Slashdot Mirror
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
Don't be so quick to condemn Halogen. When you need a color spectrum that Halogen provides, only sunlight is better. Certain UV wavelengths are bad for skin, bad for eyes, even some tints of blue is bad and literally blinds, causes permanent eye damage. These wavelengths also come with sunlight, apparently. The color spectrum of LED is drastically different, usually shifted to the blue and cool end, and there is more blue than any other color... the UV might taper off, but if it is white LED, its brightness comes from blue, and most commonly, the very blue that causes eye damage leading to blindness.
The major point here is Halogen (and incandescent in general) is not necessarily bad, and LED can be worse. LED is commercially still kind of new and we are actually already bumping up against theoretical max efficiency of LED by 2020. Incandescent is lagging behind in efficiency, but theoretically and most likely, eventually... maybe in 50 years or less... incandescent lighting technology efficiency will surpass LED efficiency. But LED will always be cheap.
What turns out not to be cheap is to create artificial light that is natural, like the sun, which LED won't do (and the closer it gets the worse its efficiency becomes). Bulbs aren't that expensive, just compared to LED they are. How much is natural light worth to you? What are the long term effects of exposure to LED light (and its less than ideal color spectrum)? Looks like Europe is going to find out, hoping for the best.
So the major problem with your argument, "Halogen is bad because of UV and that causes cancer" is that though it is true Halogen light creates UV, ultraviolet can't go through glass, and since most bulbs are made of glass specifically doped to block UV, your argument (presumably promoting LED) that "Halogen is bad because of UV" turns out to be a straw man argument (UV [i]is[/i] bad, though Halogen does produce UV, it is surrounded (generally, some bulbs are not doped) by UV blocking glass).
Halogen is bad because we created the carbon/energy crisis (human industry polluted the carbon leading to climate change, and humans are energy hogs) and decent lighting takes energy. Fun fact, turns out how good anyone feels can be directly correlated to how much sunlight (or an identical color spectrum light, or one close enough, such as an ordinary Halogen) gets in their eyes.
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)
>" 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.
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.
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.