Constitutionality of light bulb ban questioned - Environmental Protection Agency must be called for a broken bulb

In alt.engineering.electrical Don Klipstein wrote: | In article , Joseph Meehan wrote: |>>

|>> So you are saying that in 10 years, I can still buy incandescent bulbs for |>> the few places I actually need them? |>

|> Who knows, a new technology may have come along and no one may be making |>them due to lack of a market. | | I expect CFLs to advance a little more, especially with gains in dimming | and maybe some models with CRI in the low-mid 90's rather than 82 (with a | compromise in light output).

What about spectral continuity? Are they going to even recognize the issue?

| I expect LEDs to continue their pace of advancement, increment by | increment in performance, cost, and new varieties. But as LED technology | has been incrementing itself along increment by increment, I expect that | to remain the story for the next 10-15 years. | LED technology appears to me to only be advancing about half as fast as | computer technology, maybe a little slower.

As CPU performance is forced to move to multiple process cores, software has a lot of catching up to do to make effective use of it. We'll be seeing a slowdown of what computers can do for several years.

| There are also metal halide lamps, another technology that has been | advancing somewhat and is still advancing, though not as fast as LEDs are | advancing.

How do they compare to FL/CFL?

| One area where LEDs (and to some extent in recent years other | technologies) are displacing incandescents is nightlights.

All my nightlights are red in color. I just use Christmas tree lights in them to achieve that. Red is nicer on the night vision, which is what I want the nightlights for. Once they start making LED nightlights in red, then I will buy (when I need more or need to replace).

| The old traditional model used a 7 watt incandescent, and often a shade | because 7 watt incandescents are rather bright for this job, and it takes | more effort to make an 120V incandescent of wattage much lower than 7 | watts - or at least it used to. | Past 15 years or so, 4 watt incandescent nightlight "bulbs" have been | common - still bright enough to usually deserve a shade.

I have the 4 watt ones. The nightlights are also the sensor type that cut off when there is light in the area.

| Now, there are many LED night lights available. With ineffeciencies of | safe voltage dropping at low cost, most current models of 120V LED night | lights are not more efficient than incandescents in photometric terms - | but they still achieve efficiency gains by having a spectrum more | favorable to making use of night vision when the lighting is dim (higher | "s/p ratio"), along with being dim enough to not need a shade. Power | consumption of these is mostly around 1/3 watt to 1 watt. | Better are green and blue models and the Feit Electric white C7 "bulb". | Most other LED light models using white LEDs will have light output | degrading significantly year-by-year or even a bit faster.

I want the red ones.

In alt.engineering.electrical James Sweet wrote: | | snipped-for-privacy@ipal.net wrote: |> In alt.engineering.electrical Andrew Gabriel wrote: |> | In article , |> | James Sweet writes: |> |> |> |> |> |>> |> |>> T8's were designed in Europe to retrofit into T12 fittings and |> |>> provide energy savings. That doesn't work with the control gear |> |>> used on US 120V mains, where I believe you require different |> |>> control gear for the T8's and T12's of the same length. |> |> |> |> |> |> A UK friend and I have discussed this at length and I've sent him some |> |> 4' T8 lamps to play with. As I recall, we concluded that US T8 lamps are |> |> electrically different than the UK lamps. |> | |> | Very likely -- they're different ratings too. A 4' T8 designed for |> | a 40W ballast on 220-240V is rated 36W. Your 4' T8 is 32W IIRC. |> | Likewise all the other T8 tube lengths are differently rated between |> | US and elsewhere. |> | |> |> They're 230mA and over here they all use electronic ballasts. |> | |> | They're designed for switchstart operation here (known as |> | preheat in the US). Of course, there are electronic ballasts |> | available for many years, but not when they first came out. |> |> I wonder what it would be like in the USA if we wired our fluorescent lights |> to 240 volts instead of 120 volts. Virtually all homes have it (or at least |> 208 volts). Of course we'd need 2-pole switches. But at least it's still |> only 120 volts shock potential relative to ground. |> | | | It would be like it is in most of Europe, choke ballasts with glowbottle | starters. A bit more efficient than our autotransformer ballasts, but | still less than modern electronic.

Would electronic ballast be the same efficiency on both voltage systems?

In alt.engineering.electrical Don Klipstein wrote: | In article , snipped-for-privacy@ipal.net wrote: |>In alt.engineering.electrical Paul M. Eldridge | wrote: | |>| Hi Phil, |>| |>| I'm not sure what wattage lamp you use, but if its light output |>| exceeds 2,600 lumens, it falls outside this legislation. For example, |>| a 150-watt Osram Sylvania A21 incandescent is rated at 2,780 lumens |>| (clear) and 2,640 lumens (soft white). |>

|>So just run this on one of this half-wave rectifying dimmers to cut the |>power in half and you have a nice warm 40 watt light that uses 75 watts. | | 150 watt incandescent with a diode consumes about 88 watts, give or take | a bit. The 2640-2780 lumens decreases to about 800-870 lumens (light | output of "standard", "soft white" and even 1500 hour, maybe "double life" | 60 watt incandescents).

What color temp?

In alt.engineering.electrical RFI-EMI-GUY wrote: | snipped-for-privacy@ipal.net wrote: |> In alt.engineering.electrical RFI-EMI-GUY wrote: |> |> | You are missing the point. If I buy gas from a Shell station and Shell |> | has decided to adulterate the fuel with a compound (ethanol) that saves |> | Shell money and returns less BTU energy content to the consumer. Shell |> | oil is receiving a direct benefit by immediate increased profit and |> | later by selling more of the adulterated product so that consumers can |> | continue on their crippled journey. I don't care what Shell paid for a |> | barrel of oil on the market, that is not the point. It is a flagrant rip |> | off, a criminal act that the Florida government is complicit with. If |> | the public fails to realize this, they are very ignorant, and perhaps |> | deserve what they get from their government and corporations who run the |> | government. |> |> So provide some proof that this addition of ethanol reduces the total energy |> per dollar AND emits the same level of pollution per mile driven. |> |> |> | Imagine if you went the store to buy a pound of hamburger, but the |> | butcher decides that to increase his bottom line, he will take away |> | about 2 ounces of beef and substitutes two ounces of wet sawdust. Would |> | you be "OK" with that? That is exactly what is happening here in Florida |> | and elsewhere with the gasoline. |> |> I can imagine a lot of things. I can imagine you are making all this up, too. |> Show some proof. |> | | Its simple; I have a ton of gasoline receipts from the period before and | after the Ethanol blend was mandated. I was suspicious after I started | noticing the fuel economy drop in my vehicle. I have monitored the gas | mileage and done the calculations. Its all very simple. The vehicle is | well maintained and I have an OBDII reader attached to the computer to | monitor gas economy and vehicle performance. Do your own research, | Google for gas mileage and Ethanol fuel and come to your own | conclusions. As far as pollution out the tailpipe, that is simple logic. | If I have to burn 12 gallons of fuel to go the same mileage as 10 | gallons once carried me and 90% of that fuel is gasoline and 10% is | ethanol, I have a worsened pollution situation in that I am now dumping | byproducts from the 10.8 gallons gasoline plus 1.2 gallons of ethanol. | | If you don't beleive me, look up the BTU energy of gasoline and Ethanol. | Ethanol has significantly less energy than gasoline.

So basically you are saying that because of the added ethanol, you have to burn 10.8 gallons of gasoline where once before you only needed to burn 10. If that 10.8 gallons does in fact produce the same pollution (maybe it is a different mix and doesn't) per gallon, then, yeah, there is an issue with it.

I already know ethanol has a lower energy per volume or weight. But the big questions are how it affects pollution and foreign oil dependency. If you have to burn 10.8 gallons of gas that is otherwise the same as the 10 gallons burned before, then there is an issue with it.

And that's even before we figure in the cost of producing the ethanol, and the impact on the economy of the higher price for certain food products.

The Colortone 50 and Chroma 50 fluorescent lamps have a CRI of 94. I don't think that phosphor has made it into CFLs though, the high power density of the compact lamps is too hard on the fluorogermanate phosphor used to get the true red on the high CRI lamps.

That may be true, however people have been saying that for at least the last 15 years and so far computing power in the average PC has increased by leaps and bounds every year.

Yes, there's very little loss in an electronic ballast and it doesn't vary much by line voltage.

In alt.engineering.electrical James Sweet wrote: | | |> |> As CPU performance is forced to move to multiple process cores, software |> has a lot of catching up to do to make effective use of it. We'll be |> seeing a slowdown of what computers can do for several years. |> | | | That may be true, however people have been saying that for at least the | last 15 years and so far computing power in the average PC has increased | by leaps and bounds every year.

But only recently the CPU speed increases have slowed down quite a bit and the advances are more in the form of more cores. The point being that the software doesn't take good advantage of more cores. That will change, but for a while not everything will.

More cores sure do help when running multiple simultaneous programs, which is far more prevalent than it was a few years back. Also load has shifted to coprocessors like the powerful GPUs on modern graphics cards. I'm not seeing any slowdown in the technological advancement. Processors are still getting faster, hard drive capacity is growing faster than ever, a $1,000 PC today provides performance far superior to high end workstations of 5-10 years ago. As for the increases in performance slowing down, I'll believe it when I see it.

They run cooler if you keep the speed a bit lower, and add cores.

IBM will be the winner. You'll see them in everything.

The dirty little secret behind sub-prime morgtages is that they were CAUSED by government regulation. The government required a significant percentage of banking and morgtage business to take place in "deprived" or "under-served" areas. Absence of a branch bank, for example, on a street where the only other retail services were hookers and dope-dealers was evidence sufficient of discrimination!

In many cases, the only way a lender could fluff up their percentage of minority business was to offer bizarre financial instruments. This they had to do to meet the requirements of the regulators who had set minimum minority participation requirements. To simply tell the regulators such antics were bad business would be met with the same retort as was given to Dagny Taggart when she pulled the rolling stock out of Mexico: "The deserve the best we have!"

True, and we can take advantage of their foolishness. If Bangladesh wants to subsidize the manufacture of sneakers by 6-year olds such that we end up with really swell tennis shoes for two bucks, then I'm all for it.

They were CAUSED by GREED!

Hi Don,

That's my overall impression too. To get into the '90s, the CCTs are all in the range of 5,000 to 7,000K, and while that may be perfectly acceptable for tropical climates, it's way too cold for residential use here in Canada. And you're right about the marketing hype; the folks who aggressively promote another emerging lighting technology must have all cut their teeth selling "full spectrum" fluorescents because they appear to be cut from the same cloth.

A CFL with a CRI of 90 to 95 and a CCT of 3,000 to 3,500K would be the ideal and I wouldn't mind paying a reasonable premium for the better colour rendering.

Cheers, Paul

Hi James,

One more to add to the linear list: the Philips TL930 and TL950 have a CCT of 3,000 and 5,000K respectively and a CRI of 95 and 98. I haven't any personal experience with either lamp, but from what I've read they're a good choice for colour critical applications.

See:

Cheers, Paul

f you post to =A0|

ASAP. =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0|

I just saw a frige on display with leds everywhere, the problem was the color rendition made everything an ugly blue grey, but Leds will get better as cfls have.

I like my old Philips TLD36W/92 here in Sweden. It still work perfect in my kitchen since 1990.

I like my old Philips TLD36W/92 here in Sweden. It still work perfect in my kitchen since 1990.

Perhaps true, but irrelevant.

I agree, but also irrelevant.

Agreed, but also irrelevant. The *point* is that bailing out those who made bad bets allows them another chance to do so and telegraphs a terrible message to everyone else. *THAT* is distorting the market.

Also true, but irrelevant.

...by those feeding off the national teat in Washington.