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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."
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!
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.
The summary states that gas-filled incandescents will still be available.
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.
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.
I live in a house with resistance electric heating; and I prefer the quality of light from incandescent lamps. So, I swap them twice a year. Winter, incandescent lamps approach 100% efficiency for me. I also use them outdoors, in places where I need instant start in cold weather, and in specialty uses, like my range hood with an inbuilt and CFL-incompatible dimmer. Point is, I do it intelligently. I love the way politicians think they know better than I do.
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.
They argue that if the new ones really are so good, people will buy them on their own without being forced to do so.
Which is why Betamax won the video format war. Oh, wait...
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I live in Wisconsin, seriously, that "waste" heat is NOT wasted!
Blah blah, I live up north too. Let's see, should I heat my house with a 95% efficient furnace or a 10% efficient light bulb? Boy that's a tough one...
You mean that well-known eco activist George W Bush?
This coming from the country that continues to bring us the 300 Kilowatt (400HP) SUV for soccer moms.
Cree has finally got their bulbs out and they're dirt cheap - $12 apiece for 60watt equivalent bulbs at the big box store. I actually had to go back for some 40watt ones as they 60s proved too bright in a few applications. The light distribution was also decent unlike many of the early LED. Phillips also makes a good bulb and they even use phosphor so help even out the light. Earlier ones looked like bug lights when turned off but provided great lighting. Strip LED work wonderful under cabinets and use far less than halogen spots. I've even replaced my outdoor floods with LED and am saving a pile of juice over the 60+ watt units I had.
That said, after swapping out nearly all of my incandescent bulbs I'm not seeing a ton of change on the electric bill. Juice is cheap here and I'm pretty good about turning out lights but these bulbs will last and last so it's all good. I have only a sparse few curly bulbs left and maybe two incandescent in places that make sense and aren't used often. It's a great time to switch and I see no reason not to.
Now, if I could just find some cheap LED and fixtures for my fish tank I'd be all set!
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
I've been an early adopter of LED bulbs and paid as much as $50 for some of the first ones. I still have them in use 3 years or more after buying them. The curly bulbs installed base up fried because of heat, I've not had that issue with LED. Cree LED have hit the market in the $12 range here and work really really well with good light output. Considering the lifespan These are a pretty good deal. switching over has been painful for the manufacturers but at least the Govt. worked with them on the phase out to figure out which bulbs to go first and to come up with specs that would allow them to adapt like the new halogen filled incandescent bulbs. I'm even seeing some new interesting artsy incandescent bulbs on the shelf I've never seen before.
Overall this switch is a good thing and the bulb life makes the cost palatable to me. I've not had one of the new bulbs ever burn out except these weird decorator bulbs with a mini base that really seemed crappy even when I bought them. Oh and one defective Chinese bulb from Costco that flares occasionally, the rest in that multipack have been fine.
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
Yet another strong example of Liberal Fascism at work. More examples of a government hell-bent on solving some kind of problem that would have solved itself eventually, destroying jobs and making the lives of the poor worse in the process.
I personally am not effected too much by the ban - I've already been using LED and CFL bulbs where they make sense (basically a CFL makes sense anywhere you almost never have to use the light or look at anything illuminated by it). But then I can afford a $50 light bulb instead of a 60 cent one...
What will the poor do? They will use ultra-crappy CFL bulbs that don't last any longer than an incandescent yet cost 10x as much, or else make do with discarded Christmas lights for illumination instead.
That in the end is the real tragedy of overbearing government regulations. The well off can easily find a way to skirt them while the quality of life for the poor ratchets ever downward.
If you wonder why the government is doing this, wonder no more when a government subsidy is created to funnel taxpayer money to CFL makers "for the poor".
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm all for being environmentally friendly but CFLs are nasty...look what you gotta do if you break one: http://www2.epa.gov/cfl/cleaning-broken-cfl
On the surface, this seems great...much more energy efficient (e.g. less electrical consumption, less energy converted to heat, etc.), good quality of light (finally), and they last a long time, but the mercury threat will spell the demise of these. Unfortunately, it will take a few decades of these being tossed into the waste stream and the obligatory horrific mercury-caused maladies as it "may be toxic to blood, kidneys, liver, brain, peripheral nervous system, central nervous system." Fantastic...environmentalists and politicians making decisions based on emotions rather than on science.
LED bulbs aren't much safer as they may contain "lead and nickel, the bulbs and their associated parts were also found to contain arsenic, copper, and other metals that have been linked to different cancers, neurological damage, kidney disease, hypertension, skin rashes and other illnesses in humans, and to ecological damage in waterways. UC Irvine’s Oladele Ogunseitan said that while breaking a single bulb and breathing its fumes would not automatically cause cancer, it could be the tipping point for an individual regularly exposed to another carcinogen."
I'm advocating torches and if you buy three torches at my online store you'll get a free pitch fork...perfect for the looming protests before the next election cycle...they make great stocking stuffers too...
...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.
So what magical incandescent do you use which approximate a black body spectrum?
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.
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.
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.
European here. Almost all the CFLs in use in this house are still the first ones that replaced the incandescent bulbs years ago. We've had some duds that lasted only one to two years, but even those saved their money's worth in electricity. The color is fine. No light without shadow, here's the long list of complaints: CFLs are typically not dimmable, and they take a split second to turn on.
Anyway, LEDs are even more efficient, they turn on instantly and quite a few are dimmable. None of the LEDs have stopped working yet (2 years since installation), so I can't give you a first-hand account of their failure rates or modes.
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/
On outside lights that I run 12 hours a day (er, "night"), LEDs had a very short payback on electricity savings. Six months, I believe. In fact, I later bought an EV and a large portion of my commuting electricity was covered by electricity savings from that very small investment. I am now converting over the rest of the house as bulbs die, prioritizing usage level and difficult to change light bulbs.
LEDs are already here for those who like to make investments instead of "consume" things.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
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.
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.
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'.
Maybe its something wacky about our power or something but CFLs don't work with crap where I live. They last less than half as long as other bulbs and don't seem to provide enough light unless they have been on for 5 minutes or more. I swear that we changed out all of the bulbs in a ceiling fan/4 port light and within a couple weeks half of them were dead and within a month so were the remaining two. I've had good luck with halogens and I'd like to try these new incandescent and maybe LED's in a few places but I won't touch CFLs. Also there are some applications where you WANT a light that generates heat, I know well houses that need just a little heat to keep from freezing in winter use a standard incandescent bulb as a heat source.
The UK has already been through this process. The new types of bulb have near zero quality control, and the life of the new bulbs vary somewhere between two months to one year on average, with frequent on/off cycles seemingly causing the greatest rate of failure.
Blair got the British to accept the change with little process by INVISIBLY (no public announcement of an actual government initiative was ever made) having the government massively subsidise the cost of the new bulbs, so for months they could be bought at 0.1 pounds (15 cents) a bulb, or less. Sensible households bought dozens or hundreds of them at these discounted prices.
The British 'willingness' to change their bulb habits could then be used as propaganda to 'persuade' other nations to follow suite, nations unlikely to realise how extensively Brits were bribed to change over.
In truth, once you lose access to decent filament bulbs in areas you need proper lighting, you should install a PROPER fluorescent stick in their place. These crappy plug-in direct replacements for filament bulbs are far dimmer than the filament types, cost far more, and have about the same lifetime as a decent filament brand. The new bulbs are great for lamps (less power/heat) and that's about it.
Also, there are no industry standards for the new bulbs. Their colour output (warmth/spectrum) varies incredibly between makes, and worse the time taken for them to reach adequate brightness after being switched on can range from less than a second to greater than a minute. Clearly, regulation should have ensured they were all 'INSTANT' on, and had accurate descriptions of their colour spectrum on the packaging.
Who are the puppet masters so powerful that they can pull strings like these, and eliminate sheeple access to a technology which has no current decent replacement? And why are these puppet masters able to assume that an army of vile shills will howl down any ordinary person who raises very reasonable concerns? Having the ability to comprehensively impose your will on the majority, without fear of consequences, is a mark of VERY bad times for Humans. The people in power don't give a flying f**k about which bulb you use, but they do care about practising master-slave power dynamics. They do care about ensuring their mainstream media propagandists and armies of vile shills can scream the sheeple into place. One day soon, it will be demanded of you and your family that you fully back one side in a World War. You are being conditioned for this day.
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.
They don't exist yet, except for commercial applications, where lit-walls are more common. The problem is that the "best" solution is often so divergant form incandescent that the market hasn't caught up, and it'll take 20-30 years for lighting to make best use of LEDs.
LEDs work with a greater number of smaller lights (like covering a ceiling with LED strips), but that's not "acceptable" to people, mainly for aestetic reasons.
Learn to love Alaska
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.
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.
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 we had pollution and carbon taxes, that might be a valid argument. But we don't, and so people have no reason to take into account all the damage they're causing. With such massive externalities, any appeal to free market principles is a straw man.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
" They argue that if the new ones really are so good, people will buy them on their own without being forced to do so."
The problem with this argument is that incandescents start out cheap, so the majority of people who're cash-strapped buy them because they can afford them. Without sales volume prices won't go down, and without prices going down the bottom 75% can't afford to buy them so the sales volume never goes up. It's the paradox: in the long run it's better to buy the $100 pair of boots that'll last you a decade, but if you only have $20 in your pocket you can't afford to buy that pair and have to settle for the $20 pair that you'll need to replace in a year. The only way out is to either get a windfall so you can afford to get the $100 pair that'll save you money in the long run, or for something to kick demand for the $100 pairs up enough that prices come down to what you can afford. And remember that most power companies have been offering assistance replacing incandescent bulbs with CFLs for a while now.
I started swapping out incandescents for CFLs about 7 years ago. I'd buy a couple and replace bulbs that were working, leaving the old bulbs on the shelf if I needed spares before I got more CFLs. With the CFLs lasting longer I don't need to buy replacements nearly as often, so the money I save can go to other things. I'll probably soon start the same process with LED bulbs, that way I can spread the cost out.
This assumes that the consumers will make smart choices with regard to the value of money now, and the value of money in the future. Looking at the use of credit cards in the USA, it is blindingly obvious that consumers do not make smart choices in this way.
I'm not a fan of legislating things off the shelves, but the argument that good products will succeed just because they're good, especially when the goodness drizzles in over some long time period... that's just not going to fly.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
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.
That "super expensive LED" costs about $13, and will save you a LOT of money over an incandescent over its lifetime. That's with a ten year warranty.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The Cree bulbs have a 10 year warranty. There goes your concern about mortality.
I bought a lot of Cree bulbs (love the daylight color); however, I'm under no illusion that I will ever be able to collect on a warranty.
Seriously? Digging out a store receipt from 9 years ago, sending a bulb in for replacement via USPS at a cost of $5 for postage (by then)? I'm rolling my eyes here...
The point (apparently) of this rule is to drive people to make the 'right' choice (i.e. non-incandescent bulb) by eliminating the 'wrong' choice. Of course, as TFA says, if the no-incandescent choice were really so obvious, no rule would be needed. I was enthusiastic about cfl bulbs but the enthusiasm died really quickly with real-world experience. CFL bulbs are dim initially, slow to power up to operating temperature, expensive, release dangerous waste mercury powder if broken indoors, create toxic waste when discarded, have a much-shorter life than advertised, and grow dimmer as they age. They probably also consume more power than advertised (based on all of the other false claims) but I have not measured that. Undoubtedly, though, they produce more light per watt than an incandescent bulb but even that comparison is not completely correct. If incandescent bulbs are in a heated space, then the 'waste' heat that they produce is still used by offsetting the amount of heat that must be added from the room heating system. For home use, incandescent bulbs still have a place, as many consumers know, and THAT is why they need to be banned, because otherwise, people would still use them. So, now that we have the George Bush ban on incandescent bulbs, we can look forward to more household toxic waste (much of it probably improperly disposed of...when did you last see your local hardware store collecting spent cfl bulbs?), more toxic dust released in living spaces, more spending by consumers on light bulbs, lower lighting levels in residences (leading to less reading, more eyestrain, etc.), and lights left on more to avoid waiting while the dim cfl bulb warms up after being powered on. Sounds like a typical federal government program...wasteful, ill-advised, unwanted, unneeded, and expensive.
I haven't gotten over being mad about them phasing out buggy whips yet!!
Yes, you could buy a pack of 10 incandescent bulbs for less up-front money than an LED that will outlast all of them, though my wife just bought some LED bulbs for $5 (I think they're 40-watt equivalent), and I've bought 60-watt equivalent bulbs for $10. But you can't run the bulbs for all that long without the cost of electricity making up for the lower purchase price, and for the guy in Wisconsin who considers the waste heat to be a feature, remember that that's only true half the year, and if you're in Wisconsin, you've probably got a heating system that's much more efficient than the electric heat I have here in California.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks