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Edison Would Have Loved New Light Bulb Law, Says His Great-Grandson
New submitter futuristic writes with a link to Thomas Edison's great-grandson's take on Thomas Edison and the alleged demise of the incandescent light bulb. From the article: "My great grandfather's 100-watt incandescent will be replaced with new energy-efficient versions, including CFLs, LEDs, and — yes — new and improved incandescent bulbs. ... And my great-grandfather wouldn't have it any other way."
...he just bought the patent from two Toronto inventors http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Woodward_(inventor)
"Consider the lillies of the goddamn field."
Yep, that's why every single device in my house has an AC/DC converter, to convert that superior AC to something that they can actually fucking use.
Puts out a ton of waste heat in the process too, although since it's winter now, I suppose that's just as well.
The AC/DC converters to your electronics are where you're spending most of your energy, huh? Do you have those hooked up to your fridge? Air Conditioner? Washer and Dryer?
AC power is the way to go power large motors. you don't need a commutator. Brushless DC motors are actually AC motors, btw, they need an inverter.
But only because we've got technology they didn't back then. When it comes to long distance transmission, voltage is key because of Ohms law. The more current you have the bigger your conductor has to be to prevent loss.
Well transformers can easily and quite efficiently step up and down AC voltage. So you can have hundreds of thousands of volts, far more than you'd want in a home, over a distribution line. There was no equivalent technology for DC back when the current wars were going on.
Now there is, thyristors. They are solid state devices that do a good job of efficient DC-DC conversion. So it is possible today to do HVDC lines and indeed it is done. There are some advantages (like no skin effect).
Prior to that the best there was is mercury arc valves. Those worked and were used, but had some serious limits. Even then, they didn't come on the scene until about the 1920s, and the current wars were back in the 1880s.
So sure, if we redesigned the grid today, maybe DC would make sense, however there are some things that AC works really well for. Thing is, we didn't design it today, we designed it in the 1800s and back then, AC was it. Edison's DC plan called for there to be generators all over the place since long runs were out of the question. That is a shitty way to do things, not only because you don't want generators in your neighborhood but because as with many things, generators scale with efficiency in terms of size.
Transformers were invented back then - that is why AC had the advantage. The big technological proponent of AC was Tesla who (In between contributing to our modern image of the Mad Scientist by electrifying the atmosphere of an entire planet) designed the foundation upon which the national grid would be built. He knew transformers. He invented a whole new type of transformer, and called it a Tesla coil.
There are many reasons why one might need or still require incandescent bulbs in certain applications. Trying to outlaw them is just plain stupid. At the most, slap a tax on them to make them cost more than the alternatives. I am *STILL* waiting for the "perfect" incandescent replacement- one doesn't exist. That said, I have replaced MOST of my incandescents.
* Dimming characteristics
* Flicker
* Color type or quality
* X10 compatibility
* Light dispersal
* Start up time
* EFI
* Fixture compatibility
* Fixture size
1) The power wouldn't even _get_ to your house without being wasted on the way if it were DC
2) For things actually needing much power, you use AC anyway and don't convert to DC.
Incandescent technology isn't being banned, just being pushed to evolve a little. If you need to dim look for 29, 43, 53, and 72, watt halogen bulbs. These replace 40, 60, 75, and 100 watt standard bulbs respectively and comply with the new law. These are marketed under the Eco Smart brand by Phillips, Super Saver by Sylvania (Made in USA too), GE also sell them. These are more pricey than standard bulbs and the Sylvaina ones are 1/4 inch less in diameter, but are a suitable replacement.
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And they sold their original stock which they had from before the efficiency rules, then customs stopped the importation of any more because they are not idiots and know a smartass when they see one.
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&ie=UTF8&oe=UTF8&twu=1&u=http://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/unternehmen/kleinheizgeraet-heatball-zoll-haelt-40-000-gluehbirnen-auf-11065089.html
People are missing the major point here: There is no incandescent ban in the US, only an efficiency requirement. If someone can invent a filament bulb which meets the requirements they are free to sell them... oh wait they already did and it is called a halogen bulb; you can pick them up at any hardware store.
Dimmable CFLs do work, (they're used in nearly all LCD monitors, other than those that now use dimmable LEDs). Neither is as simple as a dimmable incandescent, but they are available and they do work. However, dimmers designed for incandescent bulbs are not optimal for CFL or LED lights. Your best option to replace incandescent bulbs in dimming fixtures are the newer, more efficient incandescent or halogen bulbs, or replace both the dimmer and the bulbs.
BTW, only standard bulbs are affected by the new regulations, specialty bulbs (e.g. "decorator", "teardrop", "sconce", etc.) are not affected. These are the types of bulbs most frequently used with dimmers.
I never said there aren't valid uses for incandescent bulbs (particularly halogen bulbs), I only challenged the OPs statement, and I fully expect him to fail to provide a single valid example that justifies his statement.
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You could have Googled why this matters over long distances. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_power_cable
Support Eachother, Copy Dutch Property!
Doesn't Warren Buffet want to change the tax laws so he makes less money?
Well you can believe (A) what a man says in political speeches or (B) what a man does in reality. In reality Buffet uses loopholes to engineer his personal pay in order to avoid taxes. He pays himself in dividends, which is taxed at a lower rate than regular income. If he wanted to pay the same taxes as his secretary he could pay himself in money, an ordinary paycheck, the same way she and nearly everyone else is paid.
Buffet favors an inheritance tax but he then gives all his money to the Gates foundation, again avoiding taxation.
Classic 1% behavior. Do as I say not as I do. Reminds me of Senator Ted Kennedy, all pro environment and green energy until someone wants to put up wind turbines that can be viewed from his beachfront property.
You can't transmit power over long distances at end-user voltage; the resistive losses make it impractical. A century ago there was no efficient way to step DC voltages up/down for long-distance transmission; AC made it possible to use simple and inexpensive electromagnetic transformers for this.
Even today, if we supplied DC to individual homes it would still need to be at a voltage too high for most electronics (that pesky resistive loss issue again), so you'd still need converters. Yes, they would be DC-DC instead of AC-DC, but this would only make them marginally more efficient.
My shop is lit with a row of fluorescent tubes and a bunch of very large (200 watt) incandescent bulbs. Winters are brutal on the fluorescent bulbs. They flicker a lot while the ballast warms up. As well we replace more fluorescent tubes each year in the shop than bulbs (why would cold affect the tubes?). Which is nice because the bulbs are 20 feet overhead. Getting reliable, energy-efficient replacements for these bulbs would be very nice but I haven't seen any yet.
The problem with fluorescent tubes is that they need a sufficient temperature to get the correct mercury vapor pressure in the tube. If the pressure is too low, the discharge current will be too low giving poor light out, and an unstable discharge leading to flickering. The tube will need an abnormally high a voltage from the ballast, this will cause excessive sputtering from the tube filaments, shortening the tube life dramatically.
To an extent, the use of electronic ballasts can help, as electronic ballasts operate in an almost constant-power mode, whereas magnetic ballasts act instead as a current limiter. If the tube pressure is too low, the electronic ballast will still deliver near full power to the tube, whereas the magnetic ballast will severely underdrive the tube, leading to a prolonged warm-up time, during which time the tube is overstressed. Electronic ballasts also prolong the life of the tube and improve efficiency and reduce flicker due to the use of high frequency drive.
For extremely cold environements, you need to use low temperature fluorescent tubes. These use a different gas mix and mercury charge, this ensures that the discharge is stable and tube parameters appropriate at temperatures as low as -40 C.
No, not really. It wasn't until fairly late in the 20th century that DC-DC converters and switched-mode power supplies became usably efficient. Prior to that, AC was the only realistic way to bump power up to high enough voltages to do long-distance power transmission without *huge* resistive losses. So yes, if we were designing the power grid today, DC might be practical, but a hundred years ago, it wasn't, at least not scalably.
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I call bullshit on the "cost too much" when you look at the long term for LEDs. Maybe not for every bulb in the house, including ones used a very low percentage of the time, but for those you use as little as 1000 hr/yr (2.73 hr/day), an equivalent LED is a LOT cheaper than a 60 watt incandescent.
Incandescent, 60 watts * 1000 hrs/yr = 60 kWh/yr = $10.50/yr = $210.00 in 20 years - plus $10.00 for 20 bulbs in 20 years.
Total for 20 years = $220.00
LED, 12 watts * 1000 hrs/yr = 12 kWh/yr = $2.10/yr = $42.00 in 20 years - plus $25.00 for 1 "bulb" in 20 years.
Total for 20 years = $67.00
And yes, the Philips #285106 12 watt 800 lumen A19 "bulb" is rated to last over 20,000 hr. It is dimmable, and I'll go out on a limb and guarantee it will not make you puke. This is not the usual crappy puke-green bad-light-pattern LED. The warm light it makes is a dead ringer for incandescent light and the pattern is very close to an incandescent. If you have trouble buying it for $25, just order two of them on line from Home Depot and they will waive shipping charges (to USA at any rate). Since when does having it in "your local store" make any difference in the on line age?
I used 17.5 US cents per kWh for my calculations; it's what my electricity costs and I believe its a fair representation of world rates; of course they vary from a lot less than that near the Hoover Dam to more than that in some places. Anyway, the break even point for the LED over the incandescent is clearly way below 10 US cents per kWh.