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?
The longest lasting incandescents I ever used were found at a discount store over five years ago. IIRC they were made in Poland. The trick: they were rated at 130VAC. As I had learned in an electrical course, incandescents tend to blow when turned on since heating up puts mechanical stress on the filament. So use the 130V bulbs, the filament is stronger and it’ll still work at 120V with a negligible lessening of illumination versus a 120V bulb of the same wattage. They’re normally available from industrial and electrical suppliers.
For “normal” fluorescent tubes (not the CFL’s) there are low-mercury versions available, frequently seen version (commercial setting) is 4 foot and larger straight tubes. The metal caps on the ends are green colored. For companies there is a significant difference, provided they haven’t changed the laws recently when I wasn’t looking. The ordinary ones must be saved and sent off for recycling, which can have a per-bulb cost. The green caps can be thrown out in the regular trash.
Byz says: Well I find this debate very funny as I have been using florescent lighting since 1990.
I’ve been using them since before 1988! And I used to manufacture LED lighting around 2000 (before it was commercially available at £50 each!)
But like all things the so called “waste” of lighting is often not waste, but useful heating (as our chickens know!)
Moreover, I suspect fluorescents merely lead to an increase in lighting and not a reduction in electricity and I use my own example:-
When we moved into the current house a decade ago, it had two 60W incandescents. I then replaced these with (in sequence)
2x 20W fluorescents.
6x 8W fluorescents
Which my wife has quietly replaced with:-
6x 20W fluorescents.
As for life, we seem to replace fluorescents as often as we used to replace incandescents – indeed in the early days of fluorescents, they seemed to get very dull very quickly making the projected “life” completely meaningless, I can remember waiting for many minutes after switching on a light to get any useful light.
The law as it went through our department of EU state gov in Whitehall was that you cannot buy incandescent bulbs over 60W for domestic use. This means if you want them for “other” uses you can still legally buy them! Though not many suppliers stock them.
1.) My two CFL’s outside (each 7 Watts) work well all night long for more than 5 years. But last year inside my house I had an explosion of a CFL near my head. A smoking capacitor with a very bad smell mounted on a board and the CFL-tube were dangling out of the socket. The CFL-tube was’nt broken so I had no mercury-problem in my living-room. But the smell of the capacitor dislodged me for the rest of the day.
2.) A test in Germany shows a strong depedency of CFL-life on mounting-position. Downwards mounted CFL’s can have a very short life due to heat problems.
3.) I now pay attention where and in which way to place my CFL’s inside the house but the major problem is the widespread mercury all over the country from within the CFL-tubes. The recycling-rate will never be 100% and there will be accidents in living-rooms which free mercury. It is not so easy to get rid of this.
Back to candles? — But they lead to CARBON EMISSIONS! — Aaaargh!!!
Byz says: 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.
In reality, “white” LEDs are blue LEDs with a yellow fluorescent material which absorbs blue light and gives out wide spectrum light around yellow. If you look at the spectrum of the LED lights you will find there are massive “holes” in the spectrum, which means that some colours will not show correctly, and from memory it can really help to add a red LED because they are so deficient in deep red output.
The other “problem” is that (last time I looked), fluorescents gave out more light per/watt than LEDs. Manufacturers would try to suggest they were “brighter” by only counting the light given out directly in front, but anyone with an ounce of intelligence could put a director on a fluorescent and make it brighter than an LED.
Wow, this is funny.
I was going to write something on the availability of dimmable fluorescent ballasts for regular fixtures, as found on Amazon although pricey. Dimmable CFL’s should be available now or in the near future, and expect to pay a good deal to use the dimmer switches you already have.
However, from Google I first found this unit which is an adjustable ballast for other types of lights that use a ballast, including metal halide (MH) and high pressure sodium (HPS). Apparently they’re used by horticulturists who need adjustable lighting.
Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought:
Marijuana Horticulture: The Indoor/Outdoor Medical Grower’s Bible.
Marijuana Garden Saver: Handbook for Healthy Plants.
pH Control Kit – General Hydroponics.
Ah, the miracles of modern technology! How did our ancient ancestors get along without them? ☺
It is a fact that the components for a light bulb were invented by Woodward and Evans, Canadians and then the patent was sold to N. Tesla who finished the whole idea.
To close down the factory wasn’t that necessary, by my opinion. If the management would find the way how to change an operating cycle, to change suppliers, etc… I know that is not that easy but to save jobs for people should be the priority. Otherwise we will very soon buy products that are all made in China…
Joseph: That ad you mentioned claimed that incandescents needed to be replaced two or three times a year. Not true…we have some that have been going for years. Others, of course, do need replacing from time to time. I hate the CFL bulbs…they are hideous and the light is ghastly. Those LED ones in the ad look pretty hideous too. I hate the LED lights you see on some cars and I loathe halogen lights. I worry about the amount of energy and material that goes into these so-called ‘green’ products and I certainly worry about the pollution they cause when they cease to work. I deeply resent our various nanny states’ interference in our lives; all costing US a lot more of our hard-earned money and making a fortune for the manufacturers of these abysmal lights.
Give me the old incandescents every time!
Re incandescent lightbulbs:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1047789/Britains-oldest-light-bulb-glowing-strong-70-years.html
I recall seeing a front page news story in 2001 about an even older bulb that had just burnt out, unfortunately I can no longer find the article even though I scanned it at the time.
“[Were the new LED’s or new CFL’s getting dimmer so quickly?] Robert”
CFLs were the culprits. I don’t care what anyone says, my measure of their incompetence is irrefutible – I find it difficult and then nigh on impossible to read the Daily Telegraph as the weeks pass by. By the way, this is exacerbated by the low ink level usage – accountants or greenie weenies to blame? Does less black ink lower one’s carbon footprint? Or should that read fingerprint?
No cracks about the D. T. please and also be aware that many of us over 70s are increasingly challenged in the eyesight department.
Anthony, please: “one of America’s proudest inventions” Eh? I don’t think so! We all know lots of inventions have come out of the US, but Edison wasn’t even born when the first light bulb was invented by an Englishman (yet again!) one Humphrey Davy. When Edison was 13 years old, another Englishman, Joseph Swan had made a light bulb, AND made a incandescent electric one independently of Edison in 1880. All Edison did was to improve an ALREADY existing patent that he bought! You’ll be telling us next that the US invented the jet engine, the internal combustion engine, radar, television, and the web! ALL British inventions.
Roy,
Maybe this is what you were looking for:
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/set/lightbulbs.html
Smokey:
Really interesting article but not the same bulb. The one in the article I was remembering had been shining continuously in a fitting room of a men’s clothing shop!
@ur momisugly Feet2theFire says:
September 9, 2010 at 3:02 pm
In my own workshop I have a lathe and other rotating machinery. My workshop is well-illuminated by four 6′ neon tubes. If you re-read my original entry you will see that it is Government legislation which requires rotating machinery to be incandescent-bulb illuminated, not me!
“… Factory Safety legislation which requires all rotating machinery to be illuminated by an incandescent bulb …”
Here in South Africa, we have largely CFLs as the power authority gave them away a couple of years ago in an attempt to lessen the demands on the rapidly deteriorating national grid. In the light of the now horrendous cost of power, (the rate designed to provide the capital cost of more nuclear stations) the populace was grateful enough for the CFLs despite their shortcomings. Chinese incandescents are still available if one looks around for them. As for mercury, we don’t have a problem, firstly because the matter has received exactly zero publicity, and, secondly, because all domestic waste ends up in landfill anyway so we don’t have to worry about it! Pollution of the ground water?….. You tell me.
[.] political diatribes unacceptable.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
September 10, 2010 at 12:25 am
For the same power consumption and filament length, a 130VAC lamp will need a thinner filament. It’s higher resistance means less current, needed to keep power consumption the same.
The gain in lifetime usually comes from the lower temperature that the filament runs at, and that means there’s less evaporation or rearrangement of the filament. The “burnout when switched on” phenomenon comes from the thermal/mechanical stress acting on a weakened filament, so what you’re seeing is simply less wear on the filament.
Every so often, people would try selling lamps designed for traffic lights to the general public because those lamps are designed to handle thousands of on/off cycles. However, the filament temperature is so low (there’s no need to generate blue light!) that the color is too warm and light output is too low.
Chiming in here: I just finished a gut renovation about 19 months ago. I had the electric in and working for a several months prior. Amongst all the other fixtures I have approximately 48 can lights. In the kitchen I have 10 R16’s. The rest are 60 watt floods. EVERYTHING is on a dimmer.
Out of all those bulbs, I’ve had 3 fail in 2 years. 1 flood and 2 R16’s. One of the R16’s was directly beneath the washer (which need to be replaced as it’s old and vibrates). All of the bulbs were purchased from the electrical supply place and were cheap by the case (of which I have a couple down in the basement). Basically, if you dim bulbs, they last a long time unless they get bumped are are subjected to vibration or have a manufacturing flaw. In our prior place, we replaced two of 10 can light spots when we moved in and we lived there for 5 years without any further replacements. They sip electricity if you dim them.
There’s no need to be much more efficient in the midwest. I’m looking at probably <$10/ year total bulb expense ad infinitam, of which the next 10 years worth of bulbs are capitalized in my mortgage. I love the gentle glow of dimmed incandescent spots. People actually comment on my lighting and the warm and inviting look it creates. There is simply no way that I can get the same effect for anything less than 4 times the cost, if at all. I'm not changing for the foreseeable future.
That said, I did put cfl's in the basement. First of all, they throw off a goodly amount of low shadow light and it's a workshop and storage down there. Duke gave them to us, for "free" which also makes them make sense. Additionally, I or the Mrs. will occasionally leave them on for a day or two. If we're going to do that, we want to be using efficient lighting. CFL's definitely have their uses, but from a marginal benefit perspective, those uses are limited.
Now, in a decade or so, when I run out of my incandescent bulbs, led's may be down enough in cost to get me excited. Infact, I suspect that they will be. I also suspect that I'm going to be able to get more and better light for tasks from them, than I can get now. I'm excited about the more distant future, but near term, I advise folks to stock up and hunker down.
I hate the light from energy-savers as much as everyone else, but I can’t help feeling that, a bit like the ICE, incandescent bulbs are an embarrassingly crude solution – barely a step up from whale-oil. I mean, seriously, is the best we can do for light really to heat up a piece of wire until it glows white hot?
OMG that bill was passed in 2007, by the RIGHT. We are doomed!!
Roger 2:17 AM – I had the same problem and then I got my cataracts replaced with lens implants, and the CFL got SO much better.
As an artist, attempting to paint by the light of even the “daylight” CFLs is a miserable experience in squintage. I hate it. HATE THEM with a passion. As your average consumer, the noxious stench emanating when one fries in a tiny bathroom is enough to make you retch, especially when you remember that $5 bulb is only 7 months old. Insult to injury.
[snip – language! jove~mod]
OMG that bill was passed in 2007, by the RIGHT. We are doomed!!
Uh…no. Democrats assumed control of Congress in January 2007.
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.
That would be the proud English invention! Thanks to Sir Joseph Swan.