Slashdot Mirror
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."
I live in Wisconsin, seriously, that "waste" heat is NOT wasted! It's freaking cold outside!! I'm an American, I want to be free to choose!
Let's face it: people don't want to think about every bit they do. That's why phones and clothes are nowadays mostly produced by people working in Asia under inhuman conditions, people buy prepackaged meat but would not want to see a slaughterhouse, people can't be bothered to switch off the lights or TV or heating when they don't need it.
If consumers acted intelligibly, absurdities like elevators in gym buildings would not see much use. Neither would do remote controls for entertainment devices and the sometimes associated "standby" mode.
Also realizations like "I don't have the money to afford cheap stuff" occur only to few people.
People won't change their patterns unless forced to. The whole point of a pattern is to save the effort of thinking, a strategic and rare resource.
LED bulbs are far better – when implemented correctly, they're pretty much indistinguishable from incandescents. But they are also very expensive – about $15 for the Cree bulbs at Home Depot, which are the cheapest ones I've found that have decent online reviews. Hopefully in a couple of years the manufacturing process will mature so that the price will go down without compromising quality.
the price of leds is made up by the extreme long life they have.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
As of 2013 there is still no way to get a light bulb that combines the low cost and high quality of an incandescent
Correction. Low up front cost.
At the national average of 12c/kwh a typical LED bulb will pay for itself in 2.5 years and last well over 5 years. In other words, they are already cheaper than incandescents if you aren't as short-sighted as the typical wall-street broker.
Also, Philips makes a good $10 bulb too. Cree isn't the only one in the game.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
...not because they are superior, but because at least half of the USA is living paycheck-to-paycheck, and they are cheaper. When you need a lightbulb right now, and your kids get to eat with whatever is left, you're most likely going to pick the cheapest one, not the one that should give you the cheapest electricity bill over the next 20 years (particularly if you're liable to move in 1-5 years, leaving your lightbulb "investment" behind before it has paid off).
Hell, I'm better off than most folks, but in my own house I've instituted a rule that we buy no more than 1 expensive LED bulb a month (at last check we had 8 burned out awaiting replacement). I wanna hug trees and all that, but there's a lot better way to spend hundreds of dollars this week than on light bulbs.
So expecting "the market" to fix this in a healthy way all by itself any time soon is unreasonable. This is the exact kind of thing we have government for. Otherwise the streets would be full of trash and sewage (cheapest way to dispose of it, after all! Who's the government to tell me how to dispose of my Snickers wrappers?)
I bought an LED bulb the other day (we had a coupon). We love it - instant on, and the light looks exactly like the classic incandescent. I'm sold; once they get a bit less expensive (or we find more coupons), we're buying more. I'm hoping we've bought our last CFL - they always felt like an interim solution until LEDs improved.
Now, can we get some lighting fixtures that use LEDs that are actually designed for LEDs? For example, I'd like to put in some LED downlights in the living room, but everything I can find is just an LED replacement bulb for a classic fixture, rather than a fixture designed for an LED. I'd also like to replace the 40 watt florescent tube fixtures in our garage with LEDs, but so far I can't find much that would work. I was thinking strips of LEDs, one color, but it was looking like several hundred dollars for several strips of the length I'd need.
Cree has finally got their bulbs out and they're dirt cheap - $12 apiece for 60watt equivalent bulbs at the big box store.
12$ for a light bulb is not "cheap".
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Really, and when was the incadescent ban put to a vote of the people?
Right because putting things like that to a popular vote in a republic is a really sane way to govern. There are lots of things that aren't entirely popular that are still the right thing to do. Banning needlessly inefficient technologies when there are reasonable alternatives available is one of them.
Next thing the Government will want us to stop smoking, wear seatbelts and vaccinate our children against deadly diseases. Why do they think they know what is good for us?
CM www.cometenergysystems.com Blog: http://caribbeanrenewable.blogspot.com/
If you're talking heat output, the lightbulb would be 90%, not 10%
Not for 3/4 of the year (i.e. spring, summer or fall) it would not be. A lightbulb just generates waste heat most of the time. They also are pretty useless for heating when you want it to be dark at the same time as you are generating heat, like oh, when you want to sleep. There is a reason we decouple our heat sources from our light sources.
and a lot of people have older furnaces that are fairly inefficient.
Even a clunky old inefficient furnace is still more efficient than any incandescent light bulb. If you have a badly insulated house or a shitty furnace, a light bulb isn't going to fix that problem for you.
Seriously? That's their argument? That if they are just "good enough" people will buy them on their own? You could give them away for *free* and people would still find some reason to prefer incandescents. Human beings are notorious idiots when it comes to choosing things that do or don't benefit us. Just ask the tobacco industry. Even faced with a long, painful death, we insist that 'we know what's best' for us. I'm not saying that CFL's are wondrous mana from heaven that will save the world, but sometimes mankind needs a serious kick in the ass in order to 'make the right choice'.
The math is pretty straightforward. A Cree 60W equivalent bulb costs $13, and uses 9.5 watts. With an average electric price of $0.10/kWh in the US at the moment, the breakeven point is about 2600 hours of usage, or about 2.4 years, used three hours a day, EVEN IF THE INCANDESCENT BULBS ARE FREE. This doesn't even take into account that you'll need to replace that incandescent 2-3x over that time period. The Cree bulbs have a 10 year warranty, although they should last more like 20. Even if it's only 10, you'll be looking at a total cost (bulb and power) of about $23 over 10 years with the LED ($13 for the bulb, $10 for power), vs. about $66 for the incandescent, even if the incandescents are free.
The bulb will "last" for 20 years but it will be notably dimmer at the end of that range. Most cost benefit analyses of incandescent vs LED and CFL ignore that issue.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
It amazes me that people who would never fall for the "really cheap" printer with really expensive ink will, at the same time, fall for the "really cheap" incandescent bulbs with the really expensive power.
I just want to take this opportunity to point out that Economics is the softest of all the sciences. Compared to Economics, psi research is practically classical physics. Sociology and Psychology have long eclipsed Economics in terms of rigor and honest application of the scientific method.
One of the most valuable things I've learned in my professional life in academia, at an institution with numerous Econ prize winners, is just how shoddy the methods, how dishonest the practitioners, how low the standards. Even their math is abominable.
When my institution closed its school of education, I remember how unjust I felt it was that they allowed the School of Economics to keep its doors opened. The world would be better off if every economist was sent to work in a Chinese electronics factory for ten years and their offices turned into cozy lounges for the biology students.
You are welcome on my lawn.