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US Light Bulb Phase-Out's Next Step Begins Next Month
SonicSpike writes "Light bulb manufacturers will cease making traditional 40 and 60-watt light bulbs — the most popular in the country — at the start of 2014. This comes after the controversial phasing out of incandescent 75 and 100-watt light bulbs at the beginning of 2013. In their place will be halogen bulbs, compact fluorescent bulbs, LED bulbs and high efficiency incandescents — which are just regular incandescents that have the filament wrapped in gas. All are significantly more expensive than traditional light bulbs, but offer significant energy and costs savings over the long run. (Some specialty incandescents — such as three-way bulbs — will still be available.) ... The rules were signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2007. They are designed to address gross inefficiencies with old light bulbs — only 10% of the energy they use is converted into light, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, which has a handy fact sheet about the changes. The rest is wasted as heat. But the rules have drawn fire from a number of circles — mainly conservatives and libertarians who are unhappy about the government telling people what light bulbs they can use. They argue that if the new ones really are so good, people will buy them on their own without being forced to do so."
If standard incandescent light bulbs delivered 10% efficiency, we wouldn't be as important to switch to other types.
100% efficiency is about 683 lm/W. A standard 60W bulb gives about 14 lm/W or about 2% efficiency.
12$ for a light bulb is not "cheap".
Yes it is, IF the bulb lasts for 20 years as advertized. A 60 watt equivalent LED will draw around 12-14 watts and is supposed to last over a decade. So that IS cheaper than a $1.00 incandescent you'll have to replace 10 times So yes it is cheap if you actually account for all the costs.
What exactly is the efficiency of a heat pump when the outside air temp is below 20F like it is in the upper midwest this week?
According to the Unversity of Minnesota (folks who ought to know a thing or two about cold upper Midwest temperatures), a properly installed heat pump can achieve efficiency equivalent to an 80 AFUE gas furnace. http://www.mnshi.umn.edu/kb/scale/gshp.html. When folks down South install heat pumps they generally take shortcuts during the install, trading off easier installation for lower efficiency, but that's their fault.
U of Minn does point out that high-efficiency gas furnaces (90+ AFUE) are cheaper to operate but at a cost of more environmental damage.
So you tried to be snarky and instead got a chance to learn something.
Well, I just bought a reasonable 72 Watt bulb with the output lumens equal to an older style 100 Watt bulb. Seems like a no-brainer to me. I get a lower electric bill without having to use an ugly CFL or super expensive LED.
Remember the ban is on older inefficient incandescent bulbs, not incandescent bulbs in general.
The news organizations and tin foil hat wearing types are focusing on the "ban" part for their own ends.
Self awareness - try it!
You're seriously basing your claim that LED costs more based on an article which uses a $119.99 price for an LED bulb??? That article is more than four years old at this point. You can get a 60W equivalent at any Home Depot for $13 or less. Plug that number in, and you're looking at $37.50 for LED vs $188 for incandescent, or about 1/5 the cost.
I have replaced almost all of my lights with LEDs. For 90% of the house I actually replaced the whole fitting with flush mounted LED down lights. Each downlight cost me $36 AUD. (about 32 US) and produce 800lm. They look much nicer and gave my house a more modern look. On top of that I really like the light they produce. I know this is a taste thing but we went 6000k throughout. It takes a little while to get used to it (about a week or two) but now I find the "warm white / Yellow" to look dirty to my eyes.
On a power consumption side I have one of those electricity usage sensors in my meter box which gives me real time electricity consumption. When I turn those lights on they basically don't register on the meter at all as the bounce between readings is greater than their usage.
My electricity cost is 27c / kwh. So a 100w bulb will eat basically 65c per day (assuming on all the time). These use under 10w and are rated with mttf of 50,000 hrs. Even halving the life time I am saving $600 in electricity costs alone.
The cost here for drop in replacements is about $20. More expensive than an incandescent of course but they simply don't seem to fail. I fitted 9 of these during our update - 4 to hanging fixtures and 5 to a vanity rail.
Drop in - http://www.northernlighting.com.au/products/5451-candle-3w-led-energy-saving-lamp-lca35-sunny-lighting.aspx
Down lights - http://www.northernlighting.com.au/products/4337-ecogem-10w-daylight-dimmable-led-downlight-s9041dl-sunny-lighting.aspx
Reasonable alternatives would not be priced at $27 a pop or pose a serious mercury contamination risk for disposed of bulbs
Get a clue. You can buy good 10w (60w equiv) LED light bulbs for $4 a pop on eBay. I bought a batch of 10 from this guy. They come on instantly, are very bright, and contain no mercury. Even after an hour, they are barely warm. Unlike CFLs, they work in the cold, so you can use them for a porch/garage. They are made of impact resistant plastic. While installing one, I accidentally dropped it 8 feet onto a concrete floor. It bounced, but didn't break. So far, I have had zero failures. Since the seller has a 99.4% approval rate, my guess is most other customers are happy as well.
...Government has decided that it is a bad decision for people to not purchase health insurance. I know many perfectly reasonable, rational people who did not purchase health insurance before the ACA because it was not worth it to them. I made the opposite decision; but there is no way that I could ever objectively come to the conclusion that their decision (or mine) was a good or bad one. Value is entirely subjective and for someone to impose their own subjective values onto another is asinine, coercive, and straight up maddening.
Except the value of insurance isn't subjective from the perspective of everyone else. If one of those "reasonable, rational people who did not purchase health insurance" gets hit by a bus and has the good luck to survive, then almost certainly it'll be everyone else paying for their treatment in one way or another. That's a direct 'objective' reason why having everyone be covered is beneficial, but there are other reasons why the requirement is there.
One such reason would be that removing the ability of insurance companies to discriminate based on pre-existing conditions pretty much compels something like it. Otherwise your perfectly reasonable, rational people would just wait until they got sick and buy insurance, and drop it as soon as they were better. That behavior would, of course, destroy the insurance market pretty quickly, which might be a bit of a problem.