ESL — a CRT-Based Replacement For CFL Lights Without the Mercury

New submitter An dochasac writes "Everyone knows incandescent lights are inefficient little space heaters which happen to convert 5% of their incoming energy to light. Compact Fluorescents (CFLs) are more efficient, but they contain toxic, brain-eating mercury and emit a greenish light. LEDs are also efficient and last longer, but if their blueish 'white' light doesn't mess up your melatonin balance, their price is high enough to wreck your checking account balance and give you the blues. A company called Vu1 has come up with something called Electron Stimulated Luminance (ESL) lights which claim to solve the mercury and price problem with a light based on Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) technology. These lights have the warm color balance of incandescents and are compatible with dimmer switches. The article has further ESL details along with an explanation of why it's still a bad idea to say these are 'trash can safe.'"

Comments

Habla Espanol?

[CMYKjunkie]

My first thought: English as a Second Language light bulbs?

Re:Habla Espanol?

[otaku244]

Because if you're Newt, English brings "enlightenment"

Re:Habla Espanol?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh great, another thing the DEA will outlaw or try to control. It's bad enough to be hassled when trying to by cold medicine or baby formula.

Re:Habla Espanol?

[ae1294]

I would like to subscribe to your meth fuelled newsletter.

Re:Habla Espanol?

[Compuser84]

Can I just buy clear bulbs and save the salt for my fries? :)

It only took a century

[i kan reed]

But we're finally trying to improve the lightbulb again. Thanks, energy crisis.

Re:It only took a century

[Anonymous Coward]

What crisis?

Re:It only took a century

[Attila Dimedici]

People have been trying to improve the lightbulb ever since it was invented. They have, so far, been unsuccessful, which is why they had to lobby the government to get rid of traditional incandescent lightbulbs, so that they could sell the "improved" bulbs they had developed.
If they had actually improved on the traditional incandescent, they would not need to have a law passed in order to displace it, people would have switched. Do people need to have laws passed against old computers to get people to buy new ones?

Re:It only took a century

[Kenja]

The LED bulbs I'm using sure seem to be an improvement. But perhaps you're using some metric other then price, quality, efficiency or environmental impact.

Re:It only took a century

[Anonymous Coward]

... perhaps you're using some metric other then price, quality, efficiency or environmental impact.

Yes. Quality of the light (not quality of the physical bulb).

Re:It only took a century

[mattack2]

Are you against having any gas milage requirements for cars, too?

Or energy efficiency requirements for homes, businesses, etc?

Re:It only took a century

[Anonymous Coward]

The LED bulbs I'm using sure seem to be an improvement. But perhaps you're using some metric other then price, quality, efficiency or environmental impact.

Aesthetics.

I rather like the LEDs, and use CFLs, but fluorescent lights give me headaches, if they're bright enough. Never had that problem with incandescents...

Re:It only took a century

[DanTheStone]

But perhaps you're using some metric other then price, quality, efficiency or environmental impact.

Maybe he wants to use them in his easy-bake oven.

Re:It only took a century

[cpu6502]

Well put.

I know I would never buy another CFL if it wasn't for Congress forcing me too (because they outlawed incandescents). CFLs are the perfect example of an "improved" product that is actually worse than what it is replacing. Kinda like Windows 8 or Vista.

And I suspect if anybody did a study, they'd find CFLs actually use more energy & increase the carbon footprint more than incandescents, because of the extra energy needed to ship them from China & then drive the dead CFL to a recycling center to dispose of the hazardous mercury. It would be similar to how the ACEEE's study showed EVs are no cleaner than a 45mpg gasoline vehicle (and less clean than a natural gas Civic or 88mpg Lupo TDI).

Re:It only took a century

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd vote for a law against MS Windows, but then...

Re:It only took a century

[Attila Dimedici]

If they are an improvement why was it necessary to pass a law to phase out traditional incandescent bulbs to get people to adopt them?
The fact of the matter is that they may be an improvement, but the manufacturers obviously did not believe that the consumers would think so, or they would not have spent all that money lobbying to have traditional incandescents banned. Now we will never know if they are an improvement or not because the market was not given a chance to determine. The fact is that it is possible that they are an improvement for your usage and still not an improvement over all.

Re:It only took a century

[green1]

Price: LED $27.98, Incandescent $0.43 (Comparison of 60w incandescent vs 9w LED (approximately same brightness) at local home depot store)
Efficiency: 9w vs 60w, that's an improvement.
quality: very little ever goes wrong with incandescent bulbs, they work until they eventually burn out, often many years later. LEDs theoretically last longer, but there is a lot more that can go wrong with them, and I've seen many reports of individual LEDs within the arrays not working, or annoying flickers developing etc. Quality may be a wash, but it certainly isn't something I would easily award to the LED side.
Environmental impact... this is really hard to tell, sure the LED uses less electricity, but there is a LOT more involved in the manufacture as well including various components that are not exactly great environmentally. Additionally they are generally manufactured overseas and not locally as Incandescent bulbs are, so there's the shipping impact to add in to that as well. and when it comes to disposal, incandescents are just glass and metal, LED bulbs leave a bit more of a question as to their environmental impact.

Now for the bad news. I also can't give you usability. Sure they work just fine in standard fixtures, however they don't work in a couple of extremely common applications. 1) oven lights 2) microwave lights 3) enclosed fixtures (apparently the electronics can't handle the heat they generate) 4) dimmers (sure they CLAIM to dim, but I have never found any type of bulb other than incandescent that actually does, and I've tried quite a few)

Incandescent bulbs have 2 huge drawbacks, lifespan and efficiency. But they have everything else going for them. So far those 2 drawbacks are the only thing any of the replacements do have going for them, at the expense of all the others.

People want an improved light bulb, they just haven't seen one yet.

Re:It only took a century

[Anonymous Coward]

Planned obsolescence and capitalist competition will ensure that we are unable to have repairable light bulbs. We will always take less quality for less price as inflation reduces our income, rather than have governments limit the creation of trash through the tax system. The idealism within the article is very positive, but it unfortunately doesn't match the reality of current business practices. If politicians weren't already in the pocket of business interests, there might be a hope that they would use taxes to reduce trash creation, and mandate that our goods are once again repairable. However, I don't see that happening anytime soon, since that is not in favor of large business interests that control politics (it would create a smaller repair market). We definitely need politicians that are able to be proactive (despite the tendency towards corruption) if we want a positive future.

Re:It only took a century

[mpoulton]

Are you against having any gas milage requirements for cars, too?

Or energy efficiency requirements for homes, businesses, etc?

Yes, absolutely. Every advancement in human civilization has been enabled and accompanied by a huge increase in energy consumption. Dedicating our scientific and industrial resources to reducing energy consumption is doubly damaging. It stigmatizes advancements in technology that (naturally) require more energy, and it takes scientific resources away from efforts to increase energy availability. If all the resources dedicated to reducing energy consumption were turned to advancing fusion power, we might be getting somewhere.

Re:It only took a century

[Anonymous Coward]

They only needed a law because most people are too stupid to do the math to figure out the TCO of each solution (it also doesn't help that electricity in most of the US doesn't include any externatilities in the rate that end users pay).

Re:It only took a century

[DigiShaman]

Some bulbs are specifically designed to be used in overhead heat lamps. Typically used in a bathroom where you want bright light and lots of projected heat. Psychologically and physically, they do wonders for those who live in Seattle, WA and Alaska. Personally, they've pulled me out of a funk after living a week with overcasting drizzle and near freezing temps.

Re:It only took a century

[Attila Dimedici]

Are you against having any gas milage requirements for cars, too?

Or energy efficiency requirements for homes, businesses, etc?

Yes...I am in favor of freedom. I do not believe that some government bureaucrat can better determine how I should spend my money than I can.

Re:It only took a century

[Charliemopps]

I dunno about him, but I'm certainly against such things. I think your mistake is that you believe the government cares about the environment and that these laws in some way help it. The environment doesn't contribute to campaigns.

Re:It only took a century

[mhajicek]

Do you have an affordable 100 Watt equivalent LED bulb that fits in the physical envelope of a 100 Watt incandescent? I haven't seen one.

Re:It only took a century

[uigrad_2000]

The CFLs don't seem to flicker as bad as the old ones, but they're still annoying.

The ESLs are already on the market, and have been since December. This article seems rather late.

Re:It only took a century

[Hatta]

SAD is ameliorated by blue wavelengths. Heat lamps radiate near the red end of the spectrum. Heat lamps are really just the poor mans sauna.

Re:It only took a century

[Hatta]

But perhaps you're using some metric

Spectrum.

Re:It only took a century

[hbar squared]

There is no "improvement" possible for the incandescent bulb - it is limited by physics. A blackbody is an incredibly efficient radiator, unless you only want a small slice of spectrum - in which case you're stuck with the abysmal ~5% we have now.

Re:It only took a century

[Anonymous Coward]

because people suck at math.

Re:It only took a century

[Attila Dimedici]

You appear to be saying that not only have they failed to improve on the incandescent bulb, that it is not possible to improve on them. Is this correct?

Re:It only took a century

[Jesus_666]

Actually, the light bulb has been improved on. Halogen lamps are still incandescents with all their drawbacks and advantages but they are more energy-efficient than traditional incandescents.

They do have the added disadvantage that you need to keep the bulb very clean; however, most household halogen bulbs sold are either drop-in replacements for normal lightbulbs (which means they have an outer bulb that doesn't need to be kept clean) or are reflector lamps for sockets like MR16, which also come with a largely dirt-agnostic closed case.

Re:It only took a century

[Attila Dimedici]

Then why did they need to pass a law doing away with traditional incandescents to get people to buy them (except for special applications)?

Re:It only took a century

[hbar squared]

Yep. The problem with incandescents is that they spread their power along a smooth, predictable curve governed by basic physics. When we put electrical power into a lamp, we want visible light out. But, that visible light occupies a tiny band (about 350-750 nanometers in wavelength) in the possible spectrum. With an incandescent, no matter what you do, you're still dumping ~95% of the radiated power into the infrared ( 350 nm). The best you can do with an incandescent is have it peak in the middle of the spectrum like the sun. But that would require materials that can withstand temperatures above 5000K, and you would only gain a few percent at best. Edison's bulb is a classic example of manufacturability trumping efficiency, and will eventually be regarded as being roughly as useful as a candle.

Re:It only took a century

[PRMan]

I got the cheapo LEDs at Home Depot and they dim just great.

Re:It only took a century

[mattack2]

Why did *Richard Nixon* sign the law creating the EPA then?

I'm "for freedom", as another person says (in fact, I'm voting for Ron Paul), but just like we have other societal agreements (e.g. paying for roads, and _some_ schooling), not polluting the air/water/ground has to be done through laws, since it is more cost effective to just dump it in the sewer/river/air.

Re:It only took a century

[Electricity Likes Me]

And I suspect if anybody did a study, they'd find CFLs actually use more energy & increase the carbon footprint more than incandescents, because of the extra energy needed to ship them from China & then drive the dead CFL to a recycling center to dispose of the hazardous mercury.

As opposed to...the energy needed to ship incandescents from China, then drive them in garbage trucks to a landfill site?

It would be similar to how the ACEEE's study showed EVs are no cleaner than a 45mpg gasoline vehicle (and less clean than a natural gas Civic or 88mpg Lupo TDI).

Which completely ignores the fact that electricity is independent of it's energy source, whereas natural gas, diesel and petrol are all fossil fuels which can't be easily substituted.

Re:It only took a century

[HiThere]

He may be saying that, but it probably isn't correct.

OTOH, the amount of possible improvement is probably minimal, and would likely come at the cost of considerable increase in complexity. E.g., you could, if you wanted, construct a bulb based around a hot filament where the filament would need to run significantly hotter, and the resulting UV radiation was captured by a secondary emitter. Unfortunately, this is just in inefficient version of a fluorescent bulb. But it *should* have less flicker, and by adjusting the secondary emitters you could select the wavelengths you wanted the light to produce.

So, technically, it's quite possible to improve the incandescent bulb, for certain meanings of incandescent and improve. Most simpler changes which have more wide spread agreement that they constitute improvement, have already been made. Using tungsten filaments, e.g., and vacuum filled bulbs are examples of agreed upon improvements. An inner bulb filled with an inert gas surrounded by an exterior bulb filled with vacuum is another possible improvement. But probably not worth the cost. (The bulbs would be more expensive, and the only advantage is the bulbs wouldn't dim from evaporating filament depositing on the glass.)

IOW, you can't expect much, if any, improvement in filament bulbs, because the improvements would increase the cost with minimal improvement in bulb characteristics, or they would drasticly increase the cost with at best insufficient improvement in the characteristics of the bulb.

Re:It only took a century

[Electricity Likes Me]

Halogens don't improve on the physics of an incandescent though. The luminous efficiency improvements are due to the fact that the halogen cycle lets you run the lamp hotter, which pushes more of the peak of the black body emitter to where you want it. It's still, fundamentally, a black body emitter.

Re:It only took a century

[vadim_t]

Except things don't really work that way.

What gives you idea that there's some conglomerate of scientists that as a group decides "we will prioritize efficiency"? The people who made this light bulb probably specialize in fields completely unsuitable for contributing to fusion research. And scientists are people with their own interests. Just because you think that fusion is the thing we should be looking at doesn't mean anybody has to pay attention to your wishes

Re:It only took a century

[marnues]

Phew, I'm glad this is a democracy. Otherwise your beliefs on the subject might matter!

Re:It only took a century

[marnues]

People who do care about the environment definitely contribute money to campaigns. And even if the laws aren't great, they certainly do a better job of protecting the environment than not having the laws.

Re:It only took a century

[raygundan]

Incandescents are not outlawed. Efficiency standards were set, and met, by improved incandescents. You can buy them (and have been able to since at least 2008, when I bought my first) at Home Depot (and probably other places) under the Philips Halogena Energy Saver brand name (and probably others here as well).

Re:It only took a century

[hb253]

I agree that older LED's sucked big time. However, I recently purchased a Philips LED bulb and it is leagues ahead of any CFL. Pretty much indistinguishable from a standard incandescent.

Re:It only took a century

[marnues]

Do you realize your whole post is: He's not technically correct (the best kind), but for all practical purposes he is correct.

Re:It only took a century

[RebelWithoutAClue]

He wanted to manipulate us, like he tried to manipulate the electoral process.

Re:It only took a century

[khallow]

Are you against having any gas milage requirements for cars, too?

Or energy efficiency requirements for homes, businesses, etc?

Yes, absolutely. For that way leads to the destruction of freedom. People do not live optimally. It is not to our benefit that we squander freedom for a little more energy efficiency.

Re:It only took a century

[marnues]

To overcome inertia for something most people wouldn't ever consider.

Re:It only took a century

[marnues]

Not true. Using your absolutist terms: I always save up to purchase the higher quality product. No need to worry about inflation either as I have a savings account and I make more money every 2 weeks!

Re:It only took a century

[hb253]

Did the law specifically outlaw incandescents? I don't think so. As I understand it, the law mandates higher efficiency. And you know what? I can now buy incandescents that put out more lumens per watt than previous generaiton bulbs. In my house I use each type of bulb as is appropriate. Philips Halogena for the kitchen floodlights, Philips higher efficiency incandescents in the bathroom, CFL's in most table lamps, and one LED bulb to try on one high use table lamp.

Your semi-rant smells of mindless talking point repetition.

Re:It only took a century

[hb253]

If I had mod points, I would have gladly awarded the Funny you were seeking....

Re:It only took a century

[Technician]

FYI, they work great in microwave ovens. They are located outside the cavity and survive the short duty cycle better than any other bulb. The location is fan cooled. An LED bulb in this use will see low run hours due to intermittent use so a 2000 - 6000 hr LED will typically outlast the magnetron which has a typical 1000 hour life. The mid base 16 Chip LED bulb made for fan lights fits most microwave ovens directly.

Re:It only took a century

[Smidge204]

Increasing energy efficiency lowers energy costs (and makes systems less susceptible to changes in costs), reduces infrastructure requirements (lower costs, more reliable), lowers barriers to entry, makes sustainability possible, increases productivity (more work per unit energy), and allows increasing density of technology.

Laptops and iPhones would be impossible with people like you at the helm, because "throw more watts at it" does not lend itself to miniaturization too well.

We can (and should!) still work on fusion energy, meanwhile increasing efficiency across the board will reap more immediate benefits for everyone at every level of society. Ever observe a bacteria colony in a petri dish? The colony grows and grows, consuming more and more, until they run out of resources... then the entire colony dies. I'd like to think we're smarter than bacteria and can at least recognize the consequences of consuming without regard to this planet's limits.
=Smidge=

Re:It only took a century

[Kenja]

It did not outlaw incandescents. It just required a give level of efficiency, which some incandescents manage to meet and thus are still available.

Re:It only took a century

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, sure, but they only do it once.

Re:It only took a century

[mattack2]

OK, how about if I live optimally and dump my sewage on your lawn?

Re:It only took a century

[Trogre]

I'm genuinely interested in this.

Have you done a diffraction test on your LED bulbs to see their spectral components (holding a CD at the correct angle to the light source will do it)? My beef with CFLs is that their spectra are rather narrow, and this is confirmed with the above CD test, where one can see 3-5 distinct images of the bulb in different colours, rather than a continuous stripe going from red through violet.

I'd love to replace my CFLs with their weird colour and unreliable ballasts but am still a bit shy to move to LED.

Re:It only took a century

[Anonymous Coward]

How cheap? They are still in the >$10 aren't they?

Re:It only took a century

[green1]

If you look at the specs, you'll find they only dim down to 20%, unfortunately that's actually worse than it sounds because of the way humans perceive light, so visually it appears to only dim to about 50% Incandescents on the other hand dim down to 0%

I have tried LED and CFL "dimmable" bulbs, several different makes and models, and none of them dim as much as I want in my TV room. It is extremely frustrating!

Re:It only took a century

[WindBourne]

I have bought those before. They last less than 1 year. Absolutely WORTHLESS. The reason is that they are made in China with Chinese parts with Chinese engineering. The LEDs are not desgined to last. However, that is not the real issue. HEAT is the issue. Everything says that LEDs do not emit heat and they are right. BUT, leds do not run on 120 VAC (or 240 VAC, etc). So, inside each bulb, is a voltage and type converter. The Chinese designs are cheap because they were built cheap. The better ones have a fan inside, but those give out. And when they do, the bulb can catch fire.

Instead, the bulb that you want, is the SWITCH bulb. It is coming shortly, but what they do is immerse the electronics in fluid and then allow passive heat flow. Efficient.

Re:It only took a century

[WindBourne]

That is coming VERY soon. Like less than 6 months.

Re:It only took a century

[roc97007]

> As opposed to...the energy needed to ship incandescents from China, then drive them in garbage trucks to a landfill site?

To be fair at least some incandescents were made in America, and the garbage truck was going to the landfill anyway, and used lightbulbs don't add appreciably to the payload. Moreover, the garbage truck represents big centralized collection and transport, which I think is arguably more efficient than hundreds of thousands of consumers jumping into their Accord to drive burnt-out CFLs to the recycling center (along with their old paint, oil, and other things you're not supposed to throw away.)

An issue I've been worried about for awhile is that the Joe Consumers out there, the people who buy a sack of potatoes and have it put in another sack, don't really have a cerebral or emotional connection to recycling CFLs properly, and will just throw them in the trash. I know, there are people who will drive them to recycling centers, but I suspect that if we counted CFLs sold, and CFLs recycled, we'd see a huge gap. Regular people just don't care. "The trash can is right here, and I don't even *know* where the recycling center is".

This is made worse by the fact that the 12 count "blister pack" CFLs seem to have a terribly high infant mortality and a much shorter lifespan than the more expensive "boutique" CFLs that are sold separately. I was an early adopter of the consumer integrated CFLs, and of the four bulbs I bought in 1995 or thereabouts, three are still working. I then made the mistake of buying a big box of CFLs at Costco, and *those* aren't giving me any better lifespan than incandescents. (And I will never do that again.) My concern is that significantly more of the cheap CFLs are made, and purchased, most likely by the very people who are least likely to dispose of them properly. It'll be interesting to see what the mercury content in our landfills looks like in a couple decades.

>> It would be similar to how the ACEEE's study showed EVs are no cleaner than a 45mpg gasoline vehicle (and less clean than a natural gas Civic or 88mpg Lupo TDI).

> Which completely ignores the fact that electricity is independent of it's energy source, whereas natural gas, diesel and petrol are all fossil fuels which can't be easily substituted.

EVs have the *potential* of being holistically cleaner, but that depends on a number of factors that your average consumer doesn't think much about. It's very much like CFLs -- it all depends on the implementation. Zero point emission is not the whole story.

Re:It only took a century

[ehiris]

Don't care about the energy crisis. I just want a shitload of lumen to light up the night just for fun.

Re:It only took a century

[roc97007]

Well, maybe this one will work better. My house used 100 watt recessed floods in the hallways and several rooms, (Extravagant, I know, but I didn't build it and would not have chosen that) and I stocked up on them when I realized that (a) Incandescents were going away, and (b) the current (at the time) generation CFL would not screw into the receptacle. (The base was too fat.) Last summer I ran out of stock and had to buy "100 watt" CFL floods (actually something like 26 watts). Fortunately by that time slim line CFLs were available that would screw into the existing fixtures. Also fortunately, only one of the lights is on a dimmer, and that incandescent hasn't burned out yet. (And CFLs that work on dimmers are becoming more common.)

Well, it hasn't been a lot of fun. I had one that was dead out of the box, and of the first three deployed, two burned out after less than six months. Moreover, although the current generation gets up to full output faster, it's still an annoyance to go to the hall closet, flick the switch, and then wait for the bulb to become bright enough for you to see where the pillow cases are. I've also had a problem with early death with the little 60 watt helical bulbs available at Costco. (I don't buy them there anymore, but a lot of people do.)

Moreover, the burnt out CFLs clutter up my garage until I get a big enough load for the recycling center. You can't yet put them out for curb recycling in my area, and I strongly suspect that most people just drop them in the trash.

So, I'm not a fan, and I'm interested in what the next big improvement is going to be.

Re:It only took a century

[roc97007]

Also price.

Re:It only took a century

[Qzukk]

But dammit, now that the bulbs use less electricity to produce the same amount of light and therefore less heat, how the hell am I supposed to heat the ceiling above my lamp?!

Re:It only took a century

[camperdave]

Easy-Bake ovens are not designed to use heat lamps. Of course, these days, they don't use light bulbs at all.

Re:It only took a century

[Anonymous Coward]

Your post explains why no-one uses diesel engines to move 100,000 tonnes of cargo across the planet on a single ship. Oh what's that, they actually do? Damn, there goes your argument.

Re:It only took a century

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, but it's more efficient.

Re:It only took a century

[djh101010]

100 watt incandescent light bulbs are a buck each. How much was your Philips LED bulb, and, does it put out as much light as a 100W incandescent? If so, please provide the part number, because I can't find one that even comes close, for any price.

Re:It only took a century

[NFN_NLN]

http://www.dealextreme.com/p/30w-2400lm-led-emitter-metal-plate-white-16v-18v-39959

$25 LED matrix (2400lm) + $18 driver + diffuser ($?)
LED matrix should last 25 years, don't know about the driver.

Std. 100 Watt incandescent 1750lm (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminous_efficacy)

It seems they get more efficient every year.

Re:It only took a century

[NFN_NLN]

That one was White (6000-6500K), but they sell a selection of color temperatures from 2,000K up to 20,000K.

Apparently the 20kK lights are ideal for aquarium plants..

Re:It only took a century

[lightknight]

Care to explain this more? It looks interesting.

Re:It only took a century

[Jesus_666]

Which is the entire point of the technology. More lm/W with the same characteristics as a traditional incandescent. In fact, that's why I like halogen lamps: You get a continuous spectrum, no flicker, non-hazardous waste and instant turn-on times with reasonable efficiency (class C, to be precise).

Of course in Europe we will probably see a requirement for class B lights starting 2016; it would be great if ESL turned out to have a reasonable spectrum and to be sufficiently efficient until then.

Re:It only took a century

[Maxo-Texas]

Amazon sells the 60w Phillips for $25.
Home Depot sells the 75w Phillips for $39.

They last 50x as long as your $1 bulbs and 25x as long as "extended life" bulbs and consume 1/6th the electricity.

I find the color from the phillips to be the best. The phillips are covered with an orange filter. I've tinted some of my other LED bulbs with water color orange markers and gotten a weaker similar improvement in color.

I like the light spread from the 40w GE LED's with the white fins to be the best (it's similar to incandescents).

I have about 11 LED's of various brands in my house now. My electric bill is $30 per month lower than last year at the same time.

I'm unaware of a good 100w replacement (tho I'll check out the link here).
There is an expensive 5000w LED light bulb tho. It consumes about 130w of power.

I prefer warm traditional incandescent light bulb color. I dislike CFL's. I dislike the way they drop in lumens long before their "official" life span.

I have a 20w light LED bulb which cost $30 about 9 or 10 years ago and it's been on 24/7 on my porch since I got it. It consumes 3 watts of power and attracts no bugs. I provides a warm dim light very nice for sitting on the porch at night but not enough to read by.

Re:It only took a century

[Anonymous Coward]

High CRI LEDs have been available for more than 6 years. They can be made with whatever flavor of full spectrum, lower color temperature, color rendition that tickles your fancy this week. Most of them take a 5 to 15% hit on efficiency compared to the "cold white" variety but they are still about twice as power efficient as the best case of CFL. The real argument against LEDs right now is price and that's the same argument that was against incandescent light bulbs and pretty much any new technology during their infancy.

Re:It only took a century

[Anonymous Coward]

But we're finally trying to improve the lightbulb again. Thanks, energy crisis.

Give me the sharp hard Blue white of a decent discharge bulb or high power LED any day you can put warm white where a monkey sticks it nutts

Re:It only took a century

[dbIII]

Did the law specifically outlaw incandescents? I don't think so. As I understand it

In some places it did as a sort of "green theatre" pushed though by governments that prefer an easy stick to fair legislation - for example the bill pushed through by Malcolm Turnbull of Australia's former "conservative" coalition. Thus no lights in ovens at all instead of the sensible approach of the best thing for the job.

Re:It only took a century

[Neil Boekend]

I have self dimming CFL's in my room. I can dim them by flicking the switch of and on again. I can choose between 100%/60%/30%/5% light output. 100% is ususally usefull, but it's uncomfortably bright when relaxing. The 5% setting fixes that perfectly. Dunno about the dimmable types, but the self-dimmers are verry good.

Re:It only took a century

[Omestes]

The phillips are covered with an orange filter. I've tinted some of my other LED bulbs with water color orange markers and gotten a weaker similar improvement in color.

Am I the only person who likes cool light? All of the CFLs in our house are the "Daylight" variety. My office is mostly lit with white LEDs (my desk lamp is full spectrum), and a "Daylight" CFL. The only room where we still have standard warm "bulbs" (CFLs) is the dining room and kitchen since white renders food a bit oddly. I don't get the attraction to simulated torchlight, which was originally supposed to be simulated sunlight, but we, obviously, lacked the technology.

The "daylight" type bulbs don't render skin-tones badly, like standard fluorescents, and doesn't add the nasty greenish cast that old CFLs did.

Also, whats up with the Church of the Holy Incandescent Light Bulb? Why are people so attached to them? We haven't bought one in years, outside of our old bathroom fixtures, and haven't ever missed them.

Re:It only took a century

[Neil Boekend]

Can't find the exact site, but there was a webpage where the writer calculated what the average temperature of earth will be due to the energy we use.
See, we have been using more and more energy for centuries. All this energy turns into heat eventually. With black body radiation one can calculate the thermal equilibrium of earth for each energy use-case. This led to a rising temperature. Assuming we will keep using more and more energy this thermal equilibrium will occur at a higher and higher temperature. If I remember correctly: 400 years this would mean the average temperature of earth would be above the temperature of molten iron. Not a a fun place to be.
This means we will have to do more with the energy we use, and waste less of it, even if you don't believe in normal climate change. Efficient light bulbs are a good step to take. Efficient cars is another step we should take now. I'd even advise building more solar towers (that energy will become heat anyways. Better make use of it before it's unusable).

Re:It only took a century

[AmiMoJo]

LEDs and CCFL have one huge advantage over incandescent: you can have lots of them. Rather than trying to light the entire room with one or two large 60W+ bulbs you can have lots of smaller, lower power lights dotted around. You get better illumination where you need it and it looks nicer, plus there is no need for dimming most of the time because you can just turn a proportion of them off.

Incandescent bulbs won't last long in enclosed spaces like recessed lighting fixtures because of the heat the produce either.

Re:It only took a century

[jones_supa]

You can hack the incandescent a bit by running high-power (>=100W) lamps (which output slightly whiter light) and/or applying a blue/purple coating which fixes the visible spectrum to be less yellow. Not much of an improvement though...

Re:It only took a century

[jones_supa]

And CFLs that work on dimmers are becoming more common.

That is true, but unfortunately a basic dimmer (which just adjusts the voltage) might not work as well for CFLs. It is inefficient and does not produce full smooth dimming range. An incandescent is a simple electrical resistive load, so for them it is fine. You would want to adjust directly the fluorescent tube, not the primary side voltage. That is why good dedicated dimmable electronic fluorescent ballasts have a separate dimming control line.

That said, I'm glad that you were able to find suitably fitting replacers for your incandescents. :)

Re:It only took a century

[AmiMoJo]

I hear this a lot but the "warm white" bulbs seem the same or nicer than incandescent, and the LED/CCFL daylight bulbs I prefer for hobby stuff and reading are much better.

Re:It only took a century

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, we have them too. They're excellent.

Re:It only took a century

[lxs]

IME (my home is almost exclusively lit by LEDs) the spectrum of white LED lighting is continuous. Perhaps a bit more bumpy than incandescent but nothing at all like the line spectrum fluorescents produce..

Re:It only took a century

[sdk4777]

The efficacy of this particular ESL lamp seems rather low - only 30 lm/W. This is about the same as a good halogen incandescent.

Re:It only took a century

[Attila Dimedici]

I am confused. You say that it is not possible to improve on the incandescent bulb, than you say that one day it will be regarded as useful as a candle. The second part seems to imply that you believe someone will design a lightbulb that is an improvement on the incandescent, even though you just said that was not possible.

Re:It only took a century

[Attila Dimedici]

Phew, I'm glad this is a democracy. Otherwise your beliefs on the subject might matter!

Translation: I'm glad this is a democracy, otherwise, I would have to make decisions for myself instead of some bureaucrat telling me how to live my life.

Re:It only took a century

[Attila Dimedici]

Oh, that explains why they needed to pass laws banning 386 based computers to get people to adopt 486 computers...no wait, that didn't happen. When they came out with improved computers, people bought them instead of the unimproved models. The same thing would happen with lightbulbs.

Re:It only took a century

[Attila Dimedici]

You know what? Those bulbs were available before the government mandated higher efficiency. Of course, very few people were willing to buy them because of how much more they cost than traditional incandescent lightbulbs.

Re:It only took a century

[advocate_one]

In Europe they are outlawed... rather than do the right thing and insist on a minimum efficiency standard, they just banned the higher wattage incandescents first and basically rammed CFLs down our throats... I strongly suspect some kickbacks from the CFL manufacturers helped this... Same thing happened with catalytic convertors for autos... the technology was mandated rather than a standard set for emissions that could be met by any tech that could get there... again, someone with connections had positioned themselves to corner the market for Platinum... Catalytic convertors are useless for most short journeys as they haven't got up to operating temperature by the time the journey is completed...

Re:It only took a century

[daem0n1x]

I don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Unsuccessful? My whole apartment is lit with CFLs and a few halogens. I'm looking forward to replace the halogens with LED when the price becomes practicable.

Re:It only took a century

[daem0n1x]

What about the cure for cancer? Nobody should ever do anything in the world until we find the cure for cancer. What am I doing here programming? I must run for the cancer research lab and offer to help.

Re:It only took a century

[Attila Dimedici]

Really, well if those bulbs are such an improvement, why did they have to ban traditional incandescent bulbs to get people to buy them?

Re:It only took a century

[garyebickford]

Mostly-unrelated-dept.: If you modified the name slightly to "Church of the Holy Incandescent Lamp Light", the acronym would be "CHILL". :)

Re:It only took a century

[daem0n1x]

Most uneducated people I know don't use CFLs because they're more expensive upfront. They can't be bothered to make a simple calculation and find CFLs are a lot cheaper in the end. Educated people understand this. Guess what the educated/uneducated ratio is?

The environment appears to be "free" for most people and businesses. If regulation doesn't correct for this misperception, we'll just happily destroy our environment and, in the end, our economy.

Re:It only took a century

[hbar squared]

Lightbulb != Incandescent. "Incandescent" refers to the technology of making light by heating something until it glows. That is an inefficient, dead-end technology. We will build (and have already built) a better lightbulb, but we will never build a better incandescent bulb.

Re:It only took a century

[Anonymous Coward]

They... didn't?

As fare as I know, the law simply set minimum efficiency requirements -- something I'm all for, given that I live in Texas. Every watt of heat dissipated by a lightbulb is a watt of heat that has to be removed from my house by my air conditioner in the summer -- and when it's 109 outside, my air conditioner is working hard enough as it is.

Re:It only took a century

[Walter White]

You know what? Those bulbs were available before the government mandated higher efficiency. Of course, very few people were willing to buy them because of how much more they cost than traditional incandescent lightbulbs.

I was willing and I got burned, figuratively speaking. I've replaced a *lot* of CFLs that died long before their expected life span. The worst case were a couple CFL flood lights that I put in a motion and ambient light sensing fixture. They were gone in days. I suppose that's the fault of the fixture and not the bulb, but it still cost me $$$ for no benefit.

Re:It only took a century

[Attila Dimedici]

Yes, that's right. Those "uneducated" people don't know what's best for them, so the government has to tell them. Maybe, those "uneducated" people have different priorities about how to spend their money. Maybe it is more important to them that they not introduce mercury into the environment than that they reduce their "carbon footprint" (you know the way that Al Gore has more important priorities than reducing his carbon footprint), Are you sure that CFLs are really cheaper in the end? Once you factor in the special trip to the recycling center with them once they stop working? What other costs are associated with CFLs that are hidden?

The environment appears to be "free" for most people and businesses.

Which would explain why people began cleaning up rivers and lakes even before the Clean Water Act was passed.

Re:It only took a century

[Attila Dimedici]

Perhaps you did not read my initial post where I said, "People have been trying to improve the lightbulb..." I never said that people were trying to improve the incandescent light bulb. You then responded that it was not possible to improve the incandescent bulb and now you are accusing me of misreading what you said.

Re:It only took a century

[Attila Dimedici]

And of course now you are going to have to continue to experiment with various bulbs and, in some cases fixtures, until you can find some combination that meets your needs. All because some people decided they knew better than you what you need and what was best for you.*


*this post is not aimed at the poster I am replying to as much as it is aimed at those who think that this government intervention in the market is a good thing (or any government intervention).

Re:It only took a century

[hbar squared]

If they had actually improved on the traditional incandescent, they would not need to have a law passed in order to displace...

This is what I was responding to. Sorry for the miscommunication.

Re:It only took a century

[mcgrew]

I've been using CFLs for over a decade and not only do I have no problem with them, they keep improving. The earlier ones took a second to light, which was really no big deal that people whined about. Newer ones come on instantly. They never did have the "greenish" tint that TFS mentions that flourescent tubes have. Rather than the warm light one gets from candles or incandescants, they give a light more like daylight. A lot of it is just whatever you're used to, that orangeish light that comes from incandescants I now find annoying.

As to the mercury, a coal-fired generator spews more mercury into the environment powering the incandescant than is in the CFL. The amount of mercury in a CFL is minute and really no cause for concern; I've broken several and had no undue effects.

They had to pass a law because people are stupid, and will buy an incandescent for a dollar rather than a CFL for three, even though the CFL lasts 10 times as long and is far cheaper to use. People are "penny wise and pound foolish." IMO, use of incandescent lighting is just plain stupid.

Re:It only took a century

[Attila Dimedici]

I did not say "improved the traditional incandescent", I said "improved on the traditional incandescent." I still believe that is true. If any of these new bulbs is an improvement on the traditional incandescent than the law that was passed to phase it out was unnecessary. Considering how many slashdotters believe the law was necessary, I can only conclude that they don't really believe these other bulbs are an improvement, but want more people to use them anyway.

Re:It only took a century

[Attila Dimedici]

I'm glad you know so much better than me what is the best bulb for me to use, even though you have never met me and have no idea what I applications I use lightbulbs for. I am putting in a new light fixture, perhaps you can tell me which one I should buy?

Re:It only took a century

[makomk]

I'm not sure about over in the US, but here in the UK it was basically impossible to buy high-efficiency halogen bulbs for normal light fixtures anywhere until the government mandated it. You could get CFLs quite easily but not halogens.

Re:It only took a century

[godefroi]

I like the cool bulbs, but my wife absolutely cannot be in a room with them. She'll keep the lights off. I also turn the colors on my monitors cool.

Re:It only took a century

[makomk]

Nope, the EU did the same thing - they set a minimum efficiency standard that banned traditional incandescent bulbs starting with high-wattage ones but still allowed high-efficiency versions. Your mileage may vary as to actual availability, but certainly here in the UK you can still get Philips "EcoClassic" halogen incandescent bulbs and various other brands too. Obviously they don't save you as much electricity as a CFL would, but they're dimmable and everything.

Re:It only took a century

[mcgrew]

A dollar for a bulb that lasts six months if you're lucky. I started switching to CFLs in 2000 when I bought a house with twelve foot ceilings and had some lights that were a pain to change. I no longer have that house or unreachable lamps, but I'm now 100% CFL and don't miss that strange, sunset-like orange light the incandescants put out at all.

I may pay $3 for one, but it lasts ten years and uses 1/4 the electricity as your sunset colored lights. Today's CFLs are more like daylight.

I can see a conversation 100 years ago: "No, I ain't gettin' none o' them thar newfangled electric lamps. I heared they was dangerous, and the laight just glares, nothin' like the warm, friendly light you get from good old fashioned candles and kerosene lamps. Now whar's my whip, I be takin' the buggy down to the general store. I need some new candles and some kerosine."

Re:It only took a century

[daem0n1x]

Yes, that's right. Those "uneducated" people don't know what's best for them, so the government has to tell them.

In many cases, yes. That's why there are many specialists in government organisations. To make decisions that the common mortal doesn't have the qualifications to make. Of course, some decisions can be made by politicians and bureaucrats instead of specialists. That's why every government needs to be closely watched all the time. That doesn't mean there shouldn't be any. Where government is weak, private corporations are strong, and they're orders of magnitude more dangerous and tyrannical.

Maybe it is more important to them that they not introduce mercury into the environment than that they reduce their "carbon footprint"

I can assure you these people don't give a flying fuck about mercury in the environment. Most of them don't even know what mercury is. People I know that can spell "mercury" use CFLs.

(you know the way that Al Gore has more important priorities than reducing his carbon footprint),

Who the fuck is Al Gore and why are you bringing him into this argument?

Are you sure that CFLs are really cheaper in the end? Once you factor in the special trip to the recycling center with them once they stop working? What other costs are associated with CFLs that are hidden?

I don't know which backwards 3rd world country you live in, but in mine all lamps are recycled, so your argument is moot.

The environment appears to be "free" for most people and businesses.

Which would explain why people began cleaning up rivers and lakes even before the Clean Water Act was passed.

Because polluted rivers stink. River pollution is pretty visible, annoying and has immediate effects. Otherwise, the common Joe wouldn't give a fuck.

Re:It only took a century

[Attila Dimedici]

Maybe that is because not many people were interested in using them? Those who wanted a more efficient bulb than a traditional incandescent may have been mostly selecting CFLs. Of course, perhaps you are one of those people who want the government to mandate that everyone use your preferred solution to a particular problem so as to make your life easier. That is all well and good, just don't complain when other people get the government to mandate you use a product you don't like.

Re:It only took a century

[Ltap]

In questions like this it's basically a form of people simply being used to the old lights. Even if CFLs put out cleaner light that is easier to see by, they still prefer the dim, yellowish incandescents simply because that's what they are used to and, dammit, all these durn kids should get off their lawn!

Re:It only took a century

[Attila Dimedici]

Where government is weak, private corporations are strong,...

Please give an example of this. Every place I know of, where government is strong, private corporations are also strong. In particular, my observation of history notes that as government has gotten more powerful, corporations have used that to increase their own power.
I have never recycled a light bulb in my life. You know, when I said "special trip to the recycling center", I realize that I misspoke because it is actually a toxic waste disposal site. There are not enough of any particular thing in a light bulb to make recycling them efficient (it takes more energy, resources and effort to extract the various resources from a light bulb than it does to obtain than from their natural state).

Re:It only took a century

[khallow]

You'll find out in court that this particular action isn't optimal.

So tell me, how is using incandescent lightbulbs (or the other stuff like driving somewhat inefficient vehicles or having energy inefficient appliances or buildings) like dumping sewage on my lawn?

Re:It only took a century

[daem0n1x]

Where government is weak, private corporations are strong,...

Please give an example of this. Every place I know of, where government is strong, private corporations are also strong. In particular, my observation of history notes that as government has gotten more powerful, corporations have used that to increase their own power.

Easy. Just compare the USA to Scandinavian countries. In the US, most of the economy is dominated by corporations and politicians are nothing but puppets. In Scandinavia, the governments control the strategic sectors of the economy. That makes them the countries with the highest standards of living in the world. Of course this wouldn't be possible without populations with a very high degree of political awareness and participation.

I have never recycled a light bulb in my life. You know, when I said "special trip to the recycling center", I realize that I misspoke because it is actually a toxic waste disposal site. There are not enough of any particular thing in a light bulb to make recycling them efficient (it takes more energy, resources and effort to extract the various resources from a light bulb than it does to obtain than from their natural state).

So you claim it's cheaper to bore the underground, grind thousands of tons of rock to extract the materials and then separate them, as opposed to simply grind the lamps and separate the materials??? Do you have any numbers to support that bold claim of yours?

Re:It only took a century

[Attila Dimedici]

Of course this wouldn't be possible without populations with a very high degree of political awareness and participation.

And homogeneity and small populations. Of course, are you really saying that the Scandinavian governments are more powerful than the U.S. government?

Re:It only took a century

[psyhofreak]

The LED bulbs I'm using sure seem to be an improvement.

All of the LED bulbs that I've used blink at what appears to be 120Hz. Now, it may well be that some people cannot see this blinking, but I can and it drives me batty. It's even worse than good quality CFLs. I bought a couple of cases of what I've chosen to think of as "real" lights just to postpone when I'll have to tolerate my whole house blinking at me. Ick.

Re:It only took a century

[daem0n1x]

And homogeneity and small populations.

What to say about Portugal and Greece? They're small, have ancient homogeneous populations, and they're ruled by crooks. Even worse, how about rampaging corruption typical of island nations? You can't find smaller, more homogeneous populations...

Of course, are you really saying that the Scandinavian governments are more powerful than the U.S. government?

Scandinavian governments have more power over their own countries than the US government has over the US.

Re:It only took a century

[Muad'Dave]

Interesting aside from the 100W equivalent model being 4100K vs 2700K for all the others.

As for the site itself, on the 'specs' page there's an annoying double-dimmable error (one should be 'Approvals') and 'efficacy' does not seem to be the right word - 'efficiency' would be a better choice, IMHO.

Re:It only took a century

[Electricity Likes Me]

EVs have the *potential* of being holistically cleaner, but that depends on a number of factors that your average consumer doesn't think much about. It's very much like CFLs -- it all depends on the implementation. Zero point emission is not the whole story.

You don't need the average consumer to think about or care about the wider ramifications: we know they won't, that's why we have regulation. Minimal impact to them, huge collective benefit for civilization.

Re:It only took a century

[Electricity Likes Me]

Eh, my LED halogen replacements are just fine for me. They're a pleasant warm white, and working great.

Re:It only took a century

[roc97007]

EVs have the *potential* of being holistically cleaner, but that depends on a number of factors that your average consumer doesn't think much about. It's very much like CFLs -- it all depends on the implementation. Zero point emission is not the whole story.

You don't need the average consumer to think about or care about the wider ramifications: we know they won't, that's why we have regulation. Minimal impact to them, huge collective benefit for civilization.

And of course, regulation is *never* put in place to benefit a particular campaign donor , or to do impractical things that sound good to the public.

Re:It only took a century

[Firethorn]

and the garbage truck was going to the landfill anyway, and used lightbulbs don't add appreciably to the payload. Moreover, the garbage truck represents big centralized collection and transport, which I think is arguably more efficient than hundreds of thousands of consumers jumping into their Accord to drive burnt-out CFLs to the recycling center (along with their old paint, oil, and other things you're not supposed to throw away.)

Manufacturing cheapness aside*, if properly built and used CFLs can last 50X as long as a traditional bulb, that's quite a differential. A quick search puts a random CFL at 82 grams. In order to extract the same transport penalty, the Incandescents would have to weigh only 1.6 grams. You're also going to want to break them, but the bases will still take up more space.

As for 'jumping into their accord to drive' - As you mention, there's also the old paint, oil and other stuff not to be disposed of in regular trash. So you're making a mass trip - you can keep the few bulbs you have to dispose of until your annual trip to the recycling center. Or turn them in at collection points you go to anyways - Walmart, Lowes, Home Depot, etc... Or put them in the recycle bin for your trash pickup, like my parents do.

It'll be interesting to see what the mercury content in our landfills looks like in a couple decades.

Given the death of things like mercury thermostats, toys, and high-mercury industrial FL bulbs? Probably still lower than a couple decades ago. They've dropped the amount of mercury in the standard T-8/12 bulb by more than what they put in CFL bulbs.

*We need to give CFL warranties teeth, if we want to see improved manufacturing and non-fraudulent life claims on the part of cheap CFL makers.

Re:It only took a century

[mcgrew]

aimed at those who think that this government intervention in the market is a good thing (or any government intervention).

When your house catches fire be sure to shoo the firefighters away. You don't want any government interference now, do you?

When the EPA comes by to test your well to see if Monsanto is poisoning you, shoo them away, you don't need any government regulations.

When you buy that tainted beef because you dimwitted neocons have disbanded the FDA, don't bitch when you get sick.

Moron. Those regulations are in place to protect YOU from those who would do you harm -- like multinationsl corporations who are run my money-worshiping sociopaths who don't give a rat's ass who they kill as long as they get their money.

Re:It only took a century

[Culture20]

Or maybe he wants to heat his dog/cat house? Incandescents are perfect for this; they produce a little heat (just enough to warm up a small area, but not enough to cook the animal), and when they stop working, it's obvious from quite a distance because they also stop producing light. To do that with heat lamps, you'd have to use the weakest variety, which produce almost no light, so you'd have to have an indoor/outdoor wireless thermometer or a switch that turns an LED light on when the heat lamp breaks.

Re:It only took a century

[Anonymous Coward]

LEDs are available with tremendously good light quality. Sure, 6500K, low-CRI is the most common, but units in the 2000K-4000K range, with CRIs of 90 and above, are available - and look QUITE good.

In fact, I recently replaced the incandescent bulb over my stove with some 3,000K warm white LEDs, but they were the extra-cheap ones, shipped straight from China. Still, they balance out surprisingly well against the halogen lights that illuminate the rest of my kitchen. LEDs with an actual brand name, that weren't QC rejects like mine probably were, are even better.

Re:It only took a century

[Attila Dimedici]

When your house catches fire be sure to shoo the firefighters away. You don't want any government interference now, do you?

Why would I shoo away the volunteer firefighters when they come to fight the fire?

When you buy that tainted beef because you dimwitted neocons have disbanded the FDA, don't bitch when you get sick.

Yes, because the local butchers that were put out of business by the USDA (it is the USDA that "inspects" meat plants, not the FDA) regulations, were known for how often they passed tainted meat off on their customers...oh wait, no that would be the big corporations that were empowered by the USDA regulations that got rid of the small local butcher and are still theoretically regulated by the USDA.

Moron. Those regulations are in place to protect YOU from those who would do you harm -- like multinationsl corporations who are run my money-worshiping sociopaths who don't give a rat's ass who they kill as long as they get their money.

No, my friend, those regulations are in place to make it harder for small vendors to compete with the multinational corporations.

Re:It only took a century

[roc97007]

> Manufacturing cheapness aside*, if properly built and used CFLs can last 50X as long as a traditional bulb, that's quite a differential.

My contention is that they demonstrably *did* last that much longer when they first became available, but they don't anymore. I have three CFLs that are still running 16 years later, and that exceeded my expectations and was money well spent. It appears (again from my experience, grain of salt, etc) that CFLs have since been "value engineered" to something that is not as expensive as they used to be, but still more expensive than incandescents, and don't provide any longevity advantage. The cheap "blister pack" CFLs, which I maintain is what Fred and Ethyl Mertz is going to buy, have terrible lifespan.

> A quick search puts a random CFL at 82 grams. In order to extract the same transport penalty, the Incandescents would have to weigh only 1.6 grams.

That assumes 50X lifespan. See above.

> You're also going to want to break them,

You've seen a garbage truck operate, right? If they didn't crush the garbage, they'd exceed volume capacity long before they exceeded weight capacity. And it's, like, a lightbulb. They're not terribly robust.

> *We need to give CFL warranties teeth, if we want to see improved manufacturing and non-fraudulent life claims on the part of cheap CFL makers.

Wholeheartedly agree. We should also look to the source of the CFLs, and verify that we aren't being very careful with mercury in the environment here, only to have mercury being released in the environment in significant quantities at the manufacturing source. I know it's "over there", but we're all on the same planet.

How about a stamp like the UL tag, which would signify that the product has met certain standards of longevity? Then I could buy those and avoid the crappy ones.

We also need curbside recycling of CFLs. This is absolutely imperative if we're serious about protecting the environment, not just trying to make ourselves feel better. The trick to make a majority of regular people do the right thing is to make it easy and natural to do. Even people who don't care about recycling are motivated to do so because it saves room in the trash can. In my area, you pay by the size of your trash can, and I can get the smallest and cheapest trash can because the recycle bin is huge and I don't get charged for it. (Your mileage may vary.) Tell someone they have to drive several miles to a recycling station [1], and they're really likely to toss it in the trash. Who's to know? But tell them they can put it in on the curb in a recycling container, and they're more likely to do that.

[1] It annoys me a little that the recycling station here is in an industrial district with no mass transit access. So, if you're trying to live simpler so other can simply live, you still need a car to get rid of your damned lightbulbs. Someone is really not thinking this through.

Re:It only took a century

[mcgrew]

Because Congress would have overridden a veto, which would have made Nixon look REALLY bad (the environment was in terrible condition and people were fed up with industry fouling the air and water) while signing it made him look less like a cheap political hack and more like a statesman.

And now we have idiot youngsters (led by rich geezers who won't be bothered by pollution) wanting to abolish the EPA. Fools, all.

If it weren't for his stand on the environment I could vote for Paul. But he's old enough to remember how horrible things were before the EPA, which makes his anti-EPA horseshit all the more reprehensible. He's not a libertarian, he's a corporatist (as are all the "Big L" libertarians).

When someone comes up with a Social Libertarian party I'll be the first one to sign up.

Re:It only took a century

[Anonymous Coward]

Increasing energy efficiency lowers energy costs (and makes systems less susceptible to changes in costs), reduces infrastructure requirements (lower costs, more reliable), lowers barriers to entry, makes sustainability possible, increases productivity (more work per unit energy), and allows increasing density of technology.

Laptops and iPhones would be impossible with people like you at the helm, because "throw more watts at it" does not lend itself to miniaturization too well.

We can (and should!) still work on fusion energy, meanwhile increasing efficiency across the board will reap more immediate benefits for everyone at every level of society. Ever observe a bacteria colony in a petri dish? The colony grows and grows, consuming more and more, until they run out of resources... then the entire colony dies. I'd like to think we're smarter than bacteria and can at least recognize the consequences of consuming without regard to this planet's limits.
=Smidge=

Shhh. Please don't use the germ and petri dish analogy. We don't want people to recognize the relationship.

I just want us to either die out or reduce the global population to less than 10% of its current levels.

Oh, in order to avoid racism lets talk about the single human species with many varieties (like flowers, ahhh). Some varieties seem to be outbreeding other varieties.

Something to keep in mind is Brian Aldiss' book "Hothouse" where we have developed into small critters pursued by bugs - something poetic about that. And we don't use or need light globes in that tale. "Developed" rather than devolved.

Re:It only took a century

[Firethorn]

First, the bad stuff:

That assumes 50X lifespan. See above.

Don't you love how if you'd followed my asterisk footnote, you'd have seen my addressing the lifespan? I said much the same as you did in there. Still, you get much the same improvement if you 'only' get 20-25X the lifespan. For that matter, I was installing CFLs before they were 'cool' for the energy savings because I don't like replacing lightbulbs. The extra buck or two was worth not having to replace one for a few years.

We also need curbside recycling of CFLs.

FMP: 'Or put them in the recycle bin for your trash pickup, like my parents do.'? My parents have curbside.

In my area, you pay by the size of your trash can, and I can get the smallest and cheapest trash can because the recycle bin is huge and I don't get charged for it. (Your mileage may vary.)

In my area, unless you pay a private company you don't get curbside pickup for anything. About once every 2 weeks I dump my 1 kitchen bag into a dumbster at the trash collection point. I'm on a septic system, so I don't use or even have a garbage disposal(it'll shave decades off the lifespan of the system). They even have limited recycling pickup there, but we're in a remote enough area that it generally costs more resources to ship the stuff to a recycling processing center than it is to obtain new(IE recycling would actually cause more pollution). Burnables go to the coal plant, to displace burning coal. It's not much, but it helps.

How about a stamp like the UL tag, which would signify that the product has met certain standards of longevity? Then I could buy those and avoid the crappy ones.

I'd endorse this. Then again, the rating agency will have to keep on their toes - wouldn't do for the company to start off by hiring a run from a quality factory, before switching to the lowest bidder. On further thought - I'd do something like require them to stamp manufacture date & warranty info on the bulbs- and honor their 5 year or whatever warrenty off of that, even without a receipt. Plus, say, 2-3 months for 'Storage, Shipping, and Retail'. It might not give the consumer a full 5 years from purchase, but it'd still be 4 more years of coverage if the buyer didn't take the time to photocopy their thermopaper receipt and file it carefully away. In any case, getting 90% of the warranty is better than maybe 10% of it.

Who's to know? But tell them they can put it in on the curb in a recycling container, and they're more likely to do that.

Ease wins out, doesn't it? And, as you mention, even if you have half a carload to take, that's a fair amount of resources to haul the car over there and back. Most people don't have half a car's worth of empty space to store up the stuff either. Which is why I mentioned having the recycling at retail stores. When I was a kid the recycling collection point was in a mall parking lot.

Re:It only took a century

[roc97007]

> Don't you love how if you'd followed my asterisk footnote, you'd have seen my addressing the lifespan?

I think we were making slightly different points, but I don't think I'm interested enough to argue about it. You will notice I did address your footnote, at length. I have this sneaking suspicion that 100 years from now, our descendants will look back at CFLs and say "wow, that was as stupid as putting Merbromin on cuts and Thiomersal in vaccines. What were they thinking?" But in the meantime, there are things we can do to minimize the damage.

> In my area, unless you pay a private company you don't get curbside pickup for anything.

Um, isn't that true everywhere? It's a private company here also, but (this is hilarious) you are *required* to have trash service, or the county leans on you. And of course, there is only one trash service available, so you just take it and like it. (Don't you love state enforced monopolies?) (There was a story recently of families in this area who with careful planning recycled *everything*, and didn't need trash service at all, but the county decided they had to pay for it anyway.) The one saving grace is that recycling pickup for the most common items is free (or bundled, depending on your point of view) and the recycling bin is, like, four times the size of the smallest trash can, so you're encouraged to use it.

Regarding recycling point at retail stores, I'm actually old enough to remember glass milk bottles, so I would be fine with that. I wonder, though, what happens to the returned burned-out bulbs? Do they really get recycled, or do some companies just dump them?

In that vein, I once wrote a letter to my state representatives about my experience following one of the aforementioned recycling trucks along a nearby country road. (I live only a couple blocks from the urban growth boundry.) Those trucks have a bunch of bins open on top, and my truck was showered with big pieces of cardboard and plastic milk bottles as I frantically slowed down and tried to avoid the worst of the debris. To my knowledge, they are still like that. (I didn't even get an acknowledgement of my letter.) So, when you see trash on the side of the road, don't think too ill of your fellow man -- it might just be recycling that escaped. My point being, I do carefully sort my trash and put the paper and plastic in the big bin and bottles in the little bin, and put out my offering to the recycling gods every two weeks. But I don't have any idea where it goes after it leaves my house. For all I know, it becomes landfill. But now I know part of the answer -- at least some of it becomes debris on the side of the road.

And don't even get me started on the abysmal state of beverage container deposit return.

Re:It only took a century

[ConceptJunkie]

The first CFLs I ever bought in the early 90s were very expensive but lasted for years and years. Nowadays, some of them practically come pre-burned-out for your convenience, especially the globe kind. You would think the extra layer of glass, if anything, would protect the bulb better (but maybe they get too hot?), but I've seen the new globe CFLs burn out in a few weeks and they definitely have a tiny fraction of the lifetime of the regular kind... to the point where I'm gradually shifting back to incandescents to save money. The regular CFL bulbs still seem to last long, but not as long as they used to.

The whole idea of making things an order of magnitude less expensive by making them so cheap they practically break on sight is becoming ridiculous.

I'll guess I'll wait until LED light bulbs are $3 a piece, and hope they last longer than a month.

Re:It only took a century

[ConceptJunkie]

HA HA HA HA!

Oh, wait, you're serious.

Just because the government overreaches in some ways doesn't mean it's always bad. Why is it that people like you think it has to be one extreme or the other? There are points along the spectrum between totalitarianism and anarchy, dontcha know?

You'd better turn off your incandescent lights. They get really hot and could set your straw men on fire.

Re:It only took a century

[roc97007]

> Regarding recycling point at retail stores, I'm actually old enough to remember glass milk bottles, so I would be fine with that. I wonder, though, what happens to the returned burned-out bulbs? Do they really get recycled, or do some companies just dump them?

Following up to my own post, I just had an ugly thought -- or do they just carefully rebox them and put them back on the shelf? That would explain the high incidence of infant mortality.

Re:It only took a century

[Firethorn]

Um, isn't that true everywhere? It's a private company here also, but (this is hilarious) you are *required* to have trash service, or the county leans on you.

At my parent's house it's folded into the property taxes. At my previous place it was water/sewer/trash. It's required in most places, but I'm not in most places. I readily admit that. Work takes me out to the (relative) boonies. I'm on a well and septic system. It's kinda nice not having a water/sewer bill. Well other than the electricity to pump the water and the occasional dose of Rid-x. I figured on ~$40/month in water expenses anyways when I bought the house; septic systems need to be fixed/replaced occasionally.

remember glass milk bottles, so I would be fine with that. I wonder, though, what happens to the returned burned-out bulbs? Do they really get recycled, or do some companies just dump them?

Glass bottles were actually up a step on the conservation ladder - reuse vs recycling. 'Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Dispose'. Of course, nifty sayings aside, plastic gained prominence because it turned out the NG needed to make a plastic gallon milk jug was less than what was needed to heat the water to sterilize the bottles; much less manufacture them(and they still had a loss rate on the bottles, I think I read 6% loss per cycle). Plastic is/was cheaper. So, in a sort of meta way, you could say that plastic milk bottles are actually 'reduce' - you reduce the amount of resources needed in the first place with disposable plastic. Weird, huh?

On returned bulbs - I presume they're recycled for the most part, I'm sure there's the odd store that simply trashes them, but that's a investigative reporter, nosy local shopper, or squealing employee away from nasty headlines. Nasty headlines that would quickly have the EPA breathing down the company's neck.

But I don't have any idea where it goes after it leaves my house. For all I know, it becomes landfill.

You want fun? Look up NYC's glass recycling history. They charged fees, collected the bottles, etc... But then they smashed them all together and because they didn't sorted by color, there wasn't enough manufacturers willing to work with varying shades of brown that they also have to worry about contamination with(so no food products!), that something like 4/5ths of it ends up being dumped with the rest of the trash - at a cost of millions. At one point 'recycling' glass cost twice as much as landfilling it(and the majority ended up there despite the extra expense anyways!).

Following up to my own post, I just had an ugly thought -- or do they just carefully rebox them and put them back on the shelf? That would explain the high incidence of infant mortality.

The lights or the bottles? I'd imagine that putting blown lights back on the shelves would quickly get a store a bad reputation(don't see lots of people returning working ones), and the connection with babies is iffy(even if so, the biggest concern for CFLs are mercury, and mercury poisoning has specific symptoms and can be tested for). So probably the bottles - they went back to the filling center where they'd be inspected, washed, and sterilized - steam wash, basically autoclaved, before being filled up again. As for infant mortality being higher when glass milk bottles were common- lower levels of medical knowledge, all sorts of furniture and toys were less safe(and I'd argue more fun), etc... The milk was unlikely to have been that significant of a cause.

Re:It only took a century

[LordVader717]

You were probably buying the wrong ones. I notice this easily too, but I haven't seen a new consumer-grade CFL have this problem in years. I haven't really had much experience with LEDs, but one example I did come across had a flicker in the kHz range, at least that's what the detector told me.

Re:It only took a century

[Anonymous Coward]

My milage varied. I tried using four LED bulbs in the kitchen and evry single one of them blew out within a year and a half. That's four bulbs which were very expensive so, despite their low electricty consumption, I think I took an overall net loss on them.

I'm now back to using four GU10 halogen bulbs which cost next to nothing to buy and have (so far) lasted much longer. Given the price of electricity and the length of time I use them of an evening I think I'm well ahead using the halogen bulbs.

I love the idea of LED bulbs but sadly I find the current crop to be unreliable and not worth the large upfront investment.

Re:It only took a century

[mcgrew]

Why would I shoo away the volunteer firefighters when they come to fight the fire?

Because your taxes paid for the equipment. You don't need government, remember?

that would be the big corporations that were empowered by the USDA regulations that got rid of the small local butcher

USDA regs didn't get rid of the local butcher, the big corporations ability to undercut the local butcher's prices did, just as WalMart pretty much did away with other local busineses.

No, my friend, those regulations are in place to make it harder for small vendors to compete with the multinational corporations.

Name one.

Re:It only took a century

[Attila Dimedici]

USDA regs didn't get rid of the local butcher,...

Sorry, I happen to know a local butcher who closed up shop because he could not afford the cost of paying for the USDA inspections. I was a young boy at the time, so I do not remember the details, but I remember my uncle talking about closing down his butcher shop for that very reason.

Re:It only took a century

[hb253]

The one I got is a 60-watt equivalent. I forget how much I paid, probably around $25 or so. I'm not necessarily a fanboy, but I was curious about the new technology and bought it on a whim. As I said, the light quality is very good, but I'm not about to replace all the bulbs in my house at that price point.

Re:It only took a century

[hb253]

Agreed, that is needlessly extreme.

Re:It only took a century

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because the local butchers that were put out of business by the USDA (it is the USDA that "inspects" meat plants, not the FDA) regulations, were known for how often they passed tainted meat off on their customers...oh wait, no that would be the big corporations that were empowered by the USDA regulations that got rid of the small local butcher and are still theoretically regulated by the USDA.

The big meat producers aren't really big fans of the USDA either. Nor do they often pass along tainted meat. Recalls are a major expense (not to mention hassle) for the big producers. From where I sat, the CIO would come over to my desk and tell me he needs a list of every cow that was killed in a several hour span. That is a lot of beef. So I provide the data in whatever format they want and quite often someone will say I need to expand the list to cover another couple of hours and also include some other piece of data that wasn't requested before.

Mind you, this is always an URGENT request and can come at any time of day or night or weekend. It's unlikely that all of that meat is tainted but just to be sure the recalls cast a wide net. Then this list must be correlated with all the customers it got distributed to and they in turn must track down all of their customers.

(I know, you're probably thinking what a crap system they must have that they have to involve IT every time there is a recall and you would be right. They refuse to invest the money to integrate disparate systems or even develop standard processes by which to retrieve this data.)

There are USDA inspectors in every major meat plant in the US (and probably minor ones too although I'm not familiar with those). They can shut everything down on a whim. They can pull carcasses off the line for further testing whenever they feel like it. Every day there are disagreements over the grading of cattle. (USDA says it's "choice" but to our graders it looks "prime"). Systems to automatically and objectively grade beef have been under development and testing for years, but the USDA has yet to approve any of them.

Believe it or not the big producers don't spend a whole lot of time or effort trying to put small local butchers out of business. It's inconsequential to them. When you slaughter 30-40,000 head of cattle a day a few local butchers aren't going to make a difference to your bottom line.

Re:It only took a century

[squiggleslash]

OK, listen. Turn off the TV, Fox News is not a good source of information about what's going on in the world. Also close your web browser. Now, get up, and head down to any store that sells lightbulbs.

Now, go to the manager and tell them you heard on HotAir.com, Fox News, and GlobalWarmingIsaRidiculousLiberalMyth-AndSoIsLungCancer-AndEverythingElseScientistsClaimIsToo.com that the manager is breaking the law because of the large number of incandescents on the shelves.

After he laughs at you, call the EPA.

After they laugh at you, call Fox News and demand they tell a story about how the government is refusing to enforce a law that exists in the imagination of every conservative in the country.

Re:It only took a century

[Attila Dimedici]

You know, that is a very nice straw man argument you have there. I have never tuned in to Fox News and please tell me what retailer has a "large" number of traditional incandescent light bulbs on their shelves because very few of the retailers in my area stock any traditional incandescent light bulbs, let alone a "large" number of them.

wiki link

[vlm]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_stimulated_luminescence

Slashdot needs a copy of the wiki alertbox: "This article appears to be written like an advertisement".

"Light is generated instantly when power is applied." So how are they doing the thermionic emission of electrons... cold cathode which I thought had serious amps/meter limits, or ?

Re:wiki link

[Pinky's Brain]

Nanotube forests can provide high current density cold cathode emitters, dunno about the costs.

Re:wiki link

[uberdilligaff]

They meant to say "...for sufficiently large values of instantly"

Re:wiki link

[Deathmoo]

I would imagine the costs of a nanotube forest may be a little above that of most things at this point. But that hopefully will change soon, we need a way to make huge quantities of carbon nanotubes cheaply, so we can start really using the things, the most exciting new technology that has been developed since the airplane, IMHO..

Re:wiki link

[ehiris]

Needs more mod points. Unfortunately mine ran out while I didn't see much to use them for.

Re:wiki link

[Anonymous Coward]

The slashdot article is written like an advertisement too. Mercury isn't really a concern for it's "brain eating" potential not directly. It's a concern in terms of waste disposal. The melatonin paper is about comparing outdoor lights like HPS - sodium lights which are rather yellow. The paper states: "As noted earlier, exposure to lighting with a high blue component disrupts the normal melatonin rhythms, commonly leading to insomnia, stress and increased risk for a wide
range of medical maladies and even cancer. Preventing the blue component from reaching the eye by means of fi lters blocking wavelengths under 530 nm, preserves nocturnal melatonin production in humans"

First it's worth noting that this is a paper which is an exercise in applied math. That is, no experiments were done and no values were measured. It's simply projecting that if we were to replace all sodium lamps with LED's then the result would be X. Second the paper itself claims that this effect is the result of blue light (possibly only at night I haven't read the cited paper and probably the writers didn't either). Its worth noting that the ESL bulbs don't guarantee any better performance in this area. They claim to be broader spectrum - but publish no data on that subject. If they were and we assume that the distribution is linear then we might be getting somewhat less blue light but the fact is that paper states pretty clearly that the relative difference between incandescent bulbs is only half that of what they project LED bulbs to be but as we know the spectrum of an incandescent bulb is probably less blue than a more full spectrum bulb. Thus it's not even clear if this difference is significant. Not even touching on that we have no idea if the result would be clinically significant. In other words the does response relationship between these two bulb types may have enough variance that they aren't measurably different in terms of disease outcomes. i.e. cancer

on the contrary

[Anonymous Coward]

they're highly efficient space heaters

Re:on the contrary

[tragedy]

Considering that it's dead simple to make electric heaters in the 99%-100% efficiency range, doesn't all that energy lost as visible light make them relatively inefficient for the space heater domain?

Re:on the contrary

[Electricity Likes Me]

Space heaters are highly inefficient for the heating domain anyway.

Re:on the contrary

[serviscope_minor]

Considering that it's dead simple to make electric heaters in the 99%-100% efficiency range, doesn't all that energy lost as visible light make them relatively inefficient for the space heater domain?

Two things.

Firstly, the visible light winds up as heat pretty quickly, making them 100% efficient space heaters.

Secondly heat pumps can be constructed with an "efficiency" (coefficient of performance) of about 600% or so without much trouble, making them vastly more efficient.

Re:on the contrary

[tragedy]

Not going to argue with you about the heat pumps. The "efficiency" is apples and oranges to the efficiency I was talking about, but you clearly know that.
As for the visible light from a light bulb ending up mostly as heat, that's generally true, but the margins of wasted electrical power are so slim in electric heating that the light that escapes and doesn't end up as heat drops incandescent bulbs way out of the ranks of electric space heaters even if the amount of electricity converted to heat inside the home for the light-bulbs is still in the high 90's for incandescent bulbs.

Efficiency Depends On What You're Effishing For

[sehlat]

There are still good uses for incandescents, particularly in environments where the heat is a major benefit.

As an example, my wife's theater group has a detached wooden shed which is used to store costumes, wigs, etc. She keeps a 60-watt light bulb burning in that shed to keep the place warm enough that condensation and mildew aren't a problem. Since the bulb hangs in open space from the ceiling, it's a lot safer and much more efficient than any space heater, and it's also cost effective, since, as noted, it keeps mildew down.

Re:Efficiency Depends On What You're Effishing For

[Millennium]

And don't forget the lava lamps.

Please, won't someone think of the lava lamps?

Re:Efficiency Depends On What You're Effishing For

[Belial6]

Given how little heat is produced by a 60-watt bulb, an electric blanket would likely work just as well if not better, and be just as safe. I'm not saying the light bulb should be replaced in her use case, but if incandescent disappear, she will be just fine with the widely available replacements.

Re:Efficiency Depends On What You're Effishing For

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget traffic lights. In cities up north that have replaced their traffic lights with LED units they are having problems with the lights getting obscured by snow and ice. The old incandescent bulbs kept the temperature up and melted the snow,

Re:Efficiency Depends On What You're Effishing For

[DragonWriter]

There are still good uses for incandescents, particularly in environments where the heat is a major benefit.

As an example, my wife's theater group has a detached wooden shed which is used to store costumes, wigs, etc. She keeps a 60-watt light bulb burning in that shed to keep the place warm enough that condensation and mildew aren't a problem. Since the bulb hangs in open space from the ceiling, it's a lot safer and much more efficient than any space heater,

Neither lightbulbs nor space heaters are particularly ideal as dehumidifiers, which is really what you want to prevent condensation and mildew.

Re:Efficiency Depends On What You're Effishing For

[sehlat]

Remember one thing about the bulb, it also produces light, which is a very-much-desired side effect of the heating. :)

Re:Efficiency Depends On What You're Effishing For

[Anonymous Coward]

Hand in your geek card - you think a light bulb is a more efficient heater than a space heater. Clearly you don't understand the second law of thermodynamics.

Re:Efficiency Depends On What You're Effishing For

[cpu6502]

I hate CFLs, but if she was unable to get a 60-watt incandescent she could just substitute a 70-watt CFL (200 equivalent) and get about the same level of heat.

Or a small portable heater (they make them in small 60 watt sizes).

Re:Efficiency Depends On What You're Effishing For

[Anonymous Coward]

They did. The lamps approved for use in a LAVA lamp (which are not your standard Edison A19 bulbs) are one of the many exemptions under the law.

Re:Efficiency Depends On What You're Effishing For

[X0563511]

They could put tiny electric heating elements inside there to keep them warm and still end up with a more efficient system.

Re:Efficiency Depends On What You're Effishing For

[M1FCJ]

For those very cold days, add a thermostat controlled heater circuit. Why waste energy for 330 days for the 30 days with enough snow to get the signs obscured?

Re:Efficiency Depends On What You're Effishing For

[sehlat]

Neither lightbulbs nor space heaters are particularly ideal as dehumidifiers, which is really what you want to prevent condensation and mildew.

Not particularly ideal, conceded, but they are adequate in this case. Add in the fact that most of the wear and tear on incandescent bulbs is starting them up, and a bulb will last a long time if it's just left running. As a result, the bulb needs infrequent replacement, and my wife doesn't need me or a specialist to do the repairs on some expensive dehumidifier.

Re:Efficiency Depends On What You're Effishing For

[sehlat]

I hate CFLs, but if she was unable to get a 60-watt incandescent she could just substitute a 70-watt CFL (200 equivalent) and get about the same level of heat.

Or a small portable heater (they make them in small 60 watt sizes).

If 70-watt CFL a: too bright and b: a toxic-waste-dump in a bottle which, if dropped in the will lead to endless consequences. Remember the woman who phoned her local government to find out how to clean up a dropped CFL and was told she had to spend several thousand dollars on hazmat cleanup/

Small portable heater in small space with flammable clothes? You are kidding, I hope.

Re:Efficiency Depends On What You're Effishing For

[mhajicek]

In Minnesota the incandescent bulbs heating effect is useful about 50% of the time.

Re:Efficiency Depends On What You're Effishing For

[sjames]

That depends on which efficiency. It's exactly as energy efficient in a windowless room, but if you also want light it's an improvement. It is a lot more cost efficient, especially if you already have a light socket.

Re:Efficiency Depends On What You're Effishing For

[JonySuede]

not in the north were electricity come from some hydro-electric mega-damn

Re:Efficiency Depends On What You're Effishing For

[X0563511]

Why does that matter? My point was the dedicated heaters in the right spots combined with the LEDs will still be more efficient than the old incandescents. Your location doesn't determine how efficient the incandescents were...

You don't care about ice and stuff on the sides/back - only the crap hanging off the shields. Put de-icers on the rims of the shields and it should keep them clear enough.

Re:Efficiency Depends On What You're Effishing For

[Anonymous Coward]

Part of a class I took in college was why a heating system wasn't done. Simple -- cost. The LEDs were a fairly easy retrofit to the hundreds to thousands of stoplights. The heater wasn't, because of the added circuitry needed (thermostat, heater placement, fuses, etc.)

Re:Efficiency Depends On What You're Effishing For

[DMUTPeregrine]

I much prefer LED traffic lights, they are MUCH easier to see. Incandescent lights are often quite dim. For the areas with snow, add a heater and a thermostat to let it melt snow. Build it into the bulb. Problem solved, and with a thermostat you still save energy when it's not snowy.

Re:Efficiency Depends On What You're Effishing For

[Electricity Likes Me]

It seems pretty likely that it would be more effective to install a small dehumidifier unit and then silicone up all the cracks in the place.

Re:Efficiency Depends On What You're Effishing For

[marnues]

Electricity from mega-dams is clearly _cold_ electricity, useless for heating.

Re:Efficiency Depends On What You're Effishing For

[marnues]

I prefer the LED lights because now my municipality can actually spend some money on real cops instead of high school drop-outs with ego problems.

Re:Efficiency Depends On What You're Effishing For

[marnues]

Why is the small, portable heater a bigger problem than the small, immovable incandescent bulb?

Re:Efficiency Depends On What You're Effishing For

[makomk]

LEDs are apparently fairly heat sensitive, so this may not be quite that simple.

Re:Efficiency Depends On What You're Effishing For

[sehlat]

Because it would be a small portable heater in a confined space with every wall a rack of dresses, gowns, costume, etc. It would be very easy for our costumer, coming through laden with dresses, sewing, some costume, to miss and either trip over or, distracted by work, to shove under a rack of dresses where the heat might end up setting clothes on fire.

The light bulb hangs from the ceiling, where nobody can trip over it, provides just enough heat to keep condensation away,and it lights up the "costume shed" VERY nicely.

When the ban on incandescents was announced, my wife went out and picked up a case of bulbs.

Re:Efficiency Depends On What You're Effishing For

[Belial6]

I'm pretty sure that light producing devices will continue to be made well after the incandescent bulbs are gone. ;) Again, if the bulb works for her now, it works, but it doesn't make a huge amount of sense for incandescent bulbs to continue to be made for fringe cases that have alternative solutions.

Re:Efficiency Depends On What You're Effishing For

[fleebait]

As an example, my wife's theater group has a detached wooden shed which is used to store costumes, wigs, etc. She keeps a 60-watt light bulb burning in that shed to keep the place warm enough that condensation and mildew aren't a problem. Since the bulb hangs in open space from the ceiling, it's a lot safer and much more efficient than any space heater,

Neither lightbulbs nor space heaters are particularly ideal as dehumidifiers, which is really what you want to prevent condensation and mildew.

Yeah, but light bulbs don't drip like a dehumidifier does..

Re:Efficiency Depends On What You're Effishing For

[Neil Boekend]

The old bulbs have a rather large depth. I coud envision a system where all this is integrated in a new bulb. Same size as the old one, but with design like this: Front to back: heater, then a light diffusor, double panes of glass (if feasible with a vacuum in between: spacers don't matter here) to protect the LED's from the heat, the LED's, control cicuitry, fitting (same fitting as the old ones. You really want a screw in replacement)

Re:Efficiency Depends On What You're Effishing For

[jones_supa]

I hate CFLs, but if she was unable to get a 60-watt incandescent she could just substitute a 70-watt CFL (200 equivalent) and get about the same level of heat.

There's a notable difference... From the 60W bulb she'd get 57W heat, and the 70W CFL would push 35W.

Re:Efficiency Depends On What You're Effishing For

[squizzar]

I read somewhere about a guy who was importing a lot of incandescent bulbs into the EU (where they're pretty much banned). In order to get around the rules they were (are?) sold as 100W heaters.

Re:Efficiency Depends On What You're Effishing For

[cbope]

Perhaps because that 30 days is in fact 4-5 months of the year in some places, even longer in others? Sometimes we can go weeks without the temperature going above 0 F (Finland).

Re:Efficiency Depends On What You're Effishing For

[WuphonsReach]

Given how little heat is produced by a 60-watt bulb, an electric blanket would likely work just as well if not better, and be just as safe. I'm not saying the light bulb should be replaced in her use case, but if incandescent disappear, she will be just fine with the widely available replacements.

Heating with a 60W heater might be more efficient, but when it's not working it's less obvious then the light bulb not being lit. You can easily tell that the light bulb system is working from outside, without having to open the door. If someone goes in to retrieve something, they may not pay attention to "it's colder then it should be" but they will definitely complain about "it's too dark to see".

In the case where you are not paying someone to specifically check whether a particular widget is working, you need to design your system so that it is obvious that it's not working. And that, if it's not working, it impairs the user's ability to get things done without either fixing it or telling someone about it.

You'll still get the stupid people who will just bring a flashlight rather then change the bulb, but the problem is more likely to get fixed sooner if you tie "heating" in with "light to see WTF you're banging your shins on".

Re:Efficiency Depends On What You're Effishing For

[Belial6]

Your stretching. If your goal with a light bulb is to force irresponsible people to fix a problem, you have already failed. Your irresponsible person that changes the light bulb is more likely to change a burned out bulb with the first bulb they can get their hands on. That would be a CFL. Now you not only are not heating the room, but your indicator system is telling everyone that it is working. That isn't even taking into account that incandescent bulbs are high failure items. Thus we can determine that the use of the light as a motivator to keep the heat on is a straw man.

Finally!

[Guppy06]

A light bulb with no "native resolution!"

Re:Finally!

[Anonymous Coward]

...and proper black!

LED FUD?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can get LEDs in any color balance you want now, including very warm color balances. For example:
http://www.cree.com/products/xlamp_mtg.asp

And price is falling fast:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haitz's_Law

The lighting industry is rapidly gearing up for a complete transition to LED lighting.

The melatonin study? The comparison point is high pressure sodium, which produces very yellow light. I'd be surprised if there is anything specific to LEDs as compared to any other light with decent Color Rendering Index, other than that they are efficient enough to be a candidate to replace High Pressure Sodium.

Re:LED FUD?

[Anonymous Coward]

Too lazy to look at your links, but unless things have changed very recently the spectrum output from LEDs still have the peaks associated with non-incandescent lighting. This will make colors look funky at a minimum.

Re:LED FUD?

[djdanlib]

Ah, Cree. They are in just about everything.

I like how they have such a significant spike of UV production that they feel the need to include a warning telling you to never look directly at the light.

I'm still waiting for theatrical LED lighting to be bright enough to use from the back of an auditorium, without having to buy the super high end Philips stuff.

Re:LED FUD?

[Anonymous Coward]

It probably depends on the LED, but for the linked product at least the datasheet shows a falloff to essentially zero relative spectral power by 400nm.

http://www.cree.com/products/pdf/XLampMTG-EZW.pdf

Re:LED FUD?

[jittles]

I just bought a bunch of LED bulbs this weekend at Costco. They have coupons right now. They were about $3 a bulb, and I think they put out great light. At an estimated $0.30 a year in operating cost, I think I'll keep them!

Re:LED FUD?

[R.Mo_Robert]

You can get LEDs in any color balance you want now, including very warm color balances.

Not to mention, they aren't that expensive (especially for downlight replacements) and their price is falling fast. I haven't been able to find many ESL bulbs, but a quick search online reveals that they aren't exactly competitively priced compared to LEDs, and their wattage seems to be a bit more than CFLs for the same amount of light (and both are more than LEDs).

Additionally, LEDs, if they last long enough, will cost less money in the long run. I've affordably replaced most of the bulbs in my house and have no regrets. For some niche applications, other bulbs may still be necessary, and hopefully LEDs will become more appealing to the average person within the next few years in terms of price, directionality, and so on.

Re:LED FUD?

[crath]

Too lazy to look at your links, but unless things have changed very recently the spectrum output from LEDs still have the peaks associated with non-incandescent lighting. This will make colors look funky at a minimum.

Incandescent bulbs make colors look funky too... we're just accustomed to it.

Re:LED FUD?

[marnues]

How scientific of you.

Re:LED FUD?

[Carnildo]

You can get LEDs in any color balance you want now, including very warm color balances.

What does the spectrum look like? With a suitable choice of primaries, you can get any tristimulus value you want (so you can give a white object whatever color you desire), but if you're not careful with the full spectrum, you can get some bizarre effects with other colors.

As an example, someone at the college I went to cooked up a pigment that would look red when lit by a compact fluorescent, green under his LED desk lamp, and yellow in broad daylight.

Re:LED FUD?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the "never look directly at the light" has nothing to do with the UV, rather with the LED emission area being a very small point, which allows your eye's lens to concentrate it better and thus make more damage. Diffused/indirect LED lights pose no threat whatsoever.

Re:LED FUD?

[Anonymous Coward]

FTFL Look at cree's data sheet, the warmest of their "white" light LEDs still has a strong peak at 480nm. Blue.

Similar problem problem to CFLs. With CFLs the phosphor itself is very good at converting UV to white but it isn't opaque to mercury's green emission line.

With white LEDs the phosphor is good at converting UV to white but isn't opaque to the strong blue components.

Huh

[RoboRay]

I just discovered a use for that old CRT monitor buried in my closet!

Awesome!

[king neckbeard]

Now I can be sure that my lighting solution can deliver true blacks for better contrast

Spectral balance

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

You can get your choice of color temperatures from a fluorescent: they make different phosphor mixes for different applications.

LED lights can even have their color balance changed on the fly.

Re:Spectral balance

[Anonymous Coward]

broad spectrum or peaky?

Warm white? Yuck!

[Anonymous Coward]

I go out of my way to find daylight or cool-white bulbs. I have been living with cool white for over 10 years and when I see a regular incandescent bulb outputting that putrid yellow color, I cringe. It is awful. This is the year 2012. Why do we still want our artificial light to be the same color of candles used back in the stupid ages?

I hate CFLs

[cpu6502]

LEDs are about ~$30 on amazon. They've dropped about half what they were two years ago, so not really that expensive (they last a lifetime). I'm tempted to buy one sometime.

CFLs:
- are dim for the first 4-5 minutes, so you have to sit and wait before you can read your book (or walk down the basement steps)
- filled with mercury
- have to drive the burned-out ones to the landfill (thus increasing carbon footprint) (and no I don't CFL or battery recycling where I live)
- have to ship them in from China (again increasing the carbon footprint)
- they don't last long in my fixtures because they are upside down (trapped heat kills CFL electronics)
- or startup when outside (subfreezing temps)
- and every dimmable CFL I've ever tried went "zzztt" and died within an hour.

I wish the incandescent bulbs were still available. They didn't use as much power as the CFLs do (I'm including the power to ship from China & drive them to the landfill). Or frustrate me. Or require special handling. And they were built here on this continent (close to market).

Re:I hate CFLs

[nschubach]

The last time I checked (2 weeks ago?), my local Wal-Mart (and Meijer) still had Incandescent bulbs.

Re:I hate CFLs

[hankwang]

[incandescent bulbs] didn't use as much power as the CFLs do (I'm including the power to ship from China & drive them to the landfill).

One 12 W CFL, equivalent with 60 W incandescent, over 5000 hours: electricity savings = 225 kWh = 800 MJ electrical energy = 2 GJ heat of combustion in a power plant.

Equivalent car fuel @ 35 MJ/liter: 57 liters (15 gallons). How far do you live from the landfill?

Re:I hate CFLs

[djdanlib]

I want good LEDs, but CFLs have been good enough for many of my purposes so far.

CFLs:
- are dim for the first 4-5 minutes, so you have to sit and wait before you can read your book (or walk down the basement steps)

Perfect for bathroom lights, if you rent and can't install dimmer switches! Also, they are quite good for a lamp in your living room when you have friends over to watch a movie, so that you don't cause everyone pain after the movie's over.

- have to drive the burned-out ones to the landfill (thus increasing carbon footprint) (and no I don't CFL or battery recycling where I live)

A lot of the stores that sell them will take them. There are a lot of laws requiring them to do so in various places, so check that out. Do you have a Home Depot / Lowe's / Walmart / anything like that?

And they were built here on this continent (close to market).

Which continent? I'm guessing North America from the amazon.com URL, but you never know on here.

Re:I hate CFLs

[Anonymous Coward]

4-5 minutes? You're smoking some serious grass or something.

Re:I hate CFLs

[DragonWriter]

LEDs are about ~$30 on amazon. They've dropped about half what they were two years ago, so not really that expensive (they last a lifetime).

Well, not what I'd call a lifetime; typical LED bulbs have lifespans rated around 12 years or so of 6 hour/day use.

Re:I hate CFLs

[fahrbot-bot]

- filled with mercury

That's a bit hyperbolic. There's only a very small quantity of mercury in CFLs.
Still, mercury, especially vapor, from a broken bulb is a concern.

I believe there are CFL bulbs made in the USA, but perhaps they're not available where you are.

Re:I hate CFLs

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember when light bulbs were instant on and televisions had to warm up?

Re:I hate CFLs

[cpu6502]

My 60 watt equivalents are 15 not 12 watts. Also they never last 5000 hours..... more like 1/2 a year which figuring 6 hours in the morning + evening == 1100 hours. Adjusting your math I get:

36 kWh saved. 128 MJ saved.
That's just 3.6 liters of gasoline.
I could easily burn that up in the drive to the landfill + shipping the CFL from China to the EU or US (and probably shipping it back since most electronics are recycled in China not here) + transport of the mercury to the disposal site. Net production-to-recycle cost: More energy was used by my CFL than an incandescent bulb.

Re:I hate CFLs

[Anonymous Coward]

- filled with mercury

I'm only going to deal with some of your remarks, like this one. Filled with mercury you say. How much? Pick up a standard pen. Look at the end. That little ball in the tip? That's larger than the mercury in your average bulb.

Filled is a gross exaggeration.

- and every dimmable CFL I've ever tried went "zzztt" and died within an hour.

Did you get CFL compatible dimmers/switches? If you didn't, that's your problem.

I wish the incandescent bulbs were still available. They didn't use as much power as the CFLs do (I'm including the power to ship from China & drive them to the landfill). Or frustrate me. Or require special handling. And they were built here on this continent (close to market).

Yeah, because incandescent bulbs never came from China, and your horrible situation for dealing with CFL bulbs is representative. Your frustrations are entirely of your own manufacture.

But you know what used to frustrate me? Changing light bulbs. I can't remember the last time I had to change a bulb in my house since I switched to CFLs and LEDs. Well, except when I wanted different lights.

Re:I hate CFLs

[Anonymous Coward]

That LED you're touting is shipped from China as well. Not that it matters - the power requirement and carbon footprint of shipping from China is negligible, assuming you're not ordering directly from China and having it shipped via air. A large container ship is remarkably efficient at moving cargo, and you can pack a huge number of light bulbs on one.

And btw - LEDs are also very sensitive to heat. That's why they all have those huge heatsinks integrated on to them. Putting them in a enclosed space without good convection cooling is a sure way to greatly reduce their lifespan. Not to say that LEDs aren't great, but they do have their limitations as well.

Re:I hate CFLs

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to slashdot where exaggeration of negative myths about green tech are pretty much par for the course. CFL's are satan's work. Electric cars are worse than gasoline cars. Solar power is doomed. Etc.

Re:I hate CFLs

[Anonymous Coward]

Dim CFL's only happen when you buy crappy off-brand bulbs. I buy name brand bulbs that do not have such problems. You will have the same kind of issue with any cut rate off brand electronics, including LED bulbs.

As for mercury, if you eat seafood you are already taking in a shit ton of murcury. And if you live near a coal plant powering your incandescent then you are inhaling more mercury to power that bulb than if you simply broke your CFL bulb and ate the contents.

Where the hell do you have to live to not have any kind of recycling center nearby? I myself don't live right next door to one, but I have a box I keep for burned out batteries and bulbs that I take to Home Depot when I need duct tape or some white glue.

Everything is made in China. Including LED light bulbs.

If you don't use an electronics product properly, it has problems. I suppose you expect your television to work if you plug it into a 12 volt circuit too?

Re:I hate CFLs

[Anonymous Coward]

Before I ever bought a CFL bulb, I had to clean up a broken one. It really sucks to have to deal with poisonous materials that you never wanted. I've always lived in areas where no one I know -- even people paying $2000+/month for a 1 bedroom, living in the same building as NBA starters -- has an air conditioner, so being forced into using CFLs and risking the mercury for no noticeable benefit really annoys me. There has been no noticeable effect on the electrical bill (probably because we're very efficient and typically max out at two light bulbs on at the same time, and the heating and appliances drown out what little electricity we use for lights), and the claimed lifespan increase over normal incandescents has been total crap in my experience.

Re:I hate CFLs

[jittles]

As I posted above, I bought a bunch of LED lights this weekend at Costco. They were about $3 a bulb with automatic coupons applied at the register. I like them a lot. Estimated cost per year: $0.30.

Re:I hate CFLs

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't hate CFLs, you hate cheap CFLs. I only use Osram CFLs and I have none of the problems you mention (although I haven't tried dimmables yet). Most of them were made in Germany, so no shipping from China either.

Re:I hate CFLs

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to slashdot where tilting at windmills is not just a hobby, it's a competitive sport.

Re:I hate CFLs

[HornWumpus]

One 12 W CFL, equivalent with 60 W incandescent, over 500 minutes (in bathroom used by males, dies from on/off cycle life)...

Bulbs don't just run. Which is an implicit assumption in you oft repeated analysis.

Re:I hate CFLs

[tragedy]

But have you ever in your life taken a trip to the landfill _just_ to throw out some lightbulbs, or have they just been among the dozens, hundreds, or thousands of other items you had in the load?

Re:I hate CFLs

[PRMan]

Again with the mercury? It's .4mg per bulb. Old thermometers had 500mg. The old Honeywell wall thermostats had 3000mg. Even tuna, that people EAT, has 0.048 mg of mercury. If you eat 10 cans of tuna, you've eaten more mercury than is in a CFL.

Re:I hate CFLs

[Anonymous Coward]

You can recycle CFLs at any Home Depot. At least you can in Canada.

Re:I hate CFLs

[mhajicek]

A common failure mode for CFLs is physical breakage (at least in my house with three cats and a nine year old kid). In that case the broken pieces go in the trash. I'd like LEDs but I can't find bright enough ones that aren't enormous, they tend to shine mostly in one direction, and I'm worried about them lasting as advertised. It's also hard to budget $50+ per light bulb up front.

Re:I hate CFLs

[SuricouRaven]

You know... those incandescent bulbs? They come from China too. And they only last a fraction of the life, so you have to ship a lot more of them, which should easily outweigh the extra trip back for recycling.

Re:I hate CFLs

[hankwang]

I think you have to double-check your math. A factor 4.5 in lifetime cannot result in a factor 15 in equivalent fuel usage.

Re:I hate CFLs

[hrvatska]

- have to drive the burned-out ones to the landfill (thus increasing carbon footprint) (and no I don't CFL or battery recycling where I live)

I take all my used CFLs to one of the area hardware stores when I go to purchase new ones. Lowes and Home Depot both accept used CFLs for recycling. I don't use any more energy to dispose of used CFLs than I used to use for incandescents.

- have to ship them in from China (again increasing the carbon footprint)

I'd like to see the math for that. Seriously. I also wondered why would cheap throw away items like incandescents be any more likely to be made in the US than any other cheap throw away item?

- they don't last long in my fixtures because they are upside down (trapped heat kills CFL electronics)

I just replaced a CFL that had been hanging upside down a lighting fixture in my kitchen for, as best as we can determine it, seven years. The ones in my bathroom fixtures above the mirror have been there for at least two years. I've started writing the date I install CFLs on the base so I can tell how long they last.

- or startup when outside (subfreezing temps)

I've used both halogens and LEDs for my outside lamps. I eventually ended using LEDs because they won't need to be replaced as often, and it's a pain in the butt to have to take those fixtures apart and replace the bulbs when they burn out in freezing weather.

Re:I hate CFLs

[Anonymous Coward]

Time to exercise discipline. Two cats and two kids here, never had a bulb incident.

Re:I hate CFLs

[mattack2]

I only did a bit of searching on Amazon, but I see that some 60/65 watt replacement LEDs (including one with lifetime guarantee) are about $20, including shipping. (I didn't search around further to see if any were available with Amazon's free super saver shipping.)

I was most curious about the warranty/guarantee, since I've had some CFLs burn out, even though they're supposed to last a very long time. (This was in bathroom fixtures though, and the moisture may be relevant.)

Re:I hate CFLs

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of an electrical bill, start generating all your power for lighting by human mechanisms.

You'll switch to CFLs in short order.

Just because it's easy to not notice something in the noise, doesn't mean it has no impact.

Re:I hate CFLs

[Anonymous Coward]

LEDs are great, but their problem is the total lumen output for a typical bulb.

This is the dirty secret of LED bulbs: they're just not that bright.

With the recent push for LEDs, I was sort of excited, thinking "oh, they've solved the luminosity problem."

But when I started checking things, the answer is no, they have not. I was just in the store, too, and there were tons of LED bulbs everywhere, but the lumen output was ridiculous. Look at an incandescent, and it's like 1000+ lumens. LED bulb? 450.

CFLs to some extent aren't as bright as incandescents, but the gap is much smaller. And they do turn on instantly, and the mercury content is pretty small.

I am waiting for the time when you'll have truly bright LEDs, but we're not there yet, and I don't see it changing anytime soon. For now, for me, CFLs are a reasonable compromise between incandescents and LEDs, in terms of the balance between price, performance, and brightness.

I've never really understood the "light quality issue"--I mean, I understand it, but it's never been an issue for me one way or another. But brightness does matter to me. I'm not going to pay $25 dollars for half the light output. Even if LEDs and CFLs were the same price, I'd probably still buy the CFL if the lumen outputs of LEDs were as uncompetitive as they are now.

Re:I hate CFLs

[rahvin112]

You have atrocious power quality if you are only getting 1100 hours. I bought my home 8 years ago and promptly replaced almost every bulb with CFL's. I've yet to replace one, yet the one major fixture I have that still has incandescents has been replaced 4 times at about $6 a pop (decorative bulbs). In fact I have one CFL light that's on nearly every minute we are in the room and still going strong 8 years later (god knows how many hours, wouldn't be surprised if it's upwards of 10,000 hours at this point).

So I say again, you have really crappy power thats killing bulbs or you are buying the cheapest POS you can buy and using it as some comparison test. Based on your post I sincerely doubt you've purchased or used a quality CFL for any real use.

Re:I hate CFLs

[nickersonm]

I also have yet to replace a single CFL bulb from the set I installed 6 years ago. I just used generic Costco CFLs that were something like $2-4 apiece.

Re:I hate CFLs

[Anonymous Coward]

transport of the mercury to the disposal site

Oh please. Don't pretend you're doing the "ecologically sensitive" thing, when you're just tossing them in the trash just like you do with the kitchen fluorescent tubes you used to smash over each other's head playing darth vader when you were a kid.

Re:I hate CFLs

[Qzukk]

Before I ever bought a CFL bulb, I had to clean up a broken one.

Before CFL bulbs ever existed, I had to clean up a broken one. When I was 9 my mom asked me to help her change one of the fluorescent tubes in the kitchen. I dropped it and had to sweep up the pieces. It didn't affect me much but I guess the mercury vapor must have gotten out of the house since it made everyone else too retarded to remember that the non-compact fluorescent bulbs have been using mercury for decades without anyone running screaming to the EPA!

Re:I hate CFLs

[camperdave]

Remember when light bulbs were instant on and televisions had to warm up?

My Philips CFLs are instant on.

Re:I hate CFLs

[cbhacking]

You're confused by the "failure" mode of LEDs, though. They don't really burn out, not under any reasonable timeframe. Instead, they very slowly dim.

The expected lifetimes are typically to the time when they produce 85% of their original light output. If that's still an acceptable level to you, you can get years more usage out of them.

Re:I hate CFLs

[Neil Boekend]

That's per bulb. Dunno about you, but I tend to store my burned out bulbs untill the chemical waste container is full and then bring it (with batteriesand all that). Did you bring the incandescent ones directly to the glass recycling when they burned out? My time is to valuable for that.

Re:I hate CFLs

[Neil Boekend]

It's all a dick measuring contest and windmills win in that regard (according to some definitions). Some people can't handle that.


Warning: definitions may or may not have been created for the purpose of making a lame joke.

Re:I hate CFLs

[AmiMoJo]

CFLs:
- are dim for the first 4-5 minutes, so you have to sit and wait before you can read your book (or walk down the basement steps)

There is a really simple and obvious solution to this. Fast-start bulbs like Philips reach 80% brightness in less than 2 seconds. If you would normally fit a 60W inequivalent fit an 80W instead. Now you have 100% of a 60W bulb's brightness after 2 seconds.

- have to drive the burned-out ones to the landfill (thus increasing carbon footprint) (and no I don't CFL or battery recycling where I live)

Another easy one. In the UK all shops that sell batteries and light bulbs must have a bin for recycling them. The same delivery trucks that bring new stock take the old away and recycle it.

- have to ship them in from China (again increasing the carbon footprint)

That's because the US doesn't make anything any more. Many of ours come from Germany and the Netherlands.

- they don't last long in my fixtures because they are upside down (trapped heat kills CFL electronics)

Actually it should be the opposite. Incandescents last less time in fixtures that trap heat, especially recessed ones. You probably have other issues.

- or startup when outside (subfreezing temps)

We use them for street lighting, I'm pretty sure they work fine.

Re:I hate CFLs

[makomk]

Instant on is a marketing term. All it means is that you get something like 80 or 90 percent of the full brightness within a second or so; most of the bulbs that have it still take time to warm up to full brightness.

Re:I hate CFLs

[ArsonSmith]

With the dangerous levels of toxins in a CFL I take them individually, in safe handling boxes, on separate trips each to the land fill using a different route each time. CFLs will KILL you if you are not extremely, extremely careful.

Re:I hate CFLs

[Anonymous Coward]

But have you ever in your life taken a trip to the landfill _just_ to throw out some lightbulbs

I don't drive to the landfill at all. I just throw the damn things in the trash with my batteries.

Screw the environment.

Re:I hate CFLs

[Agripa]

LEDs are about ~$30 on amazon. They've dropped about half what they were two years ago, so not really that expensive (they last a lifetime).

Incandescent bulbs here generally last 2 years. CFL and LED bulbs last half that because of our dirty power. Which is more economical in that case?

Re:I hate CFLs

[cpu6502]

Incandescent bulbs were built here in the U.S. or Mexico. So shipping costs were minimal (~1500 miles miles rather than halfway round the world). Therefore less energy wasted. AND they could be disposed here rather than having to be shipped all the way to China for recycling.

And no I didn't use crap. They were Philips bulbs. They don't die because of poor power quality but because they are upside down in ceiling fixtures which trap the heat. Heat kills CFLs. (For comparison the incandescent bulbs also lasted about 1/2 a year... they don't mind the heat.)

I just think all this BS over bulbs is ridiculous.

They represent about 1/2% of our total power usage. Almost all of the generated electricity gets sucked-up into our air conditioners and heaters. THAT'S where we should be targeting higher efficiency (and maybe requiring new homes be PassiveHaus standards). Not wasting our time with CFLs that operate as poorly as Windows Vista on a 256 megabyte RAM computer. CFLs are a DOWNgrade not an upgrade.

CFLs are shit, and I've already enumerated all the reasons. They are dim for 4-5 minutes before reaching a level where I can read my damn book. They die prematurely in upside-down, enclosed, or heat-trapping fixtures. They are expensive, filled with mercury, and require special disposal which adds wasted energy & cost. At the end of the day, I don't think a CFL saves any more production-to-disposal (overall) energy than a standard bulb. Maybe 1-2 kWh per year but that's about it. Not. Worth. The hassle.

Re:I hate CFLs

[Anonymous Coward]

CFLs are shit, and I've already enumerated all the reasons.

Except you keep enumerating the _same_ reasons, despite being proven wrong on multiple occasions. For example, the 4-5 minute warmup time. That is false, fiction, not true, a lie, unless you are deliberately choosing bulbs that have a warm up time in order to justify your ignorant bias against CFLs. You also continually mention the cost to drive a single bulb to the dump, despite the numerous posts informing you of places like Home Depot which will accept bulbs for recycling. Surely you or a co-worker go to or drive past a Home Depot often enough that you don't have to make a special trip just to dispose of your bulbs? Not to mention you phrase it like you are calculating it as one trip to the dump per bulb, instead of, say, 1 trip to the dump to drop off 10 bulbs.

Don't get me wrong though. You have, in the past, mentioned good reasons CFLs are crap. Such as how people _won't_ bother to dispose of them properly. But the way you stick to provably false assertions... just tends to destroy your credibility and make you look like a troll.

Re:I hate CFLs

[camperdave]

I get full brightness the instant I apply power. I have never noticed a brightness difference between being on a quarter second, and being on for half an hour - at least, not on the bulbs I bought. My friend bought some CFLs and it took approximately 30 seconds to a minute to go from about 50% to full brightness. I thought he had purchased a special dimmer for his lights (I was thinking that the slow onset would be perfect for those middle of the night trips to the bathroom).

Re:I hate CFLs

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed, I have to believe that the CFL's that are dying that quickly are the "free with coupon" crap sold at drugstores.

Re:I hate CFLs

[tragedy]

Well, personally, I take multiple trips with multiple decoy cars and drivers on different routes. Several just with an empty box, without the lightbulb randomly interspersed with the actual light bulb drops. That way, even if someone manages to track the routes, they can never know which car the bulb is in or even if there is one in that drop. There are additional security procedures, but it wouldn't be wise for the sake of security to discuss them here.

Seriously though, the GP was using crazy logic on the costs of transporting the bulbs to the dump, etc. Proper accounting of costs doesn't count the entire cost of a trip to the dump in the disposal cost of a lightbulb unless you took the trip just to dispose of the lightbulb. Only crazy people do that.

Re:I hate CFLs

[Anonymous Coward]

Or frustrate me.

Try psychiatrist.

Incandescents are 100% efficient heaters

[Namarrgon]

At least if you pull down the blinds. But then, so are all other electrical heaters, and indeed pretty much most electrical equipment. Light, and all other radiated energy, all ends up as heat in the end. The only difference is how a heater distributes the heat, and and how convenient that process is.

Reverse-cycle air conditioners are an exception, as they're heat pumps, not radiators.

Re:Incandescents are 100% efficient heaters

[the eric conspiracy]

Yes they are.

Which really sucks if you are trying to air condition your living space and illuminate it at the same time.

Re:Incandescents are 100% efficient heaters

[AmiMoJo]

Electricity is not a particularly efficient way of producing heat, and it sounds like in the OP's situation a dehumidifier would be a better option.

Re:Incandescents are 100% efficient heaters

[Namarrgon]

Electricity is 100% efficient at producing heat, though there are better ways (heat pumps can be 200%+ efficient at producing heat, if you don't mind cooling the surrounding environment).

But as you say, using electricity to heat something isn't often the best way to solve a problem, including when the problem is humidity.

Warm LEDs [Re:It only took a century]

[Geoffrey.landis]

But we're finally trying to improve the lightbulb again. Thanks, energy crisis.

I'm not sure that they know what they're talking about when they say the "bluish 'white' light" of LEDs. Maybe five years ago white LEDs had a blue tint, but these days you can buy consumer LED bulbs in about any color temperature you like, including the "warm" light indistinguishable from incandescents.

Re:Warm LEDs [Re:It only took a century]

[Anonymous Coward]

Color temperature isn't the full story. Any non-black body radiator is going to make some pigments look funky. See Color Rendering Index: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_rendering_index

Re:Warm LEDs [Re:It only took a century]

[Geoffrey.landis]

So? Compared to sunlight, incandescents make some pigments look funky.

If the spectrum isn't identical to sunlight, any light bulb will render some colors differently.

Re:Warm LEDs [Re:It only took a century]

[CubicleView]

Different != funky. Without any particular detailed knowledge of all this, the warm light from an incandescent is still warm after it scatters of whatever I'm looking at. The LED light that I've seen seems fake and reflects much colder colors which IMO look "funky", presumably the light is made up of fewer frequencies. I'm not aware if there are any new LEDs that solove this problem, It's most cheap ass ones I see in use.

Re:Warm LEDs [Re:It only took a century]

[crath]

...silly and ignorant ideas in the article about the color of various light technologies...

Fluorescent lights and LED lights can be manufactured in any color desired; it's simply a matter of choosing the correct phosphors. The fact that lamp manufacturers don't bother to manufacture lamps in a particular color(s) has nothing to do with ESL being any better or worse than other technologies.

Re:Warm LEDs [Re:It only took a century]

[Anonymous Coward]

To expand on my meaning of 'funky' in the previous post. Funky as in a non-linear unexpected response. Color temperature only refers to a black body temperature. Its very much an approximation when referring to a light emitter with sharp spectral lines (i.e. anything involving fluorescence such as CFL, ESL or most white LEDs). The eye tends to adapt to the simple color shifts involved in color temperature but not the non-linear responses.

Re:Warm LEDs [Re:It only took a century]

[Geoffrey.landis]

Have you ever tried to distinguish navy from black under incandescent? Pretty hard, isn't it. But walk outside and it's obvious. Ever seen an alexandrite ring? Nice green color in daylight. Funny it's yellow-orange under incandescent.

Incandescent lamps shift colors.

Re:Warm LEDs [Re:It only took a century]

[dbIII]

Tungsten also does that. Look up emission spectroscopy for how it can be quantified.

Re:Warm LEDs [Re:It only took a century]

[Neil Boekend]

While I agree with you in general idea, I must disagree with you in fact: There is a finite amount of different phosphors. A manufacturer can choose to mix dozens of them, but that'll never get a smooth spectrum like an incandescent bulb. Some manufacturers use many different ones, cheap manufacturers use only a few. The manufacturers that use many have lower efficiency, more expensive bulbs but the light will look better.
One could envision a solution with cheap CFL's in storage rooms and high powered ones as "cleaning light" with expensive low-powered ones as "comfort light".
Disclaimer: I use CFL/LED bulbs where I can. Replaced the incandescent from my fridge with a LED bulb a couple of weeks ago. Now only my oven has an incandescent and I don't think that'll change soon. Gimme sunlight or efficiency.

Re:Warm LEDs [Re:It only took a century]

[Anonymous Coward]

Tao Design remote control light bulbs - any color in the standard RGB color cube.

Re:Warm LEDs [Re:It only took a century]

[cbope]

I'd say it's not the fault of the manufacturers; here in Europe you can buy CFL's in 2 and sometimes 3 different color temperatures. I believe it's consumers being ignorant that there is more than one type of CFL in combination with buying lamps based only on wattage as was common with incandescents.

I can buy warm CFL's in any size/shape/wattage needed. You need to be a little more "educated" when buying lamps these days, but it's not rocket science.

Re:Warm LEDs [Re:It only took a century]

[Insightfill]

...but these days you can buy consumer LED bulbs in about any color temperature you like, including the "warm" light indistinguishable from incandescents.

Even slicker: Sharp makes an LED bulb which will display any color temperature you like, complete with a remote control.

CRTs eh?

[the eric conspiracy]

Didn't CRTs have to use leaded glass to prevent the users from being bathed in X-Rays?

Seems to me a small detail or two is being overlooked here.

Re:CRTs eh?

[FlatEric521]

Even then, it seemed like I remember hearing a ton about the radiation that came from CRT monitors.

I just makes me think, these will become popular like CFLs. Then suddenly! "Oh no radiation danger!" And then it will be time for the next technology.

Re:CRTs eh?

[mirix]

The xrays don't really show up until the anode gets above 10kV or so, bigger TVs were ~30kV.

ahem...

[damn_registrars]

Didn't CRTs have to use leaded glass to prevent the users from being bathed in X-Rays?

RTFA

The shadow mask stopped some electrons, converting their energy to X rays. To filter these, old TV screens were made of thick leaded glass

Re:ahem...

[nomel]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bremsstrahlung

Math check...

[damn_registrars]

From TFA:

Canada's $0.25 per pound e-waste charge

Canada has used the metric system for decades (switching back around the time the US said they would switch as well). Why would they charge per pound for electronic waste?

Re:Math check...

[elbonia]

I don't think any e-waste fee is based on the weight of the item directly. It seems Canada charges differently per item and the price varies depending on the province.

http://www.iphoneincanada.ca/apple-hardware/canadians-to-pay-e-waste-fee-on-computers-and-electronics/

The author probably took the total fees Canada collected and simply divided by the total weight of the items recycled and used American units since that is the audience he's targeting.

Re:Math check...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the article is wrong? I don't pay anything to recycle old electronics. They are quite happy for that crap not to go in the landfill

Re:Math check...

[dj245]

Because officially, Canada is on the metric system. In reality though, they run a mixed bastardized metric system similar to the US, but leaning towards metric instead of English unit.

Want some pizza Canada? You're probably getting a 12" pizza because Canada has pizza pans designed for the US market
How about a beer to go with that? You're getting a Pint (probably) because like the US, Canada has a large number of people with English/Irish heritage. One guy told me "The day I start drinking beer in liters is the day I stop drinking beer"
And in Engineering? It may be mixed there too. I talk with engineers in Canada somewhat regularly and they frequently convert my metric dimensions into inches. I'm not sure why this is- the machine was made in Japan so most dimensions are a nice round number in mm. Maybe their tooling and measurement equipment is US-style.

Warm color balance of incandescents? Really?

[c0d3g33k]

I'm not deeply familiar with the details of incandescent light development, but I was always under the impression that the big challenge was, you know, just making them work at all without burning out in a short time. Did they really work hard to find the optimal "warm color balance" before they were considered successful? I doubt it. I suspect that at the time the critics were going on about the harsh glare of the incandescent lamp and waxing poetic about the superior warm color balance of the candle flame. Fast forward to the modern day, and every advance in lighting technology can't fail to have a discussion about the "unnatural light" emitted by the newer, more efficient technology of the day. Smells like a classic case of change resistence to me.

Personally, I can adjust. Being a pampered westerner, I can't know what it's like to *really* be without light, but I've experienced several long power interruptions, including last year's week-long post-hurricane Irene outage, and I'll take any light I can get, thank you very much. More efficient, brighter, requires less power? Able to produce "normal indoor light levels" from a handheld lantern powered by a battery for a week, but sorry, it's a little on the "blue" side? Who the hell cares?

Please, bring it on.

fail: 30 lumens per watt

[madbavarian]

Their ads claim that it has similar efficiency to a CFL, but that is far from true for the CFL's one finds at Home Depot or similar.

The company's VU1 is 600 Lumens and uses 19.5 watts. (ref: http://www.jetsongreen.com/2011/11/vu1-esl-r30-light-bulb-lowes.html ) This comes out to 30 Lumens per watt.

A typical under $4 CFL from home depot puts out 1500 Lumens using 23 watts for 65 Lumens per watt or more than twice as much light for the same input power. (ref: http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1v/R-100686995/h_d2/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10053&langId=-1&keyword=100%20watt%20cfl&storeId=10051 )

Re:fail: 30 lumens per watt

[Anonymous Coward]

Comparison fail.

You just compared replacements for a 65 watt flood light to 100 watt standard bulb.

A typical 65 watt flood light is around 530-600 lumens, so the Vu1 is right on track.

Halogens

[Guppy]

I wish the incandescent bulbs were still available.

Well, Halogens are technically a special subtype of Incandescents, capable of meeting all your requirements and suitable for use as a drop-in replacement for your beloved bulbs. Power efficiency is only slightly improved compared to standard Incandescent though.

Metal halide?

[ciotog]

What, no mention of metal-halide lamps? Not a very comprehensive article...

Re:Warm color balance of incandescents? Really?

[shutdown -p now]

I'm not deeply familiar with the details of incandescent light development, but I was always under the impression that the big challenge was, you know, just making them work at all without burning out in a short time. Did they really work hard to find the optimal "warm color balance" before they were considered successful? I doubt it. I suspect that at the time the critics were going on about the harsh glare of the incandescent lamp and waxing poetic about the superior warm color balance of the candle flame.

They didn't need to work hard to find the optimal balance for incandescents, because it's inherent in their design - they're black body radiators, same as candle flame or sun, so they've got that nicely distributed spectrum that feels more "natural" to our eyes.

Don't worry about the X-rays

[Anonymous Coward]

The phosphor need not be irradiated from behind so the shielding need not be transparent. If you don't need a long focused beam, you don't need the high voltages either that give the electrons the energy to produce x-rays. I don't worry about the X-rays

The lack of mention of warm up time or cold cathode, nor the efficiency of LEDs, nor the comparison of light out put per gram of Europium vs an LED makes me think they really don't have much to offer.

Re:Warm white? Yuck!

[DigiShaman]

Color temperature. Incandescents range from 2700K to 3000K. CFLs have just now started to emulate that where before they started off at 5000K (bluish white). Personally, I can't stand first generation 5000K CFLs. You have this bluish white color and everything else in grey shadows. It's like I'm in a freezing cold morgue. How in the hell can people live like that? I prefer burning candles over that shit.

Mercury in Seafood-equivalents

[Guppy]

A couple years back, I wanted to get some perspective on just how much mercury is in a CFL. After looking up values for a typical CFL bulb, it turned out the entire mercury content of the bulb was equivalent to 4-5 pounds of swordfish.

Not sure if that's an endorsement for the safety of CFLs, or a warning to the effects of bio-accumulation on seafood.

Re:Mercury in Seafood-equivalents

[Electricity Likes Me]

As I understand it, it's far less mercury then a coal-powerplant would put into the atmosphere powering an equivalent incandescent lightbulb.

Re:Mercury in Seafood-equivalents

[camperdave]

Well, if you're going to count power plant mercury, then you need to count all the mercury released in the years upon years of CFL lighting, and add that to the mercury in the bulb.

Re:Mercury in Seafood-equivalents

[jeffb (2.718)]

If the CFL is burning a quarter of the power, emissions drop by 75%. You still come out ahead using CFLs, even if you smash every one of them open when you're done with it.

LED, of course, is still better.

Re:Mercury in Seafood-equivalents

[camperdave]

The CFL may be burning a quarter of the power, but it also lasts 20 times as long, so the power plant is yeilding 5 times the mercury.

Re:Mercury in Seafood-equivalents

[jeffb (2.718)]

Good point. If an incandescent lasts one year, but a CFL lasts 20, an incandescent user does generate less mercury emissions by sitting in the dark for those remaining 19 years.

(For the sarcasm-impaired, the power plant is still yielding only a quarter of the mercury, because you're using 20 times as many incandescent bulbs to get the same duration of light.)

Vaporware?

[Anonymous Coward]

I had been following Vu1 for several years. I moved into a house littered with can lights on dimmer switches. I've tried dozens of CFLs that claimed to be dimmable - at best they didn't dim, at worst they made a racket. I thought these sounded great - I put my name on a waiting list, dutifully put in an order when they claimed to be in production, and have been waiting for about a year since they announced that they were shipping. In the meantime, I have gotten quite proficient at seeing in the dark, so I no longer think I need them.

What is the point of all this for us?

[Picardo85]

I can't really see the point at all in why we in the nordic countries would need to change at all ... its stupid as shit since we need to heat our homes 8 months of the year anyway.

So what if they incandescent light-bulbs only produce light from 5% of the energy used. The rest go to heat ... to heat our homes ... which we would have done anyway. The rest of the year we don't use lights indoor that much since we've 18-24h sunlight here anyway.

Re:What is the point of all this for us?

[PRMan]

I agree with you. For Nordic countries. But for Southern California, where I leave my AC on 24/7/365 (it doesn't come on that much, but probably comes on over 200 days a year) you definitely don't want to be heating the same thing you are trying to cool.

Re:What is the point of all this for us?

[Electricity Likes Me]

Because heat pumps and geothermal heating - both of which are readily available - are far more energy efficient.

Re:What is the point of all this for us?

[Osgeld]

I have a heat pump, it shits itself and blows ice cold air at 40F, and its been looked at every winter by qualified repairmen sent by my complex... this year I bought a couple 15$ space heaters and my electric bill went down 30$ a month. This is the second place I have lived at with a heat pump and they act the same, ... fuck heat pumps!

Re:Warm white? Yuck!

[falzer]

Damn those benighted fools for having a preference that differs from yours!

Re:Warm white? Yuck!

[westlake]

Why do we still want our artificial light to be the same color of candles used back in the stupid ages?

Think of the choices you have made in clothing and in interior design:

Materials. Colors. Textures, Patterns --- all will be affected by any change in lighting. You wife won't take kindly if your high-efficiency lamps turn her newly remodeled kitchen and bath into the CSI Morgue.

Re:Warm color balance of incandescents? Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

They didn't need to work hard to find the optimal color balance for incandescents, because it's inherent in their design - they're black body radiators, same as candle flame or sun, so they've got that nicely distributed spectrum that feels more "natural" to our eyes.

Apparently they *DID* need to work hard to find the optimal balance for incandescents because GE charges extra for their "Reveal" line of incandescents http://www.gelighting.com/na/home_lighting/products/reveal_main.htm as other manufacturers do for their bulbs with light in the non-traditional, 5k-6.5k color spectrum.

We'll never see this light (of day)

[Anonymous Coward]

Never happen. Congress(men) have too much of their wealth tied up in the existing Mercury-based technology.

Re:Warm white? Yuck!

[Anonymous Coward]

I like a mix. 6000-6500k for when I'm trying to promote leaf & stalk growth, 2700-3000k for blossoms onward.
Also don't care for that yellowish "warm" light that is sold everywhere, for general lighting - it feels unnatural, may as well be green or pink.

Re:Warm color balance of incandescents? Really?

[crath]

They didn't need to work hard to find the optimal balance for incandescents, because it's inherent in their design - they're black body radiators, same as candle flame or sun, so they've got that nicely distributed spectrum that feels more "natural" to our eyes.

Their inherent behaviour is not an optimal color balance; rather, it's the color balance that people have become accustomed to seeing. For those of us with lots of big windows in our homes, the color of incandescent light clashes with the daylight streaming in the windows.

I recommend LEDs

[Sycraft-fu]

I am ditching all my CFLs when they die for LEDs. Home Depot sells a bunch of nice ones. They aren't too expensive, and they dim properly. Their Ecosmart ones are the ones I get for most of my lighting because I like the higher colour temperature. For my living room I like the Philips AmbientLED A19. It is a real replacement for a standard A19 bulb. Same size and everything. They call it 60 watt equivalent but I measure the light output to be equal to a GE Reveal 75 watt bulb. Has a "warm white" which I don't usually like but for dimmed TV watching light I like.

It's luminous efficiency if better than CFLs too.

We'll see how long they last but they are warrantied for like 7 years and given they are LEDs they ought to last for about 50,000 hours of continuous use.

Re:I recommend LEDs

[TheStonepedo]

Edison base LED bulbs are good for luminaires with good airflow but suffer from drastically-decreased driver life if used in recessed can fixtures.
I'm all for swapping old incandescent cans for new LED cans, but you should do it right with a retrofit LED can housing when you do so.

Your foe,
Ryan

While I don't disagree a note

[Sycraft-fu]

Don't believe the lumen per watt shit from CFLs. They tend to be wildly exaggerated in my experience. I have to get "75 watt replacement" bulbs to get near the light of a 60 watt incandescent. LEDs I find the opposite, the "60 watt replacement" Philips bulbs I get measure as bright as 75 watt GE Reveals.

Re:Warm white? Yuck!

[marnues]

Preference implies choice. I would have to raise a big stink at city meetings to change the eery glow outside my window from all the lights at the Light Rail. I have shades and shut them, but it would be so great if a soft white or blue were coming in rather than that eery yellow glow that has no business happening at nighttime.

Good luck

[Anonymous Coward]

Swedish company LightLab [http://www.lightlab.se/en.aspx] has (not very successfully) been trying to commercialize this for years.

Re:Warm color balance of incandescents? Really?

[shutdown -p now]

Well, true, "optimal" is a stretch - really, the only optimal light source is the sun (or anything that can match its spectrum). However, incandescents (and flame) are still more "natural" to us than LEDs, because their spectrum still has the same overall distribution - just shifted into yellow.

must be that time of the century again

[superwiz]

Last century saw genetic selection (aka eugenics) as a way to "improve humanity" after the world was shocked with the new scientific discovery of evolution. I guess this time around the ass holes who think the government's job is to shape society rather than serve society are putting hopes in the new wave of scientific advances to achieve their goals.

Some things old are new again

[makomk]

This is actually an old idea in some ways. For example, apparently the old-fashioned Sony Jumbotrons - the big screens in places like sports stadiums - were built around a similar device. Each color of each pixel has its own electron gun that floods the entire segment of phosphor with electrons, effectively acting as a kind of lamp.

Now lets get back CRTs

[Anonymous Coward]

I miss a display that can dynamically change its resolution, and not rely on various scaling methods and stuff.

Also, I would never retrofit an LCD into any of my arcade machines.

Stoners to the Rescue!

[Niscenus]

You know what's high efficiency, has long term cost benefits and is environmentally friendly?
Sulfur Lamps!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfur_lamp

Best use, however, is piping the light, as installing them into a room comes with many annoyances, like communication interference and microwave ballast placement. However, I must admit, they have some great uses, and currently, nothing beats them for central lighting...they glow a Fusor Test-fire purple when they first get started; how awesome is that?

selenocysteine

[epine]

There's some recent research suggesting that the primary harm from methylmercury is binding with selenium and preventing the formation of selenocysteine, which is an important amino acid in proteins that mop up oxidative graffiti artists and/or their handiwork.

In fish sources with a fair balance of MeHg and Se, the health outcomes of eating the fish outweigh toxicity. Fish sources such as Pilot whale with a lot of MeHg and almost no Se are really bad for your nervous system.

It might be time to downgrade the notion that Hg is a universal toxin. For thalidomide only the (S) enantiomer is teratogenic. What I didn't know until just now is that it's racemic in vivo (the enantiomers interconvert, but the en.wiki article didn't say how quickly or thoroughly).

As etiology advances, you need to keep an open mind. We should be more like the far right: Khamenei gives way to Saddam, then to Ossama, back to Saddam, and now Ahmadinejad. A nice passing play with assists all around.

Re:selenocysteine

[Anonymous Coward]

The heath benefits surrounding fish are mostly in relation to long-chain omega 3 oils.

Taking the long-chain omega 3 without the mercury is the ideal. Mercury is nastier stuff than people realize and I'm not going to feel much better about eating some methylmercury-laden tuna just because I swallow a selenium pill afterwards. Mercury can have a half life in the internal organs lasting decades and selenium isn't going to play "catch 'em all" with the mercury atoms once they've bound to sulfuric amino-acids in your brain.

There are exceptions but typically the fish with the most omega 3 is the fish with the most mercury, because they're the fish that either live longest or eat other fish.

Re:selenocysteine

[Anonymous Coward]

Fascinating link on wikipedia for Selenocysteine. From a programming viewpoint, the implementation to handle those Selenium atoms really seems like something hacked in. First the codon normally used to indicate "stop" is reused to indicate selenocysteine by having another token (SECIS) read later do a search-and-replace on the existing molecule under construction.

Re:Warm white? Yuck!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually you're thinking CRI, not temperature.

High CRI 5500K bulbs look damn good. In TV studios they normally use between 5500K and 6500K - all high CRI of course. LEDs there are considered awful and only used for color accents. Cheap CFLs are even more awful than LEDs in CRI. :-)

Incandescents are nearly 100% Efficient...

[Anonymous Coward]

At producing light and heat. The climate in the USA, at night... you know, when people use lights - almost always requires heat. So, in the deep South, summer time - when you have 100W bulb and the AC running, you have a point. But if you calculate on only that loss, these hateful ugly bulbs don't compare. But, that didn't stop the Feds from taking your choose away. So if you are a wealthy and looking for a Ferrari, buy one soon - if they can outlaw buying the bulbs you want and can afford to light - just because you like them - they they can stop those purchases to. Image, everything in life can fall into that category - until the population gets pissed and votes these power hungry dorks out of office.

Re:Warm white? Yuck!

[jrumney]

CFLs have been available in 2700K (Warm White), 4800K (Cool white) and 6300K (Daylight) variants for at least 10 years.

Pump-and-dump

[h0t]

Wow, a farticle for a pump-and-dump delisted stock from a first-time submitter makes it to the front page.
Slashdot, you've reached new highs.

Headline is FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, LED bulbs are twice as expensive as ESL bulbs *to buy*, but they last up to 5x longer and use HALF of the electricity of an ESL bulb per candela. All told, each LED bulb saves me over $300 during its lifespan over incandescent. ESLs would only save me about half of that.

As for color, I just installed 6 LED 10W recessed lights in my office/studio (Home Depot Ecosmart). The color is a warm 2700K, they are plenty bright (65W equivalent each), and they dim down to almost nothing with no flickering.

Sure, ESL is better than CFL or incandescent, but if you're going to invest in a bulb long-term, the LED is a much better buy even at their current price than a gussied-up CRT.

I'll bet it's 110 volts and cold there ...

[dbIII]

I'll bet it's 110 volts and cold there so you'd need to get the more expensive CFLs that are designed to work in places other than the south of China.

then drive the dead CFL to a recycling center to dispose of the hazardous mercury

It's not much mercury and it's not going anywhere sealed in glass, just save them up. If you want to get a less alarmist perspective do some numbers - look up on the net how much mercury is actually in a bulb, look up how much is in an old thermometer and work out how many thousand bulbs you need to show 1 degree of difference on a thermometer.

Mercury is easy to remove - if you try

[dbIII]

Since mercury isn't that common in coal outside the USA and the US has scrubbers to get the NOx and SOx out of the flue gas it's not really a lot. Scrubbers work by using a huge amount of water, and it's a hell of a lot easier to remove mercury as a really heavy condensed solid (the vapour solidifies in contact with water) than NOx and SOx as a dissolved gas. So if the scrubbers are getting much NOx and SOx at all it's a safe bet that it's getting all the mercury.
On the other hand, a small percentage of the coal burnt in China has mercury in it and a small percentage of vast amounts of coal adds up. While China is doing something about air pollution it's going to be some time before it's at levels we'd consider safe in some places.

Circadian protection.

[jeffb (2.718)]

Night light deficient in short wavelengths preserves your circadian rhythm better than cooler, bluer light.

Of course, as many others have posted, it's easy enough to get a warm LED now. I'm hoping someone will come out with a dimmable LED that shifts toward a warmer color balance at lower levels -- that particular incandescent "feature" is a good match for my usage patterns, where I use dimmer light when it's later and I don't want to wake myself up. The difference, of course, is that the LED wouldn't have to drop to sub-1% efficiency at low levels.

Just so long as they don't flicker

[msobkow]

The flicker of CFLs is as bad as the flicker of fluourescent tubes. Both give me migraines.

Maybe these new ESLs won't cause the same problem. I know LEDs don't, but the landlord isn't willing to pony up the extra dollars for them and I'm hardly going to invest that kind of money in bulbs that I have to leave with the apartment (under Saskatchewan law, if you attach something to the walls or elsewhere, you're supposed to leave it behind as an "improvement" to the property. Of course most people don't leave their shelves and stuff behind, but legally you're supposed to.)

Easy-bake

[Firethorn]

Maybe he has a classic/antique one?

Remember 're-use' is part of being green. Buying a new oven wastes more resources than simply buying a new bulb. Though from your report the new one bakes more evenly.

Lighting methods

[Firethorn]

LEDs and CCFL have one huge advantage over incandescent: you can have lots of them.

You know, I think this is the critical point. I used to live in a century old house. How old was it? It used to have gas lamps. Now, you have to treat gas lamps differently, they were mounted on the wall within reach. When they put electric lighing in, they simply swapped the fixtures. Still, the ideal placement for incandescent bulbs is different than for gas lamps. It's the same for FL and LED, as you mention. CFL is an attempt to stuff FL into a incandescent sized and shaped package; tubes are more efficient, and light just as well with a modern ballast and quality tube.

With Incandescent, you generally want to go as big as possible - the bulbs get more efficient as they get larger. With CFL, the light per square inch of bulb surface is often lower, but you can make the bulbs almost arbitrarily long. 4' is common, but so isn't 8'. People tend to not like early CFLs in the home due to the possibility of flicker and lousy color, but I've been seeing them more and more, especially in kitchens where you want even light. With LED - individual lamps can be *Tiny*, and the power demands aren't great. Still, they tend to be spotlights compared to the floodlights of FL and Incandescent. Directional. So I could see a track of them pointing every which way to give an overall even lighting, but that will look odd until people get used to them.

In the end, lighting fixture construction and placement will have to change to take the quirks of the new lighting systems into account.

Personally, I installed a ring FL fixture in my bedroom - gives a more dispursed light than what the old fixture gave.

Re:Lighting methods

[Anguirel]

How about "Line the room with LED Christmas Lights"?

Re:Lighting methods

[Firethorn]

That might work; One of the other problems you might have is that people generally don't like seeing their light source - thus the frequent use of diffusers, flush mount floods, etc...

It also wouldn't provide enough light, I think.

An 'ideal' system would actually be to have the whole ceiling light up with a relatively dim amount of light per area; but so much area that the room is well lit. You wouldn't get any shadows except right under something.

That's odd

[Firethorn]

I find that comment odd, seeing as how both FL and LED produce 'white' light the same way - by exciting a mixture of phosphors that each then emit various colors of light in narrow bands, but the mix has been designed to appear white.

The phosphors are why white LEDs look yellow when off. It's really a blue/UV LED under there.

Now, I'd believe that they tend to use MORE types of phospher, giving a superior white, but you can buy flourescents that use a wider phospher mix to give a better color index as well.

Re:That's odd

[lxs]

Yes they did a fine job with the phosphors on LED lighting.
Just checked it again using a DVD for a grating and the spectrum of the LED lighting is continuous (as far as I can tell without building a spectroscope) unlike the spectrum of CFLs which clearly shows discontinuities.

Don't take my word for it. Bring a DVD to a lighting store and see for yourself.

Re:That's odd

[Firethorn]

Don't take my word for it. Bring a DVD to a lighting store and see for yourself.

Don't live in a big enough city to have a 'lighting store' handy, at least one where the lights are seperated enough to actually tell.

Is an LED flashlight enough? I just checked; both look continuous to me. But then, I'm using 'Philips Alto II TL 865 F32T8' for the FL, which is advertised as having a 82 CRI@6500K.

Pollution

[Firethorn]

It's a bit diffuse, and depends on the region, but here goes:
1. Most power in the USA is generated by burning coal.
2. While regulated and producing less pollution than ever, the sheer scale at which coal is burned means a lot of pollution. Remember acid rain?
3. Running an incandescent light bulb when more efficient alternatives are available means more coal burned, more pollution in the atmosphere, millions of people breathing the pollution emitted from the coal burned to produce the electricity to light the bulb.
4. Because it causes harm to others, it's like dumping sewage on your neighbor's lawn; just spread out so that it's a microscopic amount of sewage on each person's lawn. Though at this point it breaks down because 'sewage' at that dillution level often equals 'mild fertilizer' which will make the grass greener. ;)

Re:Pollution

[khallow]

It's a bit diffuse

Right there, we have reason number one why dumping sewage is not like turning on an incandescent light bulb.

1. Most power in the USA is generated by burning coal.

So the coal burning plant is the problem, but we're not going to do anything about them. To use your own analogy, it's like we won't do anything about your sewage dumping, but we'll punish anyone who uses a bathroom because "most" people use your bathroom.

2. While regulated and producing less pollution than ever, the sheer scale at which coal is burned means a lot of pollution. Remember acid rain?

Maybe you ought to see first how much coal burning contributes to acid rain these days before talking about this subject? Last I heard, most such pollution comes from diffuse sources without pollution controls or outside sources (such as Chinese pollution on downwind locations) rather than regulated point sources.

3. Running an incandescent light bulb when more efficient alternatives are available means more coal burned, more pollution in the atmosphere, millions of people breathing the pollution emitted from the coal burned to produce the electricity to light the bulb.

If only you could show that was caused by the light bulb and not by the coal burning plant.

4. Because it causes harm to others, it's like dumping sewage on your neighbor's lawn; just spread out so that it's a microscopic amount of sewage on each person's lawn. Though at this point it breaks down because 'sewage' at that dillution level often equals 'mild fertilizer' which will make the grass greener. ;)

Even if we assume you're correct about the harm, this is harm caused by coal burning plants not by incandescent light bulbs.

A big part of the problem with the energy conservation movement is that it emphasizes forced behavior modification over fixing the problem. This has all sorts of consequences, such as the "destruction of freedom" I mentioned earlier in the thread. In the case of incandescent light bulbs, now that it will soon be illegal in the US to sell such light bulbs, someone has to enforce that law. That means both that they have the legal tools to intrude in situations where they think illlegal light bulbs may have been traded, and the legal means to punish people who trade or use illegally obtained light bulbs.

It also means that we created a bit of rent seeking as light bulb companies (particularly General Electric) now get to sell more expensive, higher profit light bulbs to a population that doesn't have legal access to the cheap bulbs any more.

So what's more important? Undetectably better air quality or human freedom? I think the latter. This leads to the last difference between dumping sewage on a lawn and regulating the kind of light bulbs we can buy. When society constrains where you can dump your sewage, sure it imposes a mild burden on you, but an insignificant one compared to the harm you can do. The same isn't true of light bulbs. There's no vast pollution problem to fix. But there's significant loss of freedom from yet another government intrusion into our lives.

Most analogies break down at some point...

[Firethorn]

Right there, we have reason number one why dumping sewage is not like turning on an incandescent light bulb.

*shrug* It wasn't mine originally, just trying to explain the train of thought. To make it closer, it'd be more like him dumping his untreated sewage into the river you get your drinking water from. Sure, there are treatment systems YOU can use to render said water clean & safe, but it's more expensive for you than him simply cleaning his wastewater up before dumping it. In real life it's actually a mix between the two - he cleans up his water 90% or so, to the point that it's indistinguishable from the river water(that has animals and fish peeing and dumping into it all the time), and you do the necessary treatment to make it drinkable.

So the coal burning plant is the problem, but we're not going to do anything about them.

I was getting a little distracted in my writing there, wasn't I? If you've seen my posts around in nuclear threads, you'll find that my proposed electrical generation system is 40% nuclear, 20% wind, 20% solar, and 20% 'other'. If I had my 'Evil Overlord' ways, we'd be on a crash project to replace those coal plants with nuclear. One of the reasons I'd be doing so is that I've estimated that replacing everybody's vehicles with electric cars would result in about 50% more household electricity usage if they all charged at home. It'd also be a great way to even out power usage, so more baseload plants would be good. BTW, this would overwhelm the difference in electricity usage via lighting.

As for acid rain, well, it 's an excellent example how some fairly easy directed regulation can fix the problem. For not much more electricity cost, we can get the acid problem down to reasonable amounts.

That means both that they have the legal tools to intrude in situations where they think illlegal light bulbs may have been traded, and the legal means to punish people who trade or use illegally obtained light bulbs.

Getting a little paranoid, aren't you? People traded in 'illegal' high flow toilets for years, nobody really got busted. It's mostly enough just to keep local stores from carrying them.

So what's more important? Undetectably better air quality or human freedom? I think the latter.

It's only undetectable on the single bulb scale. Scale it up to millions of light bulbs and you can detect the differences.

Personally, my solution would be to just charge the coal(and other) plants for any pollution they release. None of this 'carbon trading' nonsense, that's just a way to hand profit to non-producers/conserve the polluter's pie. I'd just tax X per ton of lead, Y per ton of mercury, Z per ton of sulfer, and so on. If we decide the air or water is still too dirty, ratchet the offending pollutants up by 10% or so.

That encourages a clean environment with minimal 'personal' invasion. If an economic activity is worth the pollution, it's just not practical to stop it, you pay the fees and move on. If it IS economical to control the pollutants, even if it's with a multimillion scrubber system, you install the scrubber system and avoid the fees. You don't grandfather polluting plants in, discourage upgrades where you'd have to bring them into emission standards at the same times(vastly increasing the price), discourage NEW plants that have to compete with older polluting plants, etc...

Especially for airborne pollution that can make it across the seas, I'd charge the fees on the pollution caused by any imported products as well.

There's no vast pollution problem to fix.

By who's definition? Last figures I've seen place deaths due to air pollution in the thousands per year.

Re:Most analogies break down at some point...

[khallow]

Getting a little paranoid, aren't you? People traded in 'illegal' high flow toilets for years, nobody really got busted. It's mostly enough just to keep local stores from carrying them.

Uh huh. So your solution is to hope that the US doesn't enforce this law?

Personally, my solution would be to just charge the coal(and other) plants for any pollution they release. None of this 'carbon trading' nonsense, that's just a way to hand profit to non-producers/conserve the polluter's pie. I'd just tax X per ton of lead, Y per ton of mercury, Z per ton of sulfer, and so on. If we decide the air or water is still too dirty, ratchet the offending pollutants up by 10% or so.

Yes. Even you can see the right answer. So why go with a wrong one?

Last figures I've seen place deaths due to air pollution in the thousands per year.

But not from light bulbs.

Re:Most analogies break down at some point...

[khallow]

Another thing to note is that coal burning plants are base load while incandescent light bulbs tend to be peak load (not many lights are left on overnight). That means that incandescents don't contribute much to increases in base load power, except through the use of pumped hydro storage, and hence, are a weak contributor to the demand for coal burning plants. They are a large demand for regular hydro and natural gas.

Re:Most analogies break down at some point...

[Firethorn]

Dang, first post got eaten. Anyways - on enforcing the law. I did some research. It bans the importation and manufacture of non-compliant bulbs. It doesn't make selling them domestically illegal, nor possession, etc... So unless you're running a factory or importing business, I don't think you have to worry. Just like the toilets. They aren't going to break down people's doors looking for them.

Even you can see the right answer. So why go with a wrong one?

Remember I only stepped in to explain the analogy. Didn't say I agreed with it. I think we can both agree that pollution, especially too much of it, can be bad.

But not from light bulbs.

Let's see: ~70k deaths from air pollution in the USA per year. The UK is 50k. Worldwide is 1.3M per year.
Lighting is 9% of electricity usage.
Eyeballing this and averaging the four sources, I get 24% of air pollution from energy production and distribution. EPA says 67% sulfur dioxide, 23% nitrogen oxide. I dropped CO2. That would be 45%. I'll stick with 24%.

Using a straight blame - 70k deaths from air pollution. 17k would be from electricity generation. 1.5k for pollution from powering lights, on average. 28k worldwide.
So yeah, I can trace thousands of deaths to the pollution from light bulbs. Making matters worse - there's plenty of survivors affected - per 75 deaths there are '505 hospital admissions for asthma and other respiratory diseases, 3,500 respiratory emergency doctor visits, 180,000 asthma attacks, 930,000 restricted activity days, and 2,000,000 acute respiratory symptom days.' Per 75 deaths seems an odd measure to use, but it's what the article listed. That's a lot of lost labor due to the pollution.

As for the baseload vs peak - 'not many lights are left on overnight'? I refer you to this image. And coal power isn't entirely baseload - fire up another boiler, spin another turbine. It might have to be scheduled a bit more compared to hydro or NG, but it's there.

Look, it's not that we don't agree on some things, it's just that, well, if you're going to argue this stuff, you need to do it right, and denying facts isn't going to help. I lean majorly libertarian, but given the pollution levels in my town on occasion,

Re:Most analogies break down at some point...

[khallow]

It still doesn't work because it doesn't address the problem. Incandescent light bulbs aren't emitting the PM10 pollutants that are alleged ("beyond doubt" no less in the relevant article) to kill 70k people in the US. Incandescent bulbs don't keep the oldest, worst polluting coal burning plants operating (which were grandfathered in under 1977 legislation and still kicking).

The problem here remains that instead of fixing a problem, we decided to regulate mostly irrelevant human behavior.

As for the baseload vs peak - 'not many lights are left on overnight'? I refer you to this image.

Most of what you see there are already energy efficient enough that they avoid the ban. But collectively, they burn a lot of coal.

And coal power isn't entirely baseload - fire up another boiler, spin another turbine. It might have to be scheduled a bit more compared to hydro or NG, but it's there.

For coal to burn efficiently and with low pollution, the system has to be in a steady state. That means you need to burn coal and generate additional pollution just to get it to the state where you can generate power.

Look, it's not that we don't agree on some things, it's just that, well, if you're going to argue this stuff, you need to do it right, and denying facts isn't going to help. I lean majorly libertarian, but given the pollution levels in my town on occasion,

And I am doing it right. So no worries here.

Re:Most analogies break down at some point...

[Firethorn]

Incandescent bulbs don't keep the oldest, worst polluting coal burning plants operating (which were grandfathered in under 1977 legislation and still kicking).

I already wrote specifically against grandfathering. I already expressed an ideal intent to completely shut down coal power, essentially replacing it with nuclear(and replacing current nuclear with wind/solar).

The problem here remains that instead of fixing a problem, we decided to regulate mostly irrelevant human behavior.

I agree. I buy energy star products, I bought CFLs before the big pushes due not only to the lower energy usage. My homes typically don't have AC, electric heat is 'expensive' and counterproductive in summer, and I just plain dislike replacing light bulbs. LEDs, as of last check, were:
1. Lying about their equivalency. They were claiming to be equivalent to a 60 watt bulb while only producing the lumens of a 40 watt.
2. Energy efficiency per lumen was equal at best to CFL.
3. Expensive enough that even with their presumed double the lifespan of CFLs, 2-4 CFLs would be significantly cheaper than the one LED.

That's not to say that you couldn't get me to buy one - I looked into one for my fridge. They're not available locally, but the ~$12-20 each didn't kill the sale(I'm a techie; I like toys like this), but the shipping did(not available locally).

Most of what you see there are already energy efficient enough that they avoid the ban. But collectively, they burn a lot of coal.

Actually, much of it is exempt from the law's requirements due to being outside the light range(310-2600 lumens) or 'specialty' - appliance, 'rough service', colored, plant, 3-way, over 150 watts. Of course most meet the standards by being huge, and that those installing outside lighting generally care more about overall cost than light quality or personal preference.

Yeah, it does end up burning a lot of coal - which is the point. We could do a lot in the way of managing our outdoor lighting, again, it'd likely save more energy than trying to force people to swap light bulbs - a lot of people already have, so you can no longer assume that you can save X energy per home by swapping.

For coal to burn efficiently and with low pollution, the system has to be in a steady state. That means you need to burn coal and generate additional pollution just to get it to the state where you can generate power.

It depends on how the system is designed; our local one you can feed more coal to the boilers and simply generate steam faster, then they open a valve to another turbine in a planned, routine operation. It can be quite quick.

And I am doing it right. So no worries here.

I disagree - you keep strawmanning me. I recommend that you use sources, pay a bit more attention to not continuing arguments where the other person already agrees with you,

Re:Most analogies break down at some point...

[khallow]

I disagree - you keep strawmanning me. I recommend that you use sources, pay a bit more attention to not continuing arguments where the other person already agrees with you,

Then what was the point of arguing that the ban on incadescent light bulbs could reduce deaths from air pollution more than it cost in terms of loss of freedom, when you agree that there was a much better solution to the problem which didn't lead to this loss of freedom and which actually works?

1. Lying about their equivalency. They were claiming to be equivalent to a 60 watt bulb while only producing the lumens of a 40 watt.

As an aside, the human eye is more sensitive to certain colors (I recall green then blue then red). So it is possible for a lower lumen bulb with bluer spectrum to appear as bright as an incandescent bulb with a redder spectrum. This was no doubt part of the gimmick.

As to using sources, I'd rather make logical, correct arguments than use sources. For example, remember the pretty picture of Earth at night? You used that to support an argument that lights were used at night only to admit later that those lights aren't covered by the ban. So that use of source was irrelevant. Or link to articles that speak of deaths from particulate pollution while estimating pollution contribution from linked charts of non-particulate pollution?

The point here is a that good argument may benefit from the use of sources, but the use of sources doesn't in itself lead to good argument. I find it's more used on Slashdot for argument from authority (which hasn't been a problem with your posts).

A second problem is that these links frequently don't say what you intend. I don't have endless hours to spend on a single post (though obviously I do spend too much time in total on Slashdot posting) and it's not infrequent for me to go through a link and see that the source doesn't actually support what the linker intended.

Fundamentally, the original question was does the incandescent light bulb ban create more benefit for us than the constraint on our freedom? We find out that the ban doesn't and that better and less intrusive approaches for reducing air pollution are being ignored.

Even the connection between light bulb and coal burning plant is tenuous with most bulbs which are subject to the ban operating at peak load times and hence covered more by peaking power than coal burning power. And that's assuming that one lives in an area that uses coal. It wouldn't be the case for much of the Northwest, for example.

It depends on how the system is designed; our local one you can feed more coal to the boilers and simply generate steam faster, then they open a valve to another turbine in a planned, routine operation. It can be quite quick.

Ok, that is a point I haven't considered. Though there are two problems. Why aren't they running the plant full tilt most of the time? Coal is pretty cheap. And they could sell the night's excess to someone with pumped storage or other electricity storage systems.

Second, how old is that plant? It strikes me that this sort of variability is a relatively new innovation (within the past 30-40 years). The plants least likely to be able to do this sort of thing are also probably the most polluting. That goes with my original assertion that base load generation tends to be more polluting than peaking load.

Re:Most analogies break down at some point...

[Firethorn]

you agree that there was a much better solution to the problem which didn't lead to this loss of freedom and which actually works?

Because I saw you as making logic errors? It doesn't help to deny the facts.

So it is possible for a lower lumen bulb with bluer spectrum to appear as bright as an incandescent bulb with a redder spectrum.

Possible, but how likely? The reviews I've seen mention the blue AND it being noticeably dimmer.

Or link to articles that speak of deaths from particulate pollution while estimating pollution contribution from linked charts of non-particulate pollution?

I was at work and reading quickly. Not writing a research paper, but good catch. I used what came up in the first few lines in google search.
On the lights - yeah, the new rules(which have been delayed and there's a bill to cancel them) were not what I'd consider optimal.

Even the connection between light bulb and coal burning plant is tenuous with most bulbs which are subject to the ban operating at peak load times and hence covered more by peaking power than coal burning power. And that's assuming that one lives in an area that uses coal. It wouldn't be the case for much of the Northwest, for example.

You get pollution with NG plants as well. But yeah, it depends on what's actually be admitting; I'd pay more attention to the details if I was in office and had minions to look up the details/give me estimates.

Why aren't they running the plant full tilt most of the time? Coal is pretty cheap. And they could sell the night's excess to someone with pumped storage or other electricity storage systems.

1. Not enough demand
2. Nobody to sell too; the plant is isolated. It's also a cogeneration plant - it provides heat to the local buildings as well.
Age wise, it was first built in 1952, but majorly upgraded somewhere around 1987.

Re:It only took a century Back to incandescents.

[lsatenstein]

I hate CFLs for the following reason "The 5000 hour bulbs fail after about 6 months of use, because we turn them on and off about twice a day (For light at breakfast, and after supper). The CFLs have filaments that need to heat up the vapor in the tube before glow starts. The filaments fail.

Here is another problem for we who have very cold winters. These lights cannot work outdoors if it is around freezing. They will not start. Only leds or filament bulbs work.

So, we are back to incandescents for the following reason.
In winter, the bulbs contribute to the heating in the house. In summer, with the prolonged daylight hours, they are not used much (perhaps 1 hour per day).
I live in Montreal Canada, and our electricity is water generated from James Bay. Thus the province has the majority of the 3/4 million homes and all the millions of businesses heated and cooled with electricity. If I switch to gas for the furnace when the temp is around 0F, and use electricity when warmer, my rate is $0.04 cents.

If I am with fully using electricity, without resorting to gas, my rate is 7cents. Incandescents are the best deal. The bulbs last a few years before failing.