Also, there’s a poll at the end of this article, asking about what you might be doing for the upcoming ban in California.
On January 1st, 2011, just a few days from now, California will begin phasing out the legal sale and purchase of 100-watt incandescent light bulbs. In September of this year, GE closed their last US light bulb manufacturing plant.
Here’s a Reason.tv video on why “compact fluorescent lightbulbs” (CFLs), the favored replacement for Thomas Edison’s most iconic invention are not all that. Personally I prefer LED bulbs/lights and have successfully replaced many incandescents with LED’s in my home.
The rest of the country will begin a phaseout in 2012, as mandated by the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007.
This law phases out the use of incandescent light bulbs between 40 watts and 150 watts over a two-year period. Apparently China will still manufacture light bulbs at least until 2017 when they’ll disappear there too.
So the question is, what will you do?
One of my TV reporter friends asked me if I knew if people were hoarding high wattage bulbs. Since my namesake is “watts”, this seemed to be the place to ask.
Here’s the poll:
The poll is just for entertainment purposes.
I was in a discussion with my son who was given a lecture on the evils of incandescent lights by his high school science teacher. I give this to him the next day. Sorry for the formatting but it was originally written in Excel
Unless explicitly stated source information is from http://www.energystar.gov/ia/partners/promotions/change_light/downloads/CALFacts_and_Assumptions.pdf
3 Average hours/day a light is used
6000 CFL lifetime in hours
2000 Days of use for CFL (6000 / 3)
5.48 Years of use before the CFL fails (2000 / 365)
0.005 Grams of Mercury in a CFL
45 Average number of light bulbs in house
116900000 Number of households in USA
26302500.00 Grams of Mercury that need to be reclaimed or would end up in the environment (Landfill) if every light bulb was replaced with a CFL after 5.5 years of useful life (0.005 * 45 * 116900000)
57987.09 Converted to pounds (US) of Mercury
28.99 Converted to tons (US) of Mercury
Paraphrased from Source:
The Clean Air Mercury Rule establishes “standards of performance” limiting mercury emissions from new and existing coal-fired power plants and creates a market-based cap-and-trade program to reduce nationwide utility emissions of mercury in two distinct phases. The first phase cap is 38 tons. In the second phase, due in 2018, coal-fired power plants will be subject to a second cap, which will reduce emissions to 15 tons upon full implementation. Source http://www.epa.gov/CAMR/basic.htm (First phase took affect 2010)
38 Tons of mercury produced by all coal burning plants nation wide
8.80% Percent of energy produced in the USA used for household lighting in 2001(before large CFL use).
Source http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/reps/enduse/er01_us.html
and http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/recs/recs2001/enduse2001/enduse2001.html
49.70% Percent of USA Energy produced by Coal
4.37% Energy produced by coal and used for lighting in the USA (8.80% * 49.7%)
1.66 Tons of mercury produced by coal burning plants to produce energy for incandescent lights in 2001 (38 * 4.37%)
1.25 Mercury reduction at coal burning plants based on the switch to CFL using 75% CFL efficiency (1.66 * .75)
27.75 Increase of Mercury into the environment and/or needs to be reclaimed by from the use of CFL’s (28.99 – 1.25)
I already did what any sane person who lives in California should do: I moved to Nevada. Years ago. When it first became obvious that the Golden State was going to hell in a hand basket. Not that Nevada is perfect—too many ex-Californians that want to bring too much government over here—but it’s better. And some of us ex-Californians really want to keep that big-government, high taxes attitude out of our adoptive home state.
Florescents (the 4 and 8 foot kind) can produce headaches and the rest of the problems if they run off the old magnetic ballasts. 120 Hz flicker. Newer electronic ballasts flicker at about 20 kHz, so should not be a problem. “Warm” phosphors, easy on the eyes. Squiggly CFL’s suck. Forever to warm up and shorter life. The older and hard to find U-shaped bulbs worked much better. Discontinuous light spectrum, as several have noted. No good for photography, even with an “FL” filter. LED’s are too d— expensive, and in this part of flyover land, no where near as bright.
I suspect the short life problems are more related to the source. The “country of origin” without trying to offend. Which means incandescents from the same place will have similar problems.
The solution is to ban Congress, or at least the current crop. 2012 can’t come soon enough.
Having posted on the negative practicality of LED lighting in their operation, I since found this page,
http://www.greenoptimistic.com/2008/12/23/new-oled-discovery-gives-light-quality-of-incandescent-bulb/
So the buzzword is organic LEDS aka Oleds, and it’s not even a new buzzword.
The rest of the country will begin a phaseout in 2012, as mandated by the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007
This can be undone.
100W equivalent CFLs do not fit in my kitchen light fixture. The fixture is six years old, came with my new house, uses three bulbs, and matches the other light fixtures. I am not sure if LED bulbs would work either. I want an equivalent illumination so I can see my food preparation and get my dishes clean.
I also have never seen a 100/200/300 mogul base CFL which is needed for my torch lamp. And then how do CFLs in cold temperatures such as minus 20C or minus 5F work with outdoor lights for the garage and front door? I am all for hoarding or repealing the enforced change.
I fully expect Congress to push back the ban for a few years, after it’s supposed to take full effect. Then when the new deadline gets close, push it back again. Rinse. Repeat.
It should cause just enough uncertainty to convince light bulb manufacturers to move their factories out of the USA. Then stores in every state – except California – will import incandescents to sell.
Then the Marxists in the Democrat Party (and elsewhere) will vilify “The Rich” and “Big Business” for outsourcing jobs… Instead of admitting that they caused the problem, of course.
Banning the incandescent light bulb in America, when we don’t have a superior alternative, and when a good portion of the world doesn’t even have a stable source of electricity to run any light bulbs, is complete madness.
ANH says:
December 27, 2010 at 1:17 pm
“By the way, I thought the incandescent bulb was invented by Joseph Swan who obtained his patent about a year before Edison.”
Yes this is True, Sir Joseph Wilson Swan invented the incandescent light bulb and he received the first patent in 1878, the funny thing is I know this because when I was a young school boy reading an old book I noticed that Swan had the same Birth date as me (not the same year), when I then told my teachers in school that Swan in-fact invented incandescent light bulb I was laughed at ridiculed In History class of all places and was told Edison did. Hahaha! I hope they have the internet now!
I have one word for you, Benjamin:
Bio-luminescence.
Control freaks gotta control, and honestly it matters less to them if they accomplish anything but gaining more control.
If politics doesn’t make sense to you, think of it in those terms.
Halogens never lasted long for me, CFLs are more expensive and never lasted long for me, LEDs MUCH more expensive and most not very good… thanks, government, very helpful. Can we pay you to go off and suck your thumbs now?
Ironically, I tend to like higher color temps – 5500k-6000k instead of 3500k, and the market is pushing CFLs and LEDS away from what I like. Incandescents are better for photography anyway. even with filters, esp. with new pocket cameras.
I swear, if governments made sportscars they’d weigh 6000lbs and have 9 seats, and if they made delivery trucks they’d be smaller than Geo Metros. If you want something done WRONG, vote for it.
Not that I’m at all BITTER or anything.
If you work with any rotating bit tools such as drills, mills, saws, etc., if the bit it turning at some multiple of 60 hz it will appear to be standing still! You can get hurt that way. The greens never worked a day in their lives, especially not in a factory or machine shop, and never will. They don’t care about safety for the rest of us.
S.E.Hendriksen says:
December 27, 2010 at 3:15 pm
“Don’t panic
http://heatball.de/
”
Well, AFAIK they’re not in the Gulag yet. From their news page:
“16.11.2010 Anruf vom Zoll: Bezirksregierung hat mit dem Hinweis auf möglicherweise gefährliche Ware die Heatballs festgesetzt ”
Nov 11 2010 Call by Customs: District government has confiscated heatball delivery under suspicion of possibly dangerous goods.
They have’em made in China and import them, and of course Energy Commissar Andris Piebalgs (Latvian ex-member of the Communist Party Of The Soviet Union) and his German underlings aren’t amused.
DirkH says:
December 27, 2010 at 6:45 pm
“They have’em made in China and import them, and of course Energy Commissar Andris Piebalgs (Latvian ex-member of the Communist Party Of The Soviet Union) and his German underlings aren’t amused.”
But they’re not in jail as far as i can find out. Although, if they sent Europol, they might have just vanished. Only half kidding.
I hate……HATE….. CFL’s.
They look stupid and the light they produce is ugly….and still fluorescent.
THERE IS NO GOOD FLUORESCENT…EVER….PERIOD.
(And yes, I am yelling).
Bastard Congress! They need to repeal this royal SH*T.
Maybe this Congress will be able to….we will see.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Mike. says:
December 27, 2010 at 4:58 pm
“So the buzzword is organic LEDS aka Oleds, and it’s not even a new buzzword.”
OLEDs have different compounds for blue, red and green that age with different speed. You don’t get a full spectrum, similar to CFLs, but you get the added bonus of a change of hue with usage. Blue ages the fastest.
I’ve already stocked up on 60W incandescents and 100W halogens. Up here in the northern states you can’t use CFLs for outside lighting as they do not function for half the year when the temperature goes below 30 or 40 degrees F! LEDs which are bright enough for outside lighting just don’t exist yet. Halogen are nice, but are just too hot for many types of decorative (enclosed) fixtures. You can still get HALCO brand bulbs, which are made in the US, for a good price per bulb if you buy in case quantities online. I’ve found these to be very good long-life bulbs and well worth the investment.
So in California you can sell pot from a vending machine but not incandescent light bulbs in hardware stores. Will the pot vending machines need to be retrofitted with incandescent lights to remain legal?
I can see it now. Two prisoners in Folsom:
P1: What are you in for?
P2: Running a meth lab in my basement.
P1: How much time ya get for that?
P2: Six months probation and a $500 fine.
P1: Huh? Then why are you here?
P2: Got 20 years for using incandescent bulbs to light the basement.
My sister gave me a great gift this Christmas: a box with illegal unused incandescent light bulbs (I live in Portugal): two 100W bulbs, six 150W bulbs, one 200W bulbs (!), and the address of a local shop in a remote small village who still have them in stock from the old times. And I’ve looked hard for them! They’re pretty much banned here. Thank you, sis!
Mike. says: December 27, 2010 at 4:58 pm
Having posted on the negative practicality of LED lighting in their operation, I since found this page,
http://www.greenoptimistic.com/2008/12/23/new-oled-discovery-gives-light-quality-of-incandescent-bulb/ So the buzzword is organic LEDS aka Oleds, and it’s not even a new buzzword.
OLEDs are a specialty of our occasional commenter Joel Shore. Perhaps the good Dr would honor us with a guest post on something he actually knows something about.
….. and start up a black market supply line into Califoolia….. Of course they won’t be called incandescent light bulbs, but instead renamed luminescent room heaters…;-)
Banning light bulbs….. Pffft. What’s th’ world comin’ to.
Anthony,
I have designed and built some of my own LED fixtures for my house that have been operating for over 2 years now. I figure they should go for at least 10 more years easily.
I recently found these warm white LED bulbs at Home Depot that are reasonably priced. They use LEDs made by Citizen and should have decent lifespans. They put out as much light as a 40W incandescent on 8.6 Watts of power, and I have been happy with them in applications such as outdoor porch lights, walk in closets, and small rooms:
http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1vZ1xi4/R-202188260/h_d2/ProductDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053
CFLs suck because they take too long to come up to full brightness (up to 10 minutes), have trouble running in cold weather, don’t last as long as advertised, and contain mercury so you have to take them back to the bin at Home Depot to avoid polluting the landfill.
LEDs LOVE cold temperatures, are instant on, do not have their lives shortened by being turned on and off (unlike everything else), and have about 5 years of operating life so they can last over 10 years if they aren’t on all the time (and they have an adequate heat sink so they don’t fry).
I have been using CFLs over twenty years now in spots where a light has to be continuously on (equivalent of 120 watts). I have only changed it once. A CFL my late father installed maybe more than 30 years ago is still working (as well as many of the incandescent ones).
The only problem I found is with the number of on/offs. In the cheap CFLs ( 2 to 3 euro each) the guarantee is 6000 hours and 2000 on/offs. In many european countries, corridors in apartment houses are on time switches which you press and the light lasts enough to run up/down stairs. This means for my building with 12 apartments and possibly 24 people going in and out on average, the limit of on/off is reached very fast. What happens then is the bulbs stop responding, they revive a bit if you tinker but are off again within a day. The average lifetime in our building is 2.5 months. I have unearthed an expensive version which is good for 500.000 on/offs and costs 8euro each and am slowly replacing the burned out ones with this.
I’ve made a posting with my list of all the things wrong with CFL bulbs:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/12/22/curly-bulbs/
There are many uses where nothing else will do. FWIW, about 76% of my usage is CFLs and I was a very early and enthusiastic adopter. I’ve put them everywhere possible. There are still many places where they just don’t cut the mustard, though.
FWIW I bought some 16 packs of China made bulbs at Home Depot for $3 a package. That’s 19 CENTS each. I’ve got about 7 years worth in storage now. I’ll have at least a decade worth by the end of the year.
They last much longer on dimmers (and I like the ‘easy on the eyes’ of dimmers). AND dimmers is where CFLs just do horribly. Even the “dimmable” ones are cruddy.
So I’m figuring I’ll get up to about 20 years worth. By then I’ll either be dead or folks will have recovered their sanity and I can buy them again…
FWIW a lot of “pet facilities” need combined heat and light. So things like lizard homes, chick hatching boxes, etc. I’ve also made a yogut maker using an incandecent bulb. For many uses the heat is a feature.
Also they have a color rendering index of 100. So anyone doing color layouts tends to use them and photo studios sometimes too. (I’ve got two such light stands). A relative reports they use GE Reveal lamps for their magazine layout work. The CRI of even good CFL bulbs is often down around 85 (which is why things look strange..)
But who needs esthetics when you can save a penny worth of electricity in an hour. Oh, hope you don’t mind having your $100 dinner out look sort of barf green or baby poo yellow… need to save that nickel…
Choice, it’s a good thing.
Oh how I’m going to miss that soft soothing yellowy glow of an incandescent…
So since half of the light fixtures in my home won’t fit a CFL with the equivalent of 100w, does this mean I have to go out and spend hundreds of dollars on new fixtures for my home, or do I need to go see the eye doctor (and spend hundreds of dollars there instead) to get a stronger prescription for my aging eyes so that I can see what the hell I’m doing when I can only fit the puny CFL’s into my light fixtures ?!
And what about those of us who live through half of the year in -20 to -30c temperatures ? Are we expected to fumble around in the dark when we’re outside ?
————————————————-
SemiChemE says:
December 27, 2010 at 11:48 am
“What about my easy-bake oven?”
————————————————-
I damned near fell off my chair from that comment/question laughing so hard… Thank you for that !!
In Germany the ban of light bulbs is becomming satirical.
Some smart guys are now selling heat bulbs. These heat bulbs are somehow similar with light bulbs, but those heat balls are intended to be used as compact heaters.
http://heatball.de/
But we are living in Germany – some kind of nanny state – and therefore the authorities are on the watch:
http://www.faz.net/s/RubD16E1F55D21144C4AE3F9DDF52B6E1D9/Doc~E1A49BB514CEC4DD7ADBE5855DDC44710~ATpl~Ecommon~Scontent.html
“German customs stopped an apparently dangerous import in the Cologne/Bonn airport : This concerns 40,000 so-called heat balls. […] On Tuesday the customs stopped the new delivery with 40.000 Heatballs after a hint of the district government Cologne, department 55 for product security and explosives. […]
After information of the district government the customs suspended the release of the delivery, until samples of the apparently dangerous commodity can be examined. Now the Cologne specialists for danger prevention will soon state that the heat balls does not contain explosives – however they shine”.