US switches off the incandescent lightbulb

Not that much Mercury

I did a study last year about how brilliant LED light will be and I found out some amazing stuff.

If you take into account the cost of making the bulbs in the first place, and the amount of bulbs you'd need to buy in order to last say 10 year then they go in this order of efficiencies:

1. LED

2. Halogen

3. Florescent

4. Incandescent

Also if you consider the amount of energy used to power an Incandescent bulb, and that most power still comes out of Coal burning power stations worldwide, then florescent bulbs put much less mercury into the atmosphere.

And strangely those huge halogen bulbs used for movie making are actually very efficient.

So if you don't like florescent use halogen, they are dim-able, instant on and last for times longer then incandescent and use 40% less power for the same amount of light.

@So much misinformation

"I can't see any reason why CFL's couldn't be used in car headlights, at least for the dipped beam which doesn't need to be flashed on and off quickly. I expect they'll wait for LEDs to make the grade though."

For a focussed/collimated/well-controlled beam, basic optics requires that you have as small a source of light as possible. Fluorescent technologies are inherently extended sources. LED headlamps are in development and will probably be with us in a couple of years. But we've already got there with xenon-discharge headlamps. These must be significantly more efficient and durable than tungsten for automotive use. Unfortunately the extra brightness (or more powerful blue wavelengths?) cause more dazzlement for other drivers and especially for cyclists...

LEDs make perfect sense for coloured lights for brake lights and indicators (and traffic lights) and their use here is becoming widespread. Unfortunately they tend to drive them with a pulsed waveform which causes me to see a sea of flickering lights as I flit my eyes around while driving at night - which is also very distracting :-(

@AC

"How many "insignificant" 0.1%s does it take to reduce something by 50%? 500, yes?"

By my somewhat inaccurate calculations, it should take about 1,193 reductions of 0.1% to reduce consumption by 50%.

What the LED advocates forget...

...when they revile CFLs for containing mercury, is that LEDs aren't environmentally friendly either. They contain Gallium Arsenide Phosphate, a really nice safe environmental poison to be polluting our landfills with. So if we switch over to LEDs in a few years' time, how many tons of arsenic (which is way more toxic than mercury) is going to find its way into the environment?

The fact is, whatever technology we use is going to be polluting in one way or another. Pollution is simply the introduction of man-made substances into the natural world, and since technology is man-made by definition it's all pollution. So just deal with the fact that if we want our little mechanical luxuries, the Earth has to pay. Otherwise we can always go back to living in caves and using carved stone and bone tools.

Jolly Roger icon used to symbolise toxicity not piracy.

Mmmm... Inverter smoke

Does anyone make a CFL with a half-life better than a month? CFLs are expensive, contain a lot of hazardous material, and are often illegal to throw in the trash. Any store that sells them should be required to proxy warranty replacements for the full warranty duration. Replacing DOAs isn't good enough. Consumers contacting the manufacturer for replacement of bulbs one-at-a-time is a joke and manufacturers know it. That's why they make ridiculous "7 Year Warranty" claims on a bulb built to last just barely longer than a store's return policy.

Lutec == Perpetual Motion Maniacs

Australian Skeptics report on the Lutec device

http://www.skeptics.com.au/journal/2001/3_lutec1.pdf

What offended and saddened me deeply was seeing this displayed at the Perth Royal Show on the WA Inventors stand, overshadowing some real inventions.

Re: Follow the money and Don't ignore the heating

@Tim Hogard: Hey, about a decade ago the environmentalists were talking about ozone depletion more than CO2 emissions, and that hasn't gone away - we feel that ozone hole here in Australia every summer. Ozone stops deadly UV radiation from the Sun from scorching the Earth's surface to a glowing crisp. So I would think more ozone would be a GOOD thing! ;)

@Acme Fixer: You don't need motion sensors, which are infuriating - the lights go off when you're sitting at a computer, for example - so you have to keep waving your arms around every few minutes to keep the blasted things on. Now, way, way back in 1981 I saw a DIY circuit in Electronics Today International magazine (remember them?). This circuit used two IR sensors across a doorway clocking a 16-way up/down counter. When the first beam was broken before the second, the counter incremented; when the second beam was broken first, it decremented. Thus, it counted how many people were in a room (up to 15), turning the lights on when the first person walked in, and only turning them off when the last person walked out. Simple, cheap, and perfectly effective - no periodic gymnastics required. I'm amazed that this little circuit wasn't commercially exploited!

Granted, the use of a 16-way counter meant the lights would go off unexpectedly if a 16th person walked into the room, since the counter was reset after 15, but since most houses' rooms don't accomodate 15 people that's a non-issue. For larger spaces, it wouldn't be hard to cascade counters to whatever number is required.

@Steve Roper

Ozone is a good thing in the right place - up there. Down *here* it's a very potent poisonous gas which is why people make such a fuss about it.

History of the light bulb

In addressing the question "Who invented the incandescent lamp?" historians Robert Friedel and Paul Israel [1] list 22 inventors of incandescent lamps prior to Swan and Edison. They conclude that Edison's version was able to outstrip the others because of a combination of factors.................

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incandescent_light_bulb

"Poisonous" CFLs

Everyone seems to be ignoring the fact that the halogen in halogen lamps is Flourine or Chlorine (used to be iodine) both of which are extremely poisonous -, and destroy the ozone layer.

Leds are solid, so nothing leaks - so pretty safe, and traditional incandescents contain an inert gas (Argon normally) - very safe, though there is Lead in the solder - so not so safe after all.

Still slow.

Actually, I was one of those here who said that the startup time was still slow and I stand by it. I've just moved house and done my usual trick of putting CFLs everywhere I could (including spots, since someone asked - they're readily available, both MegaMan and Philips do a wide range). As I said, I've reverted the garage, purely due to startup lag. This using new CFLs from big-name brands.

To those pooh-poohing this, your evangelism is laudable, but actually standing there and watching the damned things graaaddddduuuuaaaalllllllyyyyyy brighten proves you're talking bollocks.

Dim Idea

Will be interesting to see the full list of exempted bulbs. Right off the bat, having traffic signal bulbs on the exempt list is a very, very dumb idea, as those are better suited to LED technology.

What I'm really curious about, though, is how they plan to handle anything with a dimmer switch, as the compact fluorescent bulbs are incompatible.

Perhaps what they mean by "Candelabra" bulbs?

Except for the recessed lighting in the kitchen, which is on a dimmer, and a couple old halogen lamps we hardly ever use anyway, the entire house has been converted to fluorescent.

Remember other government mandates

I'm reminded about the ill fated (thank god!) 55mph speed limit we had here for a few years. Everybody ignored it and we went on with life. As for light bulbs, you don't want 100 watt ones, I'll sell you 95 watt ones. It won't take long to be repealed. We also have a silly toilet bill that mandates a 6 liter flush. The problem is that our piping system for waste is predicated upon a larger flush. Now we have plugged sewer lines in houses (ugh!). The government needs to be out of the "goody feel good" business, and get something better done.

They have legislated a 35mpg AVERAGE for vehicles. The government should START with their own cars, and make sure their own offices have CFLs. There should be a change of heart REAL SOON if this were the case.

Stop the madness!

LED better

Some SoCal counties have got laws in place already about lightbulbs.

BTW you can buy a cheap CFL at the 99 cent store.

Still waiting for a decent solution

You have to wonder how much money was paid by those with the CFL manufacturing facilities & associated patents to get this kind of thing passed in the various countries it's got though so far?

Personally while I've used CFLs for years, and am well aware of all the specialist versions that exist for replacement in all sorts of areas, I've just removed some of them and put in 1300W worth of conventional bulbs for the areas where I finally got fed up of the downsides of CFLs. OK, they use more power when they're on but I've got a higher degree of control and don't need to leave them running to maintain their brightness. So overall is doesn't work out to be worse.

The only places I've retained CFLs is where the lamps tend to be on for hours at a time.

As and when it becomes necessary I'll buy a large stock of bulbs to keep me going.

I suspect CFLs will be a dead-end technology in many areas, certainly for residential lighting. Hopefully LEDs will start to catch up, though I suspect the environmental impacts of manufacture, the cooling problems and poor half-life of the white ones may keep them from being a serious contender for a few years yet.

Ultimately this sort of thing shouldn't have been sorted through legislation, but through market forces - if the solution is equivalent or better, and costs less to run, then people would buy it - the fact it's being forced shows there are still problems and reality isn't matching the hype.

Lifetime

When talking about CFLs there are 2 things I hear mentioned more than anything else:

1. They don't lasts long and need constant replacing

2. They last ages and never need replacing

it's always one of the first things someone says when the subject is brought up, but of course they can't both be true!

It just happens that we have CFLs in most of the sockets in the house (and yes, it is very hard to tell the difference with modern ones), the very first one we put in for the upstairs hallway, (10 years or so ago, free from school as some environmentally friendly thing) is still working. However the downstairs hallway has been through about 5 or 6 (and it would have gone through more, but we sort of gave up changing it and just left it blown for a few months between bulbs)

I can only assume it's something with the electricity supply that causes the life to be shorter, one thing that does come to mind is that socket, along with one other (which only just last month got a CFL, last one to do so) when turned off a CFL flashes every 20 seconds or so when first turned off then every 2-3 minutes after a while. I assume this is a small current leak from somewhere, however this wasn't noticed with incandescent lights (which simply don't light up for small amounts of power) so i wonder if this is a common problem causing the reports of bulbs not lasting very long?

Either way i think it's all rather irrelevant to el reg readers though, how many of you use more power for lighting than you do to run your computers? now a law against those stupid display cards that draw over 100w...

Just a thought

I think these low energy lamps are a great idea.They use in construction more energy,exotic gases,toxic metals and in UK more tax on disposal and reclamation ultimatley passed on to the consumer who like there roads filled with lorries, filled to the brim with volumetric loads with no mass because HSE do not allow failed lamps to be deconstructed (crushed at disposal ) pay tax on fuel for said lorries making more money out of green taxes pumping more carbon into our atmosphere so drug companies can suply inhalers to our kids because they cannot breathe.Why not just use candles or go to bed when its dark.

will we wait 200 years fr the laser diode?

so the first incandescent lightbulbs were invented almost 200 years ago, and we have already invented laser diodes which are more efficient than LED's... are we going to wait another 200 years until we switch to the next level of efficiency?

Domestic lights used at night aren't they ?

Energy conservation lobbyists conveniently overlook the obvious fact that household lightbulbs are primarily used at night-exactly opposite the time of day in which utilities experience peak load demands for daytime heating, air conditioning and commercial lighting. Peak load shedding is what is most necessary for taking coal fired power plants out of commission.

Reducing nighttime lightbulb consumption of kwhs will do almost nothing to shave peak demand. Moreover, with non-peak kwhs reduced at night, utilities will now have fewer revenues on which to earn a return on their invested capital. Utilities must build up their physical plant to meet the peaks, and the capital to finance that equipment has to be paid for 24 hours a day. Thus, utilities will have to raise rates on the remainder of the kwhs we use for everything else, from washing machines to hair dryers to computers.

Household power used by lightbulbs is actually dwarfed these days by major appliances and high tech consumer electronics- such as wide screen TVs, computers and video games along with internet servers, the biggest energy hogs besides cars and trucks.

And guess where the extra purchase prices for these CFLs will wind up? In the pockets of Chinese manufacturers, because not a single CFL is produced in the US.

And it gets worse. As Chinese manufacturers add enough manufacturing capacity to produce ten times as many CFLs , they will need several new coal-fired power plants to run the new factories. This comes on top of the already breathtaking pace today of construction in coal fired electric power plants in China - at a clip of one new plant every week. Don't even think about asking about what kind of pollution control will be operating on those Chinese plants.

The great land of Oz has now banned incandescent bulbs, but has now decided to switch of analogue TV - so many people are now buying a Set Top Box so they can watch TV , which means another device to be left on stand by, or they go out and buy a stonking great plasma set with buit in digital tuner (which chews as much power as a fridge) - thus more than negating the savings in lighting

They do last

They last for years. I actually take mine with me when I move house. And the barely noticeable gradual brightening is a nice side effect for the eyes imo.

@Quirkafleeg

Yep - LED's are the next big thing, cheap, easy to make (I was a bit worried that they appear to use arsnic for one of the colours of LED's though).

Hell and hand cart will be hard to avoid it appears.

The trouble with CFL's......

... Is in the amount of *unwanted* Radio-Frequency interference that they generate.

All this high frequency switching that is built in apparently sends the broad band of radio interference into neighboring AM radios, and the radio has to be swamped with a legitimate Broadcast signal to mask the interference.

I have got the same problem with our Microwave - and its solid state switching; it just ruins AM reception - even after snapping on Ferrite chokes over the power cable.

Thanks to the "British Bucket Company" - as Kenny Everett called the BBC in a fit of pique - and their engineering consultancy - Hong Kong has mostly AM coverage for English language programs, whilst the Cantonese almost completely smothers the FM band with multiple channels of the same stuff.

CFL interference has driven me to listen to Internet music station 4BH - & I only listen to RTHK news for a few minutes on any day.

Super bright LEDs

First off, I've replaced my old 100W equivalent energy saving bulbs with the new 'Mr Whippy' swirly types. The new bulbs are much brighter and get to full brightness within a second or two. I've only had one, older style, energy saving bulb fail on me. The replaced bulbs are in my cupboard, as spares.

However - super bright LEDs?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/7162606.stm

So therefore the future does indeed look bright.

The only old style bulbs I still need are for my lava lamp, my cooker, my fridge, my Christmas tree and my G-Plan cabinets. As soon as energy saving versions are available I'll swap to them.