Politicians aren't thinking for you, they're thinking for your whole town/state/country.
In this case, I think they're making the right decision, for the country as a whole.
For me, personally, yeah, they're a bunch of meddling PITA jerks who are just restricting my freedom to choose. But, I sort of welcome the restriction, since it is also going to apply to my idiot neighbor (who had a blue tarp on his leaking roof for the last 18 months, incurring 3x the damage repair costs of taking care of it right away...)
If you're old enough to be senile within 23 years, hopefully you've lived long enough to take claims like "23 year lifespan" with a grain of salt, especially from products that didn't exist 5 years ago.
Hybrids really clean up on city driving efficiency.... not sure about TCO with those battery packs needing replacement every 5 years, but from one tank fill to the next, they're great.
I've got a bunch of LEDs, and maybe it's a whiner complaint, but when they dim, their color temperature doesn't change.
Not a big issue, unless you're used to running your lights at a deep dim low temperature level. We've kind of gotten used to it now, but it's definitely different.
Oh, and don't even start on how inefficient it is to run incandescent lights at 25% power input, I know.
I got the Philips/CREE 100W equivalent bulb (7 emitters), and it needs a shade. The CREE spots are just a little too dazzling for me in a bare-bulb application.
I know these are freakish, but I have a couple and they're at least a little less dazzling:
Having said that, I was pretty impressed with the chandelier in the dining room of a house we rented one cold winter.
Turn the lights on for dinnertime, nice and cozy warm in the dining room, done with dinner, lights off, dining room chills back down to regular house temperature.
I've commented far too much to mod this up, but: exactly.
People (taken in aggregate) are a bunch of short sighted morons. They will buy 12mpg SUVs and live in uninsulated houses with giant heat-pumps attached, especially if it's cheaper to buy today, who cares what cost of ownership is over the next 5 years.
Don't neglect the NIMBYs - those dirty nasty power plants are somewhere else, and they should install scrubbers like we did in our county, anyway.
CFLs are in my infant children's bedrooms.
Yes, I overreact - intentionally. Personally, I think our nuclear power plants are much better neighbors than the coal fired ones, though I would like to see a mercury ban start rolling out the way industrial Lead use has been curtailed since the 1970s.
CFLs are amazingly "low mercury" compared to the big tube fluorescents you find in office buildings, etc. However, big commercial and office buildings are slightly more likely to handle the dead bulbs safely and get them somewhere near a toxic waste handling facility before they shatter.
The difference between CFL bulbs and 5lb Swordfish Steaks is that Home Deopt stocks and sells thousands of CFL bulbs, probably every single day in your county. Swordfish Steak consumption, on the other hand, is less than a fraction of a percent of that volume.
Then you can stretch to the argument that Swordfish mercury content wouldn't be as high as it is if we (and especially Mexico) weren't burning all the mercury laden coal we can get our hands on....
What they do here. to an extent, is have the power company subsidize the purchase / installation of energy saving tech (light bulbs, air conditioners, etc.)
Theory goes, it's saving the power company from having to upgrade their generation and delivery infrastructure, so pass that savings on to the consumers who are contributing to delaying the need. It's a limited game though, and I often think that people who have the more efficient gadgets (lights, A/C, whatever) will tend to run them longer and harder, just because they can afford to.
Those 10 bulbs still only cost $2.50 - one equivalent LED bulb runs 4x that much. Funny thing about light bulbs (incandescent and CFL alike, in my experience), there's a huge variability in lifetime, some don't even last 25% of their rated 2000 hours, while others seem to run forever. I bought about 4 different varieties of CFLs, and the cheaper ones (multi-packs running around $3/bulb, tax subsidized I believe) didn't last any longer than their incandescent equivalents, for my applications. The CFLs I spent $8+ on did mostly last at least 5 years, though even one of those died on me.
It's all about application. In my kids' bedrooms, where they have 4 spotlights in the ceiling that are often run all day and night, I replaced with LED bulbs (at $10/bulb) almost immediately on purchase of the house.
CFLs are dead to me, no longer an option. I bought about a dozen in the 2006-2008 timeframe. Some broke, releasing (perhaps trivial amounts of) mercury into my children's bedrooms. Several died during ordinary use (fixed sockets, no vibration, no unusual switching on/off), by 2012 I was at perhaps 6 remaining functional bulbs, and 3 of those were slow start bulbs in the bathroom which were perhaps $8 each at the time they were bought.
I'm buying LED now, though I'm not throwing away all my incandescents right away, ROI horizon is just too long to dump $1000 on bulbs while the tech continues to improve.
If incandescents were still sold "free market" cheap and power hungry, I've got some applications around the house where they would be very appropriate. However, I know way too many people who just won't spend $5 extra today to save $20 over the next 5 years, so I acknowledge the need to legislate this, even as I lament my loss of freedom to choose.
Hey, man, gotta love that mountiantop mansion... and, yet, I consider Gore one of the "better" politicians of my lifetime. At least his family quit the tobacco business.
Garage - illuminated by one 800 lumen bulb whenever the door goes up and down, and natural light. Also occasionally used at night as a workshop, say 18 nights a year for 4 hours a night on average - lighting requirement for workshop use: 12000 lumens - this can be met with 4 175W equivalent bulbs.
OMFG, 700W for lighting, well, yes. 700W * 72 hours per year = 50KWh / year, about $6.
I actually did purchase LED bulbs for the purpose, because I don't like the heat from the old-style cheap bulbs, total cost for 4 LED bulbs that put out a total of 11,600 lumens? $251.80, or a 50 year ROI - worse if you wanted that heat.
Slashdot Mirror
Also realizations like "I don't have the money to afford cheap stuff" occur only to few people.
Especially when it comes to food. Commodities like light bulbs are a close second.
I like the ammonia-salt adsorption systems... get hot in the day, make ice at night.
Politicians aren't thinking for you, they're thinking for your whole town/state/country.
In this case, I think they're making the right decision, for the country as a whole.
For me, personally, yeah, they're a bunch of meddling PITA jerks who are just restricting my freedom to choose. But, I sort of welcome the restriction, since it is also going to apply to my idiot neighbor (who had a blue tarp on his leaking roof for the last 18 months, incurring 3x the damage repair costs of taking care of it right away...)
If you're old enough to be senile within 23 years, hopefully you've lived long enough to take claims like "23 year lifespan" with a grain of salt, especially from products that didn't exist 5 years ago.
Hybrids really clean up on city driving efficiency.... not sure about TCO with those battery packs needing replacement every 5 years, but from one tank fill to the next, they're great.
I have faith, but I won't agree that the long life argument is valid until these bulbs have seen 5-10 years of actual service.
I've got a bunch of LEDs, and maybe it's a whiner complaint, but when they dim, their color temperature doesn't change.
Not a big issue, unless you're used to running your lights at a deep dim low temperature level. We've kind of gotten used to it now, but it's definitely different.
Oh, and don't even start on how inefficient it is to run incandescent lights at 25% power input, I know.
So, why are we still burning coal when we can Frack clean natural gas?
Yep, incandescent are more uniform brightness, with that occasional super-nova death flash.
I got the Philips/CREE 100W equivalent bulb (7 emitters), and it needs a shade. The CREE spots are just a little too dazzling for me in a bare-bulb application.
I know these are freakish, but I have a couple and they're at least a little less dazzling:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GL6O5KI/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_S_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=2646TPXB3L2VL&coliid=I1Y36MR4F4OF5J
This is starting to get reasonable for strip lighting cost:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GOJ744Q/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=2646TPXB3L2VL&coliid=I3PYU0GZDJGVNV
And I think these are pretty cool for garage applications:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GLAA9NQ/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_S_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=2646TPXB3L2VL&coliid=I2OF03B4UILFR6
Having said that, I was pretty impressed with the chandelier in the dining room of a house we rented one cold winter.
Turn the lights on for dinnertime, nice and cozy warm in the dining room, done with dinner, lights off, dining room chills back down to regular house temperature.
I've commented far too much to mod this up, but: exactly.
People (taken in aggregate) are a bunch of short sighted morons. They will buy 12mpg SUVs and live in uninsulated houses with giant heat-pumps attached, especially if it's cheaper to buy today, who cares what cost of ownership is over the next 5 years.
They use something similar to keep french fries warm....
I actually had one of these to heat my bed at University.
Don't neglect the NIMBYs - those dirty nasty power plants are somewhere else, and they should install scrubbers like we did in our county, anyway.
CFLs are in my infant children's bedrooms.
Yes, I overreact - intentionally. Personally, I think our nuclear power plants are much better neighbors than the coal fired ones, though I would like to see a mercury ban start rolling out the way industrial Lead use has been curtailed since the 1970s.
CFLs are amazingly "low mercury" compared to the big tube fluorescents you find in office buildings, etc. However, big commercial and office buildings are slightly more likely to handle the dead bulbs safely and get them somewhere near a toxic waste handling facility before they shatter.
The difference between CFL bulbs and 5lb Swordfish Steaks is that Home Deopt stocks and sells thousands of CFL bulbs, probably every single day in your county. Swordfish Steak consumption, on the other hand, is less than a fraction of a percent of that volume.
Then you can stretch to the argument that Swordfish mercury content wouldn't be as high as it is if we (and especially Mexico) weren't burning all the mercury laden coal we can get our hands on....
What they do here. to an extent, is have the power company subsidize the purchase / installation of energy saving tech (light bulbs, air conditioners, etc.)
Theory goes, it's saving the power company from having to upgrade their generation and delivery infrastructure, so pass that savings on to the consumers who are contributing to delaying the need. It's a limited game though, and I often think that people who have the more efficient gadgets (lights, A/C, whatever) will tend to run them longer and harder, just because they can afford to.
27c/kwh, man somebody needs to build some hydro-power projects, not only for electricity but also to store some fresh water in your desert.
I have lived long enough to come to understand that a 10 year warranty rarely is good past the date you lose the receipt.
Granted, it's a little on the freakish side, but here's 4400 LED lumens in a single socket:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GLAA9NQ/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_S_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=2646TPXB3L2VL&coliid=I2OF03B4UILFR6
I have some of the 2900 lumen versions of that (they don't have a cooling fan...) They work.
Those 10 bulbs still only cost $2.50 - one equivalent LED bulb runs 4x that much. Funny thing about light bulbs (incandescent and CFL alike, in my experience), there's a huge variability in lifetime, some don't even last 25% of their rated 2000 hours, while others seem to run forever. I bought about 4 different varieties of CFLs, and the cheaper ones (multi-packs running around $3/bulb, tax subsidized I believe) didn't last any longer than their incandescent equivalents, for my applications. The CFLs I spent $8+ on did mostly last at least 5 years, though even one of those died on me.
It's all about application. In my kids' bedrooms, where they have 4 spotlights in the ceiling that are often run all day and night, I replaced with LED bulbs (at $10/bulb) almost immediately on purchase of the house.
CFLs are dead to me, no longer an option. I bought about a dozen in the 2006-2008 timeframe. Some broke, releasing (perhaps trivial amounts of) mercury into my children's bedrooms. Several died during ordinary use (fixed sockets, no vibration, no unusual switching on/off), by 2012 I was at perhaps 6 remaining functional bulbs, and 3 of those were slow start bulbs in the bathroom which were perhaps $8 each at the time they were bought.
I'm buying LED now, though I'm not throwing away all my incandescents right away, ROI horizon is just too long to dump $1000 on bulbs while the tech continues to improve.
If incandescents were still sold "free market" cheap and power hungry, I've got some applications around the house where they would be very appropriate. However, I know way too many people who just won't spend $5 extra today to save $20 over the next 5 years, so I acknowledge the need to legislate this, even as I lament my loss of freedom to choose.
Hey, man, gotta love that mountiantop mansion... and, yet, I consider Gore one of the "better" politicians of my lifetime. At least his family quit the tobacco business.
I don't see why Bitcoin couldn't be treated exactly like gold for purposes of taxation?
If you earn it by "mining" that's pure income, and if you trade it, then you've got capital gain/loss.
I understand this clearly, here's a use case:
Garage - illuminated by one 800 lumen bulb whenever the door goes up and down, and natural light. Also occasionally used at night as a workshop, say 18 nights a year for 4 hours a night on average - lighting requirement for workshop use: 12000 lumens - this can be met with 4 175W equivalent bulbs.
OMFG, 700W for lighting, well, yes. 700W * 72 hours per year = 50KWh / year, about $6.
I actually did purchase LED bulbs for the purpose, because I don't like the heat from the old-style cheap bulbs, total cost for 4 LED bulbs that put out a total of 11,600 lumens? $251.80, or a 50 year ROI - worse if you wanted that heat.