100 watt bulbs banned

[Mosey]

IMHO conservation is part of any long term energy plan as well as developing new sources. but I do not think any one wants to be forced to abandon old technology and what one is used to . I have quite a few CF bulbs in my house and still use a few incandescent. I will probably buy some leds when the price is right.
As far as global warming my yard is dry and the weeds are droopy.
This is probably the key to discussing any issue.
Every Issue is like a coin two sides to the story and around the edge is a fine line . The truth.

Thanks to all for keeping this conversation friendly and addressing one another respectfully.
Tin

Hi, Tin Falcon, from Western NJ.
I recently purchased a little clip-on machine light with 21 tiny LED's for my mill. It uses 3 watts total, and gives the same light as the former 50 watt halogen, and NO heat. And I don't scorch my forehead when I get too close. It cost $17.00 at Staples. I want more of them.
Of course I have a house full of the others.

 

[mike os]

energy conservation needs no other argument than we have finite resources & need to make the best possible use of them we can. This does not lead to an either/or situation, it leads to what is the most efficient system we can devise, that system looking at total cost of ownership, from inception to fully recycled/decomissioned, efficiency and cost effectiveness.

the problem being that those most likely to make noise are either misinformed, ignorant or on their own little power trip and likely to follow a political rather than scientific/engineering agenda. Until that changes all we will see is more waste, less efficiency, more media hype and less real world results

 

[Rayanth]

we can't ban incandescents entirely! the jewelry industry would be in an uproar! Or at least, I would.

Incandescents often cast gems in a different light... some gems are a little deeper in color under incandescent, rather than natural light. In fact there is a range of 'color change' sapphires that are a nice deep blue in natural sunlight, but turn purple under incandescent...

If we get rid of incandescent lights entirely, color change sapphires won't change color! Don't you see what this means? They're trying to ban purple sapphires!

This is an outrage, I say! *knuppel2*

- Ryan, speaking on behalf of color-change sapphires everywhere.

(And doing a TON of research on making an engagement ring from scratch using lost wax casting.)

 

[Cedge]

Just read about the "next generation" energy saving lighting for consumers. LED lighting is apparently the goal but at a suggested retail price of $45.00- $49.00 each. Unfortunately, the LED lights are directional and cast very little ambient light. I just ran a fast calculation on outfitting my home..... came to about $3000.00.

The US House of Representatives just voted on killing the ban and obtained a majority of the votes cast, however the bill did not pass due to procedural rules in place during that day's session. Should be up for a re-vote under simple majority rules soon. The Senate might be a harder sell and getting it signed by the current resident of the White House is unlikely. I'd suspect we'll see it attached to a spending bill as a rider if it's going to get done.

Steve

 

[JorgensenSteam]

Incandescent light bulbs have been obsolete since the day they were first built.
They are nothing more than a heater that happens to emit a tiny amount of light while wasting a ton of energy.

The compact fluorescent bulbs have come a long way in color, performance and price, and are very hard to beat right now.

I know this has become like a Hatfield and McCoy issue, but just to show you how people are, I took a compact fluorescent to my "never fluorescent in MY house!" brother-in-law's house and secretly screwed it in his lamp in the den. He can into the den, and I turned on the lamp and asked him "what type light bulbs do you use in your house?". He started into his usual "no &#*$&%)# compact fluorescent bulbs in my house" rant, and I asked him "well what type bulb is in that lamp. He looked closely and said "incandescent, can't you tell?", and I said "fluorescent, can't you?".

The bottom line is he could not tell the compact from the incandescent either in starting the bulb or from the color or light output, but the bulb was not only more than saving its own cost in energy savings, it was also saving his struggling air conditioning system, since all that heat did not have to be removed from the house.

The incandescent vs compat fluorescent arguement is a moot point since everything is converting to LED, and most light bulbs will be LED in the near future, like it or not.

When I was a kid, we use to break open thermometers and play with the globs of mercury all day long. We also played with Dad's roll of asbestos paper.
The hysteria surrounding fluorescent bulb disposal is just that, hysteria.
Your car spews out a whole lot more toxic stuff every day right into the face of the guy behind you.

Until energy becomes free, we need to think about conserving it. There is only a finite amount of it, and we can't fight the entire world forever to get it.

I fall in the middle of the polictial spectrum, and don't believe in the far left or far right garbage that gets spewed out constantly, but anyone that is against energy conservation is in some sort of denial about the reality of our current situation on this planet. Its not about the government telling us what we can and cannot use in our lamp, it is about us having enough common sense to do the right thing and save a bit of energy for the next generation. Think about your kids and grandkids for a second and don't be so selfish.

Just my two cents worth, not that this has anything to do with machining.
Just get tired of the misguided hype.

 

[bearcar1]

I'm not really interested in all of the hubub and to-do over fluorescent vs. incandescent lighting but I have found the former to be superior in longevity in the coach lamps I have installed on the garage face. I found that the subtle vibration of the garage door going up and down would soon render a normal incandescent bulb useless and switched to the more robust "rough usage" bulbs that seemed to have a different filament configuration to them. They did last a bit longer but not by any appreciable length of time. Finally, just as a lark, I installed two of the fluorescent bulbs into the fixtures and marked the date of replacement on the screw-in base as I always do when changing bulbs. The light output is a bit less but not extremely so and they are a bit slow in coming up to brightness in the colder winter months but to date they have outlasted the other bulbs by well over four months. The same goes for our porch light that is on the same electric eye as the coach lamps. So, all I can say is that in those environment, I shall never again put a regular household bulb into service, they just are not up to the physical task in regards to service life.

BC1
Jim

 

[Ken I]

After all that I've posted, all of my "illumination" lighting is CFL or flourescent with only the "mood" lighting incandescent - even some of those are LED.

So I'm not anti CFL's or energy saving but I am anti being told what to do.

Like Bearcar I also write the date on the base of bulbs when placed into service.

The results are all over the place - my oldest bulb was until recently an incandecent 60W but currently a CFL reigns as champ.

Having said that, very few CFL's meet the touted 2000 Hrs service life - but the incandecents are probably worse.

Ken

 

[sunworksco]

The polar ice core studies have proven, without a doubt, that the higher CO2 levels are recent and man-made.
Regards,
Giovanni

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080911150048.htm

 

[Ken I]

Giovanni, No argument man is definately pushing up the CO2 - but does it make a difference when the IR spectrum supposed to drive warming is already 99.999% absorbed and two of its three spectral absorbtion zones overlap with the collossally more significant water vapour.

Where does the extra heat come from ? - it has not been found by thousands of radiosondes probing for the upper Troposphere "hot spot" or the concomitant predicted Stratospheric cooling.
The ERBE satellite also cannot find the energy imballance in the Earth's radiation budget nor have the ARGO sea bouys found evidence of the "missing heat" claimed by the IPCC's Kevin Trenberth.

The ice core data also clearly shows that historically warming preceeds CO2 by 800 years.

The correllation between CO2 and temperature causes CO2 -outgassing from the oceans which contain 50 x atmospheric CO2 - according to Henry's law the warmer a liquid the less gas it can hold - so there is a known causal mechanism.

There is no known mechanism that allows effect to time travel backwards.

So using the the regression derived relationship between CO2 and temperature (as the modelers do) means they believe that if you add CO2 to the atmosphere today - you will make it hotter yesterday.

Sorry I'm just not buying that. So I am also not buying any projections made with such models.

I'm not making this up - check it out.

Even the IPCC admits that CO2 cannot be responsible without some additional forcing factors - which as far as I can tell have been "fudge factored" into the models to make them work.

And to quote the IPCC's Kevin Trenberth (a staunch AGW believer)

“There is no estimate, even probabilistically, as to the likelihood of any emissions scenario and no best guess.”
"None of the models used by IPCC are initialized to the observed state and none of the climate states in the models correspond even remotely to the current observed climate."
"In particular, the state of the oceans, sea ice, and soil moisture has no relationship to the observed state at any recent time in any of the IPCC models."
"Moreover, the starting climate state in several of the models may depart significantly from the real climate owing to model errors."

All the alarmism comes from modeling - and to be sure there can be no data for the year 2100 only model data - but the models do not correspond to the observed climate state

Regards,
Ken

 

[Tin Falcon]

100 watt "light" bulbs are great for powering wax warmers for crafts.Also used to power easy bake ovens IIRC . Do they still make those??
My college chem professor refereed to incandescent as heat bulbs inefficient in light production in deed.
The original concept for the incandescent light with platinum filament is over two hundred years old .time to improve on this concept I think I know subtle changes over the years.
Tin

 

[dgjessing]

... easy bake ovens ...

That's what I use to heat my side bender (for making ukuleles...):

 

[Dan Rowe]

Also used to power easy bake ovens IIRC . Do they still make those??

Tin, I saw a piece about then on the news a bit back and they are still in production only they have switched to another heat source.

Dan

 

[mike os]

Tin, I saw a piece about then on the news a bit back and they are still in production only they have switched to another heat source.

Dan

2x 60w bulbs? ;D

 

[Foozer]

As with any change, look to the text

PG 88(6) STANDARDS FOR GENERAL SERVICE LAMPS.—
‘‘(A) RULEMAKING BEFORE JANUARY 1, 2014.

(II)(ii) SCOPE.—The rulemaking shall not be limited
to incandescent lamp technologies

Robert

 

[Blue_Rock]

Certainly an interesting thread here

Regarding mercury, thanks for the info about dealing with the mercury hazard should a flourescent break.

Last week, I was flicking through a consumer magazine that compared different brands of CFLs. It examined the claimed life span of CFLs and also the time it took for the tested CFLs to reach claimed light output. Not surprisingly, cheaper brands generally had shorter lives and took longer to reach full output. So all CFLs are not created equally.

A scholarly study that I happened across had this to say on the mercury levels associated with CFLs Vs incandescents.

"The research shows that the efficiency benefits compensate for the added complexity in manufacturing,
that while rapid on-off cycling of the lamp does reduce the environmental (and payback) benefits of
CFLs they remain a net “win,” and that the mercury emitted over a CFL’s life—by power plants to
power the CFL and by leakage on disposal—is still less than the mercury that can be attributed to
powering the incandescent." Source: RMI: Life Cycle of CFL and Incandescent

I've seen the results of the above study replicated elsewhere.