California Proposes to Ban Incandescent Lightbulbs 1074
zhang1983 writes to tell us CNN is reporting that California Assemblyman Lloyd 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."
Eh.. (Score:2, Informative)
Also, I had an electrical engineering professor, that turns off his overhead florescent lights when he reads and uses an incandescent because a lot of his peers who read under mainly florescent light have had problems with cataracts.
I believe that there needs to be more R&D into florescent lighting to make it compatible with dimmer switches.
Re:I don't like this (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Hey! I Heat My Home With Incandescents (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I don't like this (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Kind of radical, but I hope it works (Score:4, Informative)
Most dimmer circuits are choppers; they switch the circuit on and off 120 times a second. The fraction of time that the circuit is on increases as the knob is turned.
Anyway, the easily-accessible CFLs are not compatible with dimmer circuits.
Re:Kind of radical, but I hope it works (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Kind of radical, but I hope it works (Score:2, Informative)
They make things to do that. (Score:2, Informative)
Alternately, and probably a better option, are actual purpose-built dog house heaters [futurepets.com], switchable wattages, usable with a timer or rheostat, and designed for use with pets.
Re:Kind of radical, but I hope it works (Score:5, Informative)
They work, just specific ones: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I don't like this (Score:5, Informative)
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?
Try a new one (Score:3, Informative)
Mod parent up (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Kind of radical, but I hope it works (Score:3, Informative)
Many heating solutions like ground source heat pumps, ventilation heat exchangers, etc, give more heat energy per electrical watt put into the system than lightbulbs. IE, heating your house with waste heat from lightbulbs might take twice as much electricity as running a heat pump. So even if the heat gets used, it's comparative waste.
"it rarely gets warm enough for it not to be in use."
Errr, sounds like you need to update your building code too over there. A properly insulated house can, with current state-of-the-art energy efficiency design, support normal indoors living temperatures with zero heat input beyond humans and ordinary applicances far further north than the UK. Of course, that's the extreme, but with a properly insulated building you should definitely not have to run heating all the time at UK temperatures.
Light bulbs are a lousy source of heat. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Kind of radical, but I hope it works (Score:3, Informative)
A dimmer circuit works by varying the line voltage going to the socket. Problem is, typically this power supply isn't going to vary its output voltage in proportion to its input voltage -- it will output 12 volts regardless, until the input voltage dips below a certain threshold where the power supply simply fails to operate.
So if you wanted a dimmable LED bulb, you would first need a power supply that operates over a wide input voltage range. Then you would need some sort of circuit to measure the line voltage before it hits the power supply. That measurement would be sent to a microcontroller which would pulse the LEDs faster than your eye can see, changing the duty cycle (the ratio of "on" to "off") depending on that voltage. As you can see, not a particularly easy feat.
A better solution would be to change the way the dimmer switch operates, to a digital protocol such as INSTEON [insteon.net]. The dimmer could then send a digital signal to the LED bulb via the power line, and the LED bulb could interpret that signal and set the right brightness accordingly. (Notice that this would give you all sorts of other cool options -- like a red/green/blue LED bulb that you could choose the color of!)
Color Temp (Score:3, Informative)
You may also want to look into Metal Halide bulbs. MH bulbs are like a mini-arclamp. It would be nice if those fast start xenon ones they use in cars could made their way into homes. The only MH fixture I could find was from a company called MicroSun. The only disadvantage is the slow start, but since this is the living room, I am in it most of the evening. Going from 300-watt halogen to a 68-watt MH was a very nice upgrade. The MH is slightly brighter than the halogen and has a very good color index.
Re:Hey! I Heat My Home With Incandescents (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What a joke... (Score:3, Informative)
As to your turn signal, there are obviously applications (like blinking lights) that are terrible for CF. And good for LED, which is what you're starting to see on cars.
Re:Kind of radical, but I hope it works (Score:1, Informative)
Reference: http://www.askthebuilder.com/414_Dimmer_Switch.sh
Public information campaign (Score:0, Informative)
A public information campaign would sound rediculous, which is why they are looking for a beefier weapon like legislation.
Fluorescent light bulbs... a solution in search of a problem.
That's funny... (Score:3, Informative)
I've replaced old failed dimmer switches that were at least 25 years old, and they were clearly "choppers", not rheostats. I've worked on several very old houses and never come across an actual rheostat.
Re:A: depends on who's asking and (heh) how (Score:5, Informative)
But they're very fragile, and one of them broke when I tried to arrange my light fixture on it.
And the power here in this building isn't very good, so in relatively short order, two more blew out.
3 of them were in the garbage inside of a month. Wonder how much energy they cost to make?
I got 6 old school bulbs to replace them. They cost a $1. And they last longer.
That's why I personally haven't switched.
Next time I pay $10 for six light bulbs, I want a warranty.
Re:I don't like this (Score:1, Informative)
Re:CFLs not very disposable (Score:3, Informative)
Cheap CFLs tend to break easily. Cheap CFLs are the only kind the poor can afford. Thus all those who do not have money pouring out of their assholes will be breaking CFLs left and right. How many of those do you think will go into the recycling queue? You can't currently put that kind of thing in your recycling bin, you have to actually take it to the landfill.
This is not a solution to a problem, or even a solution looking for a problem. It's a problem looking for a solution.
If LED lights weren't so damned expensive, we'd probably want to use them, because they have characteristics that make them superior to incandescents in every way but price. CFLs have many drawbacks.
Re:Wrong target (Score:2, Informative)
Campaign funding records [ca.gov] for Levine. Anyone recognize any of the names of people or companies in there being in the CFL business?
Re:A: depends on who's asking and (heh) how (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Kind of radical, but I hope it works (Score:2, Informative)
Shorten the life. It sure does...
Hmmm... I Don't Know About This (Score:4, Informative)
But just to put people in their place, I want to point out that fluorescent light technology isn't that much newer than incandescents: read this Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] entry on fluorescent lights. They are anywhere from 110+ to at youngest 80 some years old. Frankly, I am putting more stock in LEDs myself. For one thing, if the LED technology is improved, you'd be able to have bulbs that could be tuned to the correct color. Just imagine instead of having a dimmer, you have three RGB sliders that allow you to set the lights to ANY color you want. That's the way it SHOULD be. Aesthetics + efficiency. My personal interior design catch phrase is, "Lighting is EVERYTHING dahling".
CFLs not always a good choice (enclosed fixtures) (Score:5, Informative)
There are, however, still many applications where CFLs just aren't a good choice.
1. There are dimmable CFLs but they only dim so much and not very smoothly
2. Not recommended for enclosed fixtures (trapped heat shortens life of electronics)
3. Not recommended for use with photocells
Another problem with CFLs is that quality is very uneven and people tend to buy the cheap ones. They should avoid CFLs without an Energy Star label.
One good thing about CFLs is that they can produce quite a wide variety of light from a soft warm light to something very close to daylight. People often end up disappointed though because they don't know what to look for and they end up with a light that's too harsh or too dim looking for their tastes.
A ban on incandescents doesn't make sense. You can't really ban them because they are still needed for certain applications. You could however tax them which would make CFLs seem more attractive.
Re:Shielding takes care of RFI (Score:2, Informative)
However, recording studios do not use BNC connectors, multi-shielded cable, or GHz RF receivers. Pray tell, how do you shield the pickup on an electric guitar with 100% effectiveness? Or an open frame tube-based amp? Tape machine heads? You don't. You keep the environment quiet. It's the only way.
Noise supression on GHz class receivers is easy, since the offending signal is only a few harmonics out from the nonsense generated in a CFL, and the whole chassis is solid metal, without so much as a vent hole.
Re:No great loss... (Score:3, Informative)
I have compact fluorescent bulbs in every bedroom, in my kitchen, in the bathrooms and closets, and outside. The only room where I still use incandescent bulbs is in my living room in two halogen-shaped lamps. For that room, I couldn't find compact fluorescents that weren't either much too bright or much too dim. I have used 40-watt equivalent, 60-watt equivalent, 75-watt equivalent, and 100-watt equivalent bulbs.
I've been impressed with the change in the quality of the lights. When I first bought compact fluorescents, their light was very yellowish, and made everything look strange. But as the incandescent bulbs have burned out, the quality of each new package of compact fluorescents has been noticeably better. And they last forever. None of the compact fluorescents I've purchased(20 or so) have ever burned out. The only reason I've replaced any has been because the newer ones produce nicer light.
Re:No great loss... (Score:5, Informative)
I've gotten 60W replacements with lumen outputs higher than the incandescents they replaced and they are indeed brighter (once they fully get going in 15 seconds).
Another thing to look for is the light temperature rating. 'Bright White', 'Soft White' & 'Daylight' are just some of the different light temperature ratings out there. The temperature of the light can give a different feeling of brightness for a particular room. For instance I replace the can bulbs in my kitchen with 65W equivalent CFL bulbs that were Soft White type temperature. They rather sucked. I then replaced those with the same lumen output but with temperature of Bright White, and the results were much better for that type of room.
Things to think about for sure.
Re:No great loss... (Score:5, Informative)
Most importantly, though, I noticed a drop in my bill immediately - greater than the cost of the 4 bulbs in one month.
Re:A: depends on who's asking and (heh) how (Score:5, Informative)
Taken from http://www.nema.org/lamprecycle/epafactsheet-cfl.
So, if you add the 4mg intrinsic to the CFL(being pessimistic here and assuming NONE get recycled properly) and the 2.4 mg from electricity production you end up with 6.4 mg of mercury released to the environment, as opposed to the 10 mg for regular incandescent bulbs. About 2/3 the mercury our regular light bulbs are giving off, and some of the CFLs will get recycled eh? Sounds like a good tradeoff to me.
Re:No great loss... (Score:5, Informative)
Some people see 60Hz fluorescent light as a solid white where others see it as a really fast strobe light. Also, as fluorescents age they start 'missing' and have a lower and intermittent Hz.
Like color blindness, if you don't have 'fast' eyes it is hard to believe that the bad fluorescents can make others physically ill when all you see is solid white.
I'm confused about what you're saying here. (Score:3, Informative)
Gas/Electric heat (electric fans and gas heater): 68% source-to-delivered
Air-source heat pump with COP=2: 58% source-to-delivered
Ground Source heat pump: 111% source-to-delivered
Advanced GS heat pump: 167% source-to-delivered
Pure electric heat: 30% source-to-delivered (see his assumptions page for this number-- he is using a 70% loss estimate for electrical generation and transmission.)
This is exactly what I said-- resistive electric heat (which is the category you'd put a lighbulb-as-heater in) is the worst of the bunch. Gas is better, heat pumps are better, etc... and how much better your heat pump is depends on its COP. 2 is pretty low-- you can get 4 from an air-coupled unit without even going crazy with ground-loop stuff.
Re:Too bad CFLs are LESS effecient in some cases (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Missing the point (Score:3, Informative)
Electrical lighting accounts for 9.4% of US electrical consumption. Reducing that by a factor of 4 is is significant.
Re:No great loss... (Score:4, Informative)
I hate fluorescent lights because I'm prone to migraines and the constant flickering irritates me. I can tolerate 72hz or 75hz CRT monitors but can still see the flickering. I find 60hz CRT monitors downright painful after a few minutes - but have no problem with televisions. The reason I don't have problems with televisions is that they likely use a higher-persistence phosphor than computer monitors, plus I typically do not typically sit 18" from a television.
Stroboscopic effect - LEDs even worse (Score:5, Informative)
Be aware that LEDs operated on AC exhibit worse flicker than the cheapest fluorescent. At least with a fluorescent, there is some light from the phosphors between cycles -- an LED goes completely dark between cycles. I recently examined dozens of brands of LED holiday lights -- every single one flickered like crazy. At least they made some cool effects when you swung them around.
Re:CFLs not always a good choice (enclosed fixture (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Mee too (Score:5, Informative)
1) CFLs don't typically work well on a dimmer switch or any faulty wiring. I've found two instances of faulty wiring in my home because of constantly blowing CFLs.
2) In Washington State, many companies (Lowes, Fred Meyer) have coupons for $2 off a CFL, up to 8 per person per trip. Albertson's, Lowes, Fred Meyer, Wal-Mart, etc. sometimes have sales with bulbs running about $2 each - free light bulbs! Stock up as you only have to pay the tax on them - comes out to aobut 18 per bulb depending on local tax rates. 3) The CFL coupons are available through various electric companies nationwide - not all areas have them. 4) CFLs contain a starter just like any fluorescent bulb. This is what makes them wear out when used with a dimmer. 5) Be careful about using CFLs near infants and children. The mercury CAN cause significant health issues. CFL, dimmer at night for the night light - can add to the mercury content for a child if the light blows up.
This is the problem with having legislators rule us. They don't always check the facts or dangers but require us to obey.
With electric rates being Federally deregulated in 2008, CFLs help NOW, but when consumption drops, then the electric companies can charge just a little more for less power. Seems like a good idea until you realize you pay just as much for 1/4 the consumption. Ingenious way of raising electric rates.
Re:CFLs not always a good choice (enclosed fixture (Score:2, Informative)
Re:A: depends on who's asking and (heh) how (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Great!! (Score:3, Informative)
I just turned on my CFL desk lamp and temporarily blinded myself while I was still watching where I'd put my fingers to find the switch.
They're not as slow as they were once.
Removal of world's longest-lasting lightbulb? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:This would kill the film industry (Score:2, Informative)
Most set lighting is done with carbon-arc bulbs, which IIRC have a color temp of 5000K. Normal daylight is around 5500K. Tungsten incandescents are around 2800K. Fluorescents are all over the place...I've seen them from the 3000s (warm white) to 6500K.
That said, there are standard color-temperature correcting gels for lights to make them all play nice together. You can put a light-purple gel on a fluorescent to cut the green, and a light blue gel on the incandescent to bring it to daylight. Most camera strobes are already daylight-balanced.
There are already photographic fluorescent arrays made by a company called Kino Flo (kinoflo.com) that are designed with film and movies in mind - they have variable-frequency ballasts that can be driven at 50-400 Hz, so you can shoot at higher shutter speeds (most professional DSLRs don't have flash sync much higher than 1/250)
Re:No great loss... (Score:3, Informative)
No. Movies - as in, films you see at movie theaters - are 24 frames per second, which is doubled to 48 frames by flashing each frame twice. Television paints 1/2 the frame 60x a second, and every other frame is displaced one scan line up or down from the previous scan line. Film has no scan lines; just full frames that flash by at 48/second, really 24x2/a second.
Conversion of film to television does result in television scan lines and refresh rates.
Re:No great loss... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:CFLs not always a good choice (enclosed fixture (Score:3, Informative)
Colour work (Score:3, Informative)
Well, so long as you want your magazines, newspapers, films, etc to look good.
Re:Great!! (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Great!! (Score:4, Informative)
you CAN use them on a dimmer controlled circuit (Score:2, Informative)
Yes you can!:
http://www.grist.org/advice/ask/2006/06/07/dimmer
http://www.eartheasy.com/live_energyeff_lighting.