Edison's Light Bulb could be Endangered

Forget flourescents and go even further with led's. Very Cool, I wonder how much I would save on my jacked up electric bill. It would be good because my children act like the lights are free. Go here to check out led lightbulbs www.ccrane.com

Flourescents don't work worth snot in cold weather. And I can't see spending a brazillion dollars on an LED bulb that puts out less light than a jar full of fireflies.

Yes, we're getting there for sure. But it honks me off when politicians jump in and take credit for inventing the internet and other horse hockey.

We might as well outlaw 8-track tapes and steam shovels f'gooness sakes.

When new technology is enough better than the old, then nobody'll have to pass a law to make people buy better stuff. The marketplace is far more democratic, far faster moving, and far more logical than any number of lawmakers.

I find that the main problem in cold weather is not that the flourescents do not work, but that they take a long time to warm up, taking 10mins or more for full brightness at around freezing.

I have been using 7W flourescents in place of 60W incandescent bulbs for a few years, and find that those in cold locations are best left on for several hours instead of the constant on/off to save with the incas. One is left on constantly, due to the "traffic flow" in the area (using 7x24= 168Wh/day), an equivalent of less than 3hrs use of the inca it replaced.

Just like everything else...you need to have the right type of technology for hte Applicaiton. There are CFL's that are made especially for cold temperatures. I have recommended and seen these applied successfully in walk-in freezers.

Some CFL's dp take several minutes to get up to full power. They claim to have fixed that with bathroom vanity CFL's. However, I have some in my home that are taking 5 minutes to warm up. It doens't bother me too much but my wife hates it.

CFL's on dimmers applications are not quite there yet. There are technologies that claim to be "diommable" but they will tend to flicker or burn out really quickly. I'm not an electrical engineer but I've heard it has to do with a small amount of current going through the lamp when the dimmer is turned down.

LED's are a great technology that is fast becoming cost effective. The lights last 100,000 hours. They are more of a directional light...so the application is critical. They have affordsable LED replacements for halogen MR16 spots. I do not recommend replacing the lamp when it is used on a spot applicaiton for art or paintings. However, you often see these lamps used as accent lights in recessed ceiling fixtures. It is perfect for this.

I agree totally. The problem is that lawmakers dont have a clue what their job description is supposed to be, so the feel they have to pass laws. Doesnt matter whether the laws make sense or not, or are evn necessary.

Hi AndyHorning, did you ever try what I said about special (Electronic) starters and the sealing of fluorescents to stop the ingress of moisture?

In the RN we used Fluorescents up in the artic circle, where it gets pretty cold with little or no particular problems that I remember, outside in some areas of the ship, in hangars that had the doors open all day etc etc etc....

You may not get quite the normal life out of the tubes as when getting very old, they start to have problems starting in normal conditions, but it should be still long enough to make the installation against electrical costs attractive.

May I suggest as a test, two good moisture proof fittings, with fully electronic starters (instant start, no flickering), in the worst corner that you have and seal the fittings well after installation....

Put your experiences in this blog or a new one!

I've tried lots of different kinds of fixtures, but I confess I've never made the proper investments up front. For example, my garage is pretty big (10m X 25m), and I filled it with cheap fixtures. This has cost me more in the long run, of course. As I'm writing this, limbs are cracking all around my house from the overnight ice storm. If I were to go out to the garage right now, I'd flip on the light switch and it'd look like somebody lit a few candles here and there. But they'd be very noisy candles...

I'm not a real farmer; I was a city boy involved in politics who decided (after an ugly political race) to live on a farm in the middle of nowhere. This has taught me a great deal about the ignorance of city folk and the diligence and sophistication of farm folk.

Who'd have thought that goats would climb up on stuff and cause so much trouble, for example? A city person would never think that a ceiling light fixture needs to be physical-shock-resistant.

Maybe if the fixtures weren't so irritatingly noisy, the billy goat wouldn't have attacked it...

No, I've not tried your suggestions. But once things thaw out a bit here, I may go on a lighting technology rampage.

LEDs are too expensive for the moment. It's gonna take some time until they go mainstream. Let the market decide!

Dimmers go part of the way toward reducing ones elect bill...'cause we can have some light in each room without having the lamps on 100%...great for nite illum of bathroom, hallway etc. HOWEVER the dimmers are not designed for use with fluorescents. Oh, by the way, we have nine (9 ! ! !) in our modest-sized house. Side note...light bulbs last a LONG time when dimmed slightly.

You should be carefull using dimmers with halogen bulbs.

Those bulbs need to be at their full voltage temperature to start the process of tungsten redeposition on the filament. Though by dimming and lowering their inside temperature, you might as well shorten theif life time.

Another asinine effort by a politician to legislate something that hasn't been thought through.

Not even a little bit.

God help us!

Greg

I have been using a mixture of LED and fluorescents for some years now with great success. I tend to only buy fittings that have a GU10 connection (no transformer to be another source of problems!) and there is in europe a lot of LED lights with GU10, with upto 38 LEDs in not just white, but also in various colours too.

There is also a Fluorescent bulb for GU10 that is very bright and almost every day someone brings out something more, recently a GU10 fitting with a single huge LED was put on the market.

Normal Halogen bulbs we only use where nothing else works (and the excess heat can be lost without problems) with regard to the light needed, but we have cut our usage of them by more than 50%. I hope to improve on this figure during the next 12 months, 75% is my target.

Guaranteed to make Edison Incandescent with rage!

We have no incandescents inside our house at all, and only a few anywhere on our farm. That's more a problem than a boast.

I've got a few halogens outside, and about forty solar LEDs between our house and barns. We do hydroponics with flourescent lights. So I'm all about trying to find better, cheaper lighting technology.

But I'm about to pitch the noisy, flickering and in fact mostly black-in-the-cold flourescent fixtures in my garage, toolshed and barn. At the moment I'm thinking only of good, old-fashioned but reliable incandescents.

...Especially before some nimrod, @!$-retentive bureaucrat outlaws them.

Incandescents would be good for hydroponics too. The infrared spectrum it gives off is, in my opinion, much better than flourescent. The trick is to start an incandescent lamp slowly. ie approx 2 sec. The sudden inrush of current is what kills the filament and shortens the life span. Something like an automated light dimmer with a 2 second "ramp up" would surfice.

When Napoleon first saw the light candle, his reaction was that "Nothing, but nothing can be better than that". The candles are gone, and so did many other life improving inventions. Unfortunately ,(or not) it is the fate of all inventions. We all need no legislation on matter such as this. Is the alternative really better?, If it is, it will replace the old one anyhow. When I see Senators suggesting legislation such as this one, I wonder what are their motives?(♦). How much a ban like this one worth to a certain manufacturer, and how much is he willing to pay for it?

Don't forget, even Greenpeace is a business.

(♦) synonymous to connections.

Wangito.

Wangito.

In German offices, in areas where little or no sunlight reaches, they place what would appear to be a UV light, on a timer, above the plant......as to whether these are good for hydroponics or have problems in starting in cold weather I cannot say, but its a thought!

On the subject of starting in cold weather, my experience is that its the design of the starter that is the main problem (damp in the fitting could be another!).There are special starters around that get over the problem and also start instantly with no flicker ever at all.

Also only use fittings that were intended for a damp atmosphere, not open ones!!! Seal them up even more with a good plastic tape as well!! Use a dehumidifier bag inside the fitting to get rid of any damp and I think that you will find that your problems in cold weather are gone completely.....Fluorescents are good.

There seems little need to legislate and rather more to educate, then leave it to individual choice.

A factory operation within 35km of this location does not use a single tungsten bulb. Every artificial light source is a high lumens-per-watt device, contributing to the operation's bottom line.

A recent calculation, with domestic electricity approaching £0.10 Sterling per kWh on some tariffs and low-energy lamps at £4.75 or so for an 8000-hour operating life, showed that changing a 40W incandescent bulb for a 7W low-energy at the same lumens-per-watt achieved an attractive payback for lamps that were on for only 15min per day. In this particular case, it was far better to spend the money on the low-energy lamp than to place it on deposit or pay off a particular percentage debt, for instance, with the payback increasing rapidly with the longer on-time demand from different lamps around the home.

A sideways glance: no-one in this forum has recently extolled the virtues of the pressure-cooker as an energy-saving device. Why cook at 0barg when one can save a load of kWh per annum by cooking at 2barg for a much shorter time (rhetorical question)?

...or put it another way. £4.75 Sterling spent on a lumens-equivalent 22W mini-fluorescent to replace a 100W Edison filament in the same lampholder, that runs for 10 hours per day (there are four in a building within 1km that fit this description), achieves a payback period of 7.41 months, and is currently 131.25 times better than investing £4.75 in the best available tax-free MiniCash ISA or paying off the principal on a mortgage by that amount...

"Sold to 'im in the funny 'at."

That's a very good way to put it.

Led and leds are so expensive that it is still a bit to early for a masive market movement towards them. Jules Ross, from www.led-saving.com exposed that the work now should be mainly done in the education of the new posibilities and for the future. When people realize how much they could save, the will move on.

Excellent Point Mr PWSlack, so if we want to save energy in a few more usefull places, try cooking not only using a pressure cooker (excellent things that my family have been using since I was quite small and I am over 60!), but also the way you use electricity on the stove.

We use at home induction hotplates which I am reliably informed save about 50% of the heat/electrical energy as all the energy goes into the pot to heat it, not into the stove itself, and little is lost to the atmosphere. I would guess, that due to the controllability, a few % more can be saved, no time or energy is wasted when the hotplate is too hot, just turn it down, whereas the normal hot plates can take up to 5 minutes to react markedly to this wish!!

Good points:-

1) You only heat the pot and its contents

2) Great reduction of heat into the kitchen over conventional methods, especially good on a hot summers day and you only want to boil a few new potatoes for example.

3) instant reaction to changes in level or temperature, even faster than gas does.

4) Top surface (which is a special kind of plastic I believe on the portable ones, glass on the built in ones) only gets some transmitted/conducted heat back from the saucepan, it does not itself get hot otherwise, even after frying, no possibility of a serious burn, its only uncomfortably hot for a very short time.

5) When frying as we all have experienced, fat/oil spits around. With an induction stove, just lay a sheet of newspaper first over the unit, then place your frying pan on it and fry, afterwards you will see that the paper has not even turned brown where it was between the cooker and pan!!! No chance of a fire for example! Roll up the fatty newspaper into a ball and use it to start the wood burning stove in the winter!! Or into the compost in summer.

6) Spilled food or cooking water that has boiled over does not "Bake-on" as with normal cookers, just wipe it away with a cloth or kitchen roll....while cooking if you wish....its just not that hot....

7) On all the versions that I have seen so far, you can select a level of energy (usually between 1 and 10) or a temperature to maintain (usually between 80 and 240°C), and/or a length of time for cooking if you so wish (at a preset level or temperature of course). Naturally for each individual burner.

8) If you remove the saucepan, the ring goes immediately into standby mode for about 10 seconds. If the pot is not returned to the stove in that time, it then turns itself off completely.

9) The stove senses the size of the pot and supplies energy accordingly, not like a normal stove where you might only have a big ring free and only a small pot to heat!!

10) Pot handles do not get hot (unless very small and connected directly to the pan itself of course!)

11) Fire and explosions from gas leaks etc are banned forever!

12) Some top cooks in Germany have completely converted their kitchen hot plates from gas to induction (I know they get it for free from the companies concerned, but they had to be convinced by the way it works, is was not just a free cooker or 2 that convinced them!!)

Problems

1) Some people believe that the frequency given off (50Khz I believe) can be dangerous (which is why the presence and size of the pot is sensed automatically.) I personally do not believe that.

2) As a built in hob, they are still far too expensive, from about 500 pounds sterling upwards for a very cheap looking unit to about 5000 for something worth while!!! Too much for me!

3)The built in units have very thick glass, it would appear that the efficiency suffers a little due to that. The portable ones have a relatively thin, special plastic(?) type top.

4)A lot of saucepans are no good for induction, an easy test is to use a magnet on the base, if the magnet sticks to the saucepan base, it will work on an induction stove! Note:-Some aluminium and stainless steel cookware has a piece of steel sandwiched in the base for use on an induction stove, but just looking at the pot (unless of course it is an iron pot which of course works fine!) will not tell you if it will heat up or not....

5) Induction does not work for the oven, as of now at least!!

We have not actually bought a built in version ourselves because the prices are just ridiculous at this time, but we now have 2 x double burner portable units and a single unit that we bough a year ago to see if it suited us.

They all sit in the cupboard when not needed and leave the complete worktop free for whatever we want!!! If we want to cook stove wise, we just bring out enough burners (bad word to use really) to cook what we want, either 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5.........!!!

Also, important if small children live with you or visit, the complete unit can be pushed back against the kitchen wall when in use, keeping pots and handles well away from the edge of the worktop!!!!

The built in ones do not have this extra child safety as they look just like a ceramic hob at first glance....and the burners are arranged in the normal manner....

The portable double units cost in Germany about €80 each and a single unit costs about half!! So for €200 we have completed our kitchen in a very flexible manner.

My wife does not like new fangled things, but she is completely sold on induction.

A further good point for those campers that camp where mains electricity is available, take a single unit with you camping, you reduce the amount of cooking heat in the trailer/caravan probably by 80% over cooking with gas AND reduce the possibility of a gas explosion!! As well as getting your cooking underway quicker than gas does.

Also, sadly people have used gas burners for Heating/Cooking when camping and killed themselves with the resulting Carbon Di- and Monoxide because ventilation was not properly done.....

We have naturally gas as well in our caravan, but only use it when we must!!

As an immigrant Sacramentoan, it comes as no surprise that one child in a state assembly of children legislators would come up with such a hair brained scheme...evidently because he knows nothing, and doesn't really know that he knows nothing, about the bill he proposes in order to make a name for himself among his equally childlike constituents. But as with most other nonsense that emanates from California government, the other states benefit by watching the spectacle and discovering how not to propose legistlation--if it comes from this state, it's got to be ridiculous.

Simply put, if Master Levine had any clue, he would realize that his bill is totally unworkable, and will not accomplish the gains which he has been bamboozled into believing, and which he is trying to bamboozle citizens, and the clueless press, into believing. It also might have occured to him: that if the CFs were anywhere near as good as incandescents, there would be no need for legislation.

Fortunately, the great to-do that accompanied his proposal died about as quickly as it began; so apparently the grownups have decided to sit down with Levine and explain the silliness of his ideas. Unfortunately, in a state of obsessive compulsives, the idea is sure to rear its head again.

Dear guest, just because of this Blog I went to a specialist lighting studio yesterday and looked at what is new on offer from LEDs and Fluorescent (well I was also interested for myself too!).

I was amazed particularly at the selection of fluorescents in small Edison screw-in sizes, but with extremely good lighting qualities, how it has expanded even further recently. Today they will fit any light fitting size wise, but are of such interesting design(s), you may not want to hide them in a fitting!

I tend to agree that legislation is a big hammer to use in such cases and I also agree, that probably not every situation can be solved without incandescent bulbs, or not at this moment.....

Maybe Mr Levine (?) can temper his bill into something like every house has to have non-incandescents filling 25 % of the lighting needs this year, 50 % in two years, 75% in 4 years and less than 10% after 5 years, or something similar......that way, the burnout rate will probably exceed the throwout rate, but still leaves a house owner the possibility to have a few incandescents around where he needs them.

He should also do something like increasing sales tax on incandescents and lowering it on all other lighting types.....for people who live in the state of California.....it needs to be better thought out than the way I have said it here of course!

He will need to decide on whether the percentage is watts or light fittings.......he has bitten on a big problem, but really it is the right direction we should all be taking, without the big political stick to tell us to do it!! I am sure that the rest of the world is watching and waiting.

Politicians who want the power to give you all you want will find themselves with the power to take all you have. And which, according to human history, is most likely to happen? Is there even a single instance of a truly benevolent human government?

Socialism/Fascism/Authoritarianism has a 100% bad history if you look at it for more than a single generation.

You may think that a certain politician will do good things for people. But what about the next bloke?

I'm grieved that the nation that proved that free people and free markets work better than anything else ever tried has turned so far away from these things.

Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door. But if you legislate that everybody buys that mousetrap, then the mousetrap builder gets some lobbyists, buys a few politicians, and then mandates that only that mousetrap will be used for perpetuity because new mousetraps will cause a loss of jobs and national security.

"You may think that a certain politician will do good things for people. But what about the next bloke?"

It's not so much "the next bloke", but a repeat of the same - politicians think that just besause they have done something right that getting votes back in means that everything they do HAS to be right. ( In UK, see Margaret Thatcher & Tony Blair)

Well, a bigger problem is that they've never done anything right.

We have politicians because humans aren't angels. And since the best of us avoid politics as if it's the plague, who ends up in politics?

We want it to protect our stuff, just as a junk yard dog guards our junk. But just as we'd never ask a junkyard dog to educate our children and care for our grandmothers, we shouldn't ask the agents of oppression, slavery, genocide and oppression to do that; or to make us use the politically correct light bulbs for that matter.

I think that we all mostly agree that probably over 75% of our home lighting could be done by modern economical means, not with an Edison version anymore!! Possibly some houses could achieve 95% or more, I am aiming for that.

I feel that the problem is we all do not like being told what to do, especially by politicians, we have that sort of built in from childhood......

But at the end of the day, we want the oil not to run out quicker than it is, so most Edison type lighting (and V-8 motors for cars!), really should go the way of the Duckbilled Platypuss...

Anyone who has noted the heat given off by such lamps and who lives in a warm climate and uses airconditioning MUST agree that it is stupid to be both paying to heat the house up AND cool it down at the same time!!!

Edison bulbs have also caused a few fires over the last 100 years or so and the modern ones have a far less chance I feel of doing the same. Any one with children will be glad of this point alone!

Someone in a predominantly cold climate will see it differently, but probably only if he has electric heating anyway, as oil/gas/wood/pellets are cheaper per watt of heat than electricity is in most countries.....

Some politicians will chime in when not enough people have the gumption to change their habits without laws.....this is what is happening here!!

Look how many people complain when they get a speeding ticket when the speed limit is clearly shown.......that also does not show much common sense, especially where children and older folks are likely to be nearby..

A question or two (which nobody will want to answer!), does it in your opinion, require more intelligence to lift your foot off the gas pedal when entering a restricted speed zone or less intelligence?

Does it show more intelligence to use a condom when having sex with someone who might have a disease or who you do not want to be the Mother/Father of your children or less intelligence?

...and we still get people getting speeding tickets, diseases and unwanted pregnancies......they profess to be intelligent too....sad isn't it?

Interesting you mention regulations in this way. How far are you from Bomte? I understand that they've eliminated almost all the traffic laws and signs there in an attempt to INCREASE both responsible driving and pedestrian/bicyclist safety!

Everywhere this "unsafe is safe" policy has been tried, accident rates have dropped!

I don't mind showing my ignorance ( a trait not shared by many in this world!), who or what is "Bomte"?

The ignorance was mine. The town is Bohmte; north of Bad Essen. Draw a line from Dortmund to Bremen, and Bohmte is at the midpoint.

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_2200098.html

Yes its been in the news again recently, Aachen did a similar thing a bout a year ago if I remember correctly. Other towns too over the last 10 years, its a popular "Political" thing to do because basically, here in Germany, we have so many different traffic signs and they are so near to each other sometimes in such a quantity, you almost need someone just to watch out for and interpret them for the driver....

So some towns, sadly not all of Germany, are weeding out the ones that really are just too much, to make driving easier and less dangerous for all concerned.

I feel that in the main its a good thing....shame that more aren't following this example.

I think this is relevant to the post about light bulbs because politicians almost never revisit the effect of their laws. They just keep writing new ones over the top of old ones without any concern for the unintended and/or seriously detrimental consequences.

As applied to light bulbs, I can see this being another lobbying opportunity. The manufacturers of a certain type of flourescent will embellish upon the protection of patents by hiring a politician to mandate a certain technology which will have the effect of stifling other developments. This has happened a lot over here in the USA, and it's part of the reason why we've lost so much ground in areas of key housing and medical technologies.

Building codes are well-intended, but they do seriously squelch alternative building technology. And our insane medical regulations make almost anything impossible for USA-based companies, which is why many companies (medical ultrasound, for example) sold out to foreign conglomerates at the height of their market share.

Philips has been supporting these kinds of laws all over the world. It was reported in connection with the recently-announced incandescent ban in Australia, and they also support "banthebulb.org"....