Australia Outlaws Incandescent Light Bulb 944
passthecrackpipe writes "The Australian Government is planning on making the incandescent light bulb a thing of the past. In three years time, standard light bulbs will no longer be available for sale in the shops in Australia (expect a roaring grey market) and everybody will be forced to switch to more energy efficient Fluorescent bulbs. In this move to try and curb emissions, the incandescent bulb — which converts the majority of used energy to heat rather then light — will be phased out. Environmental groups have given this plan a lukewarm reception. They feel Australia should sign on to the Kyoto protocol first. A similar plan was created together with Phillips, one of the worlds largest lighting manufacturers."
More than Australia (Score:5, Interesting)
I find the difference in approach interesting, though. The California proposal, judging by the press releases, seems to be about banning sale of incandescents. The Australian proposal is simply upping the energy efficiency standards to the point where incandescent bulbs no longer qualify.
Considering California actually has a higher population than Australia (estimated 36 million in 2005 vs. estimated 20 million in 2006), the California ban, if adopted, would actually have a greater effect.
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-Carl
Re:More than Australia (Score:5, Informative)
It's 2007, not 1997.
Re:More than Australia (Score:5, Interesting)
1. "Daylight" CFLs have a strong bluish tinge similar to the backlight of an LCD display. Ugly. Horrible for photography. Looks nothing like real daylight.
2. "Bright White" CFLs have a strong greyish tinge. This would make you want to slit your wrist if you sat under it all day. Totally useless for anything except killing yourself.
3. "Warm" CFLs are about the only ones that are tolerable and what I wound up going with. But they have a pretty strong pinkish/yellowish tinge. All your whites look kind of dingy. These feel like a hospital waiting room or doctors examining room at best. With a pink cotton candy look.
Supposedly the HD lamps approach natural daylight, but from the photos I've seen taken online with them, we're talking a gloomy winter day and not a sunny day at the beach. Frankly, I'm waiting for some kind of hybrid lamp using LED or OLED technology. I suspect they will be more efficient, last longer and will be capable of generating ANY color of light through simple digital controls. Only then will the light problem be solved.
"grey tinge"? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Bright White" CFLs have a strong greyish tinge.
How the hell can LIGHT have a GREY 'tinge'? Definition: "To apply a trace of color to; tint." Most of the people I talk to who object to CF lights and how they "look funny", don't have a single one in their house. Your brain automatically adjusts to different color temperatures. I used to do theater lighting design, and this is (believe it or not) exploited by designers. One scene's overall temperature influences the next.
"Daylight" CFLs have a strong bluish tinge similar to the backlight of an LCD display. Ugly. Horrible for photography. Looks nothing like real daylight.
Tungsten bulbs have a significantly higher color temperature than normal incandescents. Daylight CFLs have one significantly higher than tungsten bulbs. Would it surprise you to know that photographers actually seek out the high temperature FL tubes for home-made lightboxes?
This is because, unlike you, they know how to properly set the white balance on their camera (hint: you need a grey card.)
This would make you want to slit your wrist if you sat under it all day. Totally useless for anything except killing yourself.
I have a "bright white" bulb in my bathroom, one in my kitchen, and one by my desk. The rest are "soft" white. You'll be happy to know that no wrist-slitting has occured in several months since moving in, and my landlord was shocked at how low my power bill was.
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So? I object to them (on the basic of their odd color balance) - and *because* of that, I don't have a single one in my house. Not owning one does not equate to not having seen one. I've been to friends houses and to offices that have them, I've seen them in lighting displays at the store - without ever owning a single one, I know how bad their lighting is.
Re:More than Australia (Score:5, Informative)
There is no such thing as a greyish tinge to light. In subtractive color theory, grey is made by adding black and white. In additive color theory, grey is just a dimmer white. It is not a tinge. If something seems grey, add more light.
There is no way for anything to have a "pinkish/yellowish tinge." It could be one or the other, or it could be orange. Pink is desaturated red. Red and yellow make orange. Pink and yellow makes light orange.
The problem I think you are encountering is not an actual color temperature issue, but a color accuracy issue. There are a lot of different ways of making colors that all look the same to a human eye. You could make orange by mixing red and green light, or by using an orange light. To the human eye it looks the same, to a spectrometer one "orange" looks like peaks in the red and green wavelengths, the other looks like a peak in the orange wavelengths.
Because phosphors only emit light in a very narrow band, CFLs use a combination of phosphors to approximate white light. But instead of a continuous spectrum of color mixed together to make white, you are getting just red, green and blue mixed together to make white. The light looks white to the human eye, because we only have red, green and blue receptors, but some other colors will look off because the light is not full-spectrum. There is no way to fix this with gels, either. There is nothing there for a gel to subtract.
Here's what wikipedia has to say about the quality of light in CFLs:
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Ah, the old "you can't be percieving it that way; it's not in the theory for you to do so."
Sure, if you're talk
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No, problem not solved (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:More than Australia (Score:5, Insightful)
There are two big problems with CFLs. One is that they do not work with dimmers. We have a number of lamps which are controlled by dimmers. These are especially valuable in connection with watching movies.
A worse problem is that CFLs lifetime is much less than a normal bulb in situations where the lights are turned on an off often. These CFLs die very quickly under such service. They are also much more vulnerable to instantaneous power surges and drops. The solid state devices in them silently die and the mercury containing bulb is then trash which needs special treatment.
They also take a while, (about 30 sec. to a minute) to reach full brightness and some of them flicker or pulsate until they get fully warmed up. So it is best to use them in situations where the light is left on for most of the 24 hour day. They have their uses and encouraging their use is one thing, but across the board banning of normal light bulbs is not a good idea. The color balance of the cheaper ones also leaves much to be desired. Some of them make people look like death warmed over.
Re:More than Australia (Score:5, Informative)
Also, almost half of the lights in my home are CFL, and during last 3 years I've had to change 1 CFL and about dozen or two normals ones.
It probably takes about 30 seconds until CFL reaches the maximum brightness, but for me 90% brightness is usually enough for anything that I need to do within that timeframe.
Basicly the only reason that I haven't changed all my lights to CFL is that I have still 50 old lightbulbs left, but once they are gone, I'll switch to use only CFL. Except for my outside lamps, CFL really don't like winter and temperatures of -30C or more. They often just die in a week or so. Though some people have been lucky and their CFLs have lasted a winter or two.
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Note the ones I use. They take about 0.5 of a second to actually turn on, but then are at full brightness. They also do not flicker or pulsate. Though I do admit that I don't like the color light they produce. For anyone interested - these are standard GE bulbs that came from Home Depot. YMMV depending on what you bu
Re:More than Australia (Score:5, Informative)
The "sunlight" are very cool, but I use them where there is insufficient lighting (mostly outside and in the basement) because they look much brighter than they are.
The "full spectrum" bulbs are a little cooler than incandescents, but make artwork and tapestry look great (or faded if it is).
CF bulbs are not by any means universally cooler color than an incandescent though.
Re:More than Australia (Score:4, Informative)
here [lightbulbsdirect.com] is a chart on color temperature (of course they do invert it just for fun).
here [lightbulbsdirect.com] is a chart of CRI ("full spectrum is greater than 90", and higher means more colors are distinguishable, it makes a HUGE difference).
Incandescent is closer to fire. (Score:5, Insightful)
There's probably some deep-rooted psychological link between lower color temperatures and "warmth," and associated feelings of security (because fires produce lower temperature light compared to the sun, fires = warmth and usually, safety), but I think most of it is social, and that we've acclimated to a home life that's lit by incandescent bulbs.
I switched my bedroom and home office to daylight fluorescent bulbs a while back, and after getting used to them, rooms lit with conventional (3500K) incandescent bulbs seem very 'yellow' and seem stuffy in comparison. The light from the fluorescents also blends much better with the natural light from the room's windows than the incandescent light did, and there's less of a change during the day (previously, during the morning when there was a lot of window light, it would seem very blue, then during the day as the sun would fade, I'd turn more incadescent lamps on to compensate, and everything would get yellow; now, when it gets dark, I put on the fluorescents, and it's just like turning the sun back on).
Re:Incandescent is closer to fire. (Score:5, Insightful)
A thoughtful post, but it's worth pointing out that on a personal level, lights are turned on when it's dark. When it's dark, we want something warm and glowing. And the operative adjective is "golden" rather than yellow. Admittedly, such lighting looks terrible during the day, but it's supposed to, just as lit candles during the day are out of place. Our reactions are entirely primitive in that regard. If you need more "daylight" during the day, well, that's a separate problem I think, which asks for different solutions.
If it was possible to beam pure sunlight into our homes during the evening hours, I'd bet our circadian rhythms would go out of whack in a dramatic fashion.
In the workaday world, indoor day-time lighting is already fluorescent. And most of that (in its current state) sucks.
Re:Incandescent is closer to fire. (Score:5, Funny)
That's one person's opinion.
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Sunlight is often warmer than 5000K (Score:3, Interesting)
RFI from CFLs (Score:5, Informative)
In case anyone is interested in specific figures, there is a chart of RFI versus frequency from a typical CFL ballast here [nxp.com] (go to the very end of the document for the graph).
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I live in a remote area in Northern California. The power is somewhat erratic. A friend of mine has a Solar to Grid power system, that routinely ( once a week) shuts off due to the grid voltage driving above the stated spec (120v RMS, +/- some small percentage).
I bought two CF bulbs, and neither lasted for more than a few months.
Re:More than Australia (Score:5, Informative)
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It's the same in the kitchen that usualy didn't have any light untill someone would enter it. In the first few minutes it is almost impossible to read the directions from a cookbook or something. Then everything apears
Re:More than Australia (Score:5, Informative)
Secondly, even old fashioned flourescent strips flicker at 120Hz in the US, not 60.
Thirdly, any flourescent (strip, compact, whatever) manufactured in the last 15 years will have an electronic ballast - so the flicker will be around 20kHz to 30kHz depending on the design, and imperceptible to any human.
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So? They're both mind-numbingly stupid.
Those of you who follow my posts know that restrictions on incandescents (and any other input-based methods [slashdot.org] of getting people to reduce an output) make me absolutely livid. They unfa
Re:More than Australia (Score:5, Funny)
Certainly.
After all,
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Anyhow, do they even make CFLs for, say, ovens? Freezers? Chandeliers? Can they operate at 500 degrees in my oven?
Re:More than Australia (Score:5, Interesting)
I switched over 90% of the bulbs in my house to compact fluorescents five years ago. But making me switch over the other 10% just makes me mad. None of them get used much. And there are three fixtures where, despite looking, I've never been able to find any CF bulbs that fit in them. One of these is an antique brass lamp I inherited. What am I supposed to do, throw it away? I'd like to point out that, if I were to buy a new big, heavy, nice brass lamp to replace it, there is an energy cost to mining, refining, shipping, casting, assembling, and re-shipping that new lamp. A new lamp a lot like it costs about $800. It would never save that much energy, or that much money.
Additionally, my father was in vision research. Their entire vision research lab ran on incandescent bulbs for experiments. On the one hand, they don't want to toss a $10,000 experimental apparatus it took a year to build because they can't buy the bulbs anymore. And on the other hand, they can't very easily redesign these things to use CF bulbs, because they treat the clear incandescent bulbs as point-sources. They do have one easy solution, though, if replacement incandescents were difficult/illegal to obtain. They can place their xenon arc by the experiment, and run a thin beam of arc light through a gradient mirror (to adjust the brightness to match) to a small mirror where the bulb used to be. In this respect, they would replace a 40-watt bulb with a 10,000-watt bulb.
CF bulbs already make economic sense for consumers to buy- they save a whole lot of money over their lifespan. The main reason they haven't been adopted is consumer inertia. Most people don't really know about them, or how much they'll save, or how similar their light is to normal incandescents. This problem is better fixed with a marketing campaign then a ban. This marketing campaign is already underway, by the likes of Walmart, NPR, GE, and others.
Economic incentives result in more efficient solutions to problems than command and control. If their goal is to reduce electricity usage, why don't they try to reduce electricity usage, instead of mandating people buy a particular kind of light bulb? The Playstation 3 runs 380 watts, while the Wii only consumes 53 watts. Why not ban the Playstation 3?
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CF bulbs already make economic sense for consumers to buy- they save a whole lot of money over their lifespan.
Only if you look long-term (years) - and the vast majority of consumers don't. They see that a new CFL bulb costs $4 and a regular old incandescent bulb costs $0.50, then buy the regular bulb and pat themselves on the back for saving $3.50 to buy some chocolate with.
Re:More than Australia (Score:5, Interesting)
What should be done is tax incandescent bulbs so they are more expensive, and use the tax to discount the price of fluorescents. Then people are encouraged to make the "right" decision, but are not forced.
The same thing should be done, IMHO, with many other things. For example, 2 liters of soda costs $1 but 1/2 gallon of real 100% juice costs like $3. Many low-fat foods cost more than mostly identical regular-fat foods. Whole-grain bread, rice, etc. is more expensive than super-processed, bleached white bread, rice, etc. A bag of fresh vegetables easily costs $5, and a bag of candy is $2. That should not be the case, since the cost to society is greater than the low price indicates. Someone who only has $1 to spend for their kids' drinks should not have to choose between soda and 95% sugar water. Car manufacturers should not be able to offer gas guzzling pickup trucks & big suvs for less than a more fuel-efficient vehicle because they have too much stock, as if its some surprise that gas prices keep going up and they couldn't predict this before they made them.
I agree bans are not the answer, but definitely tax the unhealthy, unnecessary, damaging, etc. stuff and rebate the better, but currently more expensive, option.
Re:More than Australia (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you are missing a very important point in your rant. In today's world, you eating that bacon while chugging a soda and smoking a Marlboro costs me money. When you have a heart attack, or have to take $1500 worth of meds each month to keep yourself functioning, that raises my health insurance rates. Once your actions effect the lives of others, you are no longer free to act. It is part of the social contract that we all agree to in this society.
Now, if you want to divest yourself of the protections of society, you will be free to act as you please. You just won't get the health care you need when your arteries can't push blood thru your atherosclerotic veins, or you can't suck anymore air into your emphysema scarred lungs.
I used to be quite libertarian, and think the way you do. Unfortunately, we can't have our cake and eat it too. If we want to eliminate all social constructs, and actually live the way CS Lewis did, we can follow his advice. I think, though, that CS Lewis would also agree that you have no right to act in a way that negatively impacts others.
Re:More than Australia (Score:5, Informative)
Environmentalists: isn't that solution a LOT better than setting up millions of pages of regulations for how big a house you can have, how fuel-efficient your car can be, who needs to get a prescription for a light bulb, etc?
Environmentalists who have a gram of economic knowledge know that capturing externalities by converting access to the commons into a market commodity is the most sustainable way of ensuring environmental efficiencies. Once the commons (in this case, the atmosphere) is no longer freely available for dumping, a well-designed market will automatically compute the costs and distribute them appropriately.
Every environmentalist worthy of the name knows this: if you restrict access to the commons via a market then environmental efficiencies become economic efficiencies, and you do not have to waste enormous resources trying to maintain unsustainable economic regulation.
This worked extremely well in limiting sulphur dioxide emissions in North America in the late 90's, to the extent that everyone was astonished at how quickly "cap and trade" reduced acid rain. There is no reason to believe that something similar can't work for carbon emissions. The only issue is that like any market it must be free of political interference. When that happens we get disasters like the East Coast fishery in Canada, which has been mismanaged due to political manipulation of catch limits to the point where major commercial stocks have collapsed.
Treating access to the atmospheric commons as a limited, ever-shrinking, tradable commodity is something that absolutely everyone whose political agenda does not trump reason and responsibility ought to be in favour of.
Re:More than Australia (Score:5, Insightful)
And with all due respect, I don't understand why so many people miss the point I made.
Australia's approach doesn't to anything to change your lifestyle, your comfort, etc
*banging head in keyboard*
YES IT DOES!!!
Why do you think I haven't changed to CFL's? Think about it for a minute.
-Do I like saving money?
-Do my investments currently earn less than the effective 100% ROR you get on CFL's?
It's much harder and controversial to dictate behavior - exactly the point that you make - but your conclusion that this is an attempt to dictate behavior doesn't make any sense.
No, you're completely misunderstanding my points. I was discussing the relative merits of a) banning individual, specific behaviors vs. b) taxing the negative outcome that the individual, specific behavior contributes to.
It's not about whether "behavior in the face of potential emergency" should be dictated or not dictated. It's about the level of generality of this dictation. Do you want to ban each and every behavior some beancounter decided is wasteful? Or do you want to assess people the costs of the negative output and let them decide for themselves which activities are still worth it?
That mega-mansion? Now it will use less energy with the same number of lights installed and turned on...
Yes, but what you seem to have missed in all of that is that the law makes living in a large house with CFL's less penalized than living in a tiny apartment with incandescents, even though the latter uses far less energy. That doesn't bother you? Or, it does bother and, you propose to restrict home sizes, in the hopes that THAT would be the silver bullet? Or, it does bother you, and you recognize the futility of that, and you get the point I was trying to make in my original post?
Where is the problem here? Do you really think a lower electrical bill will lead to more heating expenditure? Most people I know whine about their bill, but they like to stay warm no matter what.
But *how* warm do they want to be? On some level, they make a tradeoff against the bill. Or maybe they'll spend the savings heating the pool, which of course, you now have to regulate.
I think this idea is outstanding - if nothing else, many people don't even know that CF bulbs are out there - this is a chance to build that awareness in Australia, and maybe more countries will follow suit.
Right, but you can build awareness without banning. Even a heavy tax on incandescents would be much better than banning them completely, as another poster pointed out.
Please read my original post again if you would.
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About photographers
Kneejerk Bans Don't Work (Score:5, Interesting)
Instead of a ban, let's create an economic pressure. Tax the incadescent light bulbs, so that they are significantly more expensive than compact fluorescents, and use the money for conservation. This way, the shift will be natural, and the people who prefer/need incadescent bulbs, can still purchase them, albeit at 10X+ the current price.
Re:Kneejerk Bans Don't Work (Score:4, Interesting)
On a related matter - all our Christmas tree decorations were LED this year, looked a lot better than incandescent and in the UK, at least, sold out well before Christmas.
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Re:Kneejerk Bans Don't Work (Score:5, Insightful)
That can be true when you are paying the actual cost for your decision. At least in the U.S. though, most items that are bad for the environment don't factor that cost into the purchasing price. Gasoline is one example where we are only paying for the product, and not it's environmental effects.
-dave
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These bans are an affront to personal freedoms. I hear so many people claiming they want personal freedoms, yet a lot of these same people are thrilled when the government oversteps their boundries to control, through threat of fines or imprisonment,
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Strange thing is this is really already the case. But people are stupid. They see only up-front cost and fail to include the power-consumption when buying bulbs and/or lamps.
Re:More than Australia (Score:5, Funny)
Thanks man, I'm going to use that one today. "I'm sorry babe, just remember, we're not breaking up, I just upped my standards till you no longer qualify."
Re:More than Australia (Score:5, Informative)
Australia gets almost 100% of it's power from fossil fuels. As far as I know they burn a lot of coal.
California has a much more diverse energy base than Australia. In fact Australia has the highest carbon output per person in the world last time I checked.
They are a large country with a low population density. Australia doesn't have a lot in the way of hydroelectric resources and they have not embraced nuclear power. They do have a lot of coal.
APPLIANCES (Score:4, Interesting)
Okay, so they ban the sale of incandescent bulbs. Fine.
Now, mind you, I have a house full of CF tubes. Every single bulb socket that can fit one, has one. I have also given presentations on the advantages of CF tubes, including in the presentation what the financial payback is of using these tubes. I believe in this technology greatly.
That said, what are you supposed to do for your refrigerator (where a CF tube will be at the double disadvantage of being cold and not running an appropriate duty cycle), or your oven (where the temperatures will be prohibitively high)? Will appliance bulbs still be available?
Re:More than Australia (Score:4, Insightful)
And are all of these Californians and Australians going to bring their used CF bulbs to the hazardous waste disosal facility, as the instructions say to do? NO. Nobody is going to do this. Everyone is going to dump their used CF bulbs in the garbage EVEN THOUGH THEY HAVE MERCURY IN THEM.
Great environmental move California and Australia.
Let's call it what it is -- prohibition. (Score:2, Insightful)
We tried CFLs in my household and we hated them. We found some random buzzing issues, hated
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Re:Let's call it what it is -- prohibition. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Let's call it what it is -- prohibition. (Score:5, Interesting)
What is it that makes a noticeable percentage of us complete and utter idiots? Like Dwight from The Office (US).
But what about the energy cost of manufacturing? (Score:3, Interesting)
The difference is, there's no downside here. Incandescent bulbs produce less light per watt, waste far more exlectricity, and they don't last near as long as their flourescent counterparts. Flourescent's are more expensive at the get-go, but that is easily made up for by their low power usage and extremely long life.
But what about the energy cost of manufacturing? How much energy does the entire manufacturing process for a CFL take compared to an incandescent bulb? I really don't know the answer here, so if somebody has numbers, that'd be great. If it's drastically more for CFLs, then it's just useless switching to them (the energy consumption is shifted to the factory, not actually reduced). If it's truly less, then that part at least is a real benefit.
Unfortunately, there's also the environmental cost, as I see
Re:But what about the energy cost of manufacturing (Score:3, Insightful)
1) People don't need a 'deposit' to recycle. In my area (Fairfax, VA), the trash company just has an extra
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Similarly with bathroom lights.
CFLs are good, and we should all use them. But we shouldn't use them stupidly as if they're some kind of magic energy-reducing talisman.
LED's (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Let's call it what it is -- prohibition. (Score:5, Insightful)
I dont think that would happen... if stores are forced to sell only non-incandescent bulbs, that's what the majority of people will buy, if for no other reason than out of convenience.
How much effort are you willing to put into finding black market light bulbs?
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Re:Let's call it what it is -- prohibition. (Score:4, Informative)
Clearly you've never actually used them, just like regurgitating what someone with an agenda wants to tell you.
For your information they are extremely bright (in fact they're probably underrated - I find the '100 watt equivalent' ones too bright for an average room). They also work just like any other light and are fully bright immediately.
Re:Let's call it what it is -- prohibition. (Score:5, Interesting)
They also dim over time rather quickly. 8 years with a "100W equivalent" CFL bulb means 6 months of 100W equivalence, 2.5 years of 75W equivalence, and 5 years of 60W equivalence.
Furthermore, the color of every CFL on the market sucks compared to a GE Reveal bulb. Full spectrum light output just cannot compare with the peaky light output of a CFL.
Re:Let's call it what it is -- prohibition. (Score:5, Insightful)
So buy ones rated twice as bright as the ones you replace, and you'll still drop the electric consumption by half.
Oh, but then you'd complain that they look too bright and don't work well on a dimmer (the one fault I will grant CFLs still have, though they continually get better and can now go down to about 10% before stalling).
and take time to warm up before they produce even that
Uhh... No. The el-cheapo ones have perhaps a quarter second delay before they turn on, then maybe up to five seconds to "warm up". Better ones have no perceptible delay, and come on right at full brightness.
Y'know, I do oppose outright bans like this. But from reading Slashdot, I'd swear we live in a world where life-and-death hinges on people doing complex color matching within milliseconds of leaping into any and every room of their homes... "Nein! Your sample has 1.4% too much cyan. Your mother dies."
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But I do walk to work yes.
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Look, I understand what you are saying, but seriously. One way or the other, you need help.
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They're also used as an inexpensive heating element for things like battery houses and pump houses (to keep the tanks and pipes from freezing and the batteries at a temperature where they operate efficiently) in rural areas with cold climates. A 60 watt bulb on a thermostat will keep an insulated pumphouse above freezing in subzero weather. (Of course you use more than one for when they burn out...)
More roadblocks for people trying alternative e
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I usually agree with you on many things and others I think you're a wacko. In this particular case, while I agree with you about the buzzing and color issues, I think you're a wacko to believe that home automation and self-saving
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The other two problems with the CFLs is the ugly light they give off (although it is getting better), and how few of them fit into the lamps I have in my household. I also can't dim them (there are dimmable units now, I've heard), which we utilize all the time for effect, especially when watching movies or for social parties we host.
Plus the time they take to reach their steady on state. I can't think of a room in my house where I don't, reasonably often, need to switch on a light for 10 seconds then switch it off again. With a CFL (unless they've improved dramatically since I last checked) you're in half-light for that time.
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1. Go to Home Depot
2. Buy contractor cases of incandescent light bulbs
3. Open account on Ebay
4. ???
5. PROFIT!!!
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Exactly the right kind of thinking: follow the money. The money will always lead you to the actual culprit.
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CFLs do suck to some extent. This law, and the proposed law in CA, may increase the incentive to develop home lighting based on LEDs instead. LEDs use even less energy than CFLs for the same level of light output, and the light is consistent, instant, and does not flicker due to rectification/smoothing of the current to (usually) 12VDC. LEDs also last longer than CFLs. The technology is
Mercury Contamination (Score:5, Insightful)
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The issue is that they are small and discreet enough for most people to throw in the trash. Workers will easily get mercury on em, and the mercury will seep into the ground, which won't be very good. That stuff as a habit of giving everything cancer!
They spoke to a guy who ran the only recycling business for these things in a state (I can't remember which). He basically said people aren't natural recyclers, and the issue with the new bulb
Re:Mercury Contamination (Score:5, Informative)
Source: USEPA 'Fact Sheet: Mercury in Compact Fluorescent Lamps CFLs', 2003
I'd be incandesent too (Score:2)
Will do little (Score:5, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Carbon_Emissio
I also wonder what the environmental manufacturing cost of a CFL vs a plain lightbulb is.
Here's a great idea that uses no electricity! (Score:2)
Why doesn't the Australian government mandate the use of candles? They use no electricity and have little impact on the environment. Brilliant!
gasmonsohttp://religiousfreaks.com/ [religiousfreaks.com]
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Or whale oil lamps
If they outlaw Incandescent Bulbs (Score:3, Funny)
Crazy (Score:2)
Plus my experience with these bulbs is that they burn out almost twice as fast as regular bulbs.
All this will do is benefit certain bulb makers and their suppliers and will cost the public millions in the long run.
So much for rheostats (Score:5, Insightful)
Brilliant, guys.
Re:So much for rheostats (Score:5, Informative)
I think you mean using CFLs designed to work with dimmer switches. Like the ones made by GE [gelighting.com] and numerous others?
Re:So much for rheostats (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.gelighting.com/na/business_lighting/fa
Environmental Groups? Bah. (Score:3, Interesting)
So Australia does something concrete, something difficult, by itself instead of signing on to a flawed international agreement with limited enforceability. And "environmental groups" are upset.
I'm shocked, I say! Shocked!
Re:Environmental Groups? Bah. (Score:5, Informative)
Tax high wattage bulbs instead (Score:5, Interesting)
Better yet, establish a lumens per watt minimum and tax accordingly.
That way you don't force people away from certain technology, just the inefficent ones.
While they're at it, do the same for air conditioners.
So how about recyling them (Score:2)
Also, what are people with dimmers going to do?
Incandescent tax would be better (Score:5, Insightful)
Have they fixed the fault tolerance? (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course, I rent a Fight Club house with old wiring, but that doesn't change the fact that the rest of my equipment (oldskool light bulbs, half a dozen computers, alarm clock, etc) is still plugging away. But I can't exactly put the ceiling fixtures on a surge protector.
So until I hear for sure that CFs will actually last on a power grid that looks more like an EKG than a nice straight line, I'm sticking with the older technology - I'd rather spend five bucks a year on lightbulbs than twenty bucks a month.
As for the OMG UR ELECTRIK BILLZ!! - I run my lights for about two hours a day, tops. Maybe four. I don't really live in my house, so the utility difference is nill.
Whole house surge supressors (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, you can. When I had my fuse panel replaced with circuit breakers, I had them install whole-house surge supression. (they're installed in two of the circuit breaker slots, one for each leg)
There are also suppressors that don't go in the circuit panel [smarthome.com]
Either way, you're going to need an electrician, but it is possible.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
OneBillionBulbs.com (Score:3, Interesting)
Not all bulbs can be replaced with CF's (Score:3, Insightful)
There's a lot of incandescent bulbs that can't be replaced with CF. For example, the bulb in your oven, that sucker gets HOT. How about those little night-light style bulbs in the "water in the door" of many refrigerators? Just outlawing bulbs is short-sighted and will cause problems. Don't forget all those incandescent bulbs in cars, there's a bunch of them in there. I'd love to see a CF replacement for the dome light.
I also find it ironic, that other technologies that use lots of power aren't outlawed. There's lots of audio freaks that still use vacuum tubes. I've been known to weld metal which isn't very energy efficient, especially when I make something that sucks and I'll probably throw away.
The answer to this isn't to outlaw things, but to use economic means to change behavior. Make electricity cost more and people will treat it as a more precious resource. If gasoline was $5 a gallon instead of $2, I'd think twice before driving sometimes.
I lived in New Mexico a couple years ago, and they had lots of "save water" campaigns. Yet water was very cheap. Certainly a mixed message. I can see not wanting to raise the price of such a critical resource, but it could be done in a tiered fashion, such that the normal amount needed was cheap, but more than that gets expensive in a hurry.
Sheldon
Re:I wonder - have the safety issues been consider (Score:2)
This used to be noticable on HP calculators which had display refreshes that produced a beat frequency that was very visible under 60 hz lighting. FWIW, I've used fluoresents in my shop most of my li
Re:I wonder - have the safety issues been cons... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Carbon trading and CFLs (Score:5, Informative)
I've replaced all mine. Cheap. The instructions on the box say to put them in the recycle bin when used up. Easy.
What was the problem again?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)