Power saving?

I don't think there is one that you put between the lamp and lamp holder, but there are simple light push button switches that have an adjustable timer circuit inside! Check out your local public toilet or bar! But beware, some may only be a button push for a remote timer! I think most serious electrical manufactures make them.

Well, there is "The Clapper"!

I don't know about China, but we are up to our knees with them here in the US, most are made in China and shipped to Home Depot, or Lowes or Wal-Mart, or the flea market....

For years, there's been a gag product on the market. You unscrew any light bulb, drop this little device into the lamp socket, and replace the bulb. The action of this little device is to turn the light bulb off and then back on in a somewhat random pattern, thus driving the person under the lamp crazy! I see no reason why one of these couldn't be adapted to your purpose.

Second, most energy saving buildings in the US use ultrasonics to save energy. The lights of offices and conference rooms are routed through an ultrasonic transmitter/receiver circuit. If the circuit detects no motion in the room for a period of time, the lights are switched off. Opening the door or just walking in is sensed by the ultrasonic circuit, and the lights are immediately switched on.

Here in the UK we have security switches which will switch your lights on as if you were in the house, but none that I know which will automatically switch the lamp off after say 2 hours to prevent energy wastage.

There are sophisticated energy management systems which detect motion or sound to control office and school lights and heating, but what most houses need is a simple switch replacement which will switch off after a preset period.

There are, however, on and off timers that allow you to set both. The prime users of these devices are saltwater aquariums and people that keep snakes and lizards to make sure that the required amount of light/heat is delivered to their beasties!

"There are sophisticated energy management systems which detect motion or sound to control office and school lights and heating, but what most houses need is a simple switch replacement which will switch off after a preset period."

Yes, should be simple and cost effective like a starter of a fluorescent tube. These starters work for a second or so. Instead our requirement should work for 15 ~ 30 minutes or so.

Many of us especially children forget to switch off the toilet lights after using them. Such forgotten lights burn for hours till noticed during next visits. Still in many places Edison's model filament bulbs are being used. Most of them are of 40/60 watts and consuming huge power if let to burn for hours.

These lamps are available as an off the shelf item nowadays the delay is built into the lamps base.

Also if you wish there are pneumatic time delay pushes which will switch off the lamp after a given pre settable length of time.

Check out Lamson Home Products. They are available.

Congratulations! You-and no doubt thousands others-have hit upon the real answer to all the madness about governmental imposing of CF and banning of fluorescents. An easier solution--one that could be successfully mandated and enforced--and could be devised to "do no harm"--would be a requirement for time-out switching (mandatory in new construction, voluntary in old) where it will work; and to make it work in just about any circumstance would not be an insurmountable, or even inordinately difficult, challenge. The main challenge would be more psychological/sociological than technical. At the consumer level, people realize that energy consumption for incandescent lighting is very low--almost trivial. In that regard there is very little incentive to give up the advantages of incandescent for the disadvantages--and there are several--of compact (or non-compact) fluorescent. But, even with this approach (of rationing power to a light fixture rather than the power consumed) do-gooder (i.e., look-at-me) legislators and other sponsors of CF are going to have to understand that any government programs must involve cooperation involving individual and societal self interests; forcing people to submit to heavy-handed government interference is unlikely to yield wishfully "predicted" positive results, or avoid negative results. Will be interested in discussing more ideas about this aspect of energy conservation.

Oh yes, I surmise that the circuit breaker socket insert "coin" proposed by IP would probably suffer one significant shortcoming in common with CF: it's reliability would be greatly affected by the orientation of the socket. It might work satisfactorily in a table lamp socket, but be a source of constant aggravation in, say, a bulb-down, ceiling fixture. How about something that could be affixed to or integrated in a light fixture that would detect the presence (after a prescribed or "learned" interval of time) of anyone in an illuminated room? Different logic could apply in sleeping rooms during sleeping hours.

After reading your post, I can imagine the first thing new home owners are going to do is try to find a way to circumvent the devices - and probably not in the safest manner.

Additionally, there's little incentive to switching to something that costs five times as much and is guaranteed to pay for itself over the lifetime of your children.

If we need to control our power usage, leave it up to the free market (God, I can't believe I'm saying this!). If someone comes out with a really efficient AND cheap light source, people will be standing in line to buy them. I suppose, you could also try charging people for power based on a sliding fee. Use a lot, pay more per kilowatt. Hey! there's the slogan right there!!!

"Use a lot, pay more per kilowatt." Unless your supplier is a lot different than mine (PG&E), you already do! My base rate is about $0.11/kWh for the first 500kWh. it goes up to $0.13/kWh for the next 150kWh, then $0.23/kWh for the next 350kWh. I've never used anything close to 1000kWh, so I don't know what the rate is after that.

Woof!!! That's a lot of power! My honking big flash lamp supply delivers 2kWs per flash, that's 2000 Joules!

Back when I was teaching science and physics, I commonly had students calculate the energy used by various appliances over a month's time. I gave extra credit for finding what fraction of their month's electric energy was used by certain appliances, which meant they had to find out how much energy they used. At a time when my electric bill was $35-50 a month, it was not unusual for kids to bring in electric bills of several hundred dollars a month! I also had a small kWh meter (recovered from an old house that was being torn down - since it was old it had a very low capacity, so would show relatively small amounts of energy), which I put a plug and socket on, so kids could take it home and plug their refrigerator into it for a week. As I recall, the average was that the refrigerator used about 10% of all their energy (this was usually in the winter, so no A/C's running).

My wife works nights, so we have to keep the house cooler during the day than we might otherwise, so she can sleep. One of the things that made us choose this house 37 years ago was that it had A/C. Knock on wood - that A/C is still running fine (a Carrier). It does cost money to keep the house cool, but to me, it is worth it in better sleep for my wife and higher productivity for myself.

Dick

Well, it's been hot here lately. Like, the 80s. However, I know how hot Placerville can get. I don't have an AC here, but if I lived where you do I sure would!!! I know they've made some real strides in reducing refrigerator power usage. So now what's the big user? Washer/dryer, HDTV, halogen lamps for indoor gardens?

So I use up my extra electricity by blowing off high-powered lasers and keeping my PCs running 24/7. What the heck! If you can't keep cool, you can at least keep distracted. That is, of course, until that one bead of sweat drops off your forehead, and ZAP!!!