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."
All Edison's fault (Score:5, Funny)
Re:All Edison's fault (Score:5, Insightful)
The irony is that there's now a huge market for modernized versions of the original edison bulbs, which radiate far more in the infrared and red, and far less in the colder portions of the spectrum. I was at a metting in the Andaz Hotel in downtown Manhattan last week, and they had chandeliers with maybe 20-30 of these bulbs each, producing very little light and a lot of heat, and then they had a separate cove lighting system so that we could actually _see_.
So basically, a massive waste of energy solely for the purpose of fashion, which wasn't even at all attractive, and made several people quite uncomfortable because of the heat output. Oh, plus they probably had to crank up the AC to keep the room from overheating.
It's a damned shame that Edison couldn't have invented the remote-phosphor LED lighting system, and instead forced Philips to do his dirty work a century later. But that's the way things go. Both he and Tesla were way too enamored of basic electricity. :)
What astonishes me is that people aren't installing more of these Philips lights—they are amazing. You can't tell the difference between them and incandescents, but they last forever, use minimal power, and look _really_ cool (but don't look at them when they're on—they're _bright_!).
Re:All Edison's fault (Score:5, Interesting)
I can attest to this - I have retrofitted (over a year or so) my whole house with the Philips LED bulbs.
I have a fixture with multiple bulb sockets, I put in a 60W incandescent in one and the Philips LED in the other, and I could not see a difference in colour temperature at all. They stay warm-ish to the touch so you don't have to worry about spot heating problems in your home, they're great. Now they just need a bulb that can operate in an enclosed fixture.
It did help that our local power utility subsidized these bulbs, they're expensive - between $40 - $50 a pop. I got mine for half price because of the subsidy.
Re:All Edison's fault (Score:5, Insightful)
It did help that our local power utility subsidized these bulbs, they're expensive - between $40 - $50 a pop. I got mine for half price because of the subsidy.
No you got yours for half price up front, with the remaining half coming from either your electric bill or taxes over time. No such thing as a free lunch.
Re:All Edison's fault (Score:3)
Or p'raps the remaining half was paid for by his neighbors, who did not convert to energy efficient bulbs. Without examining the power company's books, you really have no idea who paid for lunch... you're either guessing, or just filling in what you'd prefer to believe is true.
But you're right - it wasn't free!
Personally I'd rather have sustainable technology subsidies provided through pollution taxes, including carbon taxes. This nonsense of taxing middle-class income and then using the money to fund social goods is dumb; it punishes workers twice, first by penalizing wage income, and then by allowing polluters to externalize the costs of the cancer and land devaluation their pollution creates back on to the working public. In a well managed capitalism, instead of discouraging wage-earning, you'd be discouraging activities that poison the natural commons and destroy non-renewable resources.
But using necessary taxation to discourage activities destructive to everyone and encourage a work ethic is an antique idea, which post-Reagan politicians will only talk about during campaigns and never enact once in office. Once in office, it's tax the middle class and let the ultra-rich pollute with impunity, business as usual, regardless of party affiliations.
Re:All Edison's fault (Score:5, Insightful)
Fucking Brilliant "pun intendend" require by code enforcement that every house have a dimmable switch or an automatic shutoff,
Now make a law that says I cannot buy incandescent bulbs.. but if I put fluorescent bulbs in I burn out the switch or they use power constantly because they cannot be turned OFF.
This is fucking ridiculous I'd rather heat my house with incandescent bulbs than continue to replace switches and burn out "energy saving" bulbs every 30 days. This is a waste of fucking time and my money.Just how environmentally conscious are we when we put 5 million fluorescent bulbs in the same landfill. 5 milligrams of mercury in each bulb which is enough to poison 6,000 gallons of water. I'm sorry but that just seems incredibly fucked up. When is the last time you immediately had to open a window and put on a mask in your house because you dropped an incandescent bulb.
I'd give a LOT to have led's everywhere in a place where they would provide a good bit of light. My main issue is cost. I will indeed check the philips LED's.
Re:All Edison's fault (Score:5, Insightful)
Life of a CFL is x hours or y on/off cycles.
All the comparisons assume they will live x hours. They suck for bathrooms or anyplace where the bulb only stays on for a short time.
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
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:LED is freakishly expensive up front (Score:5, Insightful)
Beyond just the fact that up-front costs suck, if you're poor and your kid knocks over your lamp you're out $23. If you're poor and you move then unless you plan on bringing your bulbs with you, risking shattering them in the move, you're out the $23 each.
$23 is dinner for a week if you're poor. It's only a light bulb if you're rich.
Re:LED is freakishly expensive up front (Score:3)
I can't agree more.
Re:LED is freakishly expensive up front (Score:4, Funny)
What you of course failed to take into account is the time value of money [wikipedia.org]. Assuming the bulb will last a year, at even a low credit card rate of 8% it costs you an extra 0.04c/hr. Or, if you look for savings, by not investing that money in AAPL you lose an extra 0.2c/hr (assuming 50% returns, and that's quite conservative). That's a lot of wasted money.
Re:All Edison's fault (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:All Edison's fault (Score:4, Informative)
Re:All Edison's fault (Score:3, Insightful)
In reality, there is no 100% efficiency. Bulbs and heating elements are transducers, and they have poor-moderate conversion; the problem is subsequent radiation of the heat to its intended target.
If you're getting 400-500% efficiency, this means you're inventing energy as you get 100% max. Any more, any more and you're opening up a hole from another dimension to let energy in. I want to know how to do that.
Re:All Edison's fault (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, a heat-pump is 400-500% efficient (depending on the outside temperature). For instance, 1kWh of electrical energy brings in my house about 4.5kWh of heat.
By the same measure, an electric radiator is only 100%, i.e. 1kWh of electrical energy produces exactly 1kWh of heat.
My PG&E bill is proof of the efficiency difference; after installing my Daikin system, I went down from Tier3 to Tier1 (baseline).
Re:All Edison's fault (Score:3)
If you're getting 400-500% efficiency, this means you're inventing energy as you get 100% max. Any more, any more and you're opening up a hole from another dimension to let energy in. I want to know how to do that.
You're not bringing it from another dimension with a heat pump, you're just moving it from inside to outside or vice-versa. The greater-than-100% efficiency is just the ratio of heat moved versus energy required to move it. It's not literally "efficiency" in a rigorous sense, since you're not exactly comparing input to output -- you ignore the effect of adding or removing heat from the outside environment. But the definition is close enough for most purposes, since you what want to know which technology can heat your space for less energy and thus less money.
Re:All Edison's fault (Score:5, Interesting)
Heat pumps work by moving heat from a source to a sink, not by generating heat (although of course they do generate heat because they aren't 100% efficient in what they do: pumping heat). So as long as your source has heat to move, you can deliver significantly more heat to the sink than you could get by putting the same energy into a resistive heat emitter. Our house in Vermont is heated by a single 12.5kbtu air-to-air heat pump. The source is outside air; in the winter, we cool the air passing over the exterior device, but a fan continually blows air across it so that we are never cooling the same air. You may think winter air is cold, but tell that to a space alien with liquid helium blood. To them it's fatally hot. So the air is maybe ten or twenty degrees cooler after it passes through the exterior heat exchanger, but there's a relatively endless supply of warm (say, 0F) air to replace it. Consequently, we get a nice multiplier over resistive heat: while the net heat delivered to the system as a whole is the same, the heat delivered to the conditioned space is three times greater. Physics is full of win.
Re:All Edison's fault (Score:5, Interesting)
You are arguing the wrong thing, a heat pump can produce a BTU load of more 3,415 BTU per hour per kw which is where the efficiency of greater than 100% is coming from. Sure, they aren't creating more than 3,415 BTU per hour per kw, but most people don't care about the thermodynamics of the universe, just the energy that is required to heat or cool their domicile.
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:3)
Your last paragraph capitulates to my argument.
Pointing out that you and those you're disagreeing with are talking about two different things is hardly "capitulating". You're correct insofar as you go, but what you're talking about isn't relevant to what they're talking about -- the fact that as far as efficiency of electricity use goes, a heat pump is much, much better than using incandescent lights for heating.
The transducer portion of your equation is the conversion step from electricity applied to heat output.
I didn't have an equation anywhere. But if you're going to insist that the "transducer portion" is the conversion from electricity applied to heat output, then a heat pump is more than 100% efficient, since it supplies more heat energy to the target area than the amount of electricity input.
We're talking about lightbulbs here. They throw off light, but also heat in the conversion step. That's the "work" they do in the circuit. My arguments have been based solely on that efficiency-- electrical efficiency, and no other additive or other domain measurements.
The person you were replying to was stating that using electricity to power a heat pump is much more efficient than using it to power an incandescent bulb, if what you want is to heat a space. How heat pumps work is relevant to that, no matter how you try to dodge.
Re:All Edison's fault (Score:4, Interesting)
All electric heaters are 100% efficient.
... but using electricity for heating is still a waste. Most electricity is actually produced from heat (which itself comes from a coal fire, a gas fire, a nuclear reaction, ...), and it is this first conversion (from heat to electricity) that is very inefficient (due to second law of thermodynamics).
So the overall sequence is heat -> electricity -> heat, and it is wasteful due to the first step.
Better skip the intermediate step, and directly burn gas or fuel in a home furnace, rather than waste energy by using electric heating.
Actually, one great way to make power stations more energy efficient is cogeneration, i.e. to use their waste heat to heat the surrounding houses and businesses (wouldn't obviously fly for nukes, but is commonly done for gas-fired power plants).
Even better than that (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually it's even better than that - almost all other types of modern heaters heat the air, which then heats everything else, especially the ceiling where the hottest air pools. As a result much of the heat gets sucked out of the house through the walls and ceiling and any air-gaps.
Infrared heaters instead heat the things in the room - people and surfaces - and if aimed well you can keep much of the heat off the walls and ceiling. One of the major benefits of this is that you can keep the air temperature significantly cooler, which reduces heat loss as well as allowing your body to regulate it's temperature more easily.
If you think about it IR heating is the traditional norm - an open fire sends virtually all hot air straight up - what warms you is the IR. Likewise standing near a sun-warmed rock or a Scandinavian style tile oven/masonry heater which can keep a whole house warm all day with just a few handfuls of sticks - the folks who've been living with serious cold for centuries long ago figured out that heating the air is silly.
Re:Even better than that (Score:3)
I've always found direct IR heating to be kind of unpleasant. The side of you facing the source is warm; the other side is bathed in cold air. Warm air is more even.
Perhaps it's just a matter of what we're used to. I'm certainly not going to tell the Scandinavians they're doing it wrong.
Re:Even better than that (Score:3)
Scandinavian stoves rely on thermal mass. So they take a significant fraction of the total heat from the fire, and store it in mass (rocks), and then re-radiate it to the room. This heats the walls, which also have thermal mass, and also heats the air, which has very little thermal mass and is cheap to heat. Scandinavian stoves are nothing like those little radiant dish heaters. Yes, both radiate, but the experience they deliver is quite different.
Re:Even better than that (Score:3, Interesting)
Likewise standing near a sun-warmed rock or a Scandinavian style tile oven/masonry heater which can keep a whole house warm all day with just a few handfuls of sticks - the folks who've been living with serious cold for centuries long ago figured out that heating the air is silly.
Speaking as someone who lives in Minnesota, the freezer of the continental United States, no... we haven't. We still have large, bulky furnaces that costs hundreds, sometimes thousands, of dollars per month to run in the wintertime. Thanks to environmental concerns and zoning regulations, it's very difficult, if not impossible, to get any kind of conventional wood burning stove installed in a residence. A stupidly simple double-barrel wood stove costs only $50 a month to run, and it can heat many thousands of square feet, even with minimal insulation.
I'd say that the use of electric or natural-gas furnaces is really a step in the wrong direction -- it may be more advanced technologically, but it's worse for the environment and your pocketbook. The only reason people use them is convenience and because it's illegal to use anything else. Also, because the modern man living in suburbia is stupid. Half of them can't even manage to start a fire without a ludicrous amount of matches and newspaper; Most of them get fire-starter bricks because they fail so hard. But I grew up in the country -- I can start a fire with just a napkin, two rocks, and two first-fulls of grass. The things people forget because of modern conveniences...
Re:20 x 100 W bulbs?!?!?!? (Score:3)
LOL I had 16 seventy five watt bulbs in my basement workroom / lab and it still had some troublesome shadows and dark corners. Yes that would be a little bright for a bathroom or closet. Used to get hot in the summer but the LEDs keep it cool now. Yes, that was a rather expensive LED conversion project. CFLs make too much electrical noise for some of my electronics projects so it had to be RF-quiet LEDs. 40 feet along one side and 30 along the other that's just not as much light intensity as you'd think.
Re:20 x 100 W bulbs?!?!?!? (Score:5, Funny)
LOL I had 16 seventy five watt bulbs in my basement workroom / lab and it still had some troublesome shadows and dark corners.
I know what you mean. Those grues and creepers will spawn if you give them even the slightest chance.
Re:All Edison's fault (Score:3, Funny)
Re:All Edison's fault (Score:3)
It hasn't occurred to you that a ban on incandescents for lighting might just exclude incandescents for heating in industrial applications?
Re:All Edison's fault (Score:4, Insightful)
I can imagine a lawyer saying "interesting", which is a word you never want to hear from a lawyer if you're the one paying.
It would be really hard to ban resistance heating. If those resistance heaters happened to be in a near-vacuum, with tungsten instead of nichrome, someone could argue it's still the same thing. Then the home center store relocates the 100-watt bulbs to the space heater section, where they belonged in the first place.
Re:All Edison's fault (Score:3, Informative)
Re:All Edison's fault (Score:5, Funny)
I can imagine a lawyer saying "interesting", which is a word you never want to hear from a lawyer if you're the one paying.
You don't want to hear that from your doctor, either.
Re:All Edison's fault (Score:3)
Or IT. If someone is working on your machine, and says "that's interesting," typically with a furrowed eye-brow, he / she has probably just encountered an error they've never seen before.
Re:All Edison's fault (Score:4, Funny)
It hasn't occurred to you that a ban on incandescents for lighting might just exclude incandescents for heating in industrial applications?
Can you cite a source? Everything I've read says it's just an outright ban.
Can't run my Easy-Bake oven on LED bulbs! Without the income I'd be homeless!
Re:All Edison's fault (Score:5, Informative)
Re:All Edison's fault (Score:3)
As for storage: man, just put them in a shoe box (perhaps a plastic one) and wrap each one in crumbled newspaper. Been there, done that in exactly same circumstances. I'd have thought it's a non-issue.
Re:All Edison's fault (Score:4, Funny)
Edison wasn't an inventor. He was a capitalist who stole things from other people.
I read it once on the oatmeal so it must be true.
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla [theoatmeal.com]
Re:All Edison's fault (Score:3)
Edison was a trifle early for the really good stuff; but he was doing his serious work well after the industrial revolution started. Anybody who didn't know that widespread coal burning was at least noxious, if not hazardous, would have had to be fairly clueless by that time.
Now, asking a guy who did some important technical refining of incandescent resistive lighting to have invented LEDs or fluorescent tubes instead is probably deeply unfair...
Ban is dumb (Score:5, Insightful)
Should be a tax. Encourage people to make the right choices, but don't screw people who have special circumstances or are willing to compensate society for the cost of their preference.
Re:Ban is dumb (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Ban is dumb (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Ban is dumb (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ban is dumb (Score:4, Interesting)
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:Ban is dumb (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, if you follow human behavior, you'd find that the "choice" would be limited to incandescent bulbs. Necessity is the mother of invention, and without these bans, we'd still be using incandescents - CFLs would be a niche, and white LEDs a purely decorative thing. Instead we have CFLs of all shapes, sizes, instant-on, dimmable, "cool" vs. "warm". And we have LED lights that are practically indistinguisable from incandescent (which are actually getting cheaper - from $100 to under $40 and much less on sale).
And the ban wasn't on incandescents, it was a ban on inefficiency. If you can make a more efficient incandescent (I believe GE has - it's nowhere near as efficient as a CFL or LED, but it is above the efficiency threshold), it can still be sold.
So even incandescents have improved in efficiency. How is that a bad thing? More innovation in the humble light bulb.
If you don't force companies to adapt, they'll continue doing the same old thing every day. Even giant rich ones - remember the Montreal Protocol and CFC-free asthma inhalers? They had a quarter of a decade to phase out CFC usage, and they only complain about "tight" deadlines a couple of years prior to when their exemption expires. Well, yes it's a tight deadline if you only started at the second half of the first decade of the millennium, but you did have well over a decade prior to develop new propellants in time for approvals.
It's very rare that industries see change coming and start to embrace it, though even that came with pushes and shoves. E.g., general aviation currently uses 100LL avgas - it's still a leaded fuel and demand is quite low (basically the only refinery can produce the annual supply in a day), requires special handling (leaded and unleaded gas require separate processing equipment to prevent contamination), and special licensing. Plus, there's only one source in the world of tetraethyl lead, from the UK. And with environmentalists clamoring with the EPA over regulation of leaded fuels (FAA is overriding that for safety reasons), the writing's on the wall for leaded gas. So what happened is the entire industry is getting together to do a pile of R&D to produce the next-gen unleaded avgas, compatible with 100LL and leaded engines. (The requirements are different enough that while the auto fleet switched to unleaded in a few years in the 80s, a lot more work would go in recertifying aircraft to use unleaded).
Hell, see telephone and cable companies with what's happening with VoIP and streaming. Or the music and movie industry.
Industries have to be pushed to change.
Re:Ban is dumb (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is the energy difference is almost insignificant when the bulb cost is factored in. If the bulbs were the same price there might be a point to it all, but that is far from the case.
Even the cheap Chinese-made CFL bulbs are 10x what an incandescent bulb costs and the promised lifespan hasn't materialized for most people. So you get a bulb that lasts 2x but costs 10x. Yes, there is lower energy use and lower energy costs, but the difference is pennies.
Maybe the solution is to make electricity too expensive to use - you know, something like $1.50/Kwh. That would make CFL and LED bulbs far more cost effective - except that I think most people would simply be forced to do without.
So, how about some real energy savings? Everyone can go outside and bottle up some fireflies. We could have a new company that sells bottled-up fireflies for home use. Anyone know what the lifespan of a bottle of fireflies is?
Re:Ban is dumb (Score:3)
The tax wouldn't be as effective as the ban. The ban was needed to push the industry forward and enable them to be profitable making the newer, more efficient bulbs. The tax would need to be exorbitantly high for cheap-to-produce incandescent bulbs to be as expensive as the more efficient bulbs. If the price isn't adjusted enough for competition then no manufacturer could invest in the infrastructure to produce the new bulb, it would be too risky, and thus adoption would be slowed. The most telling part of this: this legislation was drafted with the help of the industry.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/may/20/ameripac/conservative-pac-claims-democrats-banned-incandesc/ [politifact.com]
Moorhead said industry representatives were closely involved in the legislative process to develop the new efficiency standards and would never have supported a ban of incandescent bulbs. The companies, as well as the legislators who drafted the bill, were keenly aware that the new standards could be met through the development of halogen incandescent light bulbs, he said.
It's also worth noting that, while current opposition to the "ban" is primarily from Republicans, the bill was passed by a Democratic Congress but signed by a Republican President. So, the bill is not anti-consumer. It isn't anti-industry. It isn't particularly partisan, either. Now if we're lobbing complaints around we should perhaps worry about the mercury content of the CFL bulbs that are now making their way in larger quantities to landfills, at least there's some small amount of legitimate concern to that.
Politically imposssible (Score:3)
Should be a tax. Encourage people to make the right choices, but don't screw people who have special circumstances or are willing to compensate society for the cost of their preference.
Should be but won't be. Republicans break out in hives if you try to raise taxes even for a good reason. Economically it makes sense but politically it is impossible.
Re:Politically imposssible (Score:3)
Should be a tax. Encourage people to make the right choices, but don't screw people who have special circumstances or are willing to compensate society for the cost of their preference.
Should be but won't be. Republicans break out in hives if you try to raise taxes even for a good reason. Economically it makes sense but politically it is impossible.
And the democrats are scared to death of raising taxes because it will be used against them in the next election. So we have two parties who won't raise taxes, even if it would help the country, for different reasons. Not much difference in the end.
Let the free market decide (Score:4, Insightful)
My father and I used to work on cars together all year round including the winter. The trouble light we used had an incandescent 100W bulb. We used it for light AND heat! Anytime our hands got cold after gripping a freezing wrench, we would just place them around the light bulb and warm them up quickly. Now, the government is stepping in and telling me that they're smarter than me and that I need to use a CFL or LED bulb instead, which doesn't output nearly as much heat. So instead of having 1 power cord to deal under a freezing car, I am going to have to have 2; one for a light, and another for a heat source. LAME.
I know someone who replaced bulbs on a airport runways. The heat from incandescent bulbs is advantageous in street lights and runways in cold climate because the heat melts the snow which would obscure the light emitted from the bulb!
I am tired of the government pretending to be smarter than the invisible hand of the free market. Rand Paul talked about this. Search for: light bulbs rand paul congress.
Re:Ban is dumb (Score:3)
And not a tax on bulbs but a tax on electricity consumption or CO2 emission. But that would also hurt the really big wasters of energy, the big companies with deep pockets. Also, what if someone invents an incandescent bulb with efficiency comparable to fluorescent ones, would that be banned too? This is not regulation, this is planned economy.
There are many uses where incandescent is better: if you only use it for short periods of time (in a fridge,garage,basement etc.), if you live in a cold area (and thus the generated heat isn't wasted), if you need a bulb to actually produce heat (artificial incubation?), if you need a bulb with a blackbody spectrum (photography?) or if you need a bulb with modifiable intensity.
Re:Ban is dumb (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Democrats (Score:5, Informative)
Uh, you do know that a Republican president signed this into law, right?
Re:Democrats (Score:4, Interesting)
LED lights would save more electricity, last a LOT longer, but cost a LOT more. Thanks, guys.
Lets buy five 2000 hour 100 watt old fashioned filament bulbs for $5
100 watts / 1000 watts per KW * 0.10 dollars per KWh * 10000 hours total use = energy cost of $100 of highly govt subsidized electricity (real cost probably higher)
Lets buy the equivalent number of lumens in a 10000 hour LED I donno 8 watts or something for $50.
8 watts / 1000 * 0.10 * 10000 = $8 of highly subsidized electricity
Old fashioned total cost is $105. LED total cost is $58.
There's some cultural socioeconomic stuff going on too. I wouldn't be caught dead buying filament bulbs because that's poor people budgeting prioritizing up front cost over long term cost (look, its only $1 upfront instead of $50, that means you could buy $49 of malt liquor today, that kind of brilliant budgeting helps poor people stay poor).
I've been fooling around with LED lightbulbs (sometimes, unfortunately at great cost) for a decade or so. AKA I've been one of those early adopters with arrows in my back so you cheap bastards can now pay $25 for something better than I paid $150 for as a novelty a decade ago. They really do last 10000 hours when not abused. Two great ways to destroy a LED bulb : 1) Never dust it, because it never burns out so you ignore it, until its encrusted in a thick layer of dust, over heats, and poof. 2) Enclosed fixture, even worse outdoors in hot summer right after sunset, that's just not gonna live long Avoid those two scenarios and they really are a better, cheaper solution.
Its also weird as a lifestyle thing where in a big enough house you burn out a couple old fashioned bulbs every month, so you keep a stockpile and buy them at the food store as a regular purchase. Once you go LED they burn out so rarely that 1) Its a noteworthy event 2) you don't keep a stock on hand of replacements (well, you could I guess, but just like I don't keep spare major appliances around ... Although a RAID array of clothes washers would help when a backlog accumulates)
Re:Ban is dumb (Score:3)
That being said, all I could think was, "OMG! HASN'T ANYONE CONSIDERED THE TURTLES?!?!" I can think of a lot of good reasons for keeping a light bulb around, but taking a turtle that would be perfectly happy in its natural habitat and boxing it up with a light bulb is not one of them.
Labelling (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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:Labelling (Score:5, Interesting)
Came here to say the same.
I could mod you up, but instead I'll just say, every time I bitch about warm up time in one of these threads, someone replies that I should buy a bulb made this century or by a good manufacturer. Yet no one ever has an example of which ones are the "good manufacturers."
I had a service come in to do an energy audit on my home. I expected to hear a lot about insulation and drafty windows. Instead the guy just went through and changed all the bulbs he could to CFLs. I've also purchased CFLs in the past. These are GE and Sylvania bulbs.
1. These bulbs do not last as long as advertised. I've been in my house for 8 years and there are fixtures that have had bulbs burn out at least twice (ie, fixtures on their 3rd CFL bulb in 8 years).
2. Dimmable? If you consider going from off to warming up to on dimmable, then yes. If you mean on demand dimmable with a dimmer switch, then no not dimmable.
3. Warm up time. True story: a couple days after I had my "energy audit" I'm a the foot of my stairs and flip the switch for the lights at the top of the stairs.
Nothing happens. It's a 3-way with the other switch at the top, so I flip it back, wondering if the lights were on and I had just turned them off. But still nothing. I give another few flips, still nothing. I'm very puzzled, because light switches are usually very reliable. I don't remember ever having to replace a regular light switch that stopped working.
Then I look up. The switch is working. The lights are coming on. It's just they are so dim, unless I am looking directly at the bulbs, I can't tell if they are on or off.
My daily routine used to be to come home from work, go to my bedroom, turn on the over head light, change out of my work gear in to evening wear, and then go about my night. Now, I come home, go to the bedroom, turn on the over head light, turn on the night stand light, make sure I leave the door open with the hall light on, so I can see while I'm changing. By the time I'm done, all the bulbs have warmed up and I'm squinting from the brightness, but by then I'm leaving the room and turning all those lights off.
So if someone has a line on CFLs that don't need minutes to warm up, please share! Until then, I'm going through what CFLs I have and as they burn out, replacing them with real light bulbs that work.
I realize technologies take time to mature and I understand the concept of a public beta test, but CFLs are being pitched as a final product when they aren't nearly as good as the thing they are supposed to replace.
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:Labelling (Score:3)
One guaranteed for quick brightness is to look for the label "LED"
It also seems to be a guarantee for $$$
Re:Labelling (Score:5, Interesting)
> the spread was too narrow.
Yup. We put up some track lights and found the LED bulbs would illuminate a small patch of floor, but blind you if you looked directly into it.
In order to have lots of light and stay within the current rating of the track, I mixed them 50/50 with halogens. The halogens lit the room, the led were set to be pointing at things like desks that benefit from better illumination.
LED room lights have a way to go before they're a complete replacement.
Only by the idiots.... (Score:4, Insightful)
The light bulb ban is for the old incandescent. the halogens are NOT banned and work just as good and look just as good. It's all nutjobs that got foaming at the mouth over misinformation. If they had actually taken the time to go and educate themselves instead of listening to the sensationalist talking heads trying to tun something moot into a news story to milk they would have known this.
Your only choise is not only LED or "curly que" CFL bulbs. And anyone that took 3 minutes to look it up would have known this.
Re:Only by the idiots.... (Score:3)
There are better methods to handle this situation. As other commenters have said, give people incentives to change over, don't slap an outright ban on a product.
No ban solution (Score:3)
Why not just change the law so a store can't sell incandescent bulbs cheaper than CFL or LED? You wouldn't need to ban them to have the save effect.
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: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.
How many...? (Score:4, Funny)
So, how many Republicans does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
We have found the enemy, and it's Hasbro! (Score:3)
The ban is really about child obesity and preventing further use of the Easy Bake Oven.
Bulbs (Score:4, Insightful)
The *vast* majority of electricity consumed in the US is from the industrial and commercial sectors, who already almost exclusively use fluorescent lighting. Residential lighting electricity use is a drop in the overall bucket. This legislation is silly.
I'll be stocking up on GE Reveal incandescent bulbs - the best reading bulbs in existence. The new GE Edison halogen bulbs are also very good, but with the rather insane push for CFL's, they are hard to find. I'll be upgrading to LEDs once the price is right, and the dispersion problems are fixed. Screw CFLs, they are the discrete flip-chips of the lighting world (for the uninitiated, nearly obsolete upon introduction)
What are the replacements? (Score:4, Insightful)
So what, realistically are the replacements? CFL is out for me, since -40 weather is hard on them. Also I have 20 pivot irrigation systems that have telltale lights on them and CFLs would burn out in a week there (end tower light turns on and off with the motor at least once a minute, and some center tower lights have blinkers on them). My shop has a bunch of 200W rough service bulbs as well. CFL is not going to replace that. I understand there are cold-weather flourescent tubes I can install, but they are much more expensive than incandescents, and the fact they are only turned on for days out of the year total makes any efficiency benefits moot.
Someone mentioned before the ban isn't on incandescents per se, but on inefficient bulbs. So will there be higher-efficiency incandescents out there? Some sort of hybrid? Besides CFL and LED, what is really happening in the the incandescent area?
A "ban" is very poor policy (Score:3)
'Bans' take all other factors out of the decision on what to use. The only real screw-in alternative to an incandescent bulb is the 'compact fluorescent' bulb although the LED screw-ins may eventually improve their performance and lower their cost enough to make them another alternative. However...the CFL bulbs have a lot of limitations. They have very low light output when they are powered up and need several minutes to warm up enough to reach full output. That makes them a very poor choice for lighting fixtures that are powered up for only a few minutes at infrequent intervals. The lifespan of a CFL bulb decreases dramatically to the same or less than an incandescent bulb when powered up for only short periods of time. Even when warm, the CFL maximum light output decreases by 20 to 30 percent over the life of the bulb. CFLs generally have a lower light output than a comparable incandescent bulb if you rely on the manufacturer 'equivalent to a xx-watt bulb labelling so your room, when lit with CFLs in the same lighting fixtures, is likely to be quite a bit dimmer. CFLs are supposed to have a life of 6,000 to 15,000 hours but my experience in real-world use has been less than 2,000 hours at best. Finally, CFLs are a very poor choice for any lighting that is not in a heated space as they will not even start in cold temperatures and, if they do start in cool temperatures, will put out a very low amount of light. In spite of these limitations, CFLs are an excellent choice in some locations such as a heated space that is powered up for long periods of time. However, the 'ban' will result in CFLs being used everywhere with predictable poor results. A 'ban' for something like a light bulb is like using a hammer to swat a fly...heavy-handed with poor results.
CFLs are unbelievable (Score:4, Interesting)
The lighting industry has got to be gleefully rubbing its hands over these regulatory moves.
The building inspector made me replace 160 watts of very nice halogens in my new kitchen with 160 watts of fluorescents because the code says half of the lighting in a kitchen has to be "energy efficient". The overall lighting level went down considerably with this change, in part because the halogens give directed light and decent looking fluorescents don't, and also because halogen light is a lot nicer. Of course the change was reversed the same day the inspector signed off. The $120 fluorescent fixture I was forced to buy now illuminates an area of my home that I don't spend much time in--the laundry room.
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&
CFL's aren't all they're cracked up to be (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you ever taken a CFL apart? I have. There's an astonishing amount of electronics in that small base; it's required to transform line voltage into a potential sufficiently high to ionize the gas in the fluorescent tube. How much energy goes into the manufacture of these electronic components? How much of the electronics is either re-used or recovered as raw material when these bulbs are 'recycled', as opposed to the materials, (and the energy that went into their manufacture), being disposed of in landfills? I have been unable to find answers to these questions, and I think they're important. There's a lot more 'stuff', in a CFL, with a much wider range of chemical compositions, than in an incandescent bulb, so it's harder and more energy-intensive to fully recycle.
Then there are the special interests of the various stakeholders and their lobbyists - for a discussion of this, see http://ceolas.net/#li1ax [ceolas.net] . Does anyone really believe that 'saving energy' is a primary, or even an important, motivation for the manufacturers and patent holders of CFLs? Given that, what might they be hiding, and how much spin has been applied to the figures the provide vis-a-vis total energy savings?
If the powers that be were really serious about saving energy and the environment by encouraging CFL use, they would mandate two things: 1) A a high minimum standard of longevity for the electronics in the bases of CFLs, and 2) A means of replacing the tube only when it burns out, so the most complex and least homogeneous part of the bulb, (the base with its electronic circuitry), can be re-used numerous times. But guess what? That reduces the profit margins and raises both the cost and the price, making the whole proposition both less economically attractive and less politically palatable. If 'energy saving' was the true motive behind this legislation, these things would have been incorporated into CFL design by now.
The problems of the EMI and RFI that CFLs generate, and their crappy power factor, are points for further investigation for those interested. As are the problems with LED lights and their greater negative effects on melatonin production, with the accompanying decrease in health for those exposed to them.
This whole topic is a lot more complex and nuanced than most people realize, and I suggest that anyone reading this might want to do a little digging before giving in to a knee-jerk reaction of either "But, but... the environment!" or "But, but... I like the old ones!"
Re:Big Deal! (Score:3)
Except it draws attention from issues worth talking about.
You can't talk about corporate domination of congress when you're talking other bullshit like this.
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:republicans (Score:4, Insightful)
My understanding of their argument is how efficiency is met as a goal. If you read the story, Representative Burgess said, "It's something the market place should determine. Let consumers make the choice. There was no reason for the government to make that choice for them."
That doesn't sound like standing against innovation or hating on, "the gay." Certainly, it doesn't sound like that's giving to the rich. In fact, banning incandescents seems like it's going to cost us more money. Where you or I may be OK paying extra for a bulb that lasts twenty years, perhaps the poor you're talking about, the ones that do count pennies, will be fucked at the register when they can't replace something that used to be less than a buck.
But this is for a greater cause, right? I mean, energy efficiency. We've got to break a few eggs to make omelets here!
I'm all for a cleaner, safer, planet. But, I'm more in favor of individual freedoms and responsibilities. However, those pesky poor people and their damn hoarding. If only they were as rich as our dear leaders in DC, maybe this wouldn't be a problem.
"It's something the market place should determine. Let consumers make the choice. There was no reason for the government to make that choice for them."
Re:republicans (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:republicans (Score:4, Insightful)
Republicans seem to feel that the marketplace moves infinitely fast, and that there are no barriers to entry, and that there are no external costs. In reality, some problems require foresight and planning that the market is incapable of doing on its own.
I'm all for individual freedoms, and I'm actually not crazy about the bulb ban. It's a (less than-) half measure made politically feasible by the fact that it's a simple thing that people can see directly in front of them as a way to save energy.
I'd much rather see a market-based approach, in which carbon costs and fossil fuel depletion externalities were internalized via a carbon tax. A gradual increase in the cost of electricity would encourage people to buy new, efficient forms of lighting via purely economic forces. But Republicans will absolutely not hear of any sort of tax, far less one oriented towards fixing a problem they have repeatedly called a hoax. And that kind of straight-out falsehood interferes with the proper operation of markets more than any regulation on light bulbs.
In the presence of obstruction, the legislative free market will proceed in a bastardized way, just as economics predicts. And so instead of a clean, straightforward, and economically sensible plan, we get a ridiculous one that's just slightly better than nothing because it was all we can get.
I'd dearly love to see the legislative market proceed by letting actual facts and level-headed decision making guide the day, but in the absence of that, we're going to get mostly heat and little light.
Re:republicans (Score:3, Insightful)
I used to remember a time when it was the Republican that were trying to legislate behavior (morality). Now it's time for the Democrats to do this apparently.
Regulation about light bulb standards is certainly a thing that can be done, but wouldn't it be nice if people chose the "right" light bulb because it's "right" and not because they were forced to choose the "right" one? (and why are the Democrats so interested in "right"?... always thought they leaned left...)
Re:republicans (Score:3)
The Republicans still do. Legislating behavior is something the Democrats have always been accused of, I'm not sure how this falls into that.
Which is what was done.
I believe this falls into the FUD that is being spread about the legislation.
Re:republicans (Score:4, Informative)
Or the cost of one particular type of pollution is underpriced and hence such market forces won't work.
Re:republicans (Score:4, Informative)
Future discount and all that Solow stuff you haven't read.
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:republicans (Score:3)
Re:republicans (Score:3)
Why should it cost jobs? I'm pretty certain most of the CFC/LED bulb technology is western in origin, and the markups on such bulbs are probably bigger than the old filament bulbs, so why is there not a shiny US factory making these things?
Because the Chinese will make them for fractions-of-a-penny on the dollar, and there's no law stopping American corporations from shipping all their manufacturing overseas.
Re:republicans (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:republicans (Score:4, Funny)
What do you mean? Obama's the best Republican president since Reagan.
Re:republicans (Score:3)
Go look at the things Kennedy said, "ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." The party that did that, that sent people to the moon, is now full of people who demand you pay for their birth control. This is the party that rants against bankers, while filling their staff with bankers.
And looking at the frothy end of the spectrum, well, there have always been idiots in America. From women who think Obama's going to pay her rent, to idiots sitting in parks not knowing what they're protesting.
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:Fuck Green (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Fuck Green (Score:3, Insightful)
I live in Europe and fail to see this "hoarding" thing. I call bullshit. Most people I know have been using CFLs for years. Who wants to use lamps that:
Re:So you're a twat. (Score:3)
Do you know what an externality is?
It's when something you choose to do has consequences for people other than yourself.
You aren't allowed to dump your trash out the car window while you are driving down the highway, no matter how convenient that may seem.
That's why 'they' can tell you what the fuck you can do.
Re:No, you're NOT a grown up. (Score:3)
Re:So you're a twat. (Score:3)
The deal is: due to time value of money, all non-incandescent light sources cost actually more. They don't save shit, because money equals energy, so if you have to spend the money, the energy is expended somewhere else. Those bulbs cost more because it takes more energy to make them -- so much more, that it happens to almost exactly offset any energy savings due to using CCFLs or LED lights. When you factor in time value of money, those more expensive bulbs do actually cost more. So the entire argument about cost or energy savings is complete and utter made up bullshit. Yes, I like the CCFLs and LEDs better, because I don't like the heat being emanated in my home. That energy was spent at the factory, though.
Re:I don't support the ban (Score:3)
It's amazing how the very people on this thread complaining about having past costs externalized on them, are happily willing to do the same to people a decade from now, some of them are us.
Re:I wonder who these hoarders are (Score:3)
Re:Fight the ban (Score:3)
The republicans are on the right side of this one.
You might want to explain why. I've been using CFLs for over a decade. Incandescants have no advantage whatever and lots of downsides, both for the environment and your wallet. I'm happy to see incandescants go the way of the steam locomotive.
Re:Fight the ban (Score:3)
Some 15 years ago, when Philips CFLs in Europe were still a hot new thing, I designed a replacement constant power regulating supply that made the light appear to turn on instantly. I've made a batch of 20 boards, and put them in replacement CFLs, that were to replace the unmodified CFLs we had in the house. It was also dimmable. Someone could probably make good money for a short while by offering light bulbs with such upgraded power supplies, but they wouldn't be cheap. One good thing is that such supplies do extend the life of the CFL (not in isolation, you have to derate the tube!). Mine could put out up to 10kV to light the bulb up, so as long as the envelope had some vacuum in it, it would light up even if the electrodes were evaporated away to be flush with the envelope. I've had the supplies fail and had to upgrade some components, as I was pretty novice back then, but the fluorescent tubes have never failed. Those CFLs are still in use, all 20 of them, and they still produce apparently normal amounts of light, 15 years later. As long as the tube keeps vacuum, you can design a power supply that will keep it lit up. When it gets too dim for your taste, you can replace it then, even if I'd personally like to be able to replace the tube only. Those power supplies could be made to last pretty much forever. Of course they wouldn't be cheap, even if you'd make them in quantity. They have to be of sufficient quality and a run of 1000 pieces would still cost over $50 per unit, give-or-take.
Such supplies make more sense as replacements for "ballasts" in tube fluorescents -- they can, pretty much, make a tube last as close to "forever" as practicable. If you want to trade off a bit of efficiency for longevity, you could make it regulate light output instead of electrical power, up to a certain power limit for safety of course. Large fluorescent tubes can dissipate quite a bit more thermal power than relatively small lightbulbs, but the electrodes do get hot once filament has eroded away, as it will eventually do.
In all this, the key is in understanding failure modes of CCFLs and fluorescents. The key contributors are:
1. Failure of ballast/supply electronics.
2. Failure of filaments.
3. Failure of vacuum.
4. Loss of efficiency of the light-emitting coating.
#4 you can't help with without changing the chemistry of the coating, so an electronic designer can't help with that. If you overdrive the bulb, then the coating wears out much faster than it otherwise would, though, so that's something you have control over in a way, but not by trying to put out rated light output from the bulb. The only way to prolong #4 is to derate the light output.
#3 you can't help with directly if it's a random failure somewhat unrelated to stress. If the glass envelope is thermally stressed around the electrodes and if that contributes to loss of vacuum, then of course derating the tube is the only way to help.
#2 is immaterial if you don't use filament emission for startup, but if the filament is worn out then you'll be concentrating heat load on the electrodes, potentially making them hotter and leading to vacuum failure #3.
#1 is something you have full control over.
A bulb that's "dead" (no light output at all) that still has good vacuum indicates #1. That's a waste of a perfectly good mercury-containing tube, then, and a bad thing (tm).
The way to make CCFLs last "forever", as I've found out, is to have "aggresive" power supply that provides fixed electric power to the bulb (not fixed current), and to derate the light output of the tube by a factor of at least 2.5. So I'd buy the largest CFLs one could get, and drive them as if they were small 8-12W ones. Instant startup, long lasting. Win.