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Incandescent Bulbs Get a Reprieve
An anonymous reader writes "A new budget deal reached today by the U.S. Congress walks back the energy efficiency standards that would have forced the phase out of incandescent bulbs. 'These ideas were first enacted during the Bush administration, via the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. Incandescent bulbs were unable to meet the standards, so they would eventually be forced off the market in favor of LEDs and compact fluorescent bulbs. But Republicans have since soured on the bill, viewing it as an intrusion on the market and attempting to identify it with President Obama. Recent Congresses have tried many times to repeal the standards, but these have all been blocked. However, U.S. budgets are often used as a vehicle to get policies enacted that couldn't pass otherwise, since having an actual budget is considered too valuable to hold up over relatively minor disputes. The repeal of these standards got attached to the budget and will be passed into law with it.'"
I'm not sure whether to be happy about this or not. We need energy efficiency, but I still hate CFLs :)
Does this go all the way back to the 100W bulbs that were banned a while back? Or only the recent banning of >40W?
We are so fucked.
If they had waited to make the 100W bulbs illegal until there was a cost effective replacement LED I would have been okay with this. As it is the CFL have too many problems/restrictions. The 40W and 60W bulbs have LED equivalents that are decently priced (on sale) in my opinion, but not 100W bulbs yet.
That was all I really had to say. But the filter seems to want me to waste bandwidth, electricity, and my sanity by typing more shit down here. Say, did slashdot have anything to do with the lightbulb bill...
Just like the ethanol mandate there are always unintended consequences to government interference. In the case of CFL's, it's the spread of noxious poisons through our households, communities, and landfills. Not to mention that the claimed efficiencies and lifespans are grossly misleading due to very specific assumed patterns of use -- if you leave the lights on all the time, CFL's are great; but if you turn them on and off frequently, like as you walk into and out of rooms, then the advantage breaks down rapidly.
waste of time. Nobody cares.
That's good to hear. Each attic or rarely used closet doesn't need a $30 light bulb when a 30 cent light bulb will do just fine.
Using CFLs in such roles wastes 95% of the resources used to make them. There's a reason CFLs are so much more expensive -
that cost represents resources used in their manufacture, wasted resources for rarely used locations.
Also my ceiling fans have built in dimmers. Other than the one fan/light we use often, it would be stupid and wasteful to throw out all our ceiling
fans and buy entire new ones just to have a CFL capable dimmer.
With all the charm of prison block lighting, CFLs are a joke. Don't tell me the new ones have the same warmth and quality. They don't.
Light bulbs are technology. I'm shocked anyone would advocate for government (!) to have the power to outlaw technology they don't "like."
I am happy about the energy savings of my CFLs but very unhappy that some out of the box, some after just a month of use or so turn on dim and take several minutes to reach full brightness. I'm also VERY unhappy about the EPA cleanup for these bulbs. I broke a 150W equivalent one and following the instructions for cleanup was HORRIBLE. Who can leave the windows open for WEEKS? Come on. Use masking tape to pick the crap out of carpet, no vacuum for clean, etc. Not worth it.
Most of the heavily used areas in my home have already been retrofitted with CFL bulbs, but there are a few places where traditional incandescents make sense - the closet under the stairs, the furnace room and the basement storage room are all excellent candidates for cheap incandescent bulbs. In each case, the light is only turned on for a couple of hours each year and the cost of replacing those bulbs with LED or CFL equivalents far outstrips the potential energy savings pver the next few decades.
You could still purchase halogen bulbs and these new more efficient incandescent bulbs, e.g. uses 53 watts for the output of a 75 watt bulb.
I don't know, but it works for me.
CFLs aren't $30. I recently bought my first ever CFLs, and I'm positive I paid less than $30 for a 5 pack of them.
Your point stands but accurate numbers would make it stronger.
We needed to go ahead and bite the bullet on this one. All that wasted energy, continuing, is so stupid in these times of necessary conservation and dealing with climate change.
I hope all the energy wasters enjoy their free/dumb! (and higher energy bills than those of us who smartly made the switch)
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
This is real easy. All the incentives work, people who need them or are just clingy can stil get them. Everything works.
Although TFA hangs this on the Bush administration, both houses of congress were then controlled by Democrats, and that's who decided to kill the incandescent bulbs. Since the Republicans regained control of Congress, they have tried to repeal this garbage but the Democrat-controlled Senate refused.
Why not just gradually tax incandescent bulbs higher over time? Give the alternatives time to ramp up economies of scale.
And, that tax money could go toward renewable energy R&D.
Table-ized A.I.
I propose a new rider to be attached to the next budget that imposes a prison sentence on any politician attaching a rider to a budget that is not directly related to the national budget.
The US House of Representatives will formally rename the chamber Waffle House
a restaurant chain by the same name in southern states will challenge this under defamation grounds
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
1) Among other things, small things add up, so YES, you do need to replace all the little bulbs you rarely use. And over the course of their life, they would be cheaper. It is not a waste, it is a wise investment that saves you money over a period of 10 years - even if you rarely used the bulb. 2) as the law did not require replacement You could continue to use existing bulbs. 3) Dimmer bulbs were NEVER on the 'replace' list, just normal ones. You could have kept your fans along with the dimmer bulbs.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
This legislation does not repeal the new light bulb efficiency standards. It just de-funds them.
AFAIK, this means the law stands, but will not be enforced. Not the same as repeal.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/01/14/heres-a-breakdown-of-whats-in-congress-1-012-trillion-spending-bill/
It's efforts like this that make it hard to take Republicans seriously. They waste their time on this BS, opposing everything that Democrats possibly might like, simply to oppose it, whether or not it's in the GOP's or the nation's interests. The U.S. and the world have many serious problems; people are unemployed, critical needs are unfunded, climate change is costing money and lives and will cost much more; and the GOP has nothing to offer but temper-tantrums.
I used to vote for both parties, but our biggest national problem, more than the economy or security -- and probably the world's biggest problem -- is the Republican Party.
No sane manufacturer of incandescent bulbs hasn't already planned for their phase out, including shutting down manufacturing lines and laying off or transferring work force.
At best this leaves the market open for offshore (*cough* Chinese *cough*) manufacturers to keep shipping their bulbs. It does next to nothing for domestic manufacturers.
That still seems a bit expensive. I paid 30p for the last set of CFLs I bought, which at the exchange rate at the time was equivalent to about 50. The most expensive ones I bought were about a decade ago, and they were about £4, which was close to $8 then.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
You also forgot that tungsten bulbs have not been 30 cents in quite a while. As for his point, it only stands if you can't do math or know anything about pollition.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
But the last US incandescent bulb production line already closed down so well done on fighting unemployment there, chaps.
..where incandescent bulbs are banned.
The prices of bulbs will soar, even for the transition period and quality remains the same. The cheap LEDs are far from natural color, and compact fluorescent bulbs will not illuminate as much after a year or so.
Just look at us - and don't go down this route..
Conservatives against Conservation? Bro, do you even conserve?
While I've been using 90% CFL's for ten years, I have one fixture in the ceiling of a walk-in closet that needs an incandescent.
The bulb is inverted and is completely covered/enclosed. Can't use a CFL there [overheats the transformer]. Nor a halogen [too hot](?). Don't know about LED's or "high efficiency" incandescents, but the heat dissipation problem seems to be a factor. Can't change the fixture since I'm renting [and the landlord would be loathe to retrofit hundreds of units]. So, I don't have a ready replacement for my one remaining incandescent, so I stocked up on Jan 31. Prematurely, it seems.
While I like CFL's it seems most people don't. Particularly those families that have [small] children, since a broken CFL releases mercury, which is toxic. Also, I prefer the lumen output of a 100 watt equiv (27 watt CFL). Ultimately, I think LED's will be the long term solution. I did buy an LED just to try it, but the brightest I've found is barely the 60 watt equivalent.
This was one of the few cases where the regulation outpaced the technology.
Like a good neighbor, fsck is there
If you're going to directly copy and paste the words from an Ars Technica article (http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/01/as-part-of-budget-deal-congress-blacks-light-bulb-efficiency-standards), at least have the decency to credit it.
Get LED. They dim.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
That's good to hear. Each attic or rarely used closet doesn't need a $30 light bulb when a 30 cent light bulb will do just fine.
Using CFLs in such roles wastes 95% of the resources used to make them.
OR, it's an excellent use of them. Since they're used so rarely, it should be *years and years* before they need to be replaced... Also, a CFL or LED bulb for a closet or attic would cost less than half of your ridiculous statement of $30... Hell, the currently available Cree 60w 2700k bulbs for $10 at Home Depot would be fine for both cases, and CFL's are available for a few bucks (or less)...
Also my ceiling fans have built in dimmers. Other than the one fan/light we use often, it would be stupid and wasteful to throw out all our ceiling
fans and buy entire new ones just to have a CFL capable dimmer.
Dimmable CFL and LED bulbs exist -- my house has multiple of both, and they're the same price (or within a few dollars) of their non-dimmable counterparts.
bork bork bork!
Halogen bulbs use a vapor cycle where the tungsten burns off the filament, collects on the quartz envelope, then vaporizes off of the hot envelope and recollects on the filament. Used with a dimmer, the temperature won't be high enough to vaporize it and the lifecycle becomes tens of hours rather than thousands of hours.
Let me repeat that last part - they WILL last for 10,20, maybe 50 hours with a dimmer. Then they die.
The Federal Government has no constitutional authority to ban light bulbs.
Phillips has some LED bulbs that dim nicely. Now, I like the room I'm in to be warm so I don't care about waste heat, but if I did I'd go LED.
I can't think of any application where I'd choose a CFL.
It seems to me that if I was a factory owner making incandescent bulbs and I knew there was a cutoff date to be able to produce them, I'd have already stopped production, or at least planned the stoppage, so US congress changing the rules AFTER I've stopped isn't going to make me start production up again unless they are HUGELY profitable.
There have always been halogen replacement bulbs. CFL's and LED's are not the only alternative options.
* most of you, not all.
I replaced several CFLs, of two different brands, after they were in place for about a year and had been turned on for a total of maybe 20 minutes.
20 minutes of light for about $10-$15 is really, really wasteful.
"A wise investment that saves you money over a period of 10 years - even if you rarely used the bulb."
!?!? How much do you think several minutes of power costs? Apparently you think it costs thousands of dollars per hour to turn on a light?
A 50 watt bulb costs less than one penny per hour to operate. So that bulb in your attic costs less than a dollar for your entire life. Spending $10-$15 on an "energy efficient" bulb in your attic is dumb, dumb, dumb. That WASTES energy because it takes a lot more energy to make that CFL than the incandescent would have ever used.
> Other than the one fan/light we use often, it would be stupid and wasteful to throw out all our ceiling
fans and buy entire new ones just to have a CFL capable dimmer.
You do realize of course, that the wall switch and dimmer for your fan/light fixture can be replaced, without replacing the fan?
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I'm sick of these types of responses. Modern LEDs are $15 a bulb, save you [and the country] a hell of a lot of power and last virtually forever.
And the prices are still falling...
Have gnu, will travel.
There are dim-able LED lights, and I only know because I have a dim-able ceiling fan, and like most dim-able items, they tend to be hard on bulbs, which led me to look for a bulb that I'd not have to replace often. Before we were replacing a bulb every few months (the fan takes quite a few smaller bulbs), now we are 1 year without a bulb replacement. The LEDs don't dim quite as well as the incandescents, but it's better than nothing.
What decade are you getting your lightbulb pricing from? None of the relevant light technologies retail anywhere close to $30 in the applications you suggest. The CFL's you're railing against can be found for under $1 each at home depot. Even LED bulbs that will work in your dimmer are under $10. That might seem steep until you consider how long they last and how much energy you'll save. In a closet sure, go with incandescent. But even in the attic, where there is likely no external light I'd prefer the LED because even if a regular bulb burns out in 2-3 years thats a hassle that can easily be avoided. Your argument falls apart when considering a $6 bulb that can practically last forever.
Ok, let's do some math: I need to use a 60W light weekly for about 5 minutes. Assume $0.20/KWH, 20 years of use,
- A $1 incandescent will use 5.2 KWH total use over its lifespan. The cost is $1.04 over its lifetime in energy costs, for a total of $2.04 including the bulb.
- Compare to a 60W equivalent LED (9.5W @ $10/bulb). It will use 0.82 KWH over its lifespan. $0.16 in lifetime energy costs for a total of $10.16.
Why would I want to pay 5 times the cost in this situation? And what if I were talking about the same pattern of use with 10 or 20 bulbs, or in an industrial setting a few hundred or thousands of these?
If this were a completely uncommon case I wouldn't care, but it happens a lot for me and I imagine for others as well.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
But if the bulb in the fan blows, they'll need to replace it with a $1 halogen bulb, or possibly a $10 dimmable LED/CFL instead of the old $0.50 one.
It's still far more expensive than regular bulbs -- the (exact same) companies will drag ass lowering costs due to massively increasiing volumes and "competition", taking advantage of legal mandates for purchase.
Better to let people choose to buy or not based on cost savings arguments in the long run. I'd rather overpay because of my own short-sighted stupidity than government mandate.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
You do realize of course, that the wall switch and dimmer for your fan/light fixture can be replaced, without replacing the fan?
Really? Please come to my house and do so.
First of all, I've only found one fan module that doesn't support dimming. Works fine in my Hunter ceiling fans.
In my Hampton Bay fans, not a chance. The motor drive is on the same PCB as the light control, and there is no room in/near the light kit to even consider mounting the aftermarket module.
Frankly, if anyone has a solution that doesn't involve "remove and replace ceiling fans", I'm all ears.
And the worms ate into his brain.
There was always a loophole in the law to start with....if the filament has a little cage around it an called Rough Service...all wattages are available here. http://www.newcandescent.com/store/customer/ And the reason the law was put it was due to standard crony capitalist again. GE et al didnt think they were making enough pennies with the old version and had to much competition ....so they were the ones pushing the new lights so they could make more margin on each buls either CFL or LED.
And I didn't include CFLs because they aren't equivalent (especially for rare use, it takes too long for them to brighten) and for several reasons that have been posted in these comments that I won't repeat.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
> As for his point, it only stands if you can't do math or know anything about pollition.
You want MORE pollution? That's odd.
An incandescent bulb takes about 1 penny per hour of electricity to operate. If you use your attic light 5 minutes per month, that's 60 minutes per year, or 1 penny per year. One penny worth of power for the incandescent.
How much power do you think it takes to make a CFL, to refine the mercury and all of that?
Let me give you a hint - more than a penny worth. Much more.
Then, you have the toxins in the CFL, the heavy metals and such.
Fluorescent is a really good idea for the main kitchen light that you use all the time.
It's a stupendously bad idea for the attic, the hall closet, anywhere that's only used a few minutes per month.
If it's not used enough for it's efficiency to matter, fluorescent uses more energy (to make the lamp), it pollutes more, and it costs a LOT more. That extra 900% cost is money that could feed millions of starving children, or even something that would actually reduce pollution. Screwed into our attic light fixtures, that's millions of ten dollar bills being completed wasted.
Hat we really need is to pass a constitunal ammendment that would require all items in a bill be gremane to the stated purpose of the bill. Riders to a "must do" peice of megislation is the way most of the bullshit that gets enacted into a law. A proposed law should stand on its own merits.
you know you can get 6-8pks for CFL on Amazon for under $15.
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It seems to me that if I was a factory owner making incandescent bulbs and I knew there was a cutoff date to be able to produce them, I'd have already stopped production, or at least planned the stoppage, so US congress changing the rules AFTER I've stopped isn't going to make me start production up again unless they are HUGELY profitable.
If there's money to be made, a Chinese factory will quickly retool to ramp up production -- they may have already bought the equipment from a USA factory that stopped making bulbs in preparation for the ban.
That's fine, I'm sure someone who's less of a prima donna will be happy to take the market share.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
Why does a rarely-used closet need a light bulb at all?
Not counting the walk-in, only one closet in my house has a light bulb, and as it happens that's the office closet where I keep the printer, manuals and spare paper, so that light does get used fairly often (poor floor plan means its door blocks light from the window when open). It has a CFL ... which cost about $3 (if that), not $30.
And do you dim your fan often? You clearly don't understand the technology .. it's not that you need a CFL-capable dimmer, but rather a dimmer-capable CFL .. or LED.
Turn on your brains Americans.. don't just recycle what ever garbage you here and then act as if you know the " EPA cleanup rules"
http://www2.epa.gov/cfl/cleaning-broken-cfl
"Air out the room for 5-10 minutes by opening a window or door to the outdoor environment. "
"What if I can't follow all the recommended steps? or I cleaned up a CFL but didn't do it properly?
Don't be alarmed; these steps are only precautions that reflect best practices for cleaning up a broken CFL. Keep in mind that CFLs contain a very small amount of mercury -- less than 1/100th of the amount in a mercury thermometer. "
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I can power down, all my home entertainment gear, media servers because the ISPs in America can now dictate what I watch or read on the internet and legally block all peer to peer communications. I'll use the power savings to power a 100 watt incandescent reading lamp as corporate America hasn't banned the trade of used paper books yet.
Not only have the U.S. factories stopped production, but the equipment has been sold and shipped off-shore. The U.S. jobs for making these things are gone, they will not be coming back. We may end up shipping in foreign made bulbs, but since they were so inexpensive when U.S. made, expect to see the price increase and the balance of trade get worse.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
The nominal voltage in the US is 120 V and has been for a long time. But the comment is correct: efficiency and brightness is sacrificed for longevity. The brightness depends on the 3.45th power of the applied/design voltage ratio: se rerating formulas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamp_rerating
So, I've always wondered, in cold weather climates where you're already heating your house, in most cases 24/7, how inefficient are incandescent bulbs really? I mean, if you think about it, the wasted energy here is being turned into heat, which is, heating your home, albeit inefficiently -- but really who cares? You're after the light.
Lighting is relatively small in power usage in comparison to the good ol' electric clothes dryer. You don't see the environmentalists clambering about the virtues of clotheslines. Other "big hitters" are air conditioners. Heck, house sizes have also dramatically increased, increasing demand on air conditioning, heating and lighting. Most of this incandescent hoopla ignores the real energy wasters IMHO.
Well, I think you're right - incandescent are good for low-usage situations.
When you die, however, you can give your LED to your heirs :)
Have you tried this brand/model ? Normally I'm all for bright LED bulbs but even these I think are TOO bright ...
3M LED Advanced Light Bulb, Warm White, 60-Watt Equivalent, 800-Lumen
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BQ7NQLG/
I've used CFLs and I hate them. They take too long to start up (particularly if it's cold....and it is where I live). I've "turned on the light" and walked across the room in the dim light, pick something up, and left the room before I could see well. And the spectrum isn't as "clean" (they've gotten better but I still prefer a room lit with a filament.
Has anyone done an analysis of candlelight? Maybe we should move back to that....
I replaced nearly all incandescent bulbs in my house with bulbs similar to these from Lowe's the first few months after I bought it a few years ago. They cost a little under $3 per bulb, so you're off by an order of magnitude there.
They turn on instantly, and it wasn't difficult to get used to the color difference. Anymore, the color quality of incandescent looks odd to me.
My only real gripe is that when I started using CFLs, I learned that the equivalency rating to incandescents in power consumption just isn't right. A 13 watt CFL looks a hell of a lot dimmer than a 60 watt incandescent. Maybe it's just me. I've found 18 watt CFLs to be acceptable replacements for 60 watt incandescents.
You have a valid point about dimmers. That would be one application I'd probably keep incandescents for, but I don't have any dimmers in my house. If I were looking to purchase one, I'd seriously consider a CFL dimmer, but I haven't looked into how much more the upfront cost is.
That being said I don't need the federal government to get me to make decisions that will reduce my power bill, and I find it appalling that the federal government apparently has the power to prohibit the production of a product that does no more harm than eat a little over 3x as much power as a competing product.
What governments should be doing if they want to engage in market manipulation is subsidizing installation of solar panels for roofs. That would probably be more productive than forcing everyone who wants to keeps their incandescents to moving to a bulb that they're not happy with. Hell, it'd probably help the economy, too.
Another thing governments can do is investigate what we would need to build new fission power plants and move away from coal and natural gas. Perhaps some kind of anti-NIMBY legislation and some real critical thinking about how we safely build and operate fission reactors without allowing greed and bean counters from creating disasters.
A third alternative is stopping this nonsense with corn ethanol and promoting biodiesel. Petrolchemicals may be the best way to store energy, corn ethanol is not the best petrochemicals to use for that purpose, and maybe plants are the best way to harvest energy from the sun.
We're consuming energy at an increasing rate as a species, and we're only going to need more and more. That isn't a bad thing. The bad thing is being dependent on fossil fuels. Those are only renewable on scales measured in millions of years, which isn't of much utility to human progress.
Forcing people to use a bulb that, judging by comments here, even the thought of using causes visceral rage will probably be no more than a drop in the bucket compared the above.
At the end of the day, it's your power bill. It's not like you're somehow using incandescants and only being charged for the power consumption of CFLs. Hell, I'd bet certain individuals who seem to be physically incapable of turning a light off once they've left a room would see more of a savings from doing that than switching to CFLs.
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Wow, dose your fridge also regulate your stove? what other funky shit do you guys allow to be installed in house?
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Not all LED bulbs dim. I know this from direct experience.
I think it is because part of the design of the dimmer circuit is the resistance of an incandescent bulb.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
I still think the ban was a mistake... If bulbs were cheap with high quality light and burn life "laws" would be unnecessary and people would have every incentive in the world to purchase the new technology. Incandescents would disappear from shelves naturally as critical mass of consumers stopped buying.
If you want to effect change spend money on R&D into mass production of quantum dots, CNTs..etc. Make a better product people will want to buy.
Governments can play a constructive role with R&D initiatives, L-prize competitions, tax incentives... Before this blunt tool was enacted Incandescents were already well on their way out the door with a healthy competitive market driving change and innovation.
Personally I found a different solution to resolve my first world lightbulb crisis... being a diehard softwhite fan and all around hater of high temperature and or hollow spectrum bulbs.. I would buy a few dozen 25 watt softwhite's to replace 60's...The 25's are not banned and so I would have no trouble buying again.
It cut my energy usage in more than half in the few rooms without CFLs where I actually care about quality of light without sacrificing color/style. Lower output turned out just fine or slightly better for areas they were used.
I hope one day all of this incandescent/CFL/LED phosphor shit will be replaced with something better in every aspect.
> I'm also VERY unhappy about the EPA cleanup for these bulbs.
O RLY?
> I broke a 150W equivalent one and following the instructions for cleanup was HORRIBLE. Who can leave the windows open for WEEKS? Come on.
That is an interesting use of the word "weeks" with which I was previously unfamiliar.
The instructions are horrible? You need to keep the windows open for weeks? Which EPA CFL cleanup instructions are you unhappy with? Certainly not these:
http://www2.epa.gov/cfl/cleaning-broken-cfl
http://www2.epa.gov/cfl/cleaning-broken-cfl-0
Directly copied from the article:
and if you have to vacuum:
Now keep in mind that cleanup instructions, risks, cautionary notices, etc. such as this border on paranoia, because it is all about CYA to avoid civil lawsuits.
Take cellphone warnings on fuel pumps for example: they "forbid" the use of cellphones near the pump, even though the risks are based on urban legends. Why? Because people will sue the gas station if they start a fire while they happen to be on the phone (whether by smoking or electrostatic discharge, etc) at the pump, then in civil court blame the cellphone and the facility for not posting warnings, and in a civil trial the burden of proof is often on the defendant so they have to pay out. With this ridiculous scenario lawyers dream up based on equally ridiculous suits in the past, they have the company post these ridiculous warnings on the pumps, to protect themselves against this sort of liability.
My point is, the EPA instructions are not nearly as bad as you made them out to be, and even as paranoid as they are (minutes to hours to air out the room) they are overly cautious to protect against lawsuits. I can think of a scenario for CFLs:
Suzie is replacing a compact fluorescent light bulb (her home is very modern, you see - central HVAC, "green" lighting throughout, tight construction) and the central heat is on as her newborn baby Johnny is sleeping soundly two rooms away. She is still a little sore from labor and felt a twinge of pain and jerked a little. The new CFL slips from her hand and shatters when it hits the floor. She dutifully cleans up the light bulb, throws it in the trash and never gives it a second thought, until 24 to 30 months later when she notices her precious little snowflake doesn't seem to be hitting certain milestones, and seems withdrawn at times, but very prone to repeated habits and regular tantrums when Suzie doesn't get him fed on time, or to bed on time. Concerned, she takes little Johnny to the doctor, and the child is diagnosed autistic. Suddenly Suzie remembers Jenny McCarthy rambling on about mercury and vaccines and autism, and the light bulb goes on - the EPA must be at fault! CFLs have mercury, she, being a klutz, broke one as her infant child slept in his crib, and followed the cleanup instructions. They never mentioned airing out the room or shutting down the HVAC, so clearly the EPA is to blame for her precious snowflake's being autistic. THE EPA MUST PAY!!! (Never mind that if it was caused by mercury, it was more likely the mercury she played with as a child but the fact that she got into her older brother's chemistry kit and suffered heavy metal poisoning symptoms was never mentioned in court)
Somewhere, some EPA staff lawyer thought about that scenario or one like it, and came up with the overly-cautious cleanup instructions as a CYA measure. Even so, again, it is nowhere near as bad as you make it out to be.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
This does make the assumption that you don't want the heat. In some places (such as where I live), I use that heat for half the year.
I had to chuckle when they moved to LEDs to save all that money on street lights, and then ended up paying for trucks and drivers to clean the snow off them.
BTW... The toxic bulbs are not associated with the teleprompter-to-voice filter called Obama but with the scum that runs him and wants to give us more toxic mercury in our lives to choke on.
I added "or less" to my statement. I *assumed* that'd cover situations like online pricing...
bork bork bork!
I don't know where you live but I can buy a 3 pack of 60w tungsten bulbs at every dollar store I've ever been to. http://www.dollartree.com/household/auto-home-improvement/lightbulbs-lighting/Sunbeam-Long-Life-60-Watt-Light-Bulbs-3-ct-Packs/500c550c557p324531/index.pro
CFLs don't dim, cost a lot, contaminate the place when not if they break in your place. The light is ugly and the radio interference makes TV and radio reception terrible. LEDs cost a ton compared to cheap incandescents. About fifteen dollars vs twenty cents a bulb.
This is all about govt and industry crnyism to screw the consumer by forcing high margin bulbs.
Using CFLs in such roles wastes 95% of the resources used to make them
Then get LED bulbs, they won't degrade over time while switched off so it should last plenty long enough to make the investment worthwhile.
it would be stupid and wasteful to throw out all our ceiling
fans and buy entire new ones just to have a CFL capable dimmer
You do know you can get CFL and LED bulbs that are compatible with regular dimmers right?
You have put the cart before the horse. Government depends on society, people, and business providing products and services. We pay taxes and suffer interference with our lives, freedom, and the pursuit of happiness. The US constitution, widely imitated by other nations, provided for minimal government and led to decades of prosperity and happiness for American colonials. As time passed, the cancer of government grew, and along with it, an increasingly lazy and irresponsible public ignored the peril. Now, we see people so ignorant of human history that they foolishly claim in public forums that government is necessary for anything beyond providing a common defense and preserving domestic order. Thomas Paine would be amazed at the lack of "Common Sense." All of the benefits you describe above, without exception, were provided by the private sector until government moved in and took over. If you want to live like a troglodyte, just keep on parroting government propaganda and buying in to their nihilistically incompetent schemes.
Those with power have always lorded it over those without, regardless of the form of government. As such government is not a cancer, it is exactly what those with power have chosen it to be. The founding fathers valued freedom from the tyranny of the king and that is the government they created. After the depression, those in power wanted to protect against monopolies and corruption and that was the focus of government. In the 60s, those with power, felt the government should solve many of the countries social problems and that is the government they created. Today's people in power are mainly large capitalists and they are shaping the government towards their values.
What al lof that means is that unless you are the ones in power, you will always be on the outside and the government will be seen as infringing on your rights. Government is not the problem. The people running the government (both elected officials and those that support them) are.
Why do you need to throw that LED bulb out after 20 years though? Just keep using it if you're worried about wasting your $10.
Get LED bulbs instead, they're better.
Now how about repealing the OTHER mistakes of the Bush Administration?
For 88 cents at the local Jewel's. Using my "new math", they're 22 cents a piece. And actually, I bought 20 packs of them, thinking they were going the way of the dodo. This is good news indeed!
> 80's over hear
Are you trying to say "80s over here"?
When two of every three words you say are wrong, you may not be as smart as you think you are.
I doubt we will see fusion or thorium power anytime soon so why not change individual habits to reduce co2 footprint that comes with energy consumption. I would like to see scientist come up with alternatives to ovens, washing machines, microwaves, computers, lightbulbs, etc... that consume between deciwatt to milliwatt power so that way we can switch our national grid over to solar and wind power and as well as individuals using their own solar(but with better storage) instead of relying on the national grid. Imagine running all your lights, tv's, computers, washing machine, refrigerator,etc.. at the same time at a total of 5-50 watts per hour just on a single solar panel.
We do heat our houses 9 months out of the year. And for those other 3 months our basements are too cold to spend any time in.
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
Am I crazy, or do even LED lights have a bit of a flicker? It's fine when I'm looking straight at them, but during saccades suddenly I experience the flicker. In a room lit by LEDs I quickly get a headache, which came as a surprise to me since I thought LEDs could finally deliver on what CFLs can't. So sadly for myself I still haven't been able to use anything other than incandescent, although I've put in CFL or LED lights in places like the entranceway where I won't be spending extended periods of time.
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
It depends on the situation. The primary use may not exist 20 years from now. The building may not exist or may be remodeled in the next 20 years.
Considering both bulbs should last hundreds of years under that much usage, I calculate that I wouldn't break even with an LED setup for around 227 years. So unless I plan for my great-great-great-great-great-grandkids to use these bulbs, I don't think it's worth it.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
Not only did they get rid of the phase out of incandescent light bulbs, they defunded the West Coast high speed rail.
Trying to drive us back to the 17th Century, yet again.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
How about this. I live in a winter state.
That energy that comes off as waste heat is not actually wasted. It is integral to the heating of my home. During the summer we use LED/CFLs but the second it's winter we switch right back to incandescent bulbs.
On average we save about $200-$300 on utility bills during the winter because using CFLs/LEDs becomes inefficient cost wise when my heat has to run longer.
A 60W bulb in a lamp near where you are sitting can make the difference between slightly chilly and needing to turn up the heat.
I think they should enact it in states that don't have winter but leave us snow dwellers alone. We rely on those little heat lamps.
"and attempting to identify it with President Obama."
It is an intrusion on the market. If people want them they should be able to get them - let the market decide.
In terms of identifying it with Obama, OP, I see what you did there. Pretty snarky there, aren't you? Not everything is about your fucking Messiah.
Now don't forget to call me a racist for criticizing you.
Jackass.
So now, AFTER the last manufacturer of incandescent bulbs in America has closed up shop they want to use some special rules or tricks to make them legal again. Too little too late. This legislation is a perfect example of how BOTH parties are lost to the average people. I'm very Conservative and was critical of Bush for signing this (as if he would have heard or cared that I was critical of anything he did) along with the rest of the RINO Republicans that went along on this. We used to have a thing called 'Free Markets' in this country and this law is just a shining example of how the Government is actually controlling the marketplace. In a few more years LED's will be effective AND affordable, there was no harm in letting those come to market on their own. However, there is harm in forcing the mercury laden CFL's into the marketplace. Now we have homes filled with little toxic bombs just waiting to contaminate (heart-string tug) our kids with mercury.
The key is to use the right bulb for the right purpose.
An incandescent produces 10% light, and 90% heat (roughly) based on energy input. That's really bad on a porch lamp, or in an uninsulated area. However, if you live in a typical Northern climate, that heat will be in your house, offsetting your heating costs. In fact, in Germany, where incandescent bulbs were banned years ago, they started to be marketed as "Light Emitting Heaters".
There is another problem here, that is the fact that any of these sorts of "good for society" laws are usually the product of extreme lobbying. The CFL industry lobbied hard in Washington, took the right folks out to the right places, and viola incandescents get banned.
no, most LED bulbs are not designed for dimmer, and the proper dimmer depends on the type of LED bulb. LED bulbs and dimmers both can be degraded or destroyed with wrong combination. it's a complicated subject:
http://www.environmentallights.com/files/documents/How_to_Choose_the_Best_Dimmer_for_a_bulb.pdf
A real conservative would never use anything other than Carbon Arc lights.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
bad advice, normal dimmers are not designed for LED at all and will degrade them (and LED can be ruined by them, see the link).
he's better off getting industrial incandescent and using with dimmer
http://www.environmentallights.com/files/documents/How_to_Choose_the_Best_Dimmer_for_a_bulb.pdf
funny the websites for walmart and home depot trumpet the $1 bulb but going to the store they instead have crap ecosmart $2.20 ones. CFL designed to dim don't dim worth a darn, I've tried that. LED with the right dimmer is ok, but that costs money to replace tunsten dimmer.
Make each bill stand (or fall) on it's own.
Make it a capital, death penalty attached offense to try and tack things on to the bills.
I don't see where in the US Constitution the US Congress has the authority do dictate which light bulbs I can purchase. I'm sure someone reading this is screaming "interstate commerce clause!" at their computer screen right now. Even with that clause the commerce must be interstate in nature. The laws are written so broadly that the federal government will declare a light bulb is part of interstate commerce, even if used only in the state it was manufactured, because it competes with CFL bulbs produced somewhere else.
I'm convinced that the federal government is more concerned about legislating my choices away than it is about saving the environment. If they were concerned about the carbon emitted from household lighting then they'd be building a new nuclear power plant every month. Nuclear power produces very little carbon and has an effect on all electricity, not just for lighting.
I'm sure someone is now screaming "nuclear waste!" at their computer screen right now. Thing is that modern nuclear reactors actually reduce the total radiation in the world. The old designs create the waste, we'd get rid of that waste if we built new reactors.
The linked article likes to place blame on one political party over the other. As far as I'm concerned the existence of any political party is dangerous and all should be done away with, all political parties share the blame here.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Lightbulb standards are not the proper province of the Federal government; no power enumerated under the Constitution grants such authority nor can be stretched into granting such authority.
LEDs and (my favorite) magnetic resonance bulbs are superb technologies and I have several in my off-grid house precisely because they are so energy efficient. I can afford them. What do the greenies who insist that $30 light bulbs be mandated want to say to the woman with two kids barely getting by on a few hundred dollars a month? They need to be able to buy cheaper lighting than that.
Lighting technology will advance, and over time all bulbs (even incandescents) will become more efficient. Keep the government out of it.
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
How long do you thing the electronics in that CFL are really going to last? How many solid state devices costing less than $10 and subject to heavy heat cycling do you have in your house from 1994 that still work?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Dimmable LEDs - now you ARE talking real money. And shitty dimming, unless you like the 10% min light output and freakishly cool color temperature for a light that's barely on.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Horse shit. Sense of proportion. GROW ONE.
If you have ten 3 watt incandescent night lights and burn them 8 hours per day, that amounts to - deep breath now - 87.6 kWh per year, which with my comparatively high electrioc rate of 22 cents per kWh amounts to - oh, gasp - 19 cents. It isn't worth even 5 seconds of my time to shop for 1/2 watt LED night lights to save less than a goddam quarter per year.
Ten 100 watt bulbs used 20 minutes a day is only 60.8 kWh (13 cents) per year. Again, utterly negligible. The light in the furnace room, the light over the pump for the water well down cellar, the light over the breaker panel, the light in the closet, and various other lights I have are all used less than 20 minutes per day - vastly less for many of them. I probably use the incandescants on both sides of the mirror in the bathroom no more than 20 minutes a day also.
19 cents is literally lost in the noise by a factor of at LEAST 10, even to a minimum wage individual. And here is that sense of proportion thing. It might be news to you, but 300 million times 19 cents per year STILL isn't worth a bucket of warm spit to 300 million people.
I wonder if it takes more energy to make a CFL/LED bulb than it is supposed to save. It doesn't do much good for a bulb to be 10x more efficient if it cost 10x more in energy to produce.
I for one am very happy about this. CFLs are presented as a benefit for the environment, but does anyone think most bulbs are disposed of properly? How many are brought back to Home Depot, for instance? Bottom line for me is the mercury. I don't like it near my children. A broken bulb is a nightmare...who wants to deal with this?: http://www2.epa.gov/cfl/cleaning-broken-cfl-0.
Moreover, I think the difference in efficiency presented always overlooks something important: In colder climates especially, much of the time the "inefficient" incandescent bulb's "wasted energy" is not wasted at all -- it is radiated as heat that helps to warm your home.
> It would take a truly overwhelming number of bulbs to impact anything significantly.
Is a billion CFLs enough to be a problem? That would be the direct result of mandating that everyone use them.
On the other hand, that billion could be cut in half with no negative consequences if people choose to use fluorescent in kitchen, while the spare bedroom light that is on for minutes per year gets a cheap (and clean) incandescent.
I was president of a condo association for 5 years. I made the costly mistake of replacing all outside incandescent lights with CFLs:
- all CFLs, regardless of brand, failed within two years. Outdoors CFLs don't last as long as the cheapest incandescents, despite all caterwauling to the contrary. Please don't tell me about your special brand: I've tried it and it failed prematurely.Please don't tell me to return them to the store under the 3-year guarantee: if I did that all my time/gas would be spent driving to/from Home Depot/Lowe's/Light Store and changing bulbs.
- CFLs were frequently stolen. This was an unanticipated cost.
LEDs are even worse: thieves can spot an LED from 100 yards away and will stop at nothing to steal them (since they're so damn expensive). Great to spend $300 replacing a weatherproof floodlight receptacle and the electrical tubing because a thief tore it off an outside wall to get a $50 LED floodlight.
CFLs break frequently when used in an outdoor environment. This was especially true in the carport area, where taller delivery/postal/visitor SUVs and trucks would back into a spot and break the bulb, scattering fragments over the vehicle roof and an area larger than the parking space. Cleanup consists of sweeping a strip of driveway and searching for the SUV that has the broken bulb fragments atop it. This is not nearly so worrisome for an incandescent as for the mercury-laden CFL. When one considers that most SUVs belong to parents with children, who are the most likely to be adversely affected by mercury, this is even more troublesome.
After 3 years I gave up and went back to incandescents, which we will use forever. Savings due to CFLs low electrical usage are not recovered when you include failure and theft in the equation. In fact, incandescents are cheaper even when you include the cost of the rugged models.
There are good reasons why incandescents have been used for so long. And, as others note, you can heat the chicken coop, keep pipes warm, and do other useful tasks with incandescents. CFLs were a political solution to a non-problem.
Who cares as long as he's paying for it? The strain caused by his usage should be reflected in his bill, thus he and his ilk end up paying for a slightly beefier power grid.
That is, if government regulation/pricing isn't blocking the companies from doing the necessary work/expansion.
Besides, residential power usage has been falling for quite some time, indicating to me that people ARE replacing their power hungry appliances with ones of less appetite. I was surprised when my LCD TV turned out to be using more power per square inch of screen than my old CRT, but LED TVs cut power usage quite a bit themselves. People moving from desktop computers to laptops to tablets, with a power use drop each step. MOST people I know have at least partially converted to CFL/LED* lighting, with only low usage areas remaining.
Note: Aside from 'severe duty' bulbs in things like the oven I have CFLs all through my house except for 1 closet and the crawlspace, which will probably be replaced by LED lights when the bulbs(finally) go. Note: Average usage for those lights are less than 1 hour/month.
*Though I think that fixtures designed for the different light types is better than plugging in adapting bulbs.
I don't read AC A human right
Our _entire electrical grid_ out here (rural area, but over 400,000 people serviced) fluctuates enough to kill CFLs. It's awful.
I used to do extremely sensitive neurological monitoring. We could deal with the consistent 60 cycle from the incandescent bulbs, but the erratic and unsynchronized high frequency electrical noise from the CFL's creeeping down all the ground planes in the room, especially in electrically and acoustically shielded spaces in which we were connecting to human nervous systems, was *NASTY* to deal with. Not that 60 volts isn't pernicious and tends to creep through the power lines into ghe ground planes, but that was consistent and could be recorded and factored out of our measurements.
The LED bulbs.... I never got to play with.
The last time there was a similar subject on /. I missed the opportunity to talk about Limitlessled LED lamps. Bought a set, and it's really good: convenient, nice, efficient, practical. Voilà.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
A CFL costs less than $2, and nothing is wasted by infrequently using them. Their payback time is just on the order of months or years, instead of the few or weeks it would be in a more frequently lit location.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Low efficiency bulbs have been banned in Oz for ages. Before the ban there was the same "Oh the poison", "They don't last", "The colour is wrong" hoopla. Nowdays nobody cares, the replacement bulbs are cheap to buy, save on the power bills and work well.
I believe you're referring to color temperature. You can look for LED light bulbs that are "warm white" instead of the cold white color you appear to currently have. All sorts of vendors sell cheap LED RGB light bulbs with remotes to adjust the color, too.
I really can't understand this Rider!
I just can't understand what there is to be gained from the Incandescent bulb lobby?
Republicans are very very odd. What can be gained from this?
yeah, I mean, it's not like anyone would shut down the whole government just because they didn't get what they want
that'd just be nuts
How many solid state devices costing less than $10 and subject to heavy heat cycling do you have in your house from 1994 that still work?
I thought you said you'd only be using this bulb once a week for 5 minutes? I've subjected some of my high-power LED spotlights to far more extreme thermal cycling than that already (in a high-humidity environment) without issue. You can't have it both ways, you can't complain that an occasional use bulb is a waste of money because it will fail with heavy use.
I appreciate your desire to save energy and the bulbs that do so should be for sale. However as a person who has other uses for the old Edison designed lights, maybe I could put in a word for them. I raise chickens. Incondescent lights work for raising chickens and the others don't. Light isn't the only issue. The very thing you are complaining about, heat is the solution here. But I am not the only person that has similar needs. Most homes in the USA rely on incondescent light to prevent mold and cause air changes. I know nobody is thinking about this now but honestly it isn't fun if you get sick because your home gets moldy. Homes built since about 1930 to the present have built into their design the fact that the heat from these lights will allow them to keep dry. It is part of the building codes and even the basic function of the homes. We really do not even know how to build a home that doesn't rely on this fact. Of course nobody said so when they built, it was like the scour rate in plumbing that is in the design of city sewers. If you don't flush those 2.3 gallons of water the stuff doesn't arrive reliably at the sewer treatment plant and the sewer plugs up. Those high efficiency toilets are highly efficient at causing lots of work for sewer service crews.
There are many arguments going on about how to do things but seldom do they account for anything but the key hole view of a problem It is like the blind men assessing an elephant story. All those electrical savings you want~~ guess what, if you cut your use, since the generation of electricity is largely based on fixed costs, you will use less energy and the rates will go up to pay for the generators, lines, transformers etc. A False economy here will not work.
The "anonymous reader" is an obvious idiot who writes slanted articles with the usual whiny Republicans bad, Obama good take. "soured by Republicans...identify it with President Obama."
About the only truth is that the initial act was put in place by Bush in 2007. And regarding that an actual budget is considered "too valuable", the U.S. hasn't had an actual budget the entire time Obama has been in office.
Try to fact check your articles before posting them as slashdot is starting to look as bad as the tabloids and TMZ in regard to actual news.
This is retarded. Why are we still letting a fucktard like Michele Bachmann drive this conversation. She knows NOTHING.
1) Among other things, small things add up, so YES, you do need to replace all the little bulbs you rarely use. And over the course of their life, they would be cheaper. It is not a waste, it is a wise investment that saves you money over a period of 10 years - even if you rarely used the bulb.
I replaced eight old bulbs with CFLs four years ago. I can't remember how much they cost, but I have the feeling that it was somewhere around 4.50 euros each back then. They were Phillips 10 year / 10000 hour bulbs.
Now, four years later four of the eight ten-year bulbs are gone. Three have burned out, and I broke the fourth by accident releasing that tiny amount of mercury inside it into my living room.
Yeah, those bulbs certainly saved me money.
I see a lot of talk about policy and efficiency, but none of those address why I don't replace incandescent bulbs. I want to switch, and have tried several times, but the LED and CFL bulbs give me a headache. I hear "light quality" given as a reason for not switching more often than cost or other technical issues. Some may say it's good enough, and that may be for them. Maybe it shouldn't be an issue, but I hear enough people talk about it to think it is. That's actually my beef with the legislation banning incandescent bulbs. It's not technical, environmental, economic or political, but competitive: if incandescents are banned, then the LED and CFL manufacturers have no incentive to improve.
"Small things add up" is one of the worst fallacies uttered by people trying to be environmentalists. *Some* small things add up and others don't. You have to actually do the math, not just claim that people should do anything and everything that intuitively seems like it's "green".
Case in point, this whole argument about light bulbs is bordering on silly because lighting now constitutes only 11% household energy usage (on average, in the US): http://www1.eere.energy.gov/consumer/tips/m/home_energy.html . And many people use more energy driving their car than is used in their household, not to mention indirect source of energy usage such as the electricity that goes into making consumer products. Splitting hairs over whether or not someone is saving an extra 1% of 11% of minority of their energy budget is foolish.
Things that save more energy for the typical person than *any* decision about lighting, in increasing order of savings:
* Line dry your clothes instead of using an electric dryer (50% more savings)
* Insulate your house properly
* Drive 55 instead of speeding in the typical fashion
* Don't fly (2x the savings)
* Don't air condition
* Don't eat meat
* Drive car with good gas mileage instead of a typical car
* Commute via any method other than driving a car by yourself (10x the savings)
* Don't drive at all (15x the savings)
* Don't have another child (100x the savings)
Things that save more energy than any nuanced decision about lighting, such as CFL vs. LED:
* Unplug unused devices with bad transformers when not in use
* Turn your computer off at night
* Lower your thermostat by 1 degree in the winter or raise it 1/4 of a degree in the summer
* Wash your clothes in cold water
* Leave sufficient air space around your refrigerator
In contrast, people trying to save energy without doing math hold up "every little bit helps" and suggest things with absurdly tiny savings like:
* Always let hot food cool on the counter before putting it in the fridge (0.1% the savings of incandescent vs. LED/CFL)
* Dust your light bulbs (0.5% the savings under certain assumptions left as an exercise to the reader)
Good luck finding a hundreds of such things that can "add up" to significant savings, which will still be only a tenth of the difference between commuting to work by car or public transportation. People do a few of these, not hundreds or thousands, then they feel smugly confident that they are good green citizens and drive their car one extra mile, totally wiping out their savings.
Worse, people make lists of "small things that add up" that *waste* energy, like suggesting that you use your computer for an hour to do some task rather than using a single sheet of paper. The only redeeming fact about these is that the wastes are typically tiny, just like the savings above.
Alright! Now I won't have to find a new heat source of heat for my chicken incubator.
The factories are closed. There is no undo button.
How many manufacturers have already stopped production of incandescent bulbs? And how many will retool and start again. A great example of the Gov jerking people and companies around, politics at its worst.
SSL product development has been stunningly innovative, and prices for them because of the competition spurned in part by the incandescent phase-out has made them more affordable to consumers.
CFL's are a technology that's reached it's limit, and is destined to become extinct. They were an OK transition option, but with LED drop-in replacements plummeting in price and the range of options increased to such a remarkable array, it makes no sense to use a CFL now for anything.
And people who claim they need the warmth of incandescents are idiots. A fragile glass light bulb is not a heating blanket or a space heater or pipe wrap, there is not a single application for the heat from an incandescent that isn't better served with other products designed for their respective specific purposes.
With the notable exception of a vintage Easy Bake oven.
As i'm living in finland, and we have the same stupid laws incoming....
The energy put out by the bulb is not wasted, it helps heat the house, which i have to do anyway 10 months per year.
The other 2 months, it's daylight 20+hours per day, so i don't need lamps anyway.
Make a man a fire and he will be warm for a day, set a man on fire and he will be warm for the rest of his life
Get some full spectrum daylight CFLs (or LEDs) and enjoy natural, white light.
Your entire post is stupid and relies on ludicrous strawmen. I have literally never heard an environmentalist (or anyone, for that matter) advocate saving energy by using a computer for an hour instead of a sheet of paper. That is a thing which did not happen.
Incandescent light bulbs are in fact pretty wasteful of energy and it is in fact possible to reduce that by switching to other technologies and it is in fact possible to do so as a nation without severe disruptions to the economy (unlike many of your examples of changes with higher impact). That means it is low hanging fruit, and as such is entirely appropriate for people who call themselves environmentalists to make it an issue.
So shut the fuck up and stop being smug about how much smarter you are than the dumb greenies. You're not actually smart, you don't have clever insights to offer, you're just another tribalistic moron who decided he doesn't like the environmentalist tribe and is seeking to justify the hate. The worst thing about your particular flavor of bullshit is that (unlike many who take positions like this) you actually seem to be aware that environmentalism is a positive thing, but you're so devoted to bashing those environmentalists that you've decided to twist their support for better lightbulbs into a reason to bash them, even though better lightbulbs are a legitimate part of a comprehensive environmental policy.
I use 100 watt incandescent bulbs in my garage every winter to add warmth. They don't keep it room tempature here in Colorado, but at least nothing freezes. I was so upset with this ridiculous intrusion into my life by the government I went out and bought enough for 10 to 15 years.
A computer may beat me at Chess, but I always win at Kickboxing.
Your math is off by 2 orders of magnitude.
If you use CFLs, be assured that familiar dark spot will appear. Then the problems start arising in the CFL starting. LEDs have a tremendous MTBF. I'm talking about the LED element itself. Most current LED failures come from lousy power conversion supplies. When competition irons that out, Incandescent and CFLs will die in the future. Who cares about what the law says? It's the money and efficiency that will win regardless of the Morons on the hill in DC. If you like CFL's go out and buy a Plasma TV. Same technologies as CFJ but different gases. Try a CFJ in cold weather. They will pepper spot all over. Remember the dark spots on tubes, probably not, but the dark spots are called the Edison effect. A device to absorb these impurities in fluorescent devices were called 'Getters'. They weren't perfect, as I'm sure we've all seen. LEDs, 'Light Emitting Diodes', are diode junctions that use Gallium Arsenide and other chemical 'doping' to create the LED emit light. Note that the voltage used to excite LEDs are usually 2 volts. FYI, it takes alot less power to reduce the line voltage and drive a low current drain device, LEDs, than it does does to generate a high starting voltage to excite the gas in CFL devices. That means there is a high start up current surge to start the gas glowing. Incandescent lamps are basically a resistor element, lamp filament, that gives off that familiar power sucking light bulb. I cut a few corners here but I tried not to be overwhelming . So, buy what you like, I'll take LEDs anytime. BTW, LEDs work even better in the cold. They were developed at low temperatures and doped to operate at warmer temperatures. If you have a knowledgeable friend, Take a low emission LED with a 1.2K 1/4 watt series resistor, any standard 1.6 volt battery and place in a styrofoam cup with a 1/2 inch of Liquid Nitrogen. It'll light up the cup like a bright Chinese Lantern. Tnx for the ramble.
In my previous post I used some poor English and CFJ references should read CFLs. I don't live in Finland, I live in the Tropical Alaskan Interior. 1st day above 20 below in a week. I wouldn't - couldn't heat my home with electric. We have the highest power bills in the US. I live 11.5 kM SSE of Fairbanks, Alaska. We us heating oil, but we have a backup generator and wood stove. You must have cheap electricity in Finland. Also, electric heat is soooooooooo dry, you can shuffle your feet and draw a dandy spark touching door knobs, etc. Be your own Van de Graaff generator.
If you use CFLs, be assured that familiar dark spot will appear. Then the problems start arising in the CFL starting. LEDs have a tremendous MTBF. I'm talking about the LED element itself. Most current LED failures come from lousy power conversion supplies. When competition irons that out, Incandescent and CFLs will die in the future. Who cares about what the law says? It's the money and efficiency that will win regardless of the Morons on the hill in DC. If you like CFL's go out and buy a Plasma TV. Same technologies as CFJ but different gases. Try a CFJ in cold weather. They will pepper spot all over. Remember the dark spots on tubes, probably not, but the dark spots are called the Edison effect. A device to absorb these impurities in fluorescent devices were called 'Getters'. They weren't perfect, as I'm sure we've all seen. LEDs, 'Light Emitting Diodes', are diode junctions that use Gallium Arsenide and other chemical 'doping' to create the LED emit light. Note that the voltage used to excite LEDs are usually 2 volts. FYI, it takes alot less power to reduce the line voltage and drive a low current drain device, LEDs, than it does does to generate a high starting voltage to excite the gas in CFL devices. That means there is a high start up current surge to start the gas glowing. Incandescent lamps are basically a resistor element, lamp filament, that gives off that familiar power sucking light bulb. I cut a few corners here but I tried not to be overwhelming . So, buy what you like, I'll take LEDs anytime. BTW, LEDs work even better in the cold. They were developed at low temperatures and doped to operate at warmer temperatures. If you have a knowledgeable friend, Take a low emission LED with a 1.2K 1/4 watt series resistor, any standard 1.6 volt battery and place in a styrofoam cup with a 1/2 inch of Liquid Nitrogen. It'll light up the cup like a bright Chinese Lantern. Tnx for the ramble.
In my previous post I used some poor English and CFJ references should read CFLs. I don't live in Finland, I live in the Tropical Alaskan Interior. 1st day above 20 below in a week. I wouldn't - couldn't heat my home with electric. We have the highest power bills in the US. I live 11.5 kM SSE of Fairbanks, Alaska. We us heating oil, but we have a backup generator and wood stove. You must have cheap electricity in Finland. Also, electric heat is soooooooooo dry, you can shuffle your feet and draw a dandy spark touching door knobs, etc. Be your own Van de Graaff generator.
Tried Philips latest LED EQ60W for a 4 fixture overhead light. Bulbs would not light consistently. Not changing fixture, went back to tungsten.
Your maths sucks. Try $19.27.
"Some things aren't as good as they sound, so don't do anything at all, in fact be as wasteful as you want, and to hell with the consequences." Gotcha. Brilliant.