100% Efficient Incandescent Bulbs

Okay. So going by that logic what's the efficiency of the other bulbs?

Same efficiency, just cost less.

The same.

Close, anyway. If you want to be precise, there are several factors which will affect the bottom line.

1. If you have electric heat there's no $ benefit to switching. Especially not from an incandescent to a CFL because of the mercury risk.

2. If its in or near the ceiling and you have poor insulation, then there is a difference.

3. If your power supply is prone to spikes, you will lose big because the LEDs wont last very long.

But not many people live in year-round cold climates, so it's really better to change. The long term advantage will be money invested into liting tek, eventually leading to something really impressive. I think electroluminescent panels will be the next big thing. They exist now, but I suppose they are still too expensive.

I bought an LED for a desk lamp that the cats like to kick over. I had a CFL in it, so was worried about it breaking and releasing mercury.

LED type lamps with 10 years of performance life expectancy have a much longer life than CFL type lamps that must be changed on a 12-16 month interval.

This short life expectancy for CFL lamps is directly related to the extreme decrease in Mercury over the last 10 years as mandated by EPA standards/regulations.

As far as mercury exposure from what little is presented by a single broken CFL; The exposure to Mercury is less than when consuming 8 ounces of tuna, shellfish, or other bottom feeding fish.

Interesting that recent research supposedly has shown that children born to mothers that consume Mercury at higher levels during pregnancy demonstrate a higher IQ. Huh?

We are in the middle of a large scale project to migrate from incandescent, CFL, MV, and Metal Halide as the fixtures fail.

The energy cost savings is yielding 100% return on investment within 3 years across the board.

Based on actual performance and cost I am replacing all of my home lighting with LED lighting as the need arises.

Thats interesting about the mercury, SHOCK. Thanks. Whats your source on the IQ factor though? ALOT of misinfo out there when it comes to anything involving big money.

You wrote:

LED type lamps with 10 years of performance life expectancy have a much longer life than CFL type lamps that must be changed on a 12-16 month interval.

Thats not what I have seen, nor is it what is claimed on the packaging. I have CFL bulbs that I leave on 24/7 that have been going for over 5 years. The only time they are off is when the power is out, which usually happens a few times a year. The ones I turn off when I don't need also last for years.

The CFL's I've been buying from Sam's Club (local utility subsidizes the price of an 8-pack of the 13W CFL for $1.62, 20 cents each) generally last 2.5 years minimum. I date all my CFL's when installed. I had some go almost 4 years of daily use before failing.

I'm still waiting for the LED technology (and market) to mature before changing over. The cost to life bogey has not been met at this time. However, I have been very actively changing out incandescents in my RV fixtures to LED versions to save on house batteries when dry camping.

"I date all my CFL's when installed."

Fancy dinner and the Theatre, or just fast food and a movie?

(Sorry, couldn't resist, think I'm suffering from low caffeine, haven't finished the morning cup yet.)

They all get screwed (in) at the end.

Those bulbs that you got to go 2.5 to 4 years are guaranteed to last 7 to 11 years.

Government is a blunt instrument.

You need to be cautious in what you say. The Church of Radical Environmentalism does not permit heresy.

Are you another anti-environmentalist, USBport?

The oil industry and its GoP lapdogs have been spreading propaganda against the EPA, Obama, ...

Hold on. Someones at the door.

I'm pretty sure the EPA and the president are doing just fine making themselves look bad without any conspiracies to help them along.

IMHO, your statement (and spelling) is ludicrous. The "purpose" of a lighting system, any lighting system, is to emit light (note: not spelt "lite") and not heat. For a light source to be 100% efficient, all the energy consumed by the source would be converted to light and no energy would be emitted in the form of heat.

The simple fact that the energy emitted as heat by an incandescent light source is dumped into the environment that the incandescent light source is in does not raise the efficiency of that light source to 100%.

No. You do have a valid point but you cannot change the definition of efficiency for a lamp to suit your point. The electric energy is intended to produce visible light in this lamp. All other energies produced are wasted energies that must be considered in the design.

redfred wrote:

All other energies produced are wasted energies that must be considered in the design.

Better designs serve multiple purposes. Suppose you had extreme wieght & space restrictions, such as a spacecraft, and needed heat & lots of lite?

Or a cheap & simple heat source, like the Easy Bake Oven toy?

Then theres all the lite 'leaking' out of windows!

Or a cheap & simple heat source, like the Easy Bake Oven toy?
Or a Lava Light, which works on the heat from the bulb.

An incandescent light bulb is not an efficient heating device. So, you are just wrong. Most of the energy lost in incandescent illumination is sent out in infrared light which does not convert into usable heat directly. There are losses to the glass, base, and wiring that will add slightly to your environment, but it ain't no heater.

If heat is what you want from your lighting products, use a halogen lamp. Now that baby gets hot! But it will burn your cakes in your Susie Homemaker oven so don't use it there. If you are using a lamp in your incubator, don't change it to halogen either or you will have eggs cooked in the shell!

What many people don't get is that it takes a lot of energy to produce a little bit of light in an incandescent lamp. The investment cost is insignificant compared to the cost of the wasted energy over the life of the product. Regular incandescent lamps die because of vaporising tungsten without a method for recovering it. Consequently, the coil becomes thinner and thinner until it breaks. Not very efficient or convenient. A halogen recycles the tungsten by redepositing the tungsten vapor back onto the coil. Quite a different process. Both decrease light output much faster than other sources of lighting.

As for mercury, if you drive a car, you contributing to the problem since the amount of mercury released from fossil fuels are hundreds of times the whole of all lighting manufacturers can cause.

Just buy candles.

So, are you also advocating the use of vacuum tube TVs, radios and computers?

Let's also do away with microwave ovens and bring back wood stoves?

I give you credit for being unkunvenchonal.

Well thats about the dumbest counter argument I have heard so far.

If your lights are too bright just put something over them to dim them down thus converting those extra photons directly to heat.

Or mount the bulbs to work as indirect lighting sources.

Or use a small cone heater like one of these along with each of your CFLs to balance out their watts use /heat produced values..

Win win with that option being these things have typical service lives as long or longer than most CFL bulbs and you don't get all that damn light for the amount of wattage you are putting into the room. .

Well CFL's and LED's may be 'more efficient at putting out visible light, but neither one will keep a water meter or pump (dog)house from freezing like a 100 W incandescent bulb. Beats heat tape all hollow. Not only gives off heat but it's an automatic self test. See light? It's working! You can't say that about heat tapes.

There are far more effective (efficient) ways to heat a house than with heat from resistive strips. (an incandescent light bulb)

Yes, and what are we to use in the future to keep crawl spaces heated in winter? Can't beat a 100W incandescent for cheap pipe freeze protection.

Then again, the ban is only on 100W 'Light Bulbs,' who's to say they cannot make 100W 'heating elements' that are identical to the banned light bulbs except they have a chrome (or whatever metal) plating on the inside of the bulb to prevent any light from escaping. There's no way it can be used for illumination, so it fails the most basic definition of a 'light bulb,' and if it's not a light bulb, then it, by definition cannot be a 'banned light bulb.'

yes you can beat it. A thermostatic heat tape uses less electricity, and is reliable. If you need to protect a pipe from freezing, heating a crawl space with one or five incandescent light bulbs is easy, but is overkill, as it almost always is providing excess heat, unless you are at the lowest temp outside you will see in the year. (hope you guessed right on the number of bulbs to use) Where I live, a 100 watt light bulb on 24/7 costs about 29 cents a day to operate, or $9.00 per month. $25.00 of heat tape probably has a positive return in less than one season.

Especially when many heater tapes have also have a thermal switch.

Completely outside of this discussion but...

I have seen to many fires caused by poorly chosen and poorly installed heat trace.

So...

1) Not all heat trace cable is meant for use on non-metallic pipes. Ensure that you get the proper kind for your application.

2) Always power a heat trace system from a GFI protected receptacle.

3) When installing properly sourced heat trace systems on non-metallic pipes, DO NOT wrap the pipe with the heat trace cable. Run the heat trace cable along the bottom of the pipe so the heat will radiate vertically.

One of the biggest sources of problems with these is when the wrong type of heat trace cable gets "wrapped" around a non-metallic pipe. Hot spots can and do develope and can be hot enough to melt the material and cause a fire.

Completely true and good advice. What bothers me of this "What will Bubba do?" attitude is that we advocate so often people should get qualified people to work with electricity. This should not be different. Any permanent installation of voltage levels capable of starting a fire should be properly installed regardless of it heating or illuminating chickens, crawl spaces, garages, anything.

Well, you have to remember that 'Bubba' typically lives out on a farm or in a shack in the woods, and A) doesn't see other people that often, his closest neighbor is a mile or two away, and B) believs in doing as much DIY as physically possible, since service calls are so expensive for someone with an agrarian income and a few miles between him and the serviceman.

Nowhere near as easy to do - you have to know a little about wiring to use the heat tape. Your average Bubba could always place a work light / trouble light / whatever you call the light fixtures with the protective cage on a cord in a crawl space with a 100W bulb in it. Want to see him wiring up heat tape? Besides, the crawl space usually has a light fixture already in it, so you just leave the incandescent bulb in it on when it is cold. Wait until Bubba tries that with an LED.

Or what about the cheap way to protect your car from freezing and make starting easier when the temperature goes way below normal, and your anti-freeze level for a night or 2?

Or the temporary heater for the mutt out back on an excessively cold night?

We're going to miss those little in-efficient heaters called lights.

I have a gallery of thirteen Lava Lamps and it's the heat of the incandescent bulbs that make them bubble. With a draw fo about 500 watts I can feel a significant amount of heat coming off of them they help warm up the West wall of my living room and can be quite entertaining brightening up the gloom of dark Winter days. Sometimes I don't even turn on the TV set. Sometimes I think it would be more convenient to have them turned on by a single switch but there's something ritualistic about turning them on individually.

On the other hand I have found screw-based LED lamps that work quite well in my antique bicycle with a built in generator. The incandescents wouldn't put out enough light unless I was traveling at a high rate of speed. The LEDs start to flicker at a fast walk and become a steady glow as I pick up speed.

It would be nice to have the choice between a cheaper bulb that costs more to operate and a more expensive bulb that costs less to operate, factoring in the expected lifetime. If there is a clear winner, the free market economy is more likely to find it than bureaucrats making laws.

It would be great if there was a clear winner between radiation therapy and chemotherapy to treat some kinds of cancer. Those pesky research hospitals with all their quality of life issues, and their incessant babel about new drugs with fewer side effects. We should just let the market decide.

One thing that hasn't been mentioned is aesthetics. I have a mixture of incandescent, CFL, long tube (old fashioned) fluorescent and LED lighting in my house. I still prefer the illumination given off by incandescent bulbs over all the rest.

I can still remember the distress my eyes felt in the presence of fluorescent lighting as a kid. As a senior citizen, I'm sure I've been desensitized through exposure so don't feel it now, but I never had any trouble with incandescents. I wonder if anyone has ever studied the potential eye damage from those tubes?

I've always prefered the cool white floresent tubes. having the same lumens eminating from a wide area instead of a point makes for less glare.

Retina damage is something I'v been wondering about concerning LED. It woudnt suprize me if cases start getting more common in 10 years.

After watching a documentary about the dangers of mercury we gathered up all our CFLs and turned them in for hazardous waste disposal. Some were still in the box mailed to us free from the power company.

Your concern about mercury is real, I know, but CFL's are extremely unlikely to poison you, although possible. Your risk of mercury poisoning is far greater from the production or air born and ground/ocean deposition as a result of burning coal to produce electricity. While it is true that the largest source of mercury poisoning is from eating shellfish that have become contaminated, that contamination comes from the atmospheric deposition of airborn mercury that was created by coal combustion, which is primarily used to make electricity, which is relevant to your statement.

I'm sure it will be identified as a government conspiricy, but the EPA has a very good sight that explains the hazards and sources.

http://www.epa.gov/mercury/about.htm

I have an old radiant heater bolted to the living room wall. Sometimes I'll plug it in rather than turning on the furnace. Why heat up the whole house when you're sitting in one spot?

A florescent bulb recycling program has just been started in our area.