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Government mandate use of fluorescent bulbs

What do you think of the government mandating the use of fluorescent light bulbs?

  • t’s ridiculous. We already have too much government control in our lives.

    Votes: 22 40.7%
  • It’s a slippery slope toward more government control. What’s next?

    Votes: 7 13.0%
  • It’s a bad idea.

    Votes: 5 9.3%
  • Using fluorescent bulbs is a good idea, but doing so shouldn’t be mandated.

    Votes: 30 55.6%
  • This move should have been made a long time ago.

    Votes: 3 5.6%
  • The proposal doesn’t go far enough.

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • I don’t care. I’ll just buy my incandescent bulbs online.

    Votes: 3 5.6%
  • I like lamp

    Votes: 3 5.6%

  • Total voters
    54

RitcheyRch

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What do you think of the government mandating the use of fluorescent light bulbs?
 

Flyinbowtie

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Since they are too spineless to address any of the real issues, and too focused on lining their own pockets with more $$, this is the kind of thing we can expect from our fearless elected officials:swear

This way, they look like they are doing something, and it is easier for the idiots to stay awake when someone is talking over the P.A. in the room.
If it gets too quiet for a couple of minutes, I am sure some of the fools fall asleep, and it scares the shit out of them when the old geezer in the next seat farts or starts snoring & wakes 'em up.:swear:fsakes
 

syco

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Should be up to us,But than again so should the helmet& seatbelt law.
 

Baja Big Dog

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Unbelievable....this is actually a fricken subject,,,who the fock cares....is saves energy, so what...use them, and in the long run, you will save money, correct me if Im wrong. but isnt that a good thing???:cool:
 

Tom Brown

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Mandating fluorescent lighting would be stupid. It's not even the most efficient way to make light. Both LED and HID are more efficient than fluorescent and who knows what efficiency improvements might show up down the road.
 

Rexone

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I wonder if those manufacturing the flor bulbs are funding the legislation. Seems like big money ahead for someone if it passes.

Tom are there any commercial or household type LED options for bulb use commonly available yet. I know you're a flashlight guru so I'm just guessing you might know more than I do about this too. :D
 

Texasjetboats

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While it may seem like a great idea with the gain in efficiency, the compact flourescent lamps create a whole new waste stream. They should not be broken due to the drop of mercury in each sealed tube. It is like every other energy conservation measure. A small gain here with a huge loss in some other accounting column. (See ethanol)
 

RitcheyRch

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So valid points made here. I am all for saving electricty be it from either fluorescent bulbs, led or something else but dont feel it should be mandated by our government.

I posted this after reading on another forum and hearing about it on the news.
 

angiebaby

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While it may seem like a great idea with the gain in efficiency, the compact flourescent lamps create a whole new waste stream. They should not be broken due to the drop of mercury in each sealed tube. It is like every other energy conservation measure. A small gain here with a huge loss in some other accounting column. (See ethanol)

My sentiments precisely. I have found they don't last any longer. The "5 year guarantee" is complete BS. They last about 6 months to a year, just like the incandecents. Also, I've notice that when they go out, the bottom of the unit (the white part) is burnt brown and a little melted. That makes me concerned about the safety and the amount of heat they put out. The waste is also a big deal. They get broken when smashed in the trash truck, then they proceed to get dumped into the landfill along with all of the mercury in them. I'm sticking with Edison's invention as long as they'll let me.
 

Hatenwinter

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Does anyone know if these flourescent bulbs can be used with a dimmer switch. All of my lighting at my house is recessed and on dimmers, it dosen't seem like they will work. I guess I should start stocking up on regular bulbs :mad:
 

Tom Brown

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Tom are there any commercial or household type LED options for bulb use commonly available yet.


Yes. Lots. There are LED bulb options for almost any socket that is still in service, AC or DC.

http://www.ccrane.com/lights/led-light-bulbs/index.aspx

... there are zillions of other sites and links out there too. That was just the first hit Google returned.



Manufacturing breakthroughs in the last 18 months have brought a 50% efficiency increase at 1/10 the cost of previous LED generations. Those benefits haven't trickled down the lighting food chain yet but they will.

Basically, Philips bought LumiLEDs (the industry leader) and is bringing LED lighting to the main stream. They have automated the process of mounting dies on thermal substrates so they can produce some extremely high power LEDs that they can sell for $2~4 each and make money. That's an order of magnitude improvement over the last generation and there are big improvements ahead, as well.

At this point, LED lighting makes sense for some applications. One such application is industrial fridge lighting. In a fridge, you have to supply energy to make light and you have to supply energy to cool the heat the light emitter produces.

Walmart is changing all of the lights in their big glass-door fridges from fluorescent to LED. My understanding is that project will pay for itself in just a few months.

The other thing about LED emitters is that they are relatively tiny. With a 50000 hour emitter life, it will soon make sense to build LED lights into appliances, under cabinet lighting, and all sorts of places that we currently use fluorescent and then shield the harsh direct light with a valance. With a tiny LED, the light can be recessed into the wood and not hang down at all. What's more, it wouldn't be the worst thing to deliver cabinets with LED lighting features that aren't easily replaceable. LEDs rarely fail and their reliability is going up all the time. At 50K hour life expectancy, there isn't a strong need for consumer replaceability.

With line power, socket losses are a fraction of a percent. With the low voltage and relatively high currents required for LED systems, socket losses become much more significant.

More importantly, sockets bring resistance and points of failure. Removing the sockets from the system will improve system efficiency and reliability. We're a decade away from eliminating sockets, though.

Here's something you may find interesting about incandescent lighting. You know how bulb life is going down all the time? Not long ago, 500 hour bulbs were the cheap garbage. Now, we've got bulbs as low as 200 hour commonly available. This, of course, is a conspiracy to give us less product for our hard earned money so we have to buy more bulbs, causing bulb manufacturers to make more money.

Well... not entirely. It turns out, bulbs are rated by how much power they draw, not by how much light they put out. If you take three 60 watt bulbs with projected lives of 200, 500, and 1000 hours, you will discover the 200 hour bulb has higher output than the 500 bulb and the 500 bulb has more output than the 1000 hour bulb. The lower hour bulbs have thinner, more delicate filaments, causing them to run hotter and produce more light with the same current flow. This also causes the filaments to deplete more quickly and break more easily.

In fact, given the current cost of power, the 200 hour bulb will cost you around $60 for the initial purchase and the power to run the bulb for it's life. The 1000 hour bulb will cost upwards of $100 to purchase and power for it's life. These numbers are approximate, given 100 lumen output levels. It's considerably cheaper to use lower hour bulbs.

LED doesn't make a lot of sense in most applications right now but that's on the cusp of changing.

The next era will be line power drivers and LED emitters built into modules that fit standard bulb sockets. The issue with that is rectification inefficiency. That's why the generation that follows AC driven LED modules will involve having a single, fairly efficient DC power supply that will drive most of the lighting for an entire home.

After that, the DC power supply can be eliminated by sourcing DC power on location. Each generation of photovoltaic cells brings roughly double the power efficiency and LED power efficiency is roughly doubling every three years so it won't be long when you can have a small array on your roof, a small storage system of gold caps or fairly efficient batteries, and DC power.

Once we go DC, there will be a world of other efficiency improvement options like DC fridges and appliances.... but I'll save those for another post. :D

In conclusion, I wish to point to point out that I'm not a nerd; I'm a technology enthusiast.
 

Infomaniac

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CRAP !!!

Tom beat me to it.

We are building the lake house right now. Put in all recessed lighting fixtures in every room. At least 4 per room.

Electrician thought I was crazy. He said we would not need a heater due to all the light fixtures. He assumed incadescent bulbs.

But... I intend on putting in LED lights designed to screw into incadescent fixtures. Dim friendly versions.

Currently a 50 Watt equivalent lumen incadescent bulb, but LED version. Only uses 2 watts of power.

And pretty much lifetime as far as how long they will last.

LED per my research are approx. $25.00 each

But the screw in flourescent bulbs work great.

My electrician said code is getting ready to change. As far as how many fixtures per circuit. At the moment the number allowed on a circuit is based on incadescent bulbs. Factor in flourescent or LED and the number of fixtures per circuit will be greatly increased.
 

Rexone

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That is some good shit Tom. Thanks. Seriously. :D

I knew that incandescent bulb life seemed to be getting shorter but didn't know why. Now I'm not as pissed off buying bulbs that only last 200 hours.

I have had decent luck with some of the lamp type CF bulbs at home. I have one I leave on most the time in a lamp. It's been going for almost 2 years now. I switched the lights on the front of my home over as well as the little standard bulbs were lucky to last 2-3 months. The CF's seem to go about a year in that application. Which would correlate to just under 5k hours in service every night for approx 12 hours.

I have some Halogen outdoor lights as well that are on the automatic eye dealios that dim them also when no movement. I'm confident that's not the correct name for these devices but... Those bulbs seem to last pretty long too at the reduced power. But some don't. Not real consistent. I'm very careful too to not handle them when installing and clean with alcohol.

So I guess we continue on and wait for the LED era to arrive. :)
 

Infomaniac

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Oh.....

regardless of my post above.

Government should stay out of any mandate of bulb type.

Any government mandate IMHO would be driven by monitary personal gain by someone other than the consumer.

politician, lobbyist etc.
 

Outdrive1

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I guess I'll have to look into LED lights. I changed all of our can lights to flourescent and none of the dimmers worked. I also have X-10 so I can turn on my outside lights and back yard lights from a remote in the house and they won't work with flourescent either. So I changed them all back to standard stuff and through out all the flourescent stuff. :confused:
 

SuperDave013

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I'm really getting into the LED thing. As we speak I've got a batch of Cree XRE in the new R2 bin on the way. I make my own housings and am using 20mm Carclo optics on this batch.
The lights on my bike are gonna be like the ones on a B-52 bomber I tell ya.
All my machines are getting task led lights too.

Tom, I'll have around 60 extra housings soon. If you want some NiteRider killers let me know. :D
 

Tom Brown

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Any interest in swapping housings for drivers?

... or are you into the regulated experience?
 

SuperDave013

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I already have the drivers. but if you are making some send me some info. I just bought mine from taskled.com.

I'll hook you up on housings if you like the style of this first run.

Now if you are making a boost driver that will run 7 crees @ 3.7V each with 1000mA I have major intrest.
 

Guest

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Yes. Lots. There are LED bulb options for almost any socket that is still in service, AC or DC.

http://www.ccrane.com/lights/led-light-bulbs/index.aspx

... there are zillions of other sites and links out there too. That was just the first hit Google returned.



Manufacturing breakthroughs in the last 18 months have brought a 50% efficiency increase at 1/10 the cost of previous LED generations. Those benefits haven't trickled down the lighting food chain yet but they will.

Basically, Philips bought LumiLEDs (the industry leader) and is bringing LED lighting to the main stream. They have automated the process of mounting dies on thermal substrates so they can produce some extremely high power LEDs that they can sell for $2~4 each and make money. That's an order of magnitude improvement over the last generation and there are big improvements ahead, as well.

At this point, LED lighting makes sense for some applications. One such application is industrial fridge lighting. In a fridge, you have to supply energy to make light and you have to supply energy to cool the heat the light emitter produces.

Walmart is changing all of the lights in their big glass-door fridges from fluorescent to LED. My understanding is that project will pay for itself in just a few months.

The other thing about LED emitters is that they are relatively tiny. With a 50000 hour emitter life, it will soon make sense to build LED lights into appliances, under cabinet lighting, and all sorts of places that we currently use fluorescent and then shield the harsh direct light with a valance. With a tiny LED, the light can be recessed into the wood and not hang down at all. What's more, it wouldn't be the worst thing to deliver cabinets with LED lighting features that aren't easily replaceable. LEDs rarely fail and their reliability is going up all the time. At 50K hour life expectancy, there isn't a strong need for consumer replaceability.

With line power, socket losses are a fraction of a percent. With the low voltage and relatively high currents required for LED systems, socket losses become much more significant.

More importantly, sockets bring resistance and points of failure. Removing the sockets from the system will improve system efficiency and reliability. We're a decade away from eliminating sockets, though.

Here's something you may find interesting about incandescent lighting. You know how bulb life is going down all the time? Not long ago, 500 hour bulbs were the cheap garbage. Now, we've got bulbs as low as 200 hour commonly available. This, of course, is a conspiracy to give us less product for our hard earned money so we have to buy more bulbs, causing bulb manufacturers to make more money.

Well... not entirely. It turns out, bulbs are rated by how much power they draw, not by how much light they put out. If you take three 60 watt bulbs with projected lives of 200, 500, and 1000 hours, you will discover the 200 hour bulb has higher output than the 500 bulb and the 500 bulb has more output than the 1000 hour bulb. The lower hour bulbs have thinner, more delicate filaments, causing them to run hotter and produce more light with the same current flow. This also causes the filaments to deplete more quickly and break more easily.

In fact, given the current cost of power, the 200 hour bulb will cost you around $60 for the initial purchase and the power to run the bulb for it's life. The 1000 hour bulb will cost upwards of $100 to purchase and power for it's life. These numbers are approximate, given 100 lumen output levels. It's considerably cheaper to use lower hour bulbs.

LED doesn't make a lot of sense in most applications right now but that's on the cusp of changing.

The next era will be line power drivers and LED emitters built into modules that fit standard bulb sockets. The issue with that is rectification inefficiency. That's why the generation that follows AC driven LED modules will involve having a single, fairly efficient DC power supply that will drive most of the lighting for an entire home.

After that, the DC power supply can be eliminated by sourcing DC power on location. Each generation of photovoltaic cells brings roughly double the power efficiency and LED power efficiency is roughly doubling every three years so it won't be long when you can have a small array on your roof, a small storage system of gold caps or fairly efficient batteries, and DC power.

Once we go DC, there will be a world of other efficiency improvement options like DC fridges and appliances.... but I'll save those for another post. :D

In conclusion, I wish to point to point out that I'm not a nerd; I'm a technology enthusiast.


This post is far too light nerdy and long winded......thats an infraction.....all the best!
 

Outdrive1

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This post is far too light nerdy and long winded......thats an infraction.....all the best!

Faglish again.............:eek:;):D
 

sorry dog

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Tom... is a nerd!...and nerds at my school got a Swirly!
toilet.gif



I don't mind the compact florescents in some places where the light tends to stay on like the laundry room or garage, but they still aren't a direct replacement for incandescent. They turn on too slowly, the light spectum is not acceptable for some uses, and it can be bothersome that they take a few minutes to warm up and put out the full light rating. Also, if you turn then on and off a bunch they won't last for crap. If there is a law mandating this, then this will be about at popular as 1 liter per flush toilets...next thing you know, we'll be back to outhouses...

Tom...do they make affordable LEDs that have a broader spectrum? Most of the ones I've seen I would describe as cool white but with little red/yellow reflectivity.



After that, the DC power supply can be eliminated by sourcing DC power on location. Each generation of photovoltaic cells brings roughly double the power efficiency and LED power efficiency is roughly doubling every three years so it won't be long when you can have a small array on your roof, a small storage system of gold caps or fairly efficient batteries, and DC power.

Once we go DC, there will be a world of other efficiency improvement options like DC fridges and appliances.... but I'll save those for another post. :D

...so are you saying the Edison was right about DC power after all??

...Should I save the 1 farad stereo amp cap after all??:D
 

Tom Brown

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Tom... is a nerd!

It's.... technology enthusiast.


I don't mind the compact florescents in some places where the light tends to stay on like the laundry room or garage, but they still aren't a direct replacement for incandescent. They turn on too slowly, the light spectum is not acceptable for some uses, and it can be bothersome that they take a few minutes to warm up and put out the full light rating.

I've got some CF lights that are pretty much instantly on. They are inside of fixtures and you wouldn't know they aren't incandescents unless you removed the fixture.

The big long fluorescent tubes are a much slower deal, particularly when they're cold.

Fluorescent lights can be made to produce a much better spectrum than incandescent. Some fluorescent bulbs produce a pretty cool light but they can be made to produce something extremely similar to the sun's visible spectrum. Full spectrum fluorescent bulbs are fantastic and provide wonderful light for reading and working.


Tom...do they make affordable LEDs that have a broader spectrum?

Not that I'm aware of. Worse yet, current process technology creates white LEDs that are skewed toward green.

One of the things I like least about LEDs is the narrow spectrum. Particularly on my bike, where I use two high output emitters to create a ton of light from 6 AAA cells (yes... AAA.... not AA) for about an hour, the narrow spectrum makes depth perception difficult.


...so are you saying the Edison was right about DC power after all??

Right now, we have local generation from solar, wind, or whatever, and that generation drives an inverter to feed the house or, up here in Canada, it's more popular to sell that power back to the power company in AC form.

Between inverter and AC to DC power supply losses, there are huge gains to be made by simply not converting DC to AC and then back to DC. There is no question at all that, at some point, we will remove the inverter/rectification equipment. The issue is finding a way to charge more money for less equipment.

I think AC will be around for a long, long time, both in power grid form and locally sourced form. DC power doesn't transmit for shit. DC is only worth while when the source is extremely close to the consumption.
 

sorry dog

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I've got some CF lights that are pretty much instantly on. They are inside of fixtures and you wouldn't know they aren't incandescents unless you removed the fixture.

The CF's I've bought lately seen to have these problems...but I don't doubt that I could spend more money and have a better one, but then I'd rather have a normal ole bulb from a cost standpoint.
I like tube florescents as the spectrums available are good and you can mix and match on multi bulb fixtures.

I think AC will be around for a long, long time, both in power grid form and locally sourced form. DC power doesn't transmit for shit. DC is only worth while when the source is extremely close to the consumption.

One TV show I watched said Edison invisioned little DC powerplants in everybody's backyard. :point
 

Ziggy

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I've converted my Havi house nearly 100% and my Ca. house is 75%.
I like them alot.
 

Ultra26 # 1

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I wonder if those manufacturing the flor bulbs are funding the legislation. Seems like big money ahead for someone if it passes.

Tom are there any commercial or household type LED options for bulb use commonly available yet. I know you're a flashlight guru so I'm just guessing you might know more than I do about this too. :D

Mike,

There are A/C 110V LED bulbs available that most people can read by, as well as LED flood and landscape lighting. I have been using LED's outside of my home, porch, landscape and rear flood for years. We are getting close to bright enough white LED to live by. A much better alterntive to CF or Fl tubes.

John
 

SBjet

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The bad spectrum can make you sick. This has been known for over 30 years, and yet the govt. is mandating it? Fockers!
 

sorry dog

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Hey Brown...since you are the lightbulb and socket expert... maybe you can tell me this...

What the fuck is a candle watt?

I googled around but all I can find if a bunch of fuckers that claim they have millions of them.

How does it relate to standard measures of brightness such as lux or lumens?
 

maxwedge

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I recently replaced all of the incandescent lights in the garage with 200watt equivalent CF lights. It's like daylight out there now and 6 of these bulbs are using as much power as 1 of the incandescent. They take maybe three seconds to warm up to full brightness when it's 3 degrees outside and supposedly are good down to -20, at which point I'm not going out there anyway. I also have replaced almost every bulb in my house with either CF of LED a few years ago. I have a terrible habit of leaving lights on all the time but still my power bill is easily half of what it used to be.

Still I think the government mandate is stupid. They need to spend their time worrying about important issues like banning Truck Nuts.:D
 

500bbc

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If you think the flourescent lights are bad wait until the new legislation is passed here in Kalifornia where the power company controls your thermostat.:swear:smackhead:fsakes
 

Racey

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I wonder if those manufacturing the flor bulbs are funding the legislation. Seems like big money ahead for someone if it passes.

Tom are there any commercial or household type LED options for bulb use commonly available yet. I know you're a flashlight guru so I'm just guessing you might know more than I do about this too. :D

That's exactly what i was thinking, especially with compact fluorescents costing about 10x what a normal bulb does.
 
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