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Europe To Ban Halogen Lightbulbs (theguardian.com)
After nearly 60 years of brightening homes and streets, halogen lightbulbs will finally be banned across Europe on 1 September. From a report: The lights will dim gradually for halogen. Remaining stocks may still be sold, and capsules, linear and low voltage incandescents used in oven lights will be exempted. But a continent-wide switchover to light-emitting diodes (LEDs) is underway that will slash emissions and energy bills, according to industry, campaigners and experts. LEDs consume one-fifth of the energy of halogen bulbs and their phase-out will prevent more than 15m tonnes of carbon emissions a year, an amount equal to Portugal's annual electricity usage. Philips, the lighting manufacturer estimates consumer savings of up to 112 pound ($144) a year from the switchover because LEDs last much longer than halogens and use far less power.
Excellent news!
Soon their more efficient, less expensive countries will be able to outcompete the inefficient places that have not moved to low cost green energy and low cost LEDs.
The south can continue to use Kerosene and Whale Oil, of course.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I like the light that Halogen bulbs give off, but they also emit lots of far-ultraviolet radiation and can cause cancer without a UV cover. A friend of mine got cancer of the hand after many years of exposure doing intricate desk work.
The sooner we can get rid of Halogen the better.
I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.
Sorry but everyone time I hear that my energy bill will go down due to increases in efficiency just means they increase the rate. I'm all for newer, more efficient technologies but don't try and sell it like I'll spend less money on electricity.
I realize this is taking place in Europe, so perhaps their utilities are socialized and those utility services aren't by for-profits. I do know people work there and none of them will be likely to see a pay cut due to less energy being used, but the company will definitely have lower revenue.
Here in the states, every time we are told to save save save and we do it, the bill rates always get jacked up because the utilities start going broke when we become more mindful of our energy usage. Nothing worse as a consumer to use less of something, possibly at an inconvenience to oneself, and get charged as much or more when it's a metered service.
At the same time, the local energy company does need to make money otherwise the workers get laid off and the plant may close and electricity will definitely go up in price at that point due to there being less generated.
Still, no one is going to save money but it's great we are using less energy and leaving a smaller carbon footprint.
I suspect halogens will also still be allowed in "hard use" instances, like the lights very high up on towers in harsh weather.
Just coincidentally, I'm in the process of switching from those damned CFLs to LEDs. I say "damned" because although they initially met the promise of long life [1], later "value engineered" bulbs didn't last any longer, in my experience, than the incandescents they replaced. I'm really hoping LEDs don't fall to the same process -- value engineered to a pale shadow of their original glory.
I always felt that CFLs were a stopgap solution until we found a practical low power light bulb. It appears that LED is that solution, but it may be too early to tell.
[1]. It so happens, of the four original CFLs I bought in the 1990's, the last one -- the back porch light, stopped working last night. And will be replaced with an LED. During that time, I've had many many CFLs fail, some in the space of only a few months. In quantity, they really weren't manufactured very well.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
The price is coming down. Only 18 times as much now.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
All of them. fluorescent MTBF is 25K hours, while LED is 75K hours.
Not only that, but despite the touted 30.000 hour life span of LED lights, I have already had to replace several in my house, while the old-fasioned, simple tungsten bulbs keep going, and going, and going.
It's madness.
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
I have a free-standing halogen lamp. It's wonderfully bright but I rarely use it because it gives off a tremendous amount of heat and I do worry about its excessive power usage. But let me tell you, if ever there's a fly buzzing about the room that I can't catch or otherwise shoo out of the house, I turn on the light and let the little f#@&*r fry. The smell of roasting bug that inevitably wafts through the room ten minutes after I turn the lamp on after being annoyed for an hour by the victim's buzzing is extremely satisfying.
It's the only reason I keep the damn lamp, quite honestly.
Filament LEDs show some promise. As a plus many use a glass case instead of plastic.
LED and CFL lights come with their color temperature written on the box. If you want daylight get a 4500K bulb, if you want yellow get 3000K, if you want candle light get 2000K. If you can't find the color temp you want, buy them online. If you don't like blue, don't buy anything above 4000K on the box.
moox. for a new generation.
Not because incandescent bulbs are being phased out but because it does not solve any problems. [...] Sure power will be lower
So, which is it? Or does reducing power usage not count as solving a problem?
Just like incandescent bulbs have always been manufactured to be intentionally limited so will LED lights. Waste will not be cut by any meaningful measurement.
That's exactly what I said when they started selling automobiles -- the change would never help with the nation's horseshit-in-the-streets problem, because auto manufacturers would deliberately add horseshit to their cars so that they could sell more of them. Perfectly logical, no?
Come to think of it, I think I know where all the horseshit has actually gone to -- it's now being used to power incoherent Slashdot posts.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
What didn't you like? The taste or the crunch?
#DeleteFacebook
The price is coming down. Only 18 times as much now.
They are only more expensive if you don't know how to do math (or if someone else pays your power bill).
A 16 pack of Phillips 60W (8.5W actual) LED's costs $25.37 ($1.59 / Bulb) on Amazon.
You can get a 24 pack of incandescent 60W bulbs on eBay for around 75 cents a piece. So that makes the purchase price of LEDs twice has much as incandescents.
But since the LED uses 52 watts less power, if you pay $0.10/KWh for electricity, you'd break even after the first 161 hours of using the bulb.
The incandecent bulb will last around 1100 hours (and you'll have saved around $5.70 in electricity over that time), but the LED will last an average of 10X longer. But even if you only got 1100 hours out of it, you'd still come out ahead. (you can get "long-life" 4000hour incandescent's, but they are much less efficient, putting out about half the light as a standard bulb)
And incandescent lights have burned continuosly for over 115 years, that means a wee bit more than 22 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest-lasting_light_bulbs
It's easy to make in incandescent light bulb that lasts for decades or even centuries -- just run a lower voltage. For example, take an iron bar and run enough current through it to glow red, maybe seal it in an oxygen-free glass bulb...That will give out light for a long long time. Of course, you may be running a few thousand watts of power through it to get a tiny amount of light, but that's the cost of longevity.
A standard 60W incandescent bulb will put out around 850 lumens and last for around 1100 hours. You can get a "long life" variant that is rated to last for 4000 hours.... but it'll only emit around 450 lumens, so is about half as efficient.
If you don't care about efficiency or brightness, you can make an LED last much longer... there's some 20 year old equipment in our electrical room with old red indicators LED's that are still burning after 20 years of 24x7 operation.
Most incandescent bulbs are not rated anywhere near that long (most of the commercial ones were something like 1000 hours when I was still buying them) and the ones that could last that long are vastly different in design than the cheap commercial bulbs that were being sold.
Not "vastly different", just a thicker (=stronger) filament wire, and -possibly- tweaks to wire supports, gas mixture or whatever.
It's easy to make a long lasting incandescent. But it would also be very inefficient - worse than they already are. Therefore an 'optimum' is picked where bulbs don't need replacing too often, but still have acceptable efficiency. That optimum is picked around 1000 hours for regular incandescents (longer for halogen lamps due to their halogen cycle). Make 'em longer lasting, and you pay more for electricity. Make 'em more efficient, and you replace bulbs more often. So contrary to what some people think, that is not some industry conspiracy! Of course within that efficiency <-> longevity spectrum (no pun intended ;-) there can still be quality differences between bulbs.
Longer lasting incandescents do exist. Mostly meant for industrial uses where bulb replacement may be more costly than pulling some extra Watts. But such bulbs don't get around the problem described above. Likewise you can run incandescents on a lower voltage to increase their lifespan (in the case of halogens, only within limits). See "lamp rerating". But effectively that just takes the remaining few % of efficiency, and adds it to the waste heat you already had.
Not only that, but despite the touted 30.000 hour life span of LED lights, I have already had to replace several in my house, while the old-fasioned, simple tungsten bulbs keep going, and going, and going.
It's madness.
Ah, but you see the LEDs really are good for 30K hours; it's just that the power transforming base of the bulb that's gone bad.
1) Free Speech does not, and never has, protected someone from the consequences of their free speech. The classic example is shouting fire in a crowded theatre, leading to false calls to the emergency services who respond and possible panic and injury among the other theatre goers. If you stand up and exhort other like-minded people to begin a race war and murder people whose skin or faith doesn't match yours, you may become an accessory to murder before the fact if someone in your chosen audience actually goes through with it.
2) The First Amendment says that the government cannot restrict your speech. It does not say that private individuals or organizations have to listen to you, or to provide a platform from which you can broadcast your opinions. Moreover, any platform or forum that chooses to support or host a certain type of content may also be criminally and civilly liable of that content leads to someone breaking the law.
3) The choice to accept or reject speech on a private platform or forum is also given First Amendment protection. If I host a blog, I can refuse to allow statements I disagree with to appear in my comment section. Telling me I had to keep those comments visible would restrict my free speech.
I need a wheelchair van for my son. Help me get the word out. https://www.gofundme.com/wheelchair-van-for-jj
They had LED bulbs before any incandescent bulb ban was in place.
And they were much more expensive than they are today. My local big-box store sells house brand LED"s for around $1/each
I agree with your idea, the point I was trying to get at is that once again the politicians wasted a bunch of effort putting in "feel good" laws that are more waste of time than a value add to the problem at hand.
These kinds of laws are nothing more than feel good legislation to get ignorant voters off their backs or an end run parlay by mfgs to gain a market advantage through regulation.
If they want to make sensible regulation by enforcing a minimal manufacturing quality like forcing LEDs to carry a minimum 20 year warranty where mfgs are also legally required to stage recycling centers at hardware suppliers and "free shipping" then they would be getting somewhere. Until then, it is my opinion they just tricked a whole bunch of voters into thinking the did something good without really doing anything meaningful at all... other than to get rid of halogen bulbs.
The same amount of energy and waste will likely be had with LED production because it is just too easy to game the system.
Not really. I picked up a pack of 3 for $5, led bulbs, from the dollar store 2 years ago. Those bulbs are still going strong.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
Free Speech does not, and never has, protected someone from the consequences of their free speech. The classic example is shouting fire in a crowded theatre, leading to false calls to the emergency services who respond and possible panic and injury among the other theatre goers
I always love the irony of people using this analogy to try and support restriction on free speech. You are obviously completely clueless about the fact that the analogy was first made by a judge in a legal ruling which ended up sending a man to prison for the "crime" of passing out pamphlets opposing the draft.
The ruling was eventually overturned, but not before the defendant (and many like him) spent years in jail for voicing an opinion which is commonplace today. However the result of it being overturned is that, yes, in the united states at least, you CAN yell fire in a crowded theatre. What you can't do is engage in speech which "advocates imminent lawless action", as in you can't tell the theatre goers to burn down the building.
If LEDs are so wonderful, why not let the people decide what bulbs to buy?
If you aren't being a Poe, the biggest reason that CFL's and then LEDs have been brough into being is that they use less electricity, so you don't have to build that nice new nuc plant in your backyard.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Not only that, but despite the touted 30.000 hour life span of LED lights, I have already had to replace several in my house, while the old-fasioned, simple tungsten bulbs keep going, and going, and going.
It's madness.
Get the Pitchforks Ma! One bad LED is too many and is insufferable. God wants us to use incandescents becaus not one has ever failed. Since Incandescents last forever, we'll save infinite money.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The big problem with the dimable ones is that, iirc, you also have to replace your dimmer switches. That adds expense even if you know how to replace one yourself (the dimmers were like $20+ last time I looked), let alone if you have to call an electrician.
Probably still worth it in the long run for the energy savings, but it does change the equation.
>" Not really. I picked up a pack of 3 for $5, led bulbs, from the dollar store 2 years ago. Those bulbs are still going strong."
It really is a "crap shoot". I have a few ancient LED bulbs that are still working fine. I have others I bought from Amazon, with 5 star ratings, and half died within a few months. I have a lot of genuine CREE bulbs, and half of those started flickering and dying in just a few years.... and those were expensive.
I *love* LED bulbs. But I also don't think other bulbs should be "banned". That is just stupid. LED bulbs don't solve ALL problems for ALL situations, and if they are so great, they will naturally take over (like they are doing). Old tech will get less and less popular, harder to find, less in demand, and their prices will go up and up. It doesn't have to be forced down people's throats.... instead, provide education.
That's the hypothesis. Unfortunately in reality, LEDs don't last anywhere near the advertised numbers, and tend to work poorly in many conditions like too cold or too wet.
This is because unlike halogen and incandescent, the circuitry needed to control the LED is fairly complex, and tends to be the primary failure mode. Additionally if circuit board actually does last something close to advertised time, LEDs tend to become much dimmer towards their end of advertised "lifecycle", to the point where in many applications, it will have to be replaced even if it can be claimed in advertising that it "will still work for many years". Sure it will work for many years, but that work will be below acceptable.
Which is why they are being mandated, instead of allowed to be phased in gradually by market choice. Because they're actually not beneficial to end users as far as market goes, even at this stage. But if you can force their numbers to increase significantly, there's hope that development of more reliable controllers will be funded and carried out eventually, as well as LEDs become more long lasting in terms of maintaining brightness.
The downside of this is that low hanging fruit in those sectors has been long since picked. Progress forward will be costly, so it's not very likely to be carried out without a significant legislative pressure on the supply chain just like there is one on the demand chain. We'll see how that ends up, and how much people will have to pay for illumination in the end.
That's the hypothesis. Unfortunately in reality, LEDs don't last anywhere near the advertised numbers, and tend to work poorly in many conditions like too cold or too wet.
My oldest LED is 6 years old, in an upstairs hallway light that sees at least a couple hours of use nearly every day (more in the winter than in the summer). So that's over 4000 hours, about 4X the lifetime of a typical incandescent. But for this particular lamp I don't even care about the cost of the bulb or the operating cost, it's the inconvenience of changing it since it's over the stairs and I need to go borrow a telescoping folding ladder from my parents to change it, so it's a major hassle.
My second oldest LED is around 4 years old. It's in an outdoor light fixture that sees around 6 hours of use every night - in temperatures ranging from around 25F in the winter to 90F+ in the summer. So it has around 8000 hours on it now, I'm not sure what it's rated for, but it subjectively "feels" as bright as when I installed it.
I've converted 90% of my house to LED's now, the remaining 10% are CFL's in little used areas of the house that I'm still waiting on them to die.
I've only had 1 LED die so far (plus a couple that were DOA when I installed them). Nearly all of my bulbs are Phillips, I've tried a few other brands, but have been most satisfied with the Phillips bulbs.
Why let the people decide? Because they never had any choice. Companies and marketing departments decide what you buy, not you, and not your neighbors.. and what your neighbors buy determines what price you pay and what choices you have on the shelves.
Consumers do not decide squat.
Yeah no one is ever responsible for their actions.
I just want to point out that you ignored every single point I raised, and just gave us a long "my story" post.
This is great on your average mass media discussion board for average joes. But this is supposed to be a site for nerds.
I didn't ignore it, I gave anecdotal evidence that you're wrong, which is more evidence than you gave.
I didn't ignore it, I gave anecdotal evidence that you're wrong, which is more evidence than you gave.
I've been buying nothing but LED for the last 7 or 8 years now and replacing CFL mostly when they burn out. And it was only in the last 2 years that I've been able to replace some of the halogen bulbs.
I've stopped buying generic no name LEDs as they have all been garbage and lasted barely longer than the incandescent bulbs they replaced.
Even expensive ones are hit or miss in bathrooms, and in some cases they don't have the cooling figured out for the electronics for recessed lighting in a reliable way. Any fixture that requires the bulb be mounted with the threaded end up has a tenancy to overheat the electronics more often. I've had several LED bulbs die before I've had them in for 500 hours. I know they're warrantied, but I never remember where I put the receipts in order to get them replaced, so that's worthless to me.
The failure mode is also more annoying than incandescent bulbs. Those usually just die and you replace them. I have one LED in my office that has been flickering off an on for the last couple of months. It never does it when I'm thinking about it, or have the time to replace it. But it seems to always know when I'm on a call and can't do anything about it. I've also had one catch on fire and another get hot enough to release the magic blue smoke. Something that incandescent bulbs never did.
It would be interesting to know how many house and business fires have been started by faulty LEDs. I never see that factored into the overall cost. Some of the first bulbs I bought were ridiculously expensive. I have several UPS and a lot of surge protectors for electronics. At one point I was seriously thinking about putting in a whole house surge protector because the price of all of those non-incandescent bulbs would be a big hit on the bank account if I needed to replace them all at once due to a spike in the power. I'd also imagine that brown outs are pretty hard on LED bulbs too.
Any how, I'm not advocating incandescent bulbs But LED and CFL certainly have some drawbacks that are worth noting. It's not all unicorns and rainbows.
As always, the "energy savings" touted by advocates of "Green" lighting assumes that light is the only wanted output of a light source.
The efficiency is based on light-output only, so when (for example) an incandescent is described as only 20% efficient what they mean is 20% of the energy consumed goes to light and another 80% is "wasted" as heat.
But what if you live in a climate that requires supplemental heating? In that case, the 80% is wanted output, and the incandescent is now 100% efficient (assuming the other 20% of light is wanted as well).
Where this comes into play is when (like in the OP summary) "energy savings" are proposed via a banning or switchover to "more efficient" lighting; more efficient in this case meaning more of the energy input goes to light output. What these energy savings never account for is the loss of wanted heat output in some climates or during some seasons. That lost heat must be replaced by the building's heating system, so additional energy is required to make up the shortfall.
If you're in Florida (or Portugal) then the more efficient lighting makes energy-smart sense. But what if you're in the UK (balmy 15C temperatures in August are far from rare; the BBC likes to call this "fresh" weather) or Scandinavia? Now you have cold-weather heating requirements that even an incandescent can provide, with wanted light output, at 100% efficiency.
The only study I know of that took this into account was one done by BC Hydro (Canada) that determined the amount of extra natural gas / electric / wood heat energy would be needed with a switch province-wide from incandescents to CFL bulbs. It was far from a trivial amount.
The incandecent bulb will last around 1100 hours ..., but the LED will last an average of 10X longer.
Not in my experience. I bought a small LED torch (flashlamp to Americans) and after a few weeks it failed. I thought I was just unlucky so I bought another but after a few weeks that one failed too. You can't change the LED "bulbs" (if that was the fault). I have now gone back to a filament bulb torch that my father-in-law gave me; it is probably 60 years old with low cost bulb changes every few years; it just works.
Electric heating is expensive compared to the other options available in cold climate. But if you are gonna use electricity for heating, you should consider heat pumps as the more efficient alternative to light bulbs.
You start with a bad assumption, the light-efficiency of incandescent bulbs is between 2.5 and 4%, more than 5 times worse then the 20% you suggest.
It's only in places with an abundance of hydro-electricity where it would make economical sense to have electric heating.
In most places on this world other forms of heating are (much) cheaper.
Then think of places with air conditioning where incandescent lamps are a double waste of power!
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