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?
Thank you for the Wiki pic, Dirk. Quite cool. And the second the cooler spectrum CFL’s started appearing in higher lumens, I started buying them to replace the blue “daylight” incan. bulbs I loved so much (But which, oddly enough, also seemed to have their own longevity issues.)
My only problem with halogens is the heat ~ boy, can they warm up a summertime Florida studio.
Several grumpy comments:
Flicker? Yes, with magnetic ballasts. Old florescents, maybe. New electronic ballasts eliminate that, usually 20KHz flicker, which can confuse some infrared remote controls, but no hazard with rotating machines. CFL’s have to use electronics, as magnetics are too big. They sometimes flicker randomly due to partially defective switches (what?!?) yes, they draw so little current that a poor connection shows up as flicker. A good ol’ incandescent has a big inrush current that slightly welds the switch contacts and overcomes this. LED’s may or may not have this problem depending on electornics inside. Some CFL’s don’t do it, some do.
Efficiency (or efficacy)? Regular incandescent, 12-15 lumens/watt. Halogens can approach 20 lm/watt. CFL’s average about 50 lm/w. LED’s? Depends on what you chose to believe. 70 lm/w is realistic, based on what you can buy. 100 lm/w touted by the greens, valid in the lab, but not on the shelf. So a bit better than CFL’s, but nowhere near “95% less” than incandescents. And far more expensive. CFL’s contain 3-5 mg of mecury. LED’s use some of the most toxic stuff on the planet in production, much safer in use. Easier to dispose of.
Incandescents will last longer on reduced voltage. Wire two in series (60 volts each in the U.S.) and they last forever. Don’t produce much light, but you never replace them. CFL’s do last longer, but suffer greatly if you turn them on and off a lot. This is probably due to cheap electronics more than anything else. LED’s will suffer the same fate. Driving circuit will fail long before the light emitter.
What about heat? Filament bulbs get rid of their excess heat by radiation of mid IR. The socket and globe get hot, but not near as much as the LED gives out, as all of it’s waste heat (1/5 of incandescent) comes out as really long wave IR. Get rid of it by conduction. That’s why bright commercial LED’s have heatsinks. Tiny LED’s don’t have this problem, but don’t produce much light. CFL’s are in the middle. The electronics get very warm. They work outside, even in the cold, if you leave them on all the time. Don’t try them in ovens, refrigerators or on dimmers (some newer ones claim to overcome the last part).
The gotcha: older CFL’s, like the Sylvanias I had in my kitchen ceiling cans, lit up full power right away. Lasted 7 years, just like the package said. $25/ea. The new CFL’s, $7 at Home Depot, from China, take 30+ seconds to wake up, and one died in the first week. Many stories about electronics catching fire. The technology isn’t the problem, the source is. You get what you pay for.
For the shop: 4 ft T5’s (even smaller than T8’s) electronic ballasts, and good reflectors, can produce nearly 100 lm/w, comfortable on the eyes, last forever, and at least as far as my spectrum analyzer says, produce no measurable RF. I question claims to the contrary, as any electronic device sold in the U.S. using frequencies above 15 KHz, must meet the applicable part of FCC rules for RF leakage.
LED’s will get cheaper, but the usual economy of scale in microchip production, yield, doesn’t really apply. MFR’s get zillions of good parts per wafer, that won’t change much. Production and assembly costs may drop a bit if they build them in Asia, and use the cheapest electronics they can find. That may reduce the reliability.
Bottom line: there isn’t one. Use whatever you like best. I’ve had good luck with some CFL’s (mostly older ones, produced outside of China) but newer ones fail more often. LED’s are 10-20 times as expensive. Lousy ROI. Incandescents? In some places, nothing else will work.
John Innes said on September 10, 2010 at 12:55 pm
I like how you can “overload” a socket. Provided it physically fits, you can, for example, use a 100W-equivalent CFL using 23W in a desk lamp rated for 40W max. I’ve done this for several ceiling fixtures, one of them enclosed, and it works well.
The downside is you have to watch out for “fluorescent fixtures” as I’ve found at Lowes. They’re actually made like standard incandescent fixtures, except by specifying them as only for CFL’s they can use cheaper low-wattage sockets and perhaps less ceiling-side heat-deflecting insulation, might have wires with lower heat ratings as well. If you run out of CFL’s and try to use an incandescent “on an emergency basis,” or someone tries to change bulbs who doesn’t know the fixtures are CFL-only (like the person you sold your house to)… Might not be an acceptable outcome.
That hocky stick also looks like the graph of Foreclosure Phil Gramm’s activities. Here’s some graphs…
EZ READING MONEY MATTERS: Understanding The End Of Glass-Steagall Act
http://elainemeinelsupkis.typepad.com/ezmoneymatters/2008/09/understanding-t.html
Ed Murphy says:
September 10, 2010 at 3:36 pm
That hocky stick also looks like the graph of Foreclosure Phil Gramm’s activities.
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Er, uhm, how do I say it? No.
The root cause of the the world’s recession was the oil and gas price hikes resulting from Nancy Pelosi’s control of the US House of Representatives beginning in 2007 (For our overseas readers, she is a radical democrat environmentalist from San Franciso who took control in Jan 2007 after the November 2006 elections. Her policies and her bills stopped oil exploration completely, began raising taxes and raising the deficiets, and – most importantly – allowed her to single-handedly – promote her chosen liberal extremist politicians to chairmanship of tax, housing, energy, financial, banking, and all other congressional committees.
Their new policies – unfortunately not stopped by Bush, and very much promoted by the liberal/socialist media in America – began the recession. Increasing energy costs cost jobs and increased prices in many other industries (manufactoring, automobile, farming, airplane and travel and shipping, etc etc etc. ) Those rising prices, drops in the market, and drops in available work killed the housing and commercial real estate markets. Those losses in fall and winter 2007-2008 killed the over-extended Wall Street stocks and highly levered/derivative markets and short-term investors/banks/insurance companies through the late spring and early summer of 2008.
Those financial losses in summer 2008 were (perhaps deliberately) what caused the collapse in Sept 2008, “bailout, and ultimate democrat election of the other socialist/liberals including Obama in November 2008.
So it STARTED with the deliberate energy-limiting/price increasing/CAGW-inspired policies of Pelosi in mid-summer/late spring 2007.
Coming soon to ANY other government who follows a CAGW-derived national energy policy.
Retired Engineer says:
September 10, 2010 at 2:37 pm
Several grumpy comments:
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Thank you. Good points.
Tried CFL’s – most free from my energy supplier – only a small saving from the 23 bulbs tried. Not enough light from CFL’s, drained house of colour and had on ‘go pop’ on me. So I’ve gone back to a mix of incandescent and halogen, as before. Have now bought large stock of incandescent until LED or alternatives improve in quality and get cheaper.
Here in UK can still bulk buy incandescent bulbs cheaply on the internet!
I have had only CFLs in my house except for the oven for six years – yes I have a CFL in the fridge. They take at most 30 seconds to warm up. I also have a CFL in my outside light which wasn’t noticeably affected by last year’s cold winter.
In that six years I’ve only needed to change one CFL which was one of the two I leave on for most of the evening most of the time (as I’m security conscious). I did initially have a problem with two cheap bulbs I tried, but the main manufacturer’s products are fine. Based on the comments here and elsewhere I think a lot of problems may be with quality control in the US.
Since I have lights on more often than I have the heating on they do save me a lot of money.
They’d also save money for those with air con.
RE: Steve Milesworthy says:
“I also have a CFL in my outside light which wasn’t noticeably affected by last year’s cold winter.”
What part of the country are you from, Steve? I’m a bit worried about the lights in my stables up here in New Hampshire. When it gets well below zero outside, with a screaming wind, it can be below zero inside. The goats all huddle together (with a stray cat) and tend to warm an area with body heat, but during the darkness of long winter nights I need the lights to come on fast.
What will they do about heat lamps? I need them when the weather is coldest.