody know where I can get good 800-1000 lumen LED bulbs, that fit in regular A19 socket with 4" clearance (too many are 5" or more tall, and don't fit in many fixtures), and don't have a fan and heatsink?
Try here: http://www.earthled.com/
Home Depot is also starting to stock LED bulbs.
First, you have the problem of power factor, which means that with fluorescent bulbs, you're often drawing a lot more power than you think, it just isn't getting metered that way.
I'm sorry, this doesn't make any sense. Are you talking about reactive power here? Reactive power is important in grid control... but it is not energy. Energy is the issue here. Fluorescent bulbs do not, in fact, use more energy than incandescent-- they use less.
Second, you have the spectrum of light, which because it is balanced towards the blue end and because it isn't a continuous spectrum, isn't perceived as being of equal brightness.
Actually, the reason that fluorescent bulbs are more energy efficient is because their emission puts out more of its light in the parts of the spectrum that the human eye uses efficiently, not less. Incandescents are way too red-rich. (As should be obvious-- there's no way to get a thermal source to an emission temperature of 5800K, which is the sun's temperature.)
They probably could, if you ignore the startup costs of the plant. But if you've already got a US-based plant, the startup costs of that plant are sunk and don't figure into a comparison with foreign plants. OTOH, when you would either need to convert the local plant or start a foreign plant, the conversion costs of the local plant do need to be considered.
Part of the problem is that China has not historically allowed its currency to float. In other words, China has stacked the deck in its favor. Personally, I blame Clinton, who granted most favored nation status to China without meaningful free-market reforms.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
I think if you add a resistor in series with the halogen bulb you may be able to bring the temperature down enough so that the color is the same as that of a regular incandescent bulb. I know that running halogens at too low temperature shortens their life, but a small decrease actually increases the life.
The LED light does actually produce significant heat. It's nowhere near as much heat as an incandescent or CFL, but because LED's have such a very low heat tolerance (heat reduces their lifespan), keeping them cooled them isn't as easy as simply removing the AC/DC converter.
What I don't get is this: if China can produce CFLs at half the price (which doesn't surprise me), then why couldn't they also produce incandescents at half the price? In other words, why hadn't the plant closed long before the advent of CFLs?
My guess is that incandescent bulbs can be made cheaply both in the USA and in China because they contain no environmental pollutants, whereas CFLs, on the other hand, contain mercury, and it's probable that the environmental regulations in China are sufficiently loose to allow them to streamline the manufacturing process in ways that simply cannot be done legally in the USA.
Yes, it sucks that the market for candles disappeared but you have to adapt and compete. If you can't make CFLs competitively, then you lose your job. It's that simple.
This isn't that the market for candles disappeared but rather the government banned candles. This is not the free market at work but rather the government screwing us (again)
When electric lighting became available, the government didn't ban candles and lanterns. They didn't need to because people preferred electric lighting. Given a choice between CFL and incandescent light bulbs, many people prefer incandescents. I've heard stores of people in Europe and the US filling up their garages and closets with incandescents so they'll have a lifetime supply. I doubt that will happen when CFLs are replaced with LEDs (or something else).
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
And they are required to by law.
http://library.findlaw.com/2002/Dec/19/132442.html
The high-frequency ballasts that run these bulbs have been around for 20 years at least.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Bad math and Jenny McCarthy-style pseudo science (with a Fox question mark no less!).
I'm ashamed of you slashdot.
Fluorescents are 3x as efficient as incandescents. Yes, the efficiency is exaggerated on the labels because the bulbs don't quite put out as much light as the incandescents they are comparing against. But even if you correct for that fluorescents are far more efficient.
Heck, to prove it, just light up a bulb and touch it. Feel that heat on the incandescent? That's wasted energy that didn't go to light. Now touch an equivalently bright fluorescent bulb, it's only a little warm.
Power factor doesn't mean it's using more power than you would think from the wattage, it means it's using more CURRENT and less voltage. Anyway, changing phase like this (low power factor) doesn't mean that the meter isn't measuring correctly. If this were true, people would be strapping inductors onto the lines in their house right before the meter to get free power.
Power factor is only an issue for the electric company, they have to adjust for it. And they are adept at adjusting for it. This is evidenced by how the electric companies are very interested in you using CFLs, my electric company sends me mail about it twice a year. If the low power factors of CFLs presented problems to them, they wouldn't do this, would they?
If you don't like bluish CFLs, get yellowish ones. There are 3 colors, one is very yellow.
I agree LEDs still have limitations. I'd like to get some for my hallway but I"m not ready to make that move yet.
Dimmers are not suitable for fluorescent or LED bulbs, each should really be dimmed with a control signal instead of a rheostat. Hopefully this kind of technology will be common in homes soon so we can get rid of the buzzing from dimming fluorescent and LEDs.
The government is subsidizing your fossil fuels significantly. You don't see it in your bill, because it isn't being subsidized by giving you money to give the electric companies to pay for electricity. We massively subsidize oil drilling and production.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=how-much-in-subsidies-do-fossil-fue-2009-09-18
Your electric bill would be noticeably higher without these subsidies and solar would look correspondingly a little cheaper.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Why do you need a converter? The LEDs themselves are used are rectifying diodes.
I'm talking about the power factor, and yes, that is referring to reactive loads, but yes, it IS energy. It is momentary energy which is then followed by pushing energy back towards the grid (effectively), but when you look at the peak loading on the generator capacity, it must be able to handle the worst case combination of those reactive loads, not just the average case. Otherwise, you have a momentary brownout. The same holds true for every wire, every transformer, etc. along the path from the generators to your house.
Worse, because it is synchronized with the sine wave cycle, having a million of them means that a million are all drawing more current at once. It isn't randomized where one would be drawing more current while another draws less. You should not be so quick to dismiss the importance of the power factor of equipment that you put on the grid. Even though your power bill may look a lot lower, the actual impact on the grid and on generation capacity may or may not be lower to nearly the same degree.
That's theoretically true, but the difference between theory and practice is that in theory, there is no difference. In practice, no matter how bright you turn a blue lamp, you will always see it as being dark because blue reminds you of nighttime. Psychologically speaking, blue-tinted light is perceptually darker than reddish light even if it is of far greater brightness in terms of your actual ability to see and distinguish objects and color. And other things like skin tone are poorly perceived in fluorescent light as well, which contributes to that perception.
Color temperature isn't the entire story. The human eye was designed for a continuous spectrum with the peak somewhere in the neighborhood of 5600K or so. Fluorescent lights produce a discrete spectrum with very little coverage of the red end of the spectrum at all. Although the average color temperature matches more closely, the discontinuity of the spectrum produces holes in your color perception that the human eye wasn't really designed to handle. We tolerate it, but not so well.
Also, bear in mind that CFL efficiency isn't all that great. In the best case, you're talking about a 4x improvement in lumens per watt. In the worst case (a cheap CFL versus a halogen), it is barely a 3x improvement. If you discover, as I did, that it requires significantly more lights to provide the same perception of brightness in a particular room, a 3x difference in wattage can disappear like that. And if you have a power factor of 0.5 (not at all uncommon for CFLs), you are effectively only getting a 1.5x difference in wattage in terms of peak generator capacity.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
The forward voltage drop of the LEDs in series limits the current. The LEDs are actually "diodes" (that's the D part) so they don't need a rectifier diode.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
"the reason for the HSF is to convert the AC to DC."
BULLSHIT.
The reason for the heatsink is because high output diodes get hot enough TO MELT THEMSELVES WITHOUT SUFFICIENT HEAT DISSIPATION.
Learn your thermodynamics.
BTW LED lighting is my job so prepare for a MASSIVE smackdown if you wanna go toe to toe.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Probably similar to the one I had. Made in 1982 or thereabouts. Tub rusted out, so I replaced it with a Whirlpool. Made in Mexico based on a New Zealand design. I can't help it if you bought the cheapest piece of crap around.
My convection oven cost $600 and was made by GE (again in Mexico), though it was quite small. Someone I know spend a couple grand on his large one, which I believe was a Jenn-Aire, not from Germany.
If reactive power were power, then the laws of thermodynamics wouldn't hold, because the power in minus the power used (emitted as heat and light) minus the reactive power would not be net zero.
And again, when the power factor drops, it doesn't changing anything about the power used, it only means you're using more current and less voltage. This does mean the electric company has to have more current available unless they can use proper capacitive or inductive adjustments to work around it. And they are good at working around it. This is why they don't mind and in fact suggest you use CFLs.
Motors cause the same problem, so A/C presents a big issue to the grid. They're already rigged to deal with it.
CFLs are 3x more efficient in lumens per watt (or perhaps a bit more). This is for equivalent amounts of light. Your argument that you need to add more light is no more valid than saying you need to add more light with incandescents.
Yes, if you replace a 90 watt incandescent with an "equivalent" CFL replacement it will be dimmer, because the marketing people for CFLs are listing bogus figures. But even adjusting for this, CFLs are still 3x more efficient per lumen And that is a BIG difference.
> Psychologically speaking, blue-tinted light is perceptually darker than reddish light even if it is of far greater brightness in terms of your actual ability to see and distinguish objects and color. And other things like skin tone are poorly perceived in fluorescent light as well, which contributes to that perception.
No it isn't. The eye is most receptive to green, which is right between blue and yellow and the eye picks up on both yellow and blue very well. Bright blues are not seen as nighttime, they in fact are seen as very bright. See mercury vapor lamps, arc lamps, metal halide lamps, an acetylene torch or even the sun.
Color rendition is a complex issue. If you get a CFL with the proper color temperature (just look at the CFL page on wikipedia), then skin tones look correct. Due the line spectra in fluorescent light, some other things may not render well depending on the CFL and the object. If you have an object which is colored through dyes, and it's trying to be green by mixing blue and yellow (instead of having any actual green reflection to it), it may look different under fluorescent light because the mix of blue and yellow emitted may not be equal on the CFL even if the overall color temperature is good. Again, note that skin is not one of these things. In general, recent fluorescent lamps are pretty good on color rendition (see color rendition index) but still are not as good as a hot radiator like incandescent bulbs or the sun.
> Fluorescent lights produce a discrete spectrum with very little coverage of the red end of the spectrum at all.
This is not true. Just look at the picture on wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_fluorescent_lamp
See the line spectra? The yellow to red area is very well covered.
> And if you have a power factor of 0.5 (not at all uncommon for CFLs), you are effectively only getting a 1.5x difference in wattage in terms of peak generator capacity.
Not only is 0.5 not uncommon, but figures close to it like 0.55 are the most common by far. But as to the latter part, again, this is all fixed by adjustments in the grid, these higher current peaks are not seen at the generators.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
That's theoretically true, but the difference between theory and practice is that in theory, there is no difference. In practice, no matter how bright you turn a blue lamp, you will always see it as being dark because blue reminds you of nighttime. Psychologically speaking, blue-tinted light is perceptually darker than reddish light even if it is of far greater brightness in terms of your actual ability to see and distinguish objects and color. And other things like skin tone are poorly perceived in fluorescent light as well, which contributes to that perception.
What? I literally started using f.lux a few weeks ago, and I get to sleep better at night now. I don't get as tired during the day. The nighttime light isn't blue-hued; it's red-hued.
Also, blue light is daytime light. Red light is the light you see closer to sunset. The sunset is red for a reason.
2k bulbs are shit for growing algae, too. The spectrum is too far towards red with the lower K bulbs to provide adequate PAR. This applies to both red and green macroalgae, and cyanobacteria, for sure.
If you discover, as I did, that it requires significantly more lights to provide the same perception of brightness in a particular room, a 3x difference in wattage can disappear like that.
Then buy a 2k temperature bulb, instead of the closer-to-actual-daylight 6k bulbs. They're even easier to find at your local Home Depot than the 6k, since they have more of them on the shelf. Don't hold back progess because you can't pick bulbs of the same color as your incandescents that are right next to the blue-er ones.
The mercury content of CFLs is a problem but it is overhyped. They are hardly poisoning the earth, especially given how much electricity comes from coal still.
LEDs are caught up though, in a decade it'll be a mute point.
Someone had to do it.
I'm sure folks thought the same when the last 5.25" floppy drive factory closed. Oh wait, no, they didn't, it takes a modern mentality to bring culture wars into matters of technology, especially to the point of advocating violence against an imaginary class of modern-day unwashed hippies which doesn't actually exist.
Sometimes things just go obsolete. Deal with it.
Someone had to do it.
However there are no standard type bulbs that feature it...
Oh, really? Looks to me like someone with some real knowledge of thermal design in lighting has already blown your theories out of the water.
Blank until
Dimmable CFLs are expensive, and sucky.
I bought some dimmable CFLs recently (and no, I'm not going to mention a brand, because I don't believe that the brand printed on the box makes any difference with CFLs).
I plugged them into my Lutron dimmer switch, and fired 'em up. Lousy. Slow to turn on, horrific color. Actual dimming range went from "bright" to "a bit less bright," and then straight to "completely dark."
So much for trying to be energy-efficient in my office. They do work well enough with a regular light switch in the pantry, but that's about the best use I could come up with for them -- the color of light produced is too unpleasant for any place where people actually spend time.
The experience was bad enough that when I decided (a bit more recently) to install better lighting in my office, I did a complete polar opposite and put up MR16 halogens on a track. They dim just fine, and they're pretty. They're also expensive to run, but the office is almost always just lit by the dim glow of a few LCD screens, so I decided that I didn't need to care about efficiency.
Kid-proof tablet..