Kate at SmallDeadAnimals.com points out that there’s a new hockey stick afoot. With some homogenization and principal components analysis, I’m sure the past can be smoothed out.
From: United States Unemployment rate, Aug. 2010
Meanwhile, light bulb workers of America go dim as one of America’s proudest inventions disappears from production. Mr. Edison is scowling, wherever he is.
From the Washington Post, Sept. 8, 2010;
The last major GE factory making ordinary incandescent light bulbs in the United States is closing this month, marking a small, sad exit for a product and company that can trace their roots to Thomas Alva Edison’s innovations in the 1870s.
…
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.
Now the hoarding begins.
Expect container loads from China arriving on our shores soon, at least until 2017 when they’ll disappear there too…or will they?
Greg says
“If you’re concerned about breakage, don’t put a CFL into a tall top-heavy lamp.”
Really? What if you have a child around the house or a cat? The comment that it is only a tall top heavy lamp that is a risk seems to lack common sense.
Also the tubes that have been used in bathroom and other overhead lights are not in a physical location that is likely to be broken unless someone is foolish enough to store them in the garage awaiting disposal.
The main problem is that this is mandated by a bunch of idiots in congress, the safety issues are ignored, and applications where conventional light bulbs make more sense and are safer are being ruled out by these idiots.
Finally for many of us the use of lighting is primarily in the winter when the day is short and heat is not wasted. Unfortunately the Government has exaggerated and lied about the potential savings and the risk. Also they ignore the fact that much of our lighting is on Dimmers which don’t work well with CFL.
John Trigge says: at 2:31 pm “the cleanup if one of them shattered. I’ve not seen anything about this aspect of modern CFLs”
Try this: http://www.energystar.gov/ia/products/lighting/cfls/downloads/CFL_Cleanup_and_Disposal.pdf
Some say there were 22 ‘inventors’ of the incandescent lamp. Go figure! :o)
Friedel, Robert, and Paul Israel. 1986. Edison’s electric light: biography of an invention. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. pages 115–117
Hoarding is definitely part of the plan.
But then there are the specialty uses, where cost makes hoarding impractical. One that I have lots of experience with that will be badly impacted if not an exception (I’m hoping it will be an exception due to the industry political ties) is use of high-power incandescent bulbs in theatre lighting. Flourescent won’t work – it doesn’t dim smoothly below a threshold and isn’t the right color spectrum. LED lighting has started use, but it’s only good beyond a fixed distance or for specific color effects, because even the 5-color (red, green, blue, amber, and white) variety don’t color mix smoothly enough below a particular distance, which excludes them for the many thousands of small black-box theatres. Halogen bulbs are an option, so maybe that’s the main out. But a lot of older equipment won’t take them and there are a lot (most really) of small theatres that cannot possibly afford to replace all their older instruments. Without incandescent, there will definitely be some theatres permanently ‘going dark’.
From: Dr A Burns on September 9, 2010 at 2:01 pm
Make sure you have about enough battery storage to last a week, with a grid-tie inverter at least twice as large as your maximum usage. Make some good money selling them excess power during the day. (And the emergency battery charger in the closet is just something you hook up to the over-sized battery storage as absolutely needed, which will be every night as you drain down the batteries pretty far during the day to keep the inverter supplying lots of power to the grid.)
Better check if there is demand metering, electricity is expensive during the day and cheap at night. If there isn’t, insist on it! You have a planet (and a bank balance) to save and improve!
PJP said: Joe — that’s the same crap they gave us with CFLs.
Maybe so, but LED lights are not toxic, and I’ll wait a while hoping the price comes down. I may try one or two to see whether they perform as claimed. Hopefully, they are not made in China. Then they would be crap for sure.
JT says:
September 9, 2010 at 2:42 pm
I am OK with using CFLs outside. Outside, the waste heat of a incandescent bulb is actually wasted.
_________________________________________________
Try using a CFL outside at 30 below — it might not even get above dim for hours.
I replaced all my incandescent light bulbs with CFL’s years ago … then I replaced them with incandescent’s when I realized how lousy they were for light, flickering and slow starting. I have a box full of useless CFL’s in the basement next to my boxes of replacement incandescent bulbs. LED’s may be the future when the price comes down.
CFL’s also contain lead-tin solder.
“”” Jim Johnson says:
September 9, 2010 at 3:38 pm
I use CFL’s for only the lights that are left on for a long time…the family room, the office, etc. They are not good for closets, bedrooms, bathrooms as they will burn out rapidly with the short and numerous on cycles. But in general, I like them a great deal. Especially if I choose the 3000K variety.
Foe all the other, incandescent, lamps I have them on a dimmer. They last for 10 years, at least and allow all sorts of ambiance settings as well as use a less energy and produce a lot less heat while dimmed. “””
Well actually Jim, incandescent lamps when dimmed use far more energy; not less; that is when you rate them for a certain number of Lumens output.
As you dim incandescents; you lower the average electrical power fed to them and that drops their Temperature; which does two things; first off it drops the total radiation output probably by about the 4th power of that Temperature; but it also shifts the color to a longer wavelength where the eye sensitivity drop s rapidly.
So you get af less light for a given amount of power with a dimmed Incandescent. I don’t like CFLs although my house is full of them; it is also full of EM interference that messes with other equipment in the house,
LEDs can be dimmed without much of a loss in efficiency; and the color doesn’t change nearly as much as with dimmed incandescents.
The problem with LEDs is that they are far too “bright” in the sense of surface Luminance; spectacularly so if you are looking at the yellow AlInGaP lamps. At just a one Watt power level these lamps are quite dangerous to look at.
So that means they are usually assembled in fixtures with some sort of diffuser. and the diffuser sends a whole lot of light to some other place where you don’t need it.
The future of LED lighting requires a complete re-engineering of the living (or working) environment. A typical Office desk situation calls for something like 100-200 Lumens per square foot on the desk. If this is provided by the usual overhead fluorescent fixtures; then a whole lot of light is lost in 1/r^2 losses. Well the light still goes somewhere; but not where you need it.
So future office environments will have much lower ceiling lighting; regardless of whether it is LED or fluorescent; in fact the lightin levels will be dictated by safety in the office; can you see well enough to get a round and don’t forget a possible fire emergency where smoke might lower visibility.
Then there will be application lighting by high efficiency LED fixtyures; that are much closer to your work space, and concentrate their much lower total flux ouptut on the place where you really want to be able to see fine detail.
Present fluorescent fixtures use all kinds of gimmics such as Fly’s eye lens sheets or egg crate structures to restrict the viewing angle of the fixture Both of these structures scatter a whole lot of light; into directions where it is not useful to have light.
And it is too bad because it doesn’t have to be that way. A tubular (not spiral) fluorescent lamp is an absolutely ideal light source to use with a properly designed ideal flux concentrator back reflector. Theoretically you can collect almost 100% of all of the flux emitted in all directions from a fluorescent tube, and reshape that into a reasonably uniform restricted angle beam exiting from some larger illuminated aperture than the tube itself; so that it is visible over a certain viewing angle (say 40 deg off axis) and then quite invisible beyond that. The ideal concentrator geometry swaps viewing angle for illuminated area; so you don’t need either the egg crate to restrict the view angle or the fly’s eye lenses. When those sheets of lenses are molded with dirt cheap tooling; they are full of cusps that create a whole lot of uncontrolled scatetred light over non useful scattering angles; including a ton of back scatter.
I have a patent of a structure called a “wave eye” lens which does exactly the same light diffusion as a fly’s eye lens; but it is completely devoid of any cusps or uncontrolled surfaces so it has essentially zero back scatter, and zero scatter outside the design viewing angles; and it can be made into a thin plastic film, a la 3-M only 5-10 mils thick; which is more than an order of magnitude less plastic (fossil fuel) material.
You can tailor the design of the surface waves to create almost any practical flux distribution that a fly’s eye lens can create.
At the moment nobody actually makes the material for use in lighitng but one of the big LED lighting companies is looking into using something along those lines.
We do use it but for a completely different application; namely the optical low pass filtering necessary to eliminate aliassing noise in digital imaging systems. You might even have one on your desk; and not know it is there. I know I have one on my desk.
LED lighting is going to change a lot of old habits’ but it isn’t going to be a 1:1 replacement scheme.
Sadly the red LEDs are still the easiest to make and the Green (bright ones) among the hardest whcih means it is always going to be cheaper to put in red stop lights than green go lights; and that in itself wastes an astronomical amount of imported oil; burned up in cars that are sitting at lights that are mostly red most of the time; instead of going through lights that are mostly green most of the time.
Well traffic lights are programmed by the sort of thinkers that gave us M$ Windows. A two year old child can make better traffic stop/go decisions than typical city traffic lights. I find myself constantly stopped with a whole bunch of other cars at an intersection we could all safely drive through; but the traffic lights are simply waiting for some other cars to eventually arrive from somewhere else. Totally ridiculous.
The Mexican drug dealers will switch to smuggling I-bulbs into the US.
For a lot of useful information on CFLs, go to:
http://sound.westhost.com/articles/incandescent.htm
For a lot of useful information on CFLs, go to:
http://sound.westhost.com/articles/incandescent.htm
An interesting trivium about CFLs is that their power factor is 0.5, meaning that the power supplier has to pump twice as much energy into the power lines as is used by the bulb (and pardon the oversimplification of power factor!!).
IanM
Odd. I’ve been using nothing but CFL lighting for three years now, and I haven’t had any problems; the light is comfortable, the bulbs work consistently, and I haven’t had any burnouts yet that I recall. Certainly no noticeable flicker, either.
…And, erm, for those arguing that incandescents help with heating–well, sure, they do, but as far as I can tell not much. I assumed 45 bulbs in an average house, assumed that they were all 100 W (the most energetic household bulb listed on a highly non-exhaustive trip to Wikipedia), and assumed that ALL light, visible and IR, ended up heating the home eventually, giving 4.5 kWh of heating. The energy used by an average household for heating was surprisingly hard to find, but from this: http://www1.eere.energy.gov/consumer/tips/home_energy.html and this: http://www.eia.doe.gov/ask/electricity_faqs.asp#electricity_use_home I calculated a value of 3420 kWh used for heating. So, maybe 0.13% of a household’s heating comes from incandescent (that value comes with massive error bars, of course, considering my highly ersatz collection of data points, but it’s probably accurate to within an order of magnitude, which will do for my point). If anyone’s willing to devote the patience to improving that calculation, ten thousand blessings be upon you.
Ian – when I moved from EU to the USA one of the first things that I noticed was the lack of PF correction on florescent light fittings.
In the UK at least, every light fitting has a PF correction capacitor.
For those that don’t know:
Once it has fired up, a florescent light bulb (tube) has VERY low resistance. It will allow huge currents to flow, to the point of self-destruction.
The current has to be limited somehow. The obvious answer is to put a resistor in series, but this has a big drawback – the resistor will get hot, and waste a lot of power (as heat), so the big advantage of the florescent light will be lost.
The answer is to put a big inductor (the “ballast”) in series in place of the resistor.
An inductor behaves like a resistor, and limits current with AC current. It does this in a way that is completely different than a resistor. It actually limits current without absorbing any power (except for the small resistance of the copper wire it is made from, and losses in the iron core). It does this by magic by having the voltage and current 90 degrees out of phase – lots of current when there is no voltage, and lots of voltage when there is no current. Since power is the product of voltage and current, power consumption is zero.
The big problem is that fairly large currents flow. They may not result in power loss in the inductor, but those currents do heat the wiring and other components getting the power to the light.
A capacitor also limits current in the same sort of way, but with the difference between voltage and current being exactly opposite of an inductor.
By using both in the light fixture, the capacitor cancels out the phase difference caused by the inductor, and voltage and current are again in phase, but the the current is still limited.
Of course, a capacitor costs money. In the US, fittings are sold without. They still work, but end up costing the power companies and the consumers more in wasted power costs than the manufacturers save – but that’s ok, they are not paying for it – you are.
CFLs don’t use a plain inductive ballast, so they don’t suffer from this quite as badly.
However, I don’t believe that even they are fully PF corrected.
Incandescent bulbs, being purely resistive, have no such problems.
Power factor correction is a big deal. Large industrial users with lots of electric motors (for example) spend a lot of money monitoring their PF and switching in capacitors to correct it. The power companies require it, and the companies save money from not having lots of “useless” current cause unnecessary heating.
Feet2theFire says:
September 9, 2010 at 2:42 pm
If that were true, then Edison’s factory and labs would have kept running after his death. Instead, things collapsed quickly without his drive – it’s one reason http://www.nps.gov/edis/index.htm is so well preserved.
I worked for a person once who I think had a personality very similar to Edison’s. Some of us would get into some substantial arguments with Sandy over something that just wasn’t going to work, but his persistance often got people to come up with a solution. Some other folks were almost devoted to him. One came in one Saturday to fill a planter that we really didn’t have anyone to take care of it.
Edison was part inventor, experimentalist, and entrepeneur. He had little patience for more theoretical types like Tesla who favored design over experimenting. I’m not at all surprised they didn’t get along.
I read somewhere that Edison didn’t make much money off the electric light, a lot of it got burned up in patent defense and other corporate shenanigans. Things really haven’t changed much since then, e.g. Edwin Armstrong and FM radio, see http://www.ccrane.com/library/fm-invention.09.09.02.aspx or many of companies Microsoft squashed in their climb to dominance.
Disclaimer – I’m more than a bit partial towards Thomas Edison. His daughter, Marion (nicknamed Dot from Morse code) and lived in Norwalk CT next door to my grandparents. They became best friends and “Aunt Marion” to my father and uncle, and me. She was devoted to her father, but despised his young second wife, and gave me my first books about Edison. To Eric John Werme. Hoping you will be interested int the story of a little boy whose hobby was electricity. – Marion Edison Oser
It’s really remarkable that just one person links me to a kid who converted newspaper sales into chemical purchases (the “good stuff” too!) and who practiced Morse code during the Civil War.
RE: Sorry to break this to you but Edison didn’t invent the light bulb. Henry Woodward(Canadian) invented an electric light bulb in 1874 and sold the patent to Thomas Edison. Edison was no Nicola Tesla, Tesla was a genius and left many inventions in the US. – James says September 9, 2010 at 2:40 pm
Here’s the rest of that story.
“As the 1900 article mentioned4, earlier workers had advanced to the same or higher degree in their work as did Woodward and Evans. To name a few: J. B. A. M. Jobard in 1838, C. de Changy in 1856, John Wellington Starr in 1845 and Joseph Swan in 1860. All these workers contributed, in one way or another, to the eventual development of the incandescent lamp, but it was Thomas Alva Edison who put the necessary ingredients together to make the lamp and system practical.”
http://home.frognet.net/~ejcov/evans.html
The main point on this issue is the matter of personal choice. I don’t care what kind of lighting you have in your house. Why should anyone else care what I choose. The right of personal choice is being taken away by force. The debate about which type of bulb is better is a distraction. What else are they going to take away?
Does anyone here know what an Aladdin Mantle Lamp is? I have several of these and I use them not only when the power goes out, but also when I WANT to use them. They put out as much light as a 50 Watt light bulb and make a whole lot more heat than light. I don’t care. It’s my choice. I like them. If I want to pay the power bill for Edison bulbs or buy Kerosene for an Aladdin Mantle Lamp why should the Government get involved in my household affairs?
“Carl says:
September 9, 2010 at 1:55 pm
Hoarding begins? There are some of us who began quite awhile ago……”
You are correct, I started and completed my hoard of about 500 (various wattage’s)
more than a year ago!
I have found that incandescent light bulbs last essentially forever if you use a dimmer control
and if there is no loose connection in the socket.
Can’t remember how many years ago it has been since I’ve had one burn out.
My hoard could last me hundreds of years; too bad I can’t live long enough to use them all up!
If a “really useable replacement” comes along I plan on using my collection for target practice.
Just to repeat my favorite post:
William,
“The main point on this issue is the matter of personal choice. I don’t care what kind of lighting you have in your house. Why should anyone else care what I choose. The right of personal choice is being taken away by force. The debate about which type of bulb is better is a distraction. What else are they going to take away?
Does anyone here know what an Aladdin Mantle Lamp is? I have several of these and I use them not only when the power goes out, but also when I WANT to use them. They put out as much light as a 50 Watt light bulb and make a whole lot more heat than light. I don’t care. It’s my choice. I like them. If I want to pay the power bill for Edison bulbs or buy Kerosene for an Aladdin Mantle Lamp why should the Government get involved in my household affairs?”
That’s the way I see it, too. The government, which always makes the wrong choice, deprives me of choices that I might freely make, at no cost to anyone else. At my house, those choices are based in a history of expertise about the subject, and on an installed system that precludes my use of the mandated products without considerable investment on my part in the modification of my lighting system.
Thanks everyone,
I’ve learned alot: buy, buy, buy ordinary light bulbs as if they are going out of business.
Personally, I’ve tried the alternative in a number of applications and they don’t work as an incandescent. I have alot of dimmer lights and ceiling spots. The alternatives cannot fulfill those functions.
Buy, buy, buy…
I use a LED torch so as I can see what i am doing around the house while the CFLs warm up it is another global warming con job
Since nobody else said it, I guess I will.
The real problem is the dim bulbs in Congress.
Thank you. Please return to your discussion.
Time to reprint your post on LED lights in the hall
Well I find this debate very funny as I have been using florescent lighting since 1990.
I have 2 globe bulbs made by Philips that I bought in 16 years ago and they are still going strong and the light from them is great. They cost £11 at the time which was expensive but they have saved me about £40 over their life time.
The problem these days is that many new florescent bulbs are low quality and will not last very long but then what do expect from a bulb that only cost £2 !
I have tried LEDs (and do still use some) but the problem at the moment the light is too white, but as they improve I’ll use them.
As to the US loosing jobs I find the whole situation very sad 🙁
When I was a boy the US was the great innovator the US went to the Moon the US led the world, but even then I saw the seeds of it’s downfall 🙁
The US doesn’t like innovation that isn’t its own, Concord was an example of this (when I was younger at 6pm everyday Concord flew over my parents house and I used to always look out and be inspired and think even the Americans don’t have that).
This dislike of outside innovation is the US’s Achilles heal as if it isn’t American all I hear is complaints of it being un-American and Jobs being lost. This is so sad as I really, really like America and have many friends there.
What happened to the great innovator? You got taken over by accountants/bankers (plus so called capitalists who are just fat cats calling anything that stops them creaming it in socialists) and now you are falling behind the rest of the world, your broadband speeds are pathetic your innovating firms like Apple make everything in China. Microsoft are a classic example of what has gone wrong, they had it all and blew it!
Come on America wake up and become the great country you are again, don’t curse the darkness light the candle!!!!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Swan
“Sir Joseph Wilson Swan KBE (31 October 1828 – 27 May 1914) was a British physicist and chemist, most famous for the invention of the incandescent light bulb for which he received the first patent in 1878. His house (in Newcastle Upon Tyne, England) was the first in the world to be lit by a lightbulb.”
“Swan received a British patent for his device in 1878, about a year before Thomas Edison…… In America, Edison had been working on copies of the original Swan patent, trying to make them more efficient. Though Swan had beaten him to this goal, Edison obtained patents in America for a fairly direct copy of the Swan light, and started an advertising campaign which claimed that he was the real inventor. Swan, who was less interested in making money from the invention, agreed that Edison could sell the lights in America while he retained the rights in Britain….. In 1883 the Edison & Swan United Electric Light Company was established. Known commonly as “Ediswan” the company sold lamps made with a cellulose filament that Swan had invented in 1881.”