California Proposes to Ban Incandescent Lightbulbs

zhang1983 writes to tell us CNN is reporting that California Assemblyman Llyod Levine wants to make his state the first to ban incandescent lightbulbs with the "How Many Legislators Does it Take to Change a Lightbulb Act". The act will promote Compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs) to replace the inefficient incandescent lightbulbs. According to him, "Incandescent lightbulbs were first developed almost 125 years ago, and since that time they have undergone no major modifications, meanwhile, they remain incredibly inefficient, converting only about 5 percent of the energy they receive into light."

how many? it's simple, really.

[User 956 (568564)]

California Assemblyman Llyod Levine wants to make his state the first to ban incandescent lightbulbs with the "How Many Legislators Does it Take to Change a Lightbulb Act"

It takes a vote of more than half of the legislative body considering the measure. The full Assembly requires a majority vote of 41 and the full Senate requires 21, based on their memberships of 80 and 40 respectively.

Great!!

[by Anonymous Coward]

Now we have to wait for the ballast to warm up before inspiration strikes!

Re:how many? it's simple, really.

[minion (162631)]

I'm from the government and I'm here to help.

Hey! I Heat My Home With Incandescents

[MightyMait (787428)]

Hey! I'm counting on the incandescents to be inefficient--I use them to heat my home!!

If they want to target something, let them ban electric heaters. People ought to be running P4 servers as space heaters. At least *do* something with all that electricity!

Light bulbs are a lousy source of heat.

[raygundan (16760)]

It's a wash if and only if you are using resistive electric heating as your home's heat source. Light bulbs (and resistive heaters) have a Coefficient of Performance of roughly 1.0-- a watt of energy makes a watt of heat.

Modern heat pumps have COPs in the 2-4 range for air-coupled units, and higher for water or ground-loop units. A watt of energy pumps 2-4 watts of heat into your house from outside.

And lastly, gas heat doesn't suffer transmission loss to the degree that electricity does, since it is burned on-premises instead of being burned far away, used to make power (at a loss), pumped over transmission lines (at a loss), and *then* made into heat in your house.

No, no...

[Eternauta3k (680157)]

While it's great they want to promote CFLs, I think this is excessive. What if you want to light an art room or something? Maybe there are exceptions for cases like those, but wouldn't it be better if they created incentives to use CFLs or maybe tax incandescents?

Cool, but what about the mercury?

[ZipR (584654)]

Don't most CFL's contain a small amount of mercury? What are we supposed to do with them when they go bad/break/whatever? Maybe this should also come with a CFL recycling bill.

Right idea, wrong method

[mcostas (973159)]

Specific technology mandates or bans are a bad idea. However, rules requiring a certain efficiency of lighting would make sense. This could effectively ban incandescents and lead to replacement with CFL, but without getting unnecessarily stuck on a particular technology. For example, LED bulbs will probably soon be better than CFL. And of course we must believe in the American corporate ability to manufacture some sort of Hummer of CF bulbs that still manages to use 1 megawatt per room, while complying with a technology mandate.

 

Ban inefficient politicians

[by Anonymous Coward]

Politicians were invented over 2,000 years ago, and still spend only about 5 percent of their time writing legislation. I say be ban these inefficient politicians!

I repeat, "What about RFI?"

[amper (33785)]

As I mentioned in the last post on this topic, the vast majority of fluorescent fixtures I have come across in the last decade are horrible polluters of the RF spectrum. I have a recording studio in my house, and I *cannot* run fluorescent fixtures because of this problem. Despite using all balanced connections, there is a marked increase in the volume of the noise floor whenever I replace the incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescents, or when I use the long-tube traditional types.

Not that I expect California's legislators to worry about this, even though CA probably has the largest concentration of movie, music, video, and television studios in the country, but what are they going to do to force the manufacturers of fluorescent fixtures (who are largely Chinese companies serving the megabox stores of America nowadays) to clean up their emissions?

I guess HIDs are next

[HazE_nMe (793041)]

A good portion of the Mendocino and Humbolt county population are burning a combination of High-Pressure Sodium and Metal-Halide High Intensity Discharge lamps indoors. Some even for 24 hours per day. It is not too uncommon to find a room with 6 1000W lights burning for 24 hours per day for a few weeks, then a switch to 12 hours on/12 hours off for about 8 weeks.

These homes usually have a very musky odor teamed up with the occaisional U-Haul or Ryder truck parked out front.

Better idea

[MobyDisk (75490)]

A better idea would be to tax them. An even better idea would be to increase the energy tax. That way you force people to make more energy-efficient decisions about all products, not just one particular type of light bulb. This is a case where economics can work for you, not against you. Bans like this also get complicated: What about cases where incandecent is the only option? What if someone makes a hybrid bulb? What if someone makes a more efficient incandecent? It all comes back to legislating technology (light bulbs), instead of legislating the real problem (energy use).

Re:Kind of radical, but I hope it works

[wiggles (30088)]

The biggest problem I see is that you can't get a CFL bulb to work with a rheostat. There are far too many dimmer switches out there for this to be technically feasible at this point.

Does anyone know if LEDs will work with dimmer switches?

Re:Kind of radical, but I hope it works

[anagama (611277)]

CFLs work with dimmer switches. I know I've seen them at Home Depot. And of course, there's this from GE's faq

To use a compact fluorescent bulb on a dimmer switch, you must buy a bulb that's specifically made to work with dimmers (check the package). GE makes a dimming compact fluorescent light bulb (called the GE Longlife Plus Soft White Energy Saving Bulb) that is specially designed for use with dimming switches. We don't recommend using regular compact fluorescent bulbs with dimming switches, since this can shorten bulb life. (Using a regular compact fluorescent bulb with a dimmer will also nullify the bulb's warranty.)

http://www.gelighting.com/na/business_lighting/faq s/cfl.htm#3 [gelighting.com]

Re:Kind of radical, but I hope it works

[Clover_Kicker (20761)]

Heating the ceiling with a light bulb is a terrible way to warm a room. There's a reason they place dedicated heaters close to the floor on outside walls.

Re:Kind of radical, but I hope it works

[UbuntuDupe (970646)]

What's that, Marxist? You're saying that a selfish, human concern like that can possibly override the goal of SAVING THE EARTH? No, it can't be!

Re:Somewhat pointless...

[anagama (611277)]

Using lights as heaters is silly. Heat rises. Most lights are at least halfway up the wall -- floor level lights are very rare. Besides, were talking CA here, and while significant parts of the state have 4 seasons, a lot of the population is located from LA to San Diego where cooling is more of an issue than heating. Seriously, would someone in Maine leave their refrigerator door open all day to cool the house in winter (not that it would work because the cooling elements release heat back into the house -- but play along here)? Why would someone in a hot clime intentionally use lights to heat their house in the summer?

Re:Wrong target

[vought (160908)]

This is the dumbest goddamned thing I've ever heard of.

I use CFLs here at home. Have for years. But the idea of making incandescents illegal is ridiculous.

What will studio photographers do? How about people who are sensitive to the noise many CFLs make? What about legacy fixtures that CFLs don't fit into?

Run a public information campaign instead.

Re:Wrong target

[coolgeek (140561)]

I'm sure there will be exemptions for professional purposes, and of course, street lights, if you can call sodium or mercury vapor lamps "incandescent". I wouldn't mind seeing just regular old vanilla incandescent lamps banned, but better let me keep my halogen for my desk lamps.

I also think they need to make the local beverage container recycling places take your old CFLs to keep the mercury from leeching into the water tables via the landfills. Maybe even give you a dollar each (of course there would be a CRV-type fee assessed at the time of purchase).

Does kind of make one wonder though, does Lloyd Levine have any friends that own CFL companies. From what I've seen, even though the big guys like GE and Sylvania are starting to enter this space, I more commonly see off-brand companies on display. What a boon it will be for these smaller companies.

Re:Wrong target

[by Anonymous Coward]

Three words:

Ouch, my wallet!

Re:Wrong target

[UbuntuDupe (970646)]

Three words: you don't experience my consciousness, so don't presume to tell me what does or does not bother me.

What is with this focus on whether or not I follow some rote process for reducing energy usage? Why not focus on how much I'm actually using?

I average 300 kwh per month and drive a small car ... yet that's not good enough, so you have to make my home's lighting unpleasant as well? Now, I can't even relax at home. Thanks, assholes.

Re:Wrong target

[mrdaveb (239909)]

Bright white LED's.

That's 5 words

Re:I don't like this

[MarkGriz (520778)]

Dont worry. California legislators will simultaneously propose a bill to ban CFLs, because they contain a chemical
known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects or other reproductive harm.

Re:I don't like this

[thule (9041)]

If you can see the flicker from a modern fluorescent bulb with electronic ballasts, then you must have super human eyes! It is pretty rare to see new fixtures with magnetic ballasts these days. Those old ballasts certainly had flicker problems. Simply turning one of those old fixtures on would create a lightening effect until the bulb fully came on. If you spun a top under them you could clearly see the rate of flicker. Spinning a top under modern fluorescent (especially multi-bulb) shows only a hint of flicker pattern. If modern bulbs bother you, than a CRT would certainly bother you. I'm assuming that you never used computers or watched TV more than a few years ago before LCD's became popular since the flicker rate would have been worse than modern fluorescent bulbs. If you did, and it didn't bother you much, then I must say that your aversion to fluorescent bulbs may be psychological.

With modern fluorescent bulbs, there is no reason not to use them. They come in warm and daylight temperatures now, so they can more closely reproduce a incandescent light or a daylight look. It is interesting to note that proofing tables (for graphic artists, printers, etc) have fluorescent lights in them. This seems to put weight behind the idea that fluorescents *can* produce good light.

Personally, I bought a 68-watt MicroSun [microsun.com] lamp for my main living room to replace the stupid 300-watt Halogen. It's super bright and has a very good color index because it is a Metal Halide bulb.

As far as the law goes.... what happens to the bulb that has been on for 100-years at that firestation in the Bay Area?

Re:I don't like this

[CastrTroy (595695)]

Or you could just tell him which type of CFLs you find the best, so he doesn't have to do the same experimentation that you did.