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Light Bulb Ban Produces Hoarding In EU, FUD In U.S.
Lucas123 writes "The very thought of losing that pear-shaped giver of warm, yellow light drove Europeans to hoard Edison's invention [Note: Or possibly Joseph Swan's invention; HT to eldavojohn.] as the EU's Sept. 1 ban on incandescent light bulbs approached. China's ban on incandescent lamps starts Oct. 1. And, in the U.S., the Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) of 2007 effectively began banning the 100W bulb this year and will ban the most popular bulbs — the 75W, 60W and 40W screw-in incandescent bulbs --over the next two years. The end standard requires bulbs to use 65% less energy by 2020. But Republicans in Congress continue to fight the ban by hamstringing the energy efficiency standards through appropriations legislation, cutting off funds for the enforcement of the light bulb ban."
I don't think this can be blamed anyone else but Edison. Had he have the foresight to create energy saver light bulbs in the first place we would had been saved from lots of wasted energy and global pollution. Being also an inventor, I know to be both inventive and pollution-aware in my inventions.
Should be a tax. Encourage people to make the right choices, but don't screw people who have special circumstances or are willing to compensate society for the cost of their preference.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
Is there yet a way to tell at time of purchase whether a CFL bulb is going to warm up in an acceptable time?
I'm assured that bulbs exist that reach a decent brightness in under 10 seconds, but I have yet to manage to buy one.
Except it draws attention from issues worth talking about.
You can't talk about corporate domination of congress when you're talking other bullshit like this.
Energy use makes their buddies money.
It's that simple. Don't talk shit about "conspiracy theories" either because it's very straight forward and they're doing it in the open.
The EU has not ban a specific technology, it banned incandescent bulbs based on their energy efficiency over the last 3 years.
There is a website about the change:
http://ec.europa.eu/energy/lumen/faq/index_en.htm
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
The light bulb ban is for the old incandescent. the halogens are NOT banned and work just as good and look just as good. It's all nutjobs that got foaming at the mouth over misinformation. If they had actually taken the time to go and educate themselves instead of listening to the sensationalist talking heads trying to tun something moot into a news story to milk they would have known this.
Your only choise is not only LED or "curly que" CFL bulbs. And anyone that took 3 minutes to look it up would have known this.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Why not just change the law so a store can't sell incandescent bulbs cheaper than CFL or LED? You wouldn't need to ban them to have the save effect.
Democrats complain Republicans don't focus on jobs, but when this lightbulb legislation shutdown a factory and many people lost their jobs and Republicans try to prevent that, Democrats complain.
could you prove your statement? I don't know all countries, but at least in Germany you can't buy heat bulbs.
This ban was signed into law by the Bush Administration.
And now, after putting it in place, the Republicans NOW object?
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Some of us cannot use CFLs. The pulse is visible and causes eye strain and headaches. Slight exaggeration here, however it seems that you need to put small children in a hazmat suit when playing near the bulbs, you know, just in case they break. :)
When LEDs are made to be cost effective, I'll give those a try, otherwise, bug off and let me heat my home in the winter with my nice toasty bulbs and pay a bit more doing it. :)
BTW - Partisanship politics at slashdot. I am shocked. Let me see if I can enlighten you (100% pun intended). Most Republicans don't care if someone is Gay or not, they care if they pay into the system. The issue on the table related to Gays and Republicans is related to the term marriage, which has a biblical definition to many in the states. The answer is quite simple, redefine the legal term for marriage for all to be "civil unions" (or whatever) and fork over the same rights to gay couples as straight. Few Republicans would care about that answer. I'll skip over economics as that is likely a bit too involved for this crowd. :)
So, how many Republicans does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
Proud member of the Ferengi Socialist Party.
It's amazing how the very people on this thread complaining about having past costs externalized on them, are happily willing to do the same to people a decade from now, some of them are us.
Fugue for Aaron Swartz
The ban is really about child obesity and preventing further use of the Easy Bake Oven.
The *vast* majority of electricity consumed in the US is from the industrial and commercial sectors, who already almost exclusively use fluorescent lighting. Residential lighting electricity use is a drop in the overall bucket. This legislation is silly.
I'll be stocking up on GE Reveal incandescent bulbs - the best reading bulbs in existence. The new GE Edison halogen bulbs are also very good, but with the rather insane push for CFL's, they are hard to find. I'll be upgrading to LEDs once the price is right, and the dispersion problems are fixed. Screw CFLs, they are the discrete flip-chips of the lighting world (for the uninitiated, nearly obsolete upon introduction)
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
My understanding of their argument is how efficiency is met as a goal. If you read the story, Representative Burgess said, "It's something the market place should determine. Let consumers make the choice. There was no reason for the government to make that choice for them."
That doesn't sound like standing against innovation or hating on, "the gay." Certainly, it doesn't sound like that's giving to the rich. In fact, banning incandescents seems like it's going to cost us more money. Where you or I may be OK paying extra for a bulb that lasts twenty years, perhaps the poor you're talking about, the ones that do count pennies, will be fucked at the register when they can't replace something that used to be less than a buck.
But this is for a greater cause, right? I mean, energy efficiency. We've got to break a few eggs to make omelets here!
I'm all for a cleaner, safer, planet. But, I'm more in favor of individual freedoms and responsibilities. However, those pesky poor people and their damn hoarding. If only they were as rich as our dear leaders in DC, maybe this wouldn't be a problem.
"It's something the market place should determine. Let consumers make the choice. There was no reason for the government to make that choice for them."
http://www.allometry.com
I used to remember a time when it was the Republican that were trying to legislate behavior (morality). Now it's time for the Democrats to do this apparently.
Regulation about light bulb standards is certainly a thing that can be done, but wouldn't it be nice if people chose the "right" light bulb because it's "right" and not because they were forced to choose the "right" one? (and why are the Democrats so interested in "right"?... always thought they leaned left...)
Uh, you do know that a Republican president signed this into law, right?
So what, realistically are the replacements? CFL is out for me, since -40 weather is hard on them. Also I have 20 pivot irrigation systems that have telltale lights on them and CFLs would burn out in a week there (end tower light turns on and off with the motor at least once a minute, and some center tower lights have blinkers on them). My shop has a bunch of 200W rough service bulbs as well. CFL is not going to replace that. I understand there are cold-weather flourescent tubes I can install, but they are much more expensive than incandescents, and the fact they are only turned on for days out of the year total makes any efficiency benefits moot.
Someone mentioned before the ban isn't on incandescents per se, but on inefficient bulbs. So will there be higher-efficiency incandescents out there? Some sort of hybrid? Besides CFL and LED, what is really happening in the the incandescent area?
The answer is "because they're freakishly expensive." $23 per lamp vs 44 cents for a 60 watt incandescent. In terms of running cost, that's 0.46c/hr of LED (at the 5000 rated hours**) vs .032c/hr for incandescent (GE lamps at Walmart, $21/48 lamps with a 1330hr rated life). Yes - that's more than a factor of 10.
"But what about energy?" I hear you cry. Well, at 11c/kwh, it costs 11c x 0.0125w per hour for the led, or 0.1375 c per hour. The incandescent 60W it replaces - 11c x .060w = 0.66 c/hour.
So I can get an LED for 0.60c/hr or an incandescent at 0.69c/hr. That seems like a pretty minor payback - a dollar of savings will take me burning the lamp for over 1000 hours - and I'm out $23 right now.
*If this bulb does not last 4 years, return UPC and register receipt along with your name and address to GE Consumer & Industrial, Product Service Dept., 1975 Noble Road, Cleveland, OH 44112. GE will replace your bulb. So for $3-4 in packing and shipping I can get a new lamp if this one dies in four years, but if it dies in year 5, I'm SOL on a a $23 item. If my 60W blows early, I'm out 44c.
**Rated life is 5000hrs per energy comparison data provided by Philips.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
'Bans' take all other factors out of the decision on what to use. The only real screw-in alternative to an incandescent bulb is the 'compact fluorescent' bulb although the LED screw-ins may eventually improve their performance and lower their cost enough to make them another alternative. However...the CFL bulbs have a lot of limitations. They have very low light output when they are powered up and need several minutes to warm up enough to reach full output. That makes them a very poor choice for lighting fixtures that are powered up for only a few minutes at infrequent intervals. The lifespan of a CFL bulb decreases dramatically to the same or less than an incandescent bulb when powered up for only short periods of time. Even when warm, the CFL maximum light output decreases by 20 to 30 percent over the life of the bulb. CFLs generally have a lower light output than a comparable incandescent bulb if you rely on the manufacturer 'equivalent to a xx-watt bulb labelling so your room, when lit with CFLs in the same lighting fixtures, is likely to be quite a bit dimmer. CFLs are supposed to have a life of 6,000 to 15,000 hours but my experience in real-world use has been less than 2,000 hours at best. Finally, CFLs are a very poor choice for any lighting that is not in a heated space as they will not even start in cold temperatures and, if they do start in cool temperatures, will put out a very low amount of light. In spite of these limitations, CFLs are an excellent choice in some locations such as a heated space that is powered up for long periods of time. However, the 'ban' will result in CFLs being used everywhere with predictable poor results. A 'ban' for something like a light bulb is like using a hammer to swat a fly...heavy-handed with poor results.
Or the cost of one particular type of pollution is underpriced and hence such market forces won't work.
Unbelievably bad, that is. The light is poor and barren. I have yet to see a "100w equivalent" that was even close to being as bright as a 100w incandescent. Some of them have a power factor of 0.5, which means they're actually half as "energy efficient" as the label says. And "long-lasting"? Not in my experience. But hey, at least they're expensive.
The lighting industry has got to be gleefully rubbing its hands over these regulatory moves.
The building inspector made me replace 160 watts of very nice halogens in my new kitchen with 160 watts of fluorescents because the code says half of the lighting in a kitchen has to be "energy efficient". The overall lighting level went down considerably with this change, in part because the halogens give directed light and decent looking fluorescents don't, and also because halogen light is a lot nicer. Of course the change was reversed the same day the inspector signed off. The $120 fluorescent fixture I was forced to buy now illuminates an area of my home that I don't spend much time in--the laundry room.
LED lights would save more electricity, last a LOT longer, but cost a LOT more. Thanks, guys.
Lets buy five 2000 hour 100 watt old fashioned filament bulbs for $5
100 watts / 1000 watts per KW * 0.10 dollars per KWh * 10000 hours total use = energy cost of $100 of highly govt subsidized electricity (real cost probably higher)
Lets buy the equivalent number of lumens in a 10000 hour LED I donno 8 watts or something for $50.
8 watts / 1000 * 0.10 * 10000 = $8 of highly subsidized electricity
Old fashioned total cost is $105. LED total cost is $58.
There's some cultural socioeconomic stuff going on too. I wouldn't be caught dead buying filament bulbs because that's poor people budgeting prioritizing up front cost over long term cost (look, its only $1 upfront instead of $50, that means you could buy $49 of malt liquor today, that kind of brilliant budgeting helps poor people stay poor).
I've been fooling around with LED lightbulbs (sometimes, unfortunately at great cost) for a decade or so. AKA I've been one of those early adopters with arrows in my back so you cheap bastards can now pay $25 for something better than I paid $150 for as a novelty a decade ago. They really do last 10000 hours when not abused. Two great ways to destroy a LED bulb : 1) Never dust it, because it never burns out so you ignore it, until its encrusted in a thick layer of dust, over heats, and poof. 2) Enclosed fixture, even worse outdoors in hot summer right after sunset, that's just not gonna live long Avoid those two scenarios and they really are a better, cheaper solution.
Its also weird as a lifestyle thing where in a big enough house you burn out a couple old fashioned bulbs every month, so you keep a stockpile and buy them at the food store as a regular purchase. Once you go LED they burn out so rarely that 1) Its a noteworthy event 2) you don't keep a stock on hand of replacements (well, you could I guess, but just like I don't keep spare major appliances around ... Although a RAID array of clothes washers would help when a backlog accumulates)
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Where did either the original AC poster or cayenne8 say that the reason they're using incandescent bulbs is because they've been told not to?
There sure is a lot of misinformation out there. Much of it seems to have come from right wing talk. Incandescent light bulbs are not going to be banned.
Here is the straight dope from the NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/26/garden/fearing-the-phase-out-of-incandescent-bulbs.html?_r=2pagewanted=all&
I live in Europe and fail to see this "hoarding" thing. I call bullshit. Most people I know have been using CFLs for years. Who wants to use lamps that:
What made the plant here vulnerable is, in part, a 2007 energy conservation measure passed by Congress that set standards essentially banning ordinary incandescents by 2014. The law will force millions of American households to switch to more efficient bulbs.
The resulting savings in energy and greenhouse-gas emissions are expected to be immense. But the move also had unintended consequences.
Rather than setting off a boom in the U.S. manufacture of replacement lights, the leading replacement lights are compact fluorescents, or CFLs, which are made almost entirely overseas, mostly in China.
Consisting of glass tubes twisted into a spiral, they require more hand labor, which is cheaper there. So though they were first developed by American engineers in the 1970s, none of the major brands make CFLs in the United States.
Whether the loss of this factory is a cost worth paying for increased energy efficiency is a different question, but the regulations did shut down a plant.
The Republicans still do. Legislating behavior is something the Democrats have always been accused of, I'm not sure how this falls into that.
Which is what was done.
I believe this falls into the FUD that is being spread about the legislation.
What Republicans? I miss Republicans. The people marching under the GOP banner are a whole different animal than the Republicans I grew up with. I really enjoyed hating Reagan, and I kept up the fight against Bush 1 even though I knew that in many ways, he wasn't so bad. It really got bad with Bush 2--not so much the man, but his ultra-right brain trust--and the election of a (in the eyes of his detractors) mulatto kenyan indonesian communist fascist nazi muslim anti-white racist intellectual just boiled the right-hand fringe to a froth. That "froth" are not, in my eyes, Republicans. They're like the Republican version of a zombie invasion.
The CB App. What's your 20?
Mathmos LED Lava Lamp
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
LOL I had 16 seventy five watt bulbs in my basement workroom / lab and it still had some troublesome shadows and dark corners. Yes that would be a little bright for a bathroom or closet. Used to get hot in the summer but the LEDs keep it cool now. Yes, that was a rather expensive LED conversion project. CFLs make too much electrical noise for some of my electronics projects so it had to be RF-quiet LEDs. 40 feet along one side and 30 along the other that's just not as much light intensity as you'd think.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Have you ever taken a CFL apart? I have. There's an astonishing amount of electronics in that small base; it's required to transform line voltage into a potential sufficiently high to ionize the gas in the fluorescent tube. How much energy goes into the manufacture of these electronic components? How much of the electronics is either re-used or recovered as raw material when these bulbs are 'recycled', as opposed to the materials, (and the energy that went into their manufacture), being disposed of in landfills? I have been unable to find answers to these questions, and I think they're important. There's a lot more 'stuff', in a CFL, with a much wider range of chemical compositions, than in an incandescent bulb, so it's harder and more energy-intensive to fully recycle.
Then there are the special interests of the various stakeholders and their lobbyists - for a discussion of this, see http://ceolas.net/#li1ax . Does anyone really believe that 'saving energy' is a primary, or even an important, motivation for the manufacturers and patent holders of CFLs? Given that, what might they be hiding, and how much spin has been applied to the figures the provide vis-a-vis total energy savings?
If the powers that be were really serious about saving energy and the environment by encouraging CFL use, they would mandate two things: 1) A a high minimum standard of longevity for the electronics in the bases of CFLs, and 2) A means of replacing the tube only when it burns out, so the most complex and least homogeneous part of the bulb, (the base with its electronic circuitry), can be re-used numerous times. But guess what? That reduces the profit margins and raises both the cost and the price, making the whole proposition both less economically attractive and less politically palatable. If 'energy saving' was the true motive behind this legislation, these things would have been incorporated into CFL design by now.
The problems of the EMI and RFI that CFLs generate, and their crappy power factor, are points for further investigation for those interested. As are the problems with LED lights and their greater negative effects on melatonin production, with the accompanying decrease in health for those exposed to them.
This whole topic is a lot more complex and nuanced than most people realize, and I suggest that anyone reading this might want to do a little digging before giving in to a knee-jerk reaction of either "But, but... the environment!" or "But, but... I like the old ones!"
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
A 60 watt bulb produces 800 lumens and a 100 watt produces 1750. What CFLs have you found to match that, that will fit in a standard fixture? Also what do you use for dimmer switches?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Do you know what an externality is?
It's when something you choose to do has consequences for people other than yourself.
You aren't allowed to dump your trash out the car window while you are driving down the highway, no matter how convenient that may seem.
That's why 'they' can tell you what the fuck you can do.
Should be a tax. Encourage people to make the right choices, but don't screw people who have special circumstances or are willing to compensate society for the cost of their preference.
Should be but won't be. Republicans break out in hives if you try to raise taxes even for a good reason. Economically it makes sense but politically it is impossible.
The deal is: due to time value of money, all non-incandescent light sources cost actually more. They don't save shit, because money equals energy, so if you have to spend the money, the energy is expended somewhere else. Those bulbs cost more because it takes more energy to make them -- so much more, that it happens to almost exactly offset any energy savings due to using CCFLs or LED lights. When you factor in time value of money, those more expensive bulbs do actually cost more. So the entire argument about cost or energy savings is complete and utter made up bullshit. Yes, I like the CCFLs and LEDs better, because I don't like the heat being emanated in my home. That energy was spent at the factory, though.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
The republicans are on the right side of this one.
You might want to explain why. I've been using CFLs for over a decade. Incandescants have no advantage whatever and lots of downsides, both for the environment and your wallet. I'm happy to see incandescants go the way of the steam locomotive.
Free Martian Whores!
Actually it's even better than that - almost all other types of modern heaters heat the air, which then heats everything else, especially the ceiling where the hottest air pools. As a result much of the heat gets sucked out of the house through the walls and ceiling and any air-gaps.
Infrared heaters instead heat the things in the room - people and surfaces - and if aimed well you can keep much of the heat off the walls and ceiling. One of the major benefits of this is that you can keep the air temperature significantly cooler, which reduces heat loss as well as allowing your body to regulate it's temperature more easily.
If you think about it IR heating is the traditional norm - an open fire sends virtually all hot air straight up - what warms you is the IR. Likewise standing near a sun-warmed rock or a Scandinavian style tile oven/masonry heater which can keep a whole house warm all day with just a few handfuls of sticks - the folks who've been living with serious cold for centuries long ago figured out that heating the air is silly.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
This should not be the roll of government in my opinion. Let the free market decide. Yes, CFLs and LEDs have their place, but so do incandescent bulbs! If people want to buy incandescent bulbs, they should be allowed to get them at affordable prices. Let me tell you two stories about how incandescent bulbs are better than CFLs or LEDs.
My father and I used to work on cars together all year round including the winter. The trouble light we used had an incandescent 100W bulb. We used it for light AND heat! Anytime our hands got cold after gripping a freezing wrench, we would just place them around the light bulb and warm them up quickly. Now, the government is stepping in and telling me that they're smarter than me and that I need to use a CFL or LED bulb instead, which doesn't output nearly as much heat. So instead of having 1 power cord to deal under a freezing car, I am going to have to have 2; one for a light, and another for a heat source. LAME.
I know someone who replaced bulbs on a airport runways. The heat from incandescent bulbs is advantageous in street lights and runways in cold climate because the heat melts the snow which would obscure the light emitted from the bulb!
I am tired of the government pretending to be smarter than the invisible hand of the free market. Rand Paul talked about this. Search for: light bulbs rand paul congress.
Future discount and all that Solow stuff you haven't read.
Fugue for Aaron Swartz
Why should it cost jobs? I'm pretty certain most of the CFC/LED bulb technology is western in origin, and the markups on such bulbs are probably bigger than the old filament bulbs, so why is there not a shiny US factory making these things?
Because the Chinese will make them for fractions-of-a-penny on the dollar, and there's no law stopping American corporations from shipping all their manufacturing overseas.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
So in other words, if we ever get into a war with China, we won't even be able to light up any buildings.
What do you mean? Obama's the best Republican president since Reagan.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Specifically you are very much in favor of having someone else pay for that cleaner planet.
Fugue for Aaron Swartz
Some 15 years ago, when Philips CFLs in Europe were still a hot new thing, I designed a replacement constant power regulating supply that made the light appear to turn on instantly. I've made a batch of 20 boards, and put them in replacement CFLs, that were to replace the unmodified CFLs we had in the house. It was also dimmable. Someone could probably make good money for a short while by offering light bulbs with such upgraded power supplies, but they wouldn't be cheap. One good thing is that such supplies do extend the life of the CFL (not in isolation, you have to derate the tube!). Mine could put out up to 10kV to light the bulb up, so as long as the envelope had some vacuum in it, it would light up even if the electrodes were evaporated away to be flush with the envelope. I've had the supplies fail and had to upgrade some components, as I was pretty novice back then, but the fluorescent tubes have never failed. Those CFLs are still in use, all 20 of them, and they still produce apparently normal amounts of light, 15 years later. As long as the tube keeps vacuum, you can design a power supply that will keep it lit up. When it gets too dim for your taste, you can replace it then, even if I'd personally like to be able to replace the tube only. Those power supplies could be made to last pretty much forever. Of course they wouldn't be cheap, even if you'd make them in quantity. They have to be of sufficient quality and a run of 1000 pieces would still cost over $50 per unit, give-or-take.
Such supplies make more sense as replacements for "ballasts" in tube fluorescents -- they can, pretty much, make a tube last as close to "forever" as practicable. If you want to trade off a bit of efficiency for longevity, you could make it regulate light output instead of electrical power, up to a certain power limit for safety of course. Large fluorescent tubes can dissipate quite a bit more thermal power than relatively small lightbulbs, but the electrodes do get hot once filament has eroded away, as it will eventually do.
In all this, the key is in understanding failure modes of CCFLs and fluorescents. The key contributors are:
1. Failure of ballast/supply electronics.
2. Failure of filaments.
3. Failure of vacuum.
4. Loss of efficiency of the light-emitting coating.
#4 you can't help with without changing the chemistry of the coating, so an electronic designer can't help with that. If you overdrive the bulb, then the coating wears out much faster than it otherwise would, though, so that's something you have control over in a way, but not by trying to put out rated light output from the bulb. The only way to prolong #4 is to derate the light output.
#3 you can't help with directly if it's a random failure somewhat unrelated to stress. If the glass envelope is thermally stressed around the electrodes and if that contributes to loss of vacuum, then of course derating the tube is the only way to help.
#2 is immaterial if you don't use filament emission for startup, but if the filament is worn out then you'll be concentrating heat load on the electrodes, potentially making them hotter and leading to vacuum failure #3.
#1 is something you have full control over.
A bulb that's "dead" (no light output at all) that still has good vacuum indicates #1. That's a waste of a perfectly good mercury-containing tube, then, and a bad thing (tm).
The way to make CCFLs last "forever", as I've found out, is to have "aggresive" power supply that provides fixed electric power to the bulb (not fixed current), and to derate the light output of the tube by a factor of at least 2.5. So I'd buy the largest CFLs one could get, and drive them as if they were small 8-12W ones. Instant startup, long lasting. Win.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Republicans seem to feel that the marketplace moves infinitely fast, and that there are no barriers to entry, and that there are no external costs. In reality, some problems require foresight and planning that the market is incapable of doing on its own.
I'm all for individual freedoms, and I'm actually not crazy about the bulb ban. It's a (less than-) half measure made politically feasible by the fact that it's a simple thing that people can see directly in front of them as a way to save energy.
I'd much rather see a market-based approach, in which carbon costs and fossil fuel depletion externalities were internalized via a carbon tax. A gradual increase in the cost of electricity would encourage people to buy new, efficient forms of lighting via purely economic forces. But Republicans will absolutely not hear of any sort of tax, far less one oriented towards fixing a problem they have repeatedly called a hoax. And that kind of straight-out falsehood interferes with the proper operation of markets more than any regulation on light bulbs.
In the presence of obstruction, the legislative free market will proceed in a bastardized way, just as economics predicts. And so instead of a clean, straightforward, and economically sensible plan, we get a ridiculous one that's just slightly better than nothing because it was all we can get.
I'd dearly love to see the legislative market proceed by letting actual facts and level-headed decision making guide the day, but in the absence of that, we're going to get mostly heat and little light.
Nah, Metal Halide (and High Pressure Sodium for flowering phase) is the only way to go. 75-100W ballast is more than adequate for a small setup so there won't be a telltale spike on your power bill. Fluorescent (and probably LED) just aren't bright enough for their size.
It's not just a Republican thing, it's a Washington thing. Go back and look at some of Johnson's speeches. The guy was a political hack, but he had vision, he worked hard for America. His speeches were good.
Go look at the things Kennedy said, "ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." The party that did that, that sent people to the moon, is now full of people who demand you pay for their birth control. This is the party that rants against bankers, while filling their staff with bankers.
And looking at the frothy end of the spectrum, well, there have always been idiots in America. From women who think Obama's going to pay her rent, to idiots sitting in parks not knowing what they're protesting.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
LOL I had 16 seventy five watt bulbs in my basement workroom / lab and it still had some troublesome shadows and dark corners.
I know what you mean. Those grues and creepers will spawn if you give them even the slightest chance.
Halogen incandescent light bulbs are the correct replacement if you can't stand LED or CFL. They are not banned, they are about 25% more efficient than old-fashioned light bulbs. They are 100% compatible with all existing equipment, and they are cheap to boot.
I recommend the OSRAM brand. Some of them are rated for 10^6 (one million) on/off cycles and 2500h.
Unfortunately, only incandescent bulbs can be made to match the spectrum of sunlight (with appropriate filtering). This is very important for a number of reasons, including cases where color reproduction is critical (museums, etc.), and where there is not much natural sunlight (Seattle and Vancouver half of the year, or an office with insufficient or poorly directed windows). There have been a number of studies correlating productivity with daylight, and also studies linking low amount of daylight with depression.
Color reproduction suffers tremendously with the horribly spiky spectrum of fluorescent and high intensity discharge bulbs, and while white LEDs are better, their spectrum still has significant humps that make them unsuitable if you want to emulate daylight properly. This is not a simple matter of white balance and using so-called "full-spectrum" bulbs. The color of objects one observes is the product of three functions: the light source spectrum, the surface reflectance spectrum, and the spectral sensitivities of the human eye. Although the eye reduces color to only three dimensions due to having cones with sensitivities centered at the usual RGB wavelengths, it does not mean that a white-balanced light source with three narrow spikes centered at the same wavelengths is anywhere near sufficient. The reason for this is that the three types of retinal cone cells each have fairly broad sensitivity ranges. This means that, while staring at such a light source would be the same as staring at a light source with a smooth spectrum, things change when you introduce the reflectance of the surface of objects. Then, the lights that when observed directly looked the same will produce very different renditions of the colored object--because its reflectance has a spectral distribution that doesn't correlate with that of the R, G, and B peaks of retinal color sensitivity. Your "full-spectrum" fluorescent bulb will have its spectral spikes in general not match the spectral spikes of the reflectance of different surfaces that you're observing with this light. The result is colors that look completely different for bulbs matched to the same white balance point and color temperature.
Daylight from the sun has a smooth spectrum, because it is a blackbody emitter. Incandescent bulbs are also blackbody emitters. Unfortunately, due to the lack of a material that can withstand sufficient temperature, we have to run them at lower than optimal temperature and more of their energy tends towards longer wavelengths: heat (giving inefficiency) and red and yellow colors (giving a tint and low color temperature). Halogen incandescents are a little bit better as they run hotter, but its the reflectors on their MR16 incarnations (common in track lighting) that make an important difference, as they're designed to preferentially leak some of the reds and yellows and improve the color temperature.
High end MR16 incandescents such as Solux (which I use in my desk lamps) match daylight almost perfectly. This is made possible by the smooth spectrum of a blackbody emitter--the heated filament. Trying to filter narrow, high power spikes in fluorescent/HID/LED light spectra requires precise narrow-band filters, which is extremely impractical.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
The color temperature is a minor factor compared to the CRI (Color Rendering Index), and incandescents are still kings there due to the smooth spectrum. This makes them easy to filter, and high-end MR16-sized halogens do that using wavelength-selective reflectors and match daylight almost exactly. That's impossible to do with fluorescents/HIDs/LEDs and their spiky spectra fucking up colors. http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3143051&cid=41459269
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
On the American side,
regular incandescent light bulbs are legal for Texas manufacture and sales since June 2011, signed into law by Gov Rick Perry.
Texas also has several Congressmen active federally against it, with bills and amendments
http://freedomlightbulb.org/2011/06/texas-to-allow-incandescent-light-bulbs.html
http://freedomlightbulb.org/2012/06/texas-hold-em-and-congressmen-fight-for.html
All the bills in US States, links and updates
http://ceolas.net/#bills
Outside the USA, Canada delayed ban for at least 2 years, BC suspended their ongoing ban: See the above sites for more
Mexico due to implement restricitions but their grid needs upgrading (common CFLs affect grids due to their so-called power factor)
Those interested in the incandescent ban topic can if they want follow
the Incandescent Light Bulb Activist Alliance on Facebook,
started a few days ago, with American and European politicians, lighting designers, writers and others
http://www.facebook.com/groups/bulballiance