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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."
They were banned in Europe quite a few years ago, however "rough service lamps" which are less efficient than traditional bulbs are still legal, and a lot of people have started using them rather than move to more efficient bulbs.
I'm not particularly impressed by the libertarian arguments, but I do think that these regulations were phased in a bit too soon. A delay of 5 to 10 years would probably make more sense.
CFLs really suck. I've tried quite a few different brands, and have tried to like them, but they just seem to have some flaws that can't be fixed. First, and most annoyingly, none of them come on immediately - they start out extremely dim when the switch is flicked, and take 30 seconds to a minute to completely warm up. Secondly, no CFLs made in the past five years come anywhere close to meeting their life expectancy – most of them burn out faster than incandescent bulbs. (I have a couple of old CFLs in a tableside lamp that are still going strong after nearly 10 years, but once the production lines switched to China, quality went to complete crap.)
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.
As of 2013 there is still no way to get a light bulb that combines the low cost and high quality of an incandescent. As long as that remains the case, the new regulations will be resented by many people.
You are free to choose: that's what the ballot box is for.
Capitalistic "freedom of choice" is weighted by the size of your wallet.
Really, and when was the incadescent ban put to a vote of the people? No, the ballot box is only effective on things that those in power (or the people who control them) want it to be effective for.
Taxes should be a method for raising revenue, not curbing or controlling spending/markets.
Says who? Externalities are a market failure, and one of the reasons for government is to correct for market failures.
You might go back and check your calculations. 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?
Pretty good, actually. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_pump#Coefficient_of_performance_.28COP.29_and_lift, so we are still talking about more than twice the efficiency of resistance heating.
You might go back and check your calculations. 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?
Resistive heat, by definition, has a COP (coefficient of performance) of 1.0.
The average heat pump has a COP of about 3.0 at 47F and only gets down to 1.0 around 0F.
A modern heat pump with a variable speed compressor like the Carrier 25VNA should have a COP of roughly 1.5 at 0F.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
particularly if you're liable to move in 1-5 years, leaving your lightbulb "investment" behind before it has paid off
When you're so poor that the cost of CFLs is a noticeable burden, when you move out, you take the bulbs with you. I've seen it with my own eyes. It's gotten to the point that when you move in, you can expect that there will be no bulbs whatsoever. America's poor made that adjustment very quickly.
lumens are a weighted intensity based on human response curves. The 683 max lumens figure comes from degenerate case in which all of the spectral power is concentrated on the wavelength of peak luminous response. It's my understanding that such a lamp would be an intense, monochromatic green. But you'd really be able to see it!
The 10% efficiency figure, I believe, is found by comparing the radiant flux (total power emitted as light) to the total power input.
Lumens are a useful rating, if the spectrum of each lamp is comparable - it's a rough, relative comparison of the effectiveness of each lamp.
However non-blackbody sources have a chance to game the rating by adjusting their spectrum to concentrate on the most effective wavelengths. This may be one reason why some cfls are not living up to their equivalency claims - they're hitting the lumen target, but unscrupulous manufacturers could be using a set of phosphors that puts more energy in the peak response bands and not enough outside them.
I'm now curious as to whether there are independent spectrum analyses out there for consumers to review.
I suppose what we need is yet another unit of measure to include the fact that although humans can see one wavelength better than all the rest, we need light across the spectrum to be able to effectively and comfortably observe our surroundings.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
"Capitalistic "freedom of choice" is weighted by the size of your wallet."
I have grown so tired of this utter bullshit.
"Crony capitalism" is not capitalism. It isn't even close. That's the reason it has a name. "Monopoly" and "oligopoly" are not capitalism. Even Adam Smith, who was basically the originator of the concept of capitalism as a system, recognized that antitrust laws to keep monopolies and oligopolies from forming were a necessary part of the strategy.
Capitalism is about free market forces. Voluntary exchange. With the exception of antitrust, EVERY government interference in the market, and ALL corporate lobbying that ends up restricting your choices, is an ENEMY of capitalism.
Don't blame the system for the actions of enemies of the system. That is like blaming the food for somebody burning your crops.
Uhh, I'm not sure "LED costs $144.49 over 30,000 hours, while incandescent costs $187.82" really backs up your claim that LEDs are more expensive ;)
Your estimates are also based off $0.10 per kWh, which is cheaper than even the cheapest states in the US. You also vastly overestimate the power consumption, and cost of LED bulbs. I recently bought 4.5W LED bulbs that are as bright as 60W incandescents, for $13.99 each in safeway.
If you redo the sums for the cheapest $0.11 and sane price for LEDs, you get $205.82 for the incandescent, $47.55 for the CFL and $28.84 for LEDs.
If you do the sums for an average $0.14, you get $259.82 for the incandescent, $59.25 for the CFL and $32.89 for LEDs.
If you do them at the most expensive rates in the US ($0.18 per kWh), you get $331.82 for incandescent, $74.85 for CFL and $38.29 for LEDs.
That, for me, makes the choice pretty obvious.
whoa. Home depot has Cree (excellent brand) LEDs, 60w equivalent (800 lumens, 25k hours) for about $13.00 -- that's half what you're assuming. You can get them for even less if you buy them a 1/2 dozen at a time. And they will save you a LOT of money as compared to an incandescent, and a reasonable amount compared to a CFL.
We went to all CFLs here (large home, lots of lights) a few years ago, went through the usual spate of infant mortality problems and finally ended up with an installed set that were dependable after spending WAY more than we planned on replacement CFLs. When home depot hit $13/LED-bulb, we began to replace those CFLs with Cree LEDs. No dead ones yet, they're all working fine and output is steady. They can be dimmed. Zero RFI. Great color, too. There's one over my desk as I type this. We expect to have the entire house done other than speciality lights by the end of 2014.
The numbers are highly compelling: Any geek who hasn't actually looked at the cost savings should be ashamed. If for no other reason than you can use that money for something else, but the environmental issues are significant, not to mention it's really nice not to have to worry about changing bulbs all the time.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
You used to be able to dump all your waste in the local river rather than paying for disposal. Sorry, but we have to share the environment we live in.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Actually, the
part says everything that needs to be said about the safety of the nuclear power industry.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
They "oversold" CFL with these arguments - I bought about a dozen CFLs in the 2006-2008 timeframe, by 2012 at least 1/2 of them had died - hardly meeting their advertised lifetime claims.