US Light Bulb Phase-Out's Next Step Begins Next Month 1146
SonicSpike writes "Light bulb manufacturers will cease making traditional 40 and 60-watt light bulbs — the most popular in the country — at the start of 2014. This comes after the controversial phasing out of incandescent 75 and 100-watt light bulbs at the beginning of 2013. In their place will be halogen bulbs, compact fluorescent bulbs, LED bulbs and high efficiency incandescents — which are just regular incandescents that have the filament wrapped in gas. All are significantly more expensive than traditional light bulbs, but offer significant energy and costs savings over the long run. (Some specialty incandescents — such as three-way bulbs — will still be available.) ... The rules were signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2007. They are designed to address gross inefficiencies with old light bulbs — only 10% of the energy they use is converted into light, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, which has a handy fact sheet about the changes. The rest is wasted as heat. But the rules have drawn fire from a number of circles — mainly conservatives and libertarians who are unhappy about the government telling people what light bulbs they can use. They argue that if the new ones really are so good, people will buy them on their own without being forced to do so."
Seriously? (Score:4, Insightful)
I live in Wisconsin, seriously, that "waste" heat is NOT wasted! It's freaking cold outside!! I'm an American, I want to be free to choose!
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
You are free to choose: that's what the ballot box is for.
Capitalistic "freedom of choice" is weighted by the size of your wallet.
I'll be stocking up and this is why. (Score:2, Insightful)
The power consumption advantages are often nullified by the mortality rate of modern lighting if your power fluctuates as it does in many rural and semi-rural areas.
I demand reliability.
BTW incandescent bulbs are nice for heating my well pump house and chicken coop. I can buy separate heaters, but they cost more and nullify any ecological advantages from running "eco bulbs" to light those places.
"Rugged" bulbs are often plastic coated and their fumes can be dangerous to birds:
http://www.t-g.com/blogs/stevemills/entry/50611/ [t-g.com]
The responsible consumer is a myth (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's face it: people don't want to think about every bit they do. That's why phones and clothes are nowadays mostly produced by people working in Asia under inhuman conditions, people buy prepackaged meat but would not want to see a slaughterhouse, people can't be bothered to switch off the lights or TV or heating when they don't need it.
If consumers acted intelligibly, absurdities like elevators in gym buildings would not see much use. Neither would do remote controls for entertainment devices and the sometimes associated "standby" mode.
Also realizations like "I don't have the money to afford cheap stuff" occur only to few people.
People won't change their patterns unless forced to. The whole point of a pattern is to save the effort of thinking, a strategic and rare resource.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
I live in Wisconsin, seriously, that "waste" heat is NOT wasted! It's freaking cold outside!! I'm an American, I want to be free to choose!
I suspect that Poe's Law [wikipedia.org] is at work here. But I'll play it straight and point out that a heat-pump is a lot more efficient than simple resistive heating like the waste heat from a light-bulb. Modern heat-pumps work even in sub-freezing temperatures like a Wisconsin winter.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
I live in Wisconsin, seriously, that "waste" heat is NOT wasted! It's freaking cold outside!! I'm an American, I want to be free to choose!
I doubt you need heat year round. The only way you don't waste energy in that scenario is if you're already using electric resistance heating which is horribly inefficient. Heat pumps are less efficient in the cold, but still outperform resistance heat down to 15*F. If you're routinely colder than that, you have gas/propane/oil backup heat or worst case electric resistance heat.
That said, there are cases where incandescent bulbs are used to provide heat, such as terrariums. For those I guess we're stuck with $4 halogens that don't last any longer instead of the 25-cent walmart specials.
the best wins (Score:3, Insightful)
They argue that if the new ones really are so good, people will buy them on their own without being forced to do so.
Which is why Betamax won the video format war. Oh, wait...
Yes Seriously (Score:3, Insightful)
I live in Wisconsin, seriously, that "waste" heat is NOT wasted!
Blah blah, I live up north too. Let's see, should I heat my house with a 95% efficient furnace or a 10% efficient light bulb? Boy that's a tough one...
Re:Regulations a bit premature (Score:5, Insightful)
LED bulbs are far better – when implemented correctly, they're pretty much indistinguishable from incandescents. But they are also very expensive – about $15 for the Cree bulbs at Home Depot, which are the cheapest ones I've found that have decent online reviews. Hopefully in a couple of years the manufacturing process will mature so that the price will go down without compromising quality.
the price of leds is made up by the extreme long life they have.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
I live in Wisconsin, seriously, that "waste" heat is NOT wasted! It's freaking cold outside!! I'm an American, I want to be free to choose!
It's still wasting money unless you heat your house with electrical resistance heating.
And many lamps aren't located where they are the most effective radiators - much of the heat from a ceiling fixture is conducted into the ceiling.
Re:Regulations a bit premature (Score:5, Insightful)
As of 2013 there is still no way to get a light bulb that combines the low cost and high quality of an incandescent
Correction. Low up front cost.
At the national average of 12c/kwh a typical LED bulb will pay for itself in 2.5 years and last well over 5 years. In other words, they are already cheaper than incandescents if you aren't as short-sighted as the typical wall-street broker.
Also, Philips makes a good $10 bulb [homedepot.com] too. Cree isn't the only one in the game.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
Modern heat pumps are expensive and cranky of maintenance. But you don't heat your entire house with incandescents - the idea is that the 90% waste isn't 'waste' it's being utilized effeciently. And to pay another $10 for an effecient solution makes little sense.
I like the new LEDs, I have them all over the house now. But those were installed with a bit of care - I only expended the money on the larger areas that are lit frequently. Closets, hallways, bathrooms - the analysis just isn't in favor of LEDs or CFLs. The feds should just let the market figure it out. That would also minimize the problem of tens of thousands of shit quality 'effecient' bulbs pushed on the market. With the time constraints the feds created and the associated hoopla, you had every Chinese fifth tier electronics manufacturer trying to get into the game. With predictable results. Lots of people are turned off to the 'effecient' solution since they lasted six months and then died.
The ratcheting of Liberal Fascism (Score:2, Insightful)
Yet another strong example of Liberal Fascism [amazon.com] at work. More examples of a government hell-bent on solving some kind of problem that would have solved itself eventually, destroying jobs and making the lives of the poor worse in the process.
I personally am not effected too much by the ban - I've already been using LED and CFL bulbs where they make sense (basically a CFL makes sense anywhere you almost never have to use the light or look at anything illuminated by it). But then I can afford a $50 light bulb instead of a 60 cent one...
What will the poor do? They will use ultra-crappy CFL bulbs that don't last any longer than an incandescent yet cost 10x as much, or else make do with discarded Christmas lights for illumination instead.
That in the end is the real tragedy of overbearing government regulations. The well off can easily find a way to skirt them while the quality of life for the poor ratchets ever downward.
If you wonder why the government is doing this, wonder no more when a government subsidy is created to funnel taxpayer money to CFL makers "for the poor".
"The Market" would never phase them out (Score:4, Insightful)
...not because they are superior, but because at least half of the USA is living paycheck-to-paycheck, and they are cheaper. When you need a lightbulb right now, and your kids get to eat with whatever is left, you're most likely going to pick the cheapest one, not the one that should give you the cheapest electricity bill over the next 20 years (particularly if you're liable to move in 1-5 years, leaving your lightbulb "investment" behind before it has paid off).
Hell, I'm better off than most folks, but in my own house I've instituted a rule that we buy no more than 1 expensive LED bulb a month (at last check we had 8 burned out awaiting replacement). I wanna hug trees and all that, but there's a lot better way to spend hundreds of dollars this week than on light bulbs.
So expecting "the market" to fix this in a healthy way all by itself any time soon is unreasonable. This is the exact kind of thing we have government for. Otherwise the streets would be full of trash and sewage (cheapest way to dispose of it, after all! Who's the government to tell me how to dispose of my Snickers wrappers?)
Re:Seriously? (Score:4, Insightful)
I live in Wisconsin, seriously, that "waste" heat is NOT wasted! It's freaking cold outside!! I'm an American, I want to be free to choose!
I doubt you need heat year round. The only way you don't waste energy in that scenario is if you're already using electric resistance heating which is horribly inefficient. Heat pumps are less efficient in the cold, but still outperform resistance heat down to 15*F. If you're routinely colder than that, you have gas/propane/oil backup heat or worst case electric resistance heat.
That said, there are cases where incandescent bulbs are used to provide heat, such as terrariums. For those I guess we're stuck with $4 halogens that don't last any longer instead of the 25-cent walmart specials.
If that were true then why do all air based heat pumps include heating coils that kick on well above 15F? Might it be that there is the theoretical efficiency and the practical result? As for terrariums, the various reptile heat lamps are still deemed specialty lamps and exempt from the incadescent ban (as are many decorative incadescents that high end houses have).
Re:CFLs still suck (Score:5, Insightful)
I bought an LED bulb the other day (we had a coupon). We love it - instant on, and the light looks exactly like the classic incandescent. I'm sold; once they get a bit less expensive (or we find more coupons), we're buying more. I'm hoping we've bought our last CFL - they always felt like an interim solution until LEDs improved.
Now, can we get some lighting fixtures that use LEDs that are actually designed for LEDs? For example, I'd like to put in some LED downlights in the living room, but everything I can find is just an LED replacement bulb for a classic fixture, rather than a fixture designed for an LED. I'd also like to replace the 40 watt florescent tube fixtures in our garage with LEDs, but so far I can't find much that would work. I was thinking strips of LEDs, one color, but it was looking like several hundred dollars for several strips of the length I'd need.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
Modern heat pumps are expensive and cranky of maintenance.
Bullshit. They are no more problematic than a regular A/C unit.
But you don't heat your entire house with incandescents - the idea is that the 90% waste isn't 'waste' it's being utilized effeciently
No. The choice is between running the efficient heat-pump a little bit more or running the light-bulb and paying 10x more for the marginal increase in heat.
Re:CFLs still suck (Score:5, Insightful)
Cree has finally got their bulbs out and they're dirt cheap - $12 apiece for 60watt equivalent bulbs at the big box store.
12$ for a light bulb is not "cheap".
We vote on leaders not lightbulbs (Score:5, Insightful)
Really, and when was the incadescent ban put to a vote of the people?
Right because putting things like that to a popular vote in a republic is a really sane way to govern. There are lots of things that aren't entirely popular that are still the right thing to do. Banning needlessly inefficient technologies when there are reasonable alternatives available is one of them.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
Really, and when was the incadescent ban put to a vote of the people?
At the same time we voted for an energy price system that incorporates all externalities. Since you don't want to pay more for your energy it failed and this is what you chose instead.
What conservatives really want is to live in a fantasy world where the rest of the country and planet don't exist. Somebody magically provides cheap resources and they can build a Randian society where everybody is free to chose their brand of gas guzzler. The rest of the world begs to differ.
Leave our kids alone (Score:5, Insightful)
Next thing the Government will want us to stop smoking, wear seatbelts and vaccinate our children against deadly diseases. Why do they think they know what is good for us?
Waste heat in the summer (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're talking heat output, the lightbulb would be 90%, not 10%
Not for 3/4 of the year (i.e. spring, summer or fall) it would not be. A lightbulb just generates waste heat most of the time. They also are pretty useless for heating when you want it to be dark at the same time as you are generating heat, like oh, when you want to sleep. There is a reason we decouple our heat sources from our light sources.
and a lot of people have older furnaces that are fairly inefficient.
Even a clunky old inefficient furnace is still more efficient than any incandescent light bulb. If you have a badly insulated house or a shitty furnace, a light bulb isn't going to fix that problem for you.
Re:We vote on leaders not lightbulbs (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides, you can just connect a big resistor in series with a halogen bulb. This lowers the color temperature to that of a regular incandescent and probably makes the bulb last longer. As a side effect it makes the efficiency even worse than that of an incandescent bulb.
While EU kindabanned regular light bulbs, the "specialty" ones are still available. That includes rugged and longer life bulbs, both of which have efficiency rating of "G", while the normal light bulbs had a rating of "E". A 60W long-life light bulb produces about as much light as a 40W regular. OTOH, the color temperature is even lower, so I like them. Both are also labeled "not for room lighting",
If they ever decide to ban the long-life bulbs as well, I will buy a lot of them. I still have mu stash of ~100 regular bulbs.
The reason is that I like the light they produce. A point source of continuous spectrum light with a low color temperature. I do not care about the efficiency - after all, my computers use ~1kW and my Bitcoin miners use ~600W, I really do not care about the 40W or 60W that goes to a light bulb.
The Argument (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously? That's their argument? That if they are just "good enough" people will buy them on their own? You could give them away for *free* and people would still find some reason to prefer incandescents. Human beings are notorious idiots when it comes to choosing things that do or don't benefit us. Just ask the tobacco industry. Even faced with a long, painful death, we insist that 'we know what's best' for us. I'm not saying that CFL's are wondrous mana from heaven that will save the world, but sometimes mankind needs a serious kick in the ass in order to 'make the right choice'.
Re:Seriously? (Score:4, Insightful)
It seems to me that in a free market light bulb manufacturers have a disincentive to produce a product that doesn't need to be replaced for 7 years versus a product that needs to be replaced far more regularly. Am I missing something?
Re:We vote on leaders not lightbulbs (Score:5, Insightful)
Banning needlessly inefficient technologies when there are reasonable alternatives available is one of them.
Reasonable alternatives would not be priced at $27 a pop or pose a serious mercury contamination risk for disposed of bulbs, or evacuation [epa.gov] in the case of broken ones.
.
Contrary to the article and the summary, the payback period on some of the newer bulbs is way longer than the devices actually last in real-life environments. And again, inefficiency is not an issue if you are heating your house anyway.
LED is the only technology with any real promise [designrecycleinc.com], but the cost has to come down to 1/10th what it is today before they
will be accepted by people on a budget.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's actually a much more complex calculation. Nobody argues that the poor efficiency of an incandescent is good. However, it does have a cost associated with it that must be balanced against the cost of a more efficient bulb. That cost is effectively lower if the excess heat isn't waste. In that case the real cost of the heat is just the differential vs the cost of adding that heat to the room more efficiently.
Likewise, in the case where the house is being cooled, the real cost of the (actually) waste heat is the cot of the wasted electricity PLUS the cost of moving the heat out with an A/C.
Naturally, all of that will balance quite differently in Wisconsin than it does in Miami.
LEDs make sense even if incandescents are free (Score:4, Insightful)
Even worse. (Score:2, Insightful)
I live in Wisconsin, seriously, that "waste" heat is NOT wasted! It's freaking cold outside!! I'm an American, I want to be free to choose!
Even worse than that --- I have a number of friends who's rooftop solar produces more energy than they consume.
For them - the energy is "free" so nothing's wasted.
But instead they're forced to use the more environmentally harmful mercury-filled incandescants, or e-waste-with-dirty-manufacturing LED bulbs.
TL/DR: with rooftop solar, they banned the most environmentally friendly bulbs.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a real pity the anti-nuclear lobby ensured we have no way to produce lots of cheap, non-polluting electricity, now isn't it?
Re:$12 is cheap IF you account for all the costs (Score:4, Insightful)
The bulb will "last" for 20 years but it will be notably dimmer at the end of that range. Most cost benefit analyses of incandescent vs LED and CFL ignore that issue.
Think Printers (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:We vote on leaders not lightbulbs (Score:5, Insightful)
Who do you think pays for those subsidizes?
The same people that benefit from less coal mining, fracking, and global warming.
Re:We vote on leaders not lightbulbs (Score:3, Insightful)
I focus on the fact that I used to be able to buy a pack of 10 light bulbs for $2.50... that is clearly no longer the case.
Re:Seriously? (Score:2, Insightful)
And the folks in this thread might argue that the failure of a fifty-year-old reactor operated without regard to best practices, well past its design lifetime in a seismically-active tsunami zone, says less than nothing about the safety of the nuclear power industry as a whole.
More horrible government policy (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Making smart choices (Score:5, Insightful)
I just want to take this opportunity to point out that Economics is the softest of all the sciences. Compared to Economics, psi research is practically classical physics. Sociology and Psychology have long eclipsed Economics in terms of rigor and honest application of the scientific method.
One of the most valuable things I've learned in my professional life in academia, at an institution with numerous Econ prize winners, is just how shoddy the methods, how dishonest the practitioners, how low the standards. Even their math is abominable.
When my institution closed its school of education, I remember how unjust I felt it was that they allowed the School of Economics to keep its doors opened. The world would be better off if every economist was sent to work in a Chinese electronics factory for ten years and their offices turned into cozy lounges for the biology students.