Europe To Ban Halogen Lightbulbs (theguardian.com) 364
After nearly 60 years of brightening homes and streets, halogen lightbulbs will finally be banned across Europe on 1 September. From a report: The lights will dim gradually for halogen. Remaining stocks may still be sold, and capsules, linear and low voltage incandescents used in oven lights will be exempted. But a continent-wide switchover to light-emitting diodes (LEDs) is underway that will slash emissions and energy bills, according to industry, campaigners and experts. LEDs consume one-fifth of the energy of halogen bulbs and their phase-out will prevent more than 15m tonnes of carbon emissions a year, an amount equal to Portugal's annual electricity usage. Philips, the lighting manufacturer estimates consumer savings of up to 112 pound ($144) a year from the switchover because LEDs last much longer than halogens and use far less power.
EU becoming more efficient (Score:3)
Excellent news!
Soon their more efficient, less expensive countries will be able to outcompete the inefficient places that have not moved to low cost green energy and low cost LEDs.
The south can continue to use Kerosene and Whale Oil, of course.
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Vermin Supreme is on the job.
Whale couch potatoes, fast whale food. Whale oil extracted by liposuction.
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I assumed Antarctica, as you can't get more south than that.
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The south can continue to use Kerosene and Whale Oil, of course.
Hey, I like my whale oil lamp. It provides a nice warm, soft light to read by while I lie in bed at night reading Moby Dick.
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Countries that overwork their workforce pay out the back end in health care costs and the market inefficiencies resulting from having a bunch of stressed out sleep deprived yahoos running around doing stupid things.
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Countries that overwork their workforce pay out the back end in health care costs and the market inefficiencies resulting from having a bunch of stressed out sleep deprived yahoos running around doing stupid things.
But when they push the cost of healthcare onto that same workforce, the government doesn't care, the workforce only looks at their take-home pay and doesn't realize that their high healthcare costs are in effect a pay cut.
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Which means the workforce rightfully demands greater compensation from the corporations instead of giving more compensation to the share holders.
This is the USA -- generally the workforce is not in a position to "demand" anything. Those that do that have power are already well compensated.
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When the Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake ( The Big One ) puts you dozens of feet under water and / or the debris from disintegrated buildings, we in the south will enjoy seeing how you "superior" people in Seattle deal with that challenge.
Economic studies show that rich cities rebuild and become even richer after cataclysmic events, whereas low income areas lose after such events.
We'll just rebuild and become even richer.
Science shows that.
Dangerous (Score:4, Interesting)
I like the light that Halogen bulbs give off, but they also emit lots of far-ultraviolet radiation and can cause cancer [nytimes.com] without a UV cover. A friend of mine got cancer of the hand after many years of exposure doing intricate desk work.
The sooner we can get rid of Halogen the better.
Re:Dangerous (Score:5, Interesting)
I like the light that Halogen bulbs give off, but they also emit lots of far-ultraviolet radiation and can cause cancer [nytimes.com] without a UV cover. A friend of mine got cancer of the hand after many years of exposure doing intricate desk work.
The sooner we can get rid of Halogen the better.
Don't be so quick to condemn Halogen. When you need a color spectrum that Halogen provides, only sunlight is better. Certain UV wavelengths are bad for skin, bad for eyes, even some tints of blue is bad and literally blinds, causes permanent eye damage. These wavelengths also come with sunlight, apparently. The color spectrum of LED is drastically different, usually shifted to the blue and cool end, and there is more blue than any other color... the UV might taper off, but if it is white LED, its brightness comes from blue, and most commonly, the very blue that causes eye damage leading to blindness.
The major point here is Halogen (and incandescent in general) is not necessarily bad, and LED can be worse. LED is commercially still kind of new and we are actually already bumping up against theoretical max efficiency of LED by 2020. Incandescent is lagging behind in efficiency, but theoretically and most likely, eventually... maybe in 50 years or less... incandescent lighting technology efficiency will surpass LED efficiency. But LED will always be cheap.
What turns out not to be cheap is to create artificial light that is natural, like the sun, which LED won't do (and the closer it gets the worse its efficiency becomes). Bulbs aren't that expensive, just compared to LED they are. How much is natural light worth to you? What are the long term effects of exposure to LED light (and its less than ideal color spectrum)? Looks like Europe is going to find out, hoping for the best.
So the major problem with your argument, "Halogen is bad because of UV and that causes cancer" is that though it is true Halogen light creates UV, ultraviolet can't go through glass [realclearscience.com], and since most bulbs are made of glass specifically doped to block UV, your argument (presumably promoting LED) that "Halogen is bad because of UV" turns out to be a straw man argument (UV [i]is[/i] bad, though Halogen does produce UV, it is surrounded (generally, some bulbs are not doped) by UV blocking glass).
Halogen is bad because we created the carbon/energy crisis (human industry polluted the carbon leading to climate change, and humans are energy hogs) and decent lighting takes energy. Fun fact, turns out how good anyone feels can be directly correlated to how much sunlight (or an identical color spectrum light, or one close enough, such as an ordinary Halogen) gets in their eyes.
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So the major problem with your argument, "Halogen is bad because of UV and that causes cancer" is that though it is true Halogen light creates UV, ultraviolet can't go through glass [realclearscience.com], and since most bulbs are made of glass specifically doped to block UV, your argument (presumably promoting LED) that "Halogen is bad because of UV" turns out to be a straw man argument (UV [i]is[/i] bad, though Halogen does produce UV, it is surrounded (generally, some bulbs are not doped) by UV blocking glass).
You realize the article you posted doesn't say anything concrete about glass blocking UV (only passingly talks about UV and glass at all)? The fact is that only UVB is blocked by glass. UVA can pass through glass but a UVA blocker coating can handle that.
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I like the light that Halogen bulbs give off,
What I particularly iss is the way they go redder as they dim, which I really liked in the evening, and they tend to dim further than LEDs [*]. On the other hand the halogen spots (large nuber of bulbs) always had one or two out because they went so often compared to the LEDs.
I have very few incandescents left.
[*] LEDs theselves are obviously very dimable but the practical combination of 240V LED modules and standard light switch dimmers are not so good.
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Interesting, I did not know about the UV danger.
I don't like them 'cause they run super-hot and need
a porcelain socket to prevent melting / fire hazard.
They're not really more efficient than regular bulbs, too.
CAP === 'typifies'
Capsule Halogens (that are bulit into a standard bulb formfactor) don't run any hotter than a standard bulb -- a 100W bulb can only put out 100W of heat, the halogen is more efficient so it puts out a little less heat. Yes, that capsule within the bulb gets very hot - hundreds of degrees.... but any incandescent filiament hits thousands of degrees, so it's not just the temperature that heats the base, it's the amount of energy dissipated.
So yes, a 500W halogen lamp gets very hot... but so would a 500W inc
Reduced energy usage but not bills... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry but everyone time I hear that my energy bill will go down due to increases in efficiency just means they increase the rate. I'm all for newer, more efficient technologies but don't try and sell it like I'll spend less money on electricity.
I realize this is taking place in Europe, so perhaps their utilities are socialized and those utility services aren't by for-profits. I do know people work there and none of them will be likely to see a pay cut due to less energy being used, but the company will definitely have lower revenue.
Here in the states, every time we are told to save save save and we do it, the bill rates always get jacked up because the utilities start going broke when we become more mindful of our energy usage. Nothing worse as a consumer to use less of something, possibly at an inconvenience to oneself, and get charged as much or more when it's a metered service.
At the same time, the local energy company does need to make money otherwise the workers get laid off and the plant may close and electricity will definitely go up in price at that point due to there being less generated.
Still, no one is going to save money but it's great we are using less energy and leaving a smaller carbon footprint.
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A friend complains about exactly this. They upgraded the AC, better doors, new water heaters, fridge, dryer... Bill seems to stay almost exactly the same. Worse, we were in a drought so the water company asked everyone to conserve. We did. Our reward was a conservation surcharge since they were not selling enough water. Oddly, drought is over, surcharge remains. Shocking.
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Sorry but everyone time I hear that my energy bill will go down due to increases in efficiency just means they increase the rate. I'm all for newer, more efficient technologies but don't try and sell it like I'll spend less money on electricity.
I think the problem is that human behaviour tends to take advantage of changes in efficiency to improve quality of life rather than continue the same and safe money. I know that when I was a child every room had multiple 100W bulbs, we switched the lights off religiously when leaving the space and got chastised when we didn't. Now my house has a collection of 6W bulbs and I don't worry about switching the lights off particularly... I'm getting a nicer evening environment with the new efficient technology by
"hard use" and replacing CFGs (Score:4, Informative)
I suspect halogens will also still be allowed in "hard use" instances, like the lights very high up on towers in harsh weather.
Just coincidentally, I'm in the process of switching from those damned CFLs to LEDs. I say "damned" because although they initially met the promise of long life [1], later "value engineered" bulbs didn't last any longer, in my experience, than the incandescents they replaced. I'm really hoping LEDs don't fall to the same process -- value engineered to a pale shadow of their original glory.
I always felt that CFLs were a stopgap solution until we found a practical low power light bulb. It appears that LED is that solution, but it may be too early to tell.
[1]. It so happens, of the four original CFLs I bought in the 1990's, the last one -- the back porch light, stopped working last night. And will be replaced with an LED. During that time, I've had many many CFLs fail, some in the space of only a few months. In quantity, they really weren't manufactured very well.
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I suspect halogens will also still be allowed in "hard use" instances, like the lights very high up on towers in harsh weather.
Wouldn't they be more likely to use high pressure sodium lamps there? High powered, more efficient than all but the best LEDs and very long life in harsh conditions. Maybe metal halide if better colour is needed.
I'm really hoping LEDs don't fall to the same process -- value engineered to a pale shadow of their original glory.
They mostly will, especially for those targeted at consum
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Sodium is being replaced by LED now. As well as being me efficient it offers a choice of colour for different needs.
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Sodium is being replaced by LED now
That was specifically about in hard use areas. HPS lamps need a ballast which is always going to be much more rugged than a power converter.
I've seen HPS being replaced by LEDs for streetlighting, and I am a little skeptical for now. Those high power lamps are among the most efficient already (150 lm/W), which is at the top end for LEDs, and have a long practical life (25,000 hours). LEDs themselves have a long life of course, but the power converters are another matter.
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Did you also notice that the CFLs dim significantly over time as well
(and sometimes take a long time to actually start)? I use CFL for
outside ('cause if the break, the mercury is not in my home) and when
the temperature dips, they take a long time to warm up. LEDs, no such
issue...
CAP === 'occupied'
Yes, I did discover all of that. I had misgivings about CFLs from the start because of the reasons you state (including mercury -- yeah, I know they only contain as much as a thermometer, but who keeps 40 thermometers in their home?) but sort-of threw myself into the fervor when they started to become available in the nineties. Because hey, I'm a geek, and they were kinda geeky at the time. By the early thousands I was sick to death of them and hoping for a replacement soon.
Re:"hard use" and replacing CFGs (Score:4, Informative)
A typical CFL lights has about 4mg of mercury (Hg).
A typical thermometer has about 500mg Hg.
Unless you are breaking A LOT of CFLs inside the amount of mercury is negligible. Removing that small amount of mercury from the environment does have a net cumulative effect though (i.e. the total amount of Hg in all CFLs isn't negligible).
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Ok, but I wasn't even talking about breakage in the house. In 30 years I haven't broken a single CFL, so the hue and cry of mercury hazards in the home have been largely overblown in my experience.
I think the real issue is mercury in the landfill. Now, I know, you're supposed to recycle CFLs, not throw them in the trash, and I'm sure that us highly educated and ethical people are all doing that [1]. But what do you think Ma and Pa Kettle are doing with theirs?
[1]. Actually, our recycling center won't tak
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So those four cfls lasted you thirthy years.
I highly doubt four leds will last you that long. either the leds will burn out, or the integrated power supplies will fail, or both.
passphrase : minima
Yes they did. It was truly remarkable.
As to whether LEDs will last that long, we'll see. I suspect that the first batch of LEDs I've bought will have an exceptional lifespan. The bulbs I buy later, say, in those Costco blister packs, won't last any longer than incandescent bulbs did. But again, we'll see.
colour spectrum (Score:2)
with incandescents — the ive found the colour spectrum left me with the 'blues' — it was only when halogens came on the scene, that i felt that we finally had a bulb that got us closer to a natural sunshine daylight full spectrum bulb. then came compact flourescents —those toxic (mercury) abonitations made poor lighting quality manditory. thank god LEDs came in just in time to forstall the takeover of the CFLs.
consumers should be given a choice — halogen bulbs still have the best col
Re:colour spectrum (Score:5, Informative)
LED and CFL lights come with their color temperature written on the box. If you want daylight get a 4500K bulb, if you want yellow get 3000K, if you want candle light get 2000K. If you can't find the color temp you want, buy them online. If you don't like blue, don't buy anything above 4000K on the box.
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the problem is LED are made of a weird combo of two bulbs, look at the real spectrum of them, like a unicorn snail or something.....
bulbs based on hot things have nicer smoother spectrum
yes I have LED at home, but one halogen for occasional use at my computer workstation for documents is nicer
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the problem is LED are made of a weird combo of two bulbs, look at the real spectrum of them, like a unicorn snail or something.....
Most white LEDs are fluorescent lights, they're just not tubes. They are UV LEDs and the plastic lens is doped with phosphors which absorb the UV and then emit visible light. There are also RGB LEDs, but IME they are seldom used in any light which doesn't have a color-changing feature.
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How Will I Fry Bugs? (Score:5, Funny)
I have a free-standing halogen lamp. It's wonderfully bright but I rarely use it because it gives off a tremendous amount of heat and I do worry about its excessive power usage. But let me tell you, if ever there's a fly buzzing about the room that I can't catch or otherwise shoo out of the house, I turn on the light and let the little f#@&*r fry. The smell of roasting bug that inevitably wafts through the room ten minutes after I turn the lamp on after being annoyed for an hour by the victim's buzzing is extremely satisfying.
It's the only reason I keep the damn lamp, quite honestly.
Go to Pirate Bay ... (Score:2)
... to get the 3D CAD files and make your own bulbs!
What a shame (Score:2)
I stocked up on hundreds of incandescent bulbs in the US before the ban went into effect. The black-body light is superior, full stop. No peaky semiconductor emission frequencies shining through the phosphor, leaving some colors dim. They also make my my eyes hurt if I happen to look at them directly.
I do mix incandescent with fluorescent at my workbench, for things like reading resistor color
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Make sure the LEDs are dark sky friendly (Score:2)
Cheap Light Bulbs, or Saving Electricity? (Score:2)
I was an early adopter of the little pigtail compact fluorescent bulbs. THey were supposed to last way longer while saving electricity, and so were WORTH the higher cost per bulb. Except that they did NOT last longer. And if they saved pennies for electricity, they cost many dollars for expensive bulbs. Now we're dealing with the same issue with LEDs; LED bulbs cost $5 each (AFTER the considerable decrease in the last year) and still save a few pennies on the power bill.
I'm not sure that we're ahead
let's do the numbers for the US (Score:2)
Electricity is responsible for about 34% of US carbon emissions. Of those 34%, about 7% are residential and commercial lighting, with less than half of that being residential lighting. We're down to less than 1% of US carbon emissions due to residential lighting now. Halogen is less than 10% of that market, so we're down to less than 0.1% of US carbon emissions due to halogen bulbs. LEDs are a lot more efficient than those, saving you probably up to 75% of those carbon emissions, but the impact overall is n
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Just search eBay for 100W commercial long-life incandescent A19 E26 medium base or
"Rough Service" bulbs.... plenty of options
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What didn't you like? The taste or the crunch?
Re:And they only cost 20 times as much (Score:4, Funny)
The price is coming down. Only 18 times as much now.
Re:And they only cost 20 times as much (Score:5, Informative)
The price is coming down. Only 18 times as much now.
They are only more expensive if you don't know how to do math (or if someone else pays your power bill).
A 16 pack of Phillips 60W (8.5W actual) LED's costs $25.37 ($1.59 / Bulb) on Amazon.
You can get a 24 pack of incandescent 60W bulbs on eBay for around 75 cents a piece. So that makes the purchase price of LEDs twice has much as incandescents.
But since the LED uses 52 watts less power, if you pay $0.10/KWh for electricity, you'd break even after the first 161 hours of using the bulb.
The incandecent bulb will last around 1100 hours (and you'll have saved around $5.70 in electricity over that time), but the LED will last an average of 10X longer. But even if you only got 1100 hours out of it, you'd still come out ahead. (you can get "long-life" 4000hour incandescent's, but they are much less efficient, putting out about half the light as a standard bulb)
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They're referring to upfront cost of course, as you are are aware.
However it IS common to compare the cheapest bulb you can get when comparing prices, but compare the manufacturer claimed life expectancy improvements from high end bulbs.
The cheap POS LEDs do NOT last 5x longer. I wouldn't even give them 2x.
The higher quality LED bulbs are great, but make the cost analysis closer (and of course 5x is still BS)
And I say this as someone with a handful of incandescent still burning, no remaining CFLs (hated th
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They're referring to upfront cost of course, as you are are aware.
However it IS common to compare the cheapest bulb you can get when comparing prices, but compare the manufacturer claimed life expectancy improvements from high end bulbs.
The cheap POS LEDs do NOT last 5x longer. I wouldn't even give them 2x.
The higher quality LED bulbs are great, but make the cost analysis closer (and of course 5x is still BS)
And I say this as someone with a handful of incandescent still burning, no remaining CFLs (hated them so much...) and almost entirely LEDs at this point.
LEDs are the better direction but it's not as overwhelming an analysis as it is made out to be. Particularly as they have significantly more efficient incandescents that became available once that sluggish industry realized it was being regulated out of existence and tried to adjust (too late). Comparisons are of course not done against the more efficient incandescent bulbs. LED still wins those comparisons, but the story is again reduced when this is done.
I compared the cheapest *incandescent* bulb I could find against name-brand Phllips LED bulbs, which I've used for the past 6 years or so (back when they cost $20+ a bulb). So this wasn't a case of cherrypicking cheap LED's. The cost savings from the lower power consumption is so great that there's no need to skimp on the LED bulb.
I gave my figures, feel free to post your own analysis to show your point, but don't expect a big difference -- an "efficient incandescent" still still uses 43W for a 60W "equival
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I was being facetious. The price for LEDs has gone down to the point where I buy only LEDs now for all applications for which an LED solution exists. This includes replacing the few remaining incandescents on my motorcycle. This most especially includes replacing all those horrible CFLs scattered through the house.
But besides the usual benefits, (long life, instant-on (compared to CFLs), low power) there's one I haven't seen mentioned yet: They look nice. I have a few vintage light stands indoors, (inh
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That's the hypothesis. Unfortunately in reality, LEDs don't last anywhere near the advertised numbers, and tend to work poorly in many conditions like too cold or too wet.
This is because unlike halogen and incandescent, the circuitry needed to control the LED is fairly complex, and tends to be the primary failure mode. Additionally if circuit board actually does last something close to advertised time, LEDs tend to become much dimmer towards their end of advertised "lifecycle", to the point where in many ap
Re:And they only cost 20 times as much (Score:5, Informative)
That's the hypothesis. Unfortunately in reality, LEDs don't last anywhere near the advertised numbers, and tend to work poorly in many conditions like too cold or too wet.
My oldest LED is 6 years old, in an upstairs hallway light that sees at least a couple hours of use nearly every day (more in the winter than in the summer). So that's over 4000 hours, about 4X the lifetime of a typical incandescent. But for this particular lamp I don't even care about the cost of the bulb or the operating cost, it's the inconvenience of changing it since it's over the stairs and I need to go borrow a telescoping folding ladder from my parents to change it, so it's a major hassle.
My second oldest LED is around 4 years old. It's in an outdoor light fixture that sees around 6 hours of use every night - in temperatures ranging from around 25F in the winter to 90F+ in the summer. So it has around 8000 hours on it now, I'm not sure what it's rated for, but it subjectively "feels" as bright as when I installed it.
I've converted 90% of my house to LED's now, the remaining 10% are CFL's in little used areas of the house that I'm still waiting on them to die.
I've only had 1 LED die so far (plus a couple that were DOA when I installed them). Nearly all of my bulbs are Phillips, I've tried a few other brands, but have been most satisfied with the Phillips bulbs.
Re:And they only cost 20 times as much (Score:5, Funny)
I just want to point out that you ignored every single point I raised, and just gave us a long "my story" post.
This is great on your average mass media discussion board for average joes. But this is supposed to be a site for nerds.
I didn't ignore it, I gave anecdotal evidence that you're wrong, which is more evidence than you gave.
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As always, the "energy savings" touted by advocates of "Green" lighting assumes that light is the only wanted output of a light source.
The efficiency is based on light-output only, so when (for example) an incandescent is described as only 20% efficient what they mean is 20% of the energy consumed goes to light and another 80% is "wasted" as heat.
But what if you live in a climate that requires supplemental heating? In that case, the 80% is wanted output, and the incandescent is now 100% efficient (assuming
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It's only in places with an abundance of hydro-electricity where it would make economical sense to have electric heating.
In most places on this world other forms of heating are (much) cheaper.
Then think of places with air conditioning where incandescent lamps are a double waste of power!
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The incandecent bulb will last around 1100 hours ..., but the LED will last an average of 10X longer.
Not in my experience. I bought a small LED torch (flashlamp to Americans) and after a few weeks it failed. I thought I was just unlucky so I bought another but after a few weeks that one failed too. You can't change the LED "bulbs" (if that was the fault). I have now gone back to a filament bulb torch that my father-in-law gave me; it is probably 60 years old with low cost bulb changes every few years; it just works.
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A 16 pack of Phillips 60W (8.5W actual) LED's costs $25.37 ($1.59 / Bulb) on Amazon.
Probably some non-dimmable pieces of shit...
I only have 2 dimmers in my house, so dimmable bulbs really aren't that important to me. But if you want dimmables, feel free to re-do the numbers for dinnable bulbs. Here, I'll do most of the work for you, I found a 6 pack of 9.5W Dimmable Phillips 60W bulbs for $23, or $3.85/each.
Re: And they only cost 20 times as much (Score:3)
The big problem with the dimable ones is that, iirc, you also have to replace your dimmer switches. That adds expense even if you know how to replace one yourself (the dimmers were like $20+ last time I looked), let alone if you have to call an electrician.
Probably still worth it in the long run for the energy savings, but it does change the equation.
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The big problem with the dimable ones is that, iirc, you also have to replace your dimmer switches. That adds expense even if you know how to replace one yourself (the dimmers were like $20+ last time I looked), let alone if you have to call an electrician.
Probably still worth it in the long run for the energy savings, but it does change the equation.
It's getting hard to find non-LED compatible dimmers these days, but you can buy a cheap LED compatible one for $7:
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Le... [homedepot.com]
Re: And they only cost 20 times as much (Score:2)
Nice. Good to know that the price for those has come down also. A little too late to be useful to me, but good nonetheless.
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If LEDs are so wonderful, why not let the people decide what bulbs to buy?
If you aren't being a Poe, the biggest reason that CFL's and then LEDs have been brough into being is that they use less electricity, so you don't have to build that nice new nuc plant in your backyard.
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Why let the people decide? Because they never had any choice. Companies and marketing departments decide what you buy, not you, and not your neighbors.. and what your neighbors buy determines what price you pay and what choices you have on the shelves.
Consumers do not decide squat.
Yeah no one is ever responsible for their actions.
That yummy tetraethyllead... ummm... (Score:2)
If people want efficiency, long life, power savings, they will buy them of their own free will.
Why mandate and force people to buy certain products.
Let people decide what is best for themselves.
Typical nanny state control freaks !
Funny...
We can actually tell your parents yelled out those same lines back when the phasing out of leaded gasoline was announced.
Re: So you don't need a lwa (Score:4, Insightful)
They had LED bulbs before any incandescent bulb ban was in place.
And they were much more expensive than they are today. My local big-box store sells house brand LED"s for around $1/each
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Right.
He should have said "invest in **more** factories".
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They had LED bulbs before any incandescent bulb ban was in place.
No, previous anonymous coward has a point. They existed, true, but they wouldn't be affordable until they were popular, which creates a chicken-and-egg issue.
For LEDs, this appears to have been a beneficial move. But the US tried to ban incandescents when the only affordable alternative was CFLs, which was a crappy technology. If the government is going to interfere with our lives, the least they could do is pick a decent product.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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Something may be crummy with your power. Try different brands. Some are more tolerant of bad power than others.
Re:And they only cost 20 times as much (Score:4, Informative)
Not only that, but despite the touted 30.000 hour life span of LED lights, I have already had to replace several in my house, while the old-fasioned, simple tungsten bulbs keep going, and going, and going.
It's madness.
Ah, but you see the LEDs really are good for 30K hours; it's just that the power transforming base of the bulb that's gone bad.
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Not only that, but despite the touted 30.000 hour life span of LED lights, I have already had to replace several in my house, while the old-fasioned, simple tungsten bulbs keep going, and going, and going.
Well we have a cabin and there we keep the light burning all winter long, it's 8760 hours in a year and they last several years so they're probably not wrong. But unlike the old days the key to economic efficiency is to simply not turn the lights out. It might have been 60W from 5PM to 11PM, today it's 11W running 24x7. That's an advantage I guess? Particularly rapid on/off cycles seems to kill it faster, my buddy has basically said leave the bathroom light on. Any "savings" is more than eaten up by bulb re
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Not only that, but despite the touted 30.000 hour life span of LED lights, I have already had to replace several in my house, while the old-fasioned, simple tungsten bulbs keep going, and going, and going.
It's madness.
Get the Pitchforks Ma! One bad LED is too many and is insufferable. God wants us to use incandescents becaus not one has ever failed. Since Incandescents last forever, we'll save infinite money.
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I like LEDs. I want to believe in them. But in my house, regular incandescent and halogen lights installed years before are still working. LEDs are running about a 20% failure rate in just a couple of years, and they cost a heck of a lot more, not to mention the hassles over dimmability and finding ones with the right color temperature.
I think we'll get there, but its been a painful and expensive process for me so far (switching from incandescents to LEDs).
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I've been using Energy Saving Bulbs (various sorts) since late 90s, and not had to replace any - I'd suspect you have an electrical issue (brownouts and the like), and might want to have a word with your supplier.
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I don't doubt your experience, but it does seem odd. I think my house power is noisy... incandescents never lasted long, and neither did CFLs. But I've had really good luck with LEDs from day one.
I've especially noticed it with 3-way bulbs. Those things never seemed to last more than a month or two in our lamps. About 3 years ago I bit the bullet and bought three 3-ways of the LED persuasion at $20/each - they're still going strong, so they've already paid for themselves even just in terms of what I would'v
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Not only that, but despite the touted 30.000 hour life span of LED lights, I have already had to replace several in my house, while the old-fasioned, simple tungsten bulbs keep going, and going, and going.
I've yet to have an LED bulb go out, and I started switching over to them in 2011. I know the year because the bulbs were expensive and had a five-year warranty - so I saved the receipt and boxes, and wrote the installation date on the boxes (I finally got rid of the boxes earlier this year).
We did replace the ones over our dining room table recently, but that was because my wife decided she wanted higher-output bulbs there.
I did have CFL bulbs go bad, though... all the bloody time. I think my power may be
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"I did have CFL bulbs go bad, though... all the bloody time."
CFLs do seem to fail more often than is claimed. I think "they" extrapolated the failure rate for long tube "industrial" bulbs to the curly compact form factor. I suspect that compact FLs run warmer and therefore fail more often than the T8/T12 straight bulbs . I've even had one CFL expire with a loud bang. Blew the curly glass tube off the base.
That said, the CFLs do last a lot longer than incandescents.
I had some bad experiences with early L
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Not really. I picked up a pack of 3 for $5, led bulbs, from the dollar store 2 years ago. Those bulbs are still going strong.
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Not really. I picked up a pack of 3 for $5, led bulbs, from the dollar store 2 years ago. Those bulbs are still going strong.
That cashier ripped you off.
Re:And they only cost 20 times as much (Score:5, Insightful)
>" Not really. I picked up a pack of 3 for $5, led bulbs, from the dollar store 2 years ago. Those bulbs are still going strong."
It really is a "crap shoot". I have a few ancient LED bulbs that are still working fine. I have others I bought from Amazon, with 5 star ratings, and half died within a few months. I have a lot of genuine CREE bulbs, and half of those started flickering and dying in just a few years.... and those were expensive.
I *love* LED bulbs. But I also don't think other bulbs should be "banned". That is just stupid. LED bulbs don't solve ALL problems for ALL situations, and if they are so great, they will naturally take over (like they are doing). Old tech will get less and less popular, harder to find, less in demand, and their prices will go up and up. It doesn't have to be forced down people's throats.... instead, provide education.
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All of them. fluorescent MTBF is 25K hours, while LED is 75K hours.
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Cheap chinese LEDs tend to fail quite frequently, often not making it past a single year. The power supplies that are build into the LED bulbs also like to blow up a lot. That said, cheap chinese Halogen bulbs aren't exactly long lasting either. There is plenty of cheap garbage out there that will go nowhere near the theoretical lifetime.
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You're comparing an apple cart to a banana plantation.
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Do you want minions? Because that's how you get minions.
Bulb life vs. efficiency (Score:2)
Most incandescent bulbs are not rated anywhere near that long (most of the commercial ones were something like 1000 hours when I was still buying them) and the ones that could last that long are vastly different in design than the cheap commercial bulbs that were being sold.
Not "vastly different", just a thicker (=stronger) filament wire, and -possibly- tweaks to wire supports, gas mixture or whatever.
It's easy to make a long lasting incandescent. But it would also be very inefficient - worse than they already are. Therefore an 'optimum' is picked where bulbs don't need replacing too often, but still have acceptable efficiency. That optimum is picked around 1000 hours for regular incandescents (longer for halogen lamps due to their halogen cycle [wikipedia.org]). Make 'em longer
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And incandescent lights have burned continuosly for over 115 years, that means a wee bit more than 22 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest-lasting_light_bulbs
It's easy to make in incandescent light bulb that lasts for decades or even centuries -- just run a lower voltage. For example, take an iron bar and run enough current through it to glow red, maybe seal it in an oxygen-free glass bulb...That will give out light for a long long time. Of course, you may be running a few thousand watts of power through it to get a tiny amount of light, but that's the cost of longevity.
A standard 60W incandescent bulb will put out around 850 lumens and last for around 1100 hour
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That should be an incandescent bulb has been on that long. I also don't think you would want to do much reading around that bulb (as I recall it is rather dim and has a very yellow hue).
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I would advise buying your next LED bulbs on an online site that allows you to post reviews, then when they fail, going back to the product page and giving it a bad review. And try to remember to give a good review to whatever bulb has outlasted the others once a year.
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I agree with your idea, the point I was trying to get at is that once again the politicians wasted a bunch of effort putting in "feel good" laws that are more waste of time than a value add to the problem at hand.
These kinds of laws are nothing more than feel good legislation to get ignorant voters off their backs or an end run parlay by mfgs to gain a market advantage through regulation.
If they want to make sensible regulation by enforcing a minimal manufacturing quality like forcing LEDs to carry a minimu
Re:This is total garbage (Score:5, Insightful)
Not because incandescent bulbs are being phased out but because it does not solve any problems. [...] Sure power will be lower
So, which is it? Or does reducing power usage not count as solving a problem?
Just like incandescent bulbs have always been manufactured to be intentionally limited so will LED lights. Waste will not be cut by any meaningful measurement.
That's exactly what I said when they started selling automobiles -- the change would never help with the nation's horseshit-in-the-streets problem, because auto manufacturers would deliberately add horseshit to their cars so that they could sell more of them. Perfectly logical, no?
Come to think of it, I think I know where all the horseshit has actually gone to -- it's now being used to power incoherent Slashdot posts.
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"So, which is it? Or does reducing power usage not count as solving a problem?"
Your thinking is too narrow. Just like how everyone found out that the total energy needed to produce ethanol as a fuel was not really saving any effort, if LED light manufacturing is allowed to do the same we are not "technically saving energy". We are just playing a card trick by moving the cost of energy outside of your home and towards the constant manufacturing of cheap and poor quality LEDs that do not last. But it appea
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Just like incandescent bulbs have always been manufactured to be intentionally limited so will LED lights.
You can make a light bulb that lasts longer, but it will also use more power for a given amount of light. It would cost you more to pay for the additional power consumption than it does to replace the light bulbs. LED lights, on the other hand, actually will be designed to sell to a price point that has nothing to do with lifespan. That's why the glass globes fell off my otherwise perfectly-working Cree lights.
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Incandescent bulbs are the least "natural" light. This is assuming by natural you mean sunlight. If by natural you mean "what I am used to" then I guess I will buy that. The light of incandescent bulbs is on the yellow end of the spectrum (yes I know you can get daylight incandescent bulb talking in generality here). The "sterile like warehouse/hospital fluorescents" lights are toward the blue end of the spectrum. Sunlight tends to be closer to the "sterile like warehouse/hospital fluorescents" color temper
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The inspector for my home says it passed for grounding. I have also verified this visually myself and with a wiring tester. So far the test is okay unless I have a fault somewhere that showed good while I tested it but gets faulty if something shifts, which is possible.
However, I am not aware of bad grounding being a culprit for LED failures. Grounding is not something that really has play in electrical applications in this way. Electrical grounding is a safety mechanism and if grounding is being engage
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energy savings != monetary savings
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energy savings != monetary savings
It does if you're a taxpayer. Responding to forest fires, floods, disease outbreaks, et cetera costs money.
Re: Trumpies already outraged. (Score:4, Insightful)
1) Free Speech does not, and never has, protected someone from the consequences of their free speech. The classic example is shouting fire in a crowded theatre, leading to false calls to the emergency services who respond and possible panic and injury among the other theatre goers. If you stand up and exhort other like-minded people to begin a race war and murder people whose skin or faith doesn't match yours, you may become an accessory to murder before the fact if someone in your chosen audience actually goes through with it.
2) The First Amendment says that the government cannot restrict your speech. It does not say that private individuals or organizations have to listen to you, or to provide a platform from which you can broadcast your opinions. Moreover, any platform or forum that chooses to support or host a certain type of content may also be criminally and civilly liable of that content leads to someone breaking the law.
3) The choice to accept or reject speech on a private platform or forum is also given First Amendment protection. If I host a blog, I can refuse to allow statements I disagree with to appear in my comment section. Telling me I had to keep those comments visible would restrict my free speech.
Re: Trumpies already outraged. (Score:4, Informative)
Free Speech does not, and never has, protected someone from the consequences of their free speech. The classic example is shouting fire in a crowded theatre, leading to false calls to the emergency services who respond and possible panic and injury among the other theatre goers
I always love the irony of people using this analogy to try and support restriction on free speech. You are obviously completely clueless about the fact that the analogy was first made by a judge in a legal ruling which ended up sending a man to prison for the "crime" of passing out pamphlets opposing the draft.
The ruling was eventually overturned, but not before the defendant (and many like him) spent years in jail for voicing an opinion which is commonplace today. However the result of it being overturned is that, yes, in the united states at least, you CAN yell fire in a crowded theatre. What you can't do is engage in speech which "advocates imminent lawless action", as in you can't tell the theatre goers to burn down the building.
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I've yet to see a CFL or LED bulb that lasts as long as incandescent bulbs in the US. I've used several brands and wattage's. What's most frustrating about the new LEDs is they're all advertised as '10 year bulbs' but have a 1 year warranty, then die in 9 months.
The higher cost per bulb is simply not worth the savings in my electric bill, especially with constantly rising rates.
So if the bulb dies after 9 month get a replacement under warranty. Extending the warranty to 10 years wouldn't help your bulb that died after only 9 months.