Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
Incandescent bulbs suck. They break easily, don't last long,
I have incandescent bulbs that have lasted twenty years without being changed. I have had CFLs that last a month, in the same socket that the previous incandescent lasted for years. YMMV.
When an incandescent bulb breaks, you release highly toxic nothing gas and some bits of tungsten. When a CFL breaks, you call in the hazmat team to deal with it.
When I turn an incandescent on, it is at full brightness in seconds. I turn on the CFL in my dining room and it's five minutes before they reach a usable light level. Yes, I know, I'm supposed to buy a whole new set of instant-on CFL for this fixture, properly disposing of the existing working CFL bulbs so I don't poison the environment.
Incandescents are lighter. CFL mean I have to tighten the screws on my swing-arm desk lamp to the point that it isn't swing-arm anymore. The flexible-arm lamp in my living room droops under the weight of the CFL and has no way to tighten up the flexibility.
The LED lamps I bought are heavier than the CFL, so they are worse where weight is an issue. They are larger than either the CFL or incandescent so they won't fit in many of my lamps at all.
OTOH, there are applications where I love the lower heat aspect of the CFL and the size/weight isn't an issue, so they're the bulb of choice for those lamps.
Waaaah people will be allowed to choose what works best for the application. That's the real cry of the douche. I say, if I want to pay more for a simple, cheap, light incandescent, that's my problem, not yours. You use the energy you buy for what you want, I'll use it for what I want and we'll both live happily ever after.
they draw roughly an order of magnitude less current.
The important measure is not current but wattage, since that's what is used in billing. According to this they use 1/3 to 1/5 as many watts.
Now how about repealing the OTHER mistakes of the Bush Administration?