Light Bulb Ban Produces Hoarding In EU, FUD In U.S. 1080
Lucas123 writes "The very thought of losing that pear-shaped giver of warm, yellow light drove Europeans to hoard Edison's invention [Note: Or possibly Joseph Swan's invention; HT to eldavojohn.] as the EU's Sept. 1 ban on incandescent light bulbs approached. China's ban on incandescent lamps starts Oct. 1. And, in the U.S., the Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) of 2007 effectively began banning the 100W bulb this year and will ban the most popular bulbs — the 75W, 60W and 40W screw-in incandescent bulbs --over the next two years. The end standard requires bulbs to use 65% less energy by 2020. But Republicans in Congress continue to fight the ban by hamstringing the energy efficiency standards through appropriations legislation, cutting off funds for the enforcement of the light bulb ban."
Re:republicans (Score:3, Informative)
Energy use makes their buddies money.
It's that simple. Don't talk shit about "conspiracy theories" either because it's very straight forward and they're doing it in the open.
Re:Fuck Green (Score:3, Informative)
The EU has not ban a specific technology, it banned incandescent bulbs based on their energy efficiency over the last 3 years [europa.eu].
There is a website about the change:
http://ec.europa.eu/energy/lumen/faq/index_en.htm [europa.eu]
Re:republicans (Score:2, Informative)
Democrats complain Republicans don't focus on jobs, but when this lightbulb legislation shutdown a factory and many people lost their jobs and Republicans try to prevent that, Democrats complain.
Re:Fuck Green (Score:3, Informative)
Republicans disrupting a REPUBLICAN ban! (Score:5, Informative)
This ban was signed into law by the Bush Administration [wikipedia.org].
And now, after putting it in place, the Republicans NOW object?
Re:Labelling (Score:5, Informative)
Is there yet a way to tell at time of purchase whether a CFL bulb is going to warm up in an acceptable time?
I'm assured that bulbs exist that reach a decent brightness in under 10 seconds, but I have yet to manage to buy one.
I've had good luck with the Philips Warm White CFL bulbs. They have a colour that is almost exactly the same as incandescant (I can't tell the difference by looking at them) and they turn on to full brightness instantly. Literally a small fraction of a second, with no flickering at all.
Re:Democrats (Score:5, Informative)
Uh, you do know that a Republican president signed this into law, right?
LED is freakishly expensive up front (Score:5, Informative)
The answer is "because they're freakishly expensive." $23 per lamp vs 44 cents for a 60 watt incandescent. In terms of running cost, that's 0.46c/hr of LED (at the 5000 rated hours**) vs .032c/hr for incandescent (GE lamps at Walmart, $21/48 lamps with a 1330hr rated life). Yes - that's more than a factor of 10.
"But what about energy?" I hear you cry. Well, at 11c/kwh, it costs 11c x 0.0125w per hour for the led, or 0.1375 c per hour. The incandescent 60W it replaces - 11c x .060w = 0.66 c/hour.
So I can get an LED for 0.60c/hr or an incandescent at 0.69c/hr. That seems like a pretty minor payback - a dollar of savings will take me burning the lamp for over 1000 hours - and I'm out $23 right now.
*If this bulb does not last 4 years, return UPC and register receipt along with your name and address to GE Consumer & Industrial, Product Service Dept., 1975 Noble Road, Cleveland, OH 44112. GE will replace your bulb. So for $3-4 in packing and shipping I can get a new lamp if this one dies in four years, but if it dies in year 5, I'm SOL on a a $23 item. If my 60W blows early, I'm out 44c.
**Rated life is 5000hrs per energy comparison data provided by Philips.
Re:republicans (Score:4, Informative)
Or the cost of one particular type of pollution is underpriced and hence such market forces won't work.
No, there will be no ban on incandescent bulbs. (Score:5, Informative)
There sure is a lot of misinformation out there. Much of it seems to have come from right wing talk. Incandescent light bulbs are not going to be banned.
Here is the straight dope from the NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/26/garden/fearing-the-phase-out-of-incandescent-bulbs.html?_r=2pagewanted=all&
Re:Ban is dumb (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is that the cost of energy as currently setup in the US does no account for negative externalities and every attempt to fix that situation has been blocked so they pushed through what they could (not that it makes any significant difference since domestic lighting is less than .1% of all energy use, but it was something they could take back to their voters who superficially care about the environment).
Re:republicans (Score:5, Informative)
What made the plant here vulnerable is, in part, a 2007 energy conservation measure passed by Congress that set standards essentially banning ordinary incandescents by 2014. The law will force millions of American households to switch to more efficient bulbs.
The resulting savings in energy and greenhouse-gas emissions are expected to be immense. But the move also had unintended consequences.
Rather than setting off a boom in the U.S. manufacture of replacement lights, the leading replacement lights are compact fluorescents, or CFLs, which are made almost entirely overseas, mostly in China.
Consisting of glass tubes twisted into a spiral, they require more hand labor, which is cheaper there. So though they were first developed by American engineers in the 1970s, none of the major brands make CFLs in the United States.
Whether the loss of this factory is a cost worth paying for increased energy efficiency is a different question, but the regulations did shut down a plant.
Re:Labelling (Score:5, Informative)
The GE CFL's that Walmart and Samsclub sell will reach 90+% brightness in about 2-3 seconds and 100% in under a minute. As far as the dimable CFL's, they are available but they don't dim as far, and those do take considerable time to warm up. I stopped buying them after the first purchase and now purchase the energy efficient halogen bulbs for my downstairs can lights that are on a dimmer, they're about halfway between a traditional incandescent and a CFL in efficiency and won't be banned under the efficiency guidelines.
Re:All Edison's fault (Score:4, Informative)
Re:All Edison's fault (Score:4, Informative)
You don't even have to try to dim them, even the highest setting is not really 100% voltage, so you kill the light.
Law of unintended consequences in full effect: Regulations that are written with no real understanding of the side effects.
"The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'" - Ronald Regan
Re:Republicans disrupting a REPUBLICAN ban! (Score:5, Informative)
This Bill passed in the House 314-100 [house.gov] with 95 Republicans voting for it (with 96 voting against it). In the Senate, it passed 86-8 [senate.gov], with 40 Republicans voting in favor of the Bill, and only 7 voting against. And, of course, President Bush, a Republican, signed it into law.
Re:republicans (Score:4, Informative)
Future discount and all that Solow stuff you haven't read.
Re:All Edison's fault (Score:3, Informative)
Re:20 x 100 W bulbs?!?!?!? (Score:2, Informative)
Nah, Metal Halide (and High Pressure Sodium for flowering phase) is the only way to go. 75-100W ballast is more than adequate for a small setup so there won't be a telltale spike on your power bill. Fluorescent (and probably LED) just aren't bright enough for their size.
Re:All Edison's fault (Score:5, Informative)
From what you've written, you don't understand what a heat pump is and does. So let's try this again:
There's no "transducer" converting electricity to heat in a heat pump. The primary parts of a heat pump are a compressor, a condenser, an evaporator, and an expansion valve. The compressor takes fluid, compresses it, and sends it into the condenser. Doing this raises the temperature of the fluid to a temperature above that of the surrounding area, so that heat flows from the fluid to the surrounding area, heating that area. On its way to another area, the fluid passes through an expansion valve, which lowers the pressure the fluid is under, into the evaporator. This causes the temperature of the fluid to drop to where it is below that of the surrounding area, so that heat flows from the surrounding area to the fluid, heating the fluid (and cooling the surrounding area).
Thus, heat is moved from one area to another. Since the heat is not coming from the supplied power, but rather, from the area around the evaporator, the amount of heat let out on the heating side can be greater than the amount of power supplied.
To put it another way: Let's say your house has a fireplace, but you want to have heat in other rooms. So, you take a bunch of bricks, lay them in front of the fire, and let them heat up. When they're hot, you carry them into the rooms you want to heat. When the bricks in a room start to get cold, you take them back to the fireplace to heat again, and grab hot bricks to take back to the room.
The heat pump here is you, carrying the bricks back and forth. Your energy is being used to move the bricks, not to heat them -- it's the fire that heats them. In the same way, the heat pump isn't what's creating the heat -- it's simply moving fluid around, which is getting its heat from its surroundings while it's in the evaporator.
Now, the compressor will be less than 100% efficient in converting electrical energy to kinetic energy as it moves the fluid around -- but since heat pump users are less interested in how well their heat pump moves fluid, and more interested in how much heat it can output, and the heat being supplied from the outside environment is effectively free, heat pumps have their efficiency rated in how much heat the condenser outputs under normal operating conditions vs. how much electrical energy is supplied to them, and that number is more than 100%. That's not thermodynamic efficiency, which can never exceed 100%, but it's the efficiency that the people using heat pumps care about.
Re:All Edison's fault (Score:5, Informative)
Legal in Texas and Canada, 9 US State Repeal Bills (Score:3, Informative)
regular incandescent light bulbs are legal for Texas manufacture and sales since June 2011, signed into law by Gov Rick Perry.
Texas also has several Congressmen active federally against it, with bills and amendments
http://freedomlightbulb.org/2011/06/texas-to-allow-incandescent-light-bulbs.html [freedomlightbulb.org]
http://freedomlightbulb.org/2012/06/texas-hold-em-and-congressmen-fight-for.html [freedomlightbulb.org]
All the bills in US States, links and updates
http://ceolas.net/#bills [ceolas.net]
Outside the USA, Canada delayed ban for at least 2 years, BC suspended their ongoing ban: See the above sites for more
Mexico due to implement restricitions but their grid needs upgrading (common CFLs affect grids due to their so-called power factor)
Those interested in the incandescent ban topic can if they want follow
the Incandescent Light Bulb Activist Alliance on Facebook,
started a few days ago, with American and European politicians, lighting designers, writers and others
http://www.facebook.com/groups/bulballiance [facebook.com]