Trump Administration Dims Rule On Energy Efficient Lightbulbs (npr.org) 428
An anonymous reader shares a report: If it's been a few years since you shopped for a lightbulb, you might find yourself confused. Those controversial curly-cue ones that were cutting edge not that long ago? Gone. (Or harder to find.) Thanks to a 2007 law signed by President George W. Bush, shelves these days are largely stocked with LED bulbs that look more like the traditional pear-shaped incandescent version but use just one-fifth the energy. A second wave of lightbulb changes was set to happen. But now the Trump administration wants to undo an Obama-era regulation designed to make a wide array of specialty lightbulbs more energy efficient.
At issue here are bulbs such as decorative globes used in bathrooms, reflectors in recessed lighting, candle-shaped lights and three-way lightbulbs. The Natural Resources Defense Council says that, collectively, these account for about 2.7 billion light sockets, nearly half the conventional sockets in use in the U.S. At the very end of the Obama administration, the Department of Energy decided these specialty bulbs should also be subject to efficiency requirements under the 2007 law. The lighting industry objected and sued to overturn the decision. [...] NEMA argued that Congress never intended for the law to apply to all these other lightbulbs. After President Trump took office the Energy Department agreed and proposed to reverse the agency's previous decision. Critics say if the reversal is finalized it will mean higher energy bills for consumers and more pollution.
At issue here are bulbs such as decorative globes used in bathrooms, reflectors in recessed lighting, candle-shaped lights and three-way lightbulbs. The Natural Resources Defense Council says that, collectively, these account for about 2.7 billion light sockets, nearly half the conventional sockets in use in the U.S. At the very end of the Obama administration, the Department of Energy decided these specialty bulbs should also be subject to efficiency requirements under the 2007 law. The lighting industry objected and sued to overturn the decision. [...] NEMA argued that Congress never intended for the law to apply to all these other lightbulbs. After President Trump took office the Energy Department agreed and proposed to reverse the agency's previous decision. Critics say if the reversal is finalized it will mean higher energy bills for consumers and more pollution.
Solution looking for a problem? (Score:5, Interesting)
However, modern LED bulbs are not as reliable as an early models. I have very first Phillips LED bulb that was sold, it cost almost 80$ when it was new and it still works. About a year ago I purchased 20$ LED bulb and noticed it already intermittently fails to light. Such lack of reliability is a significant e-waste issue.
Re:Solution looking for a problem? (Score:5, Informative)
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Sylvania LED bulbs seem to be especially unreliable. Are they a bad player or is this new normal?
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I've had mixed results, especially with older Sylvania and Philips, which at the time were $30 a bulb. Those older bulbs were used in medium to light traffic areas and began flickering after about 5 years. I have some Cree bulbs that are nearly 6 years old now that are used in high traffic areas and have had no issues. I also have a highly used vanity that burned out a Philips in 2 years - the three incandescent bulbs still in it outlasted the Philips, but they eventually all died . It now actually has 4 ne
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I also have a highly used vanity that burned out a Philips in 2 years - the three incandescent bulbs still in it outlasted the Philips
The secret to keeping CFL or LED bulbs from dying when used in frequent on/off areas is to just leave them on. We have a rule that the restroom light once turned on by the first user in the evening stays on until bedtime. The mini candle-flame shaped CFLs installed there have lasted long enough that I've lost track. It's the flipping on and off that kills them early. Since they only use 5 watts, leaving them on a few hours is not a problem.
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Holy crap, I somehow forgot this age-old wisdom... damn it. Thank you for the reminder. I've been killing myself because the CFL light in my bathrooms are a REAL BITCH to change. They are part of the vent system, and I have to literally unhook the entire fixture, bring it down, unhook again, unplug the electric wires, then bring the whole thing outside to pry the lightbulb out and replace. I've broken at least one bulb because it is so hard to get out. All the while, I fanatically turn them off ASAP thinkin
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Actually the circuitry is the primary failure mode in overwhelming majority of LEDs. Which is why most modern LEDs will have "x hours OR x times switched on" in their specs.
Typical LED failure mode is slow dimming as they age. Typical circuitry failure mode is catastrophic failure of it not turning on any more. This is why LED failure is rare, as gradual dimming is not catastrophic.
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Ding ding ding, this is correct.
Does it matter if the LED itself or the drive electronics dies? In either case, you're replacing the bulb. In neither case is anyone except a real diehard electrical nerd going to open the bulb up to see, nor will there be any significant amount of repair going on.
TFS has one part almost right: "Critics say if the reversal is finalized it will mean higher energy bills for consumers and more pollution." That's true only if consumers choose to use less efficient or higher polluting products. They can choose
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You used to be able to buy long-lasting incandescent bulbs for slightly more and they did last longer.
They were also less efficient.
During ordinary operation, the tungsten of the filament evaporates; hotter, more-efficient filaments evaporate faster. Because of this, the lifetime of a filament lamp is a trade-off between efficiency and longevity. [wikipedia.org]
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You used to be able to buy long-lasting incandescent bulbs for slightly more and they did last longer.
They also used more energy per lumen.
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Back in the day, electric companies gave out free replacements for light bulbs to get you to use elctricity. These bulbs lasted longer, like an old rotary bakelite phone at your grandma's, because the company didn't want to replace it on its dime.
Then Phillips sued for restraint of trade, and that was that.
Anyway, it's old hat for an outgoing administration to jack up a costly regulation as it walks out the door so the following administration has no choice but roll it back and take the heat. Clinton did
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They do that by design. If LED lightbulbs don't have an MTBF similar to old incandescent bulbs then the manufacturers stand to lose a lot of money. So they are intentionally made like crap. Everyone thought that with LEDs we wouldn't have to change lightbulbs anymore. That was naive. Incandescent bulbs can last much longer than what we were used to as well. But there is no money in it
Just looking at a standard 60 watt replacement soft white Cree led light bulb, they have a 10 year 100% satisfaction guaranteed warranty https://creebulb.com/warranty/ [creebulb.com]
There is no possibility of this being sustainable with a mtbf similar to the old incandescent light bulbs (about 1000 hours) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
If you really believe what you are saying you'd be short selling Cree stock like crazy, and somehow I seriously doubt you are.
Re:Solution looking for a problem? (Score:4, Insightful)
Just looking at a standard 60 watt replacement soft white Cree led light bulb, they have a 10 year 100% satisfaction guaranteed warranty https://creebulb.com/warranty/ [creebulb.com]
They require a receipt to actually make a claim. How many people are going to bother to keep paperwork on every light bulb in their house for ten years?
Companies can offer extraordinarily long warranties when they can be reasonably confident that only a small proportion of customers will go to the trouble of making a claim.
The OP is wrong in that they don't need the MTBF to be as low as for incandescents (since LED bulbs still cost quite a bit more than incandescents), but anyone who believes that it's going to be ten years is living in a fantasy world.
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Sure there is. Well, okay, not literally the same as an incandescent which would burn out in a couple months but when was the last time you actually USED a 10-20yr warranty on something that didn't cost thousands of dollars? For that matter, when was the last time you tried to use such a warranty and had it work?
The devil is in the fine print. First, 80% of people will never try to use the warranty. They'll just buy a new bulb when one burns out in 2-3yrs. Having a 10yr warranty is great but actually still
Re:Solution looking for a problem? (Score:5, Informative)
Try IKEA bulbs. They sell them really cheaply and they've been reliable so far, with good quality light as well. We use them in our rental properties where they are used hard in the common areas.
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LED bulbs went through the cost reduction/reliability curve.
Started out expensive but reliable and well engineered. Got cheap and unreliable, but then they figured out what the common failure modes were and fixed them, and now some of the cheap ones like IKEA are good.
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Are LEDs safe?
A minimal amount of research should make you highly suspicious of any claims made by dr jack https://jackkruse.com/store/ [jackkruse.com]
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Burden of proof is on the extraordinary claim. If "LED are deadly" then we should see that in health outcomes n countries starting when LED bulbs became popular there. If we don't see that, then you are likely a fool.
Re:Solution looking for a problem? (Score:4, Insightful)
"The burden of proof of safety are on those introducing the novelty."
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/burden-of-proof
The burden of proof is is on Jack Kruse who is making these claims. If he'd proven his claim then there would be a burden on the manufacturer to prove their product is safe.
"When unsure, defaulting to Nature may be the safer bet."
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-nature
Nature is a set of random outcomes. Being natural confers no tendency to be better, safer, or to have better outcomes. Also, humans are natural and the electrical properties exploited to produce LED lighting is also natural. The most natural light would be sunlight, which burns you and damages your DNA, causing aging and cancer.
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Am I wrong to consider energy efficiency problem with light bulbs largely solved? LED bulb are affordable and efficient. Is there anything else left to do?
Maybe it's just me, or the bulb(s) I've tried, but the light from LED bulbs seems more harsh -- for lack of a better word -- than from CFL or incandescent bulbs. Perhaps it's because of something like this: The scientific reason you don’t like LED bulbs — and the simple way to fix them [theconversation.com].
Harsh LED bulbs? (Score:5, Informative)
the light from LED bulbs seems more harsh
I personally find "daylight" bulbs very harsh, and I'm wondering if you got one of those. They are slightly brighter than "warm" bulbs but I don't like the color.
Ironically we say "warm" bulbs for bulbs with a lower color temperature. Color temperature is measured using the number of degrees that an ideal black-body radiator would be to glow at that color. "warm" bulbs are 2700K, and "daylight" bulbs are 5000K. The hotter color temperature means the light is shifted toward blue, so it's brighter. The "warm" temperature is less bluish. (We are used to fire being considered warm, and it's only red-hot; blue-hot is hotter. But ice looks bluish so I guess we think bluish colors are cooler.)
I have Cree brand tube bulbs that replace fluorescent tubes and they are 3000K color temperature. I like 3000K; the "warm" temperature of 2700K seems kind of yellowish to me. I found that Cree has some 3000K bulbs on the Home Depot web site (I've never seen them in a store) and I plan to try buying some.
Also, bulbs have a metric called "CRI", which I believe is "Color Rendering Index". A CRI rating of 100 is theoretically exactly as nice as sunlight. Higher is better. The most expensive Cree bulbs have CRI of over 90. Your "harsh" bulb may have a low CRI.
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>"I have Cree brand tube bulbs that replace fluorescent tubes and they are 3000K color temperature. I like 3000K; the "warm" temperature of 2700K seems kind of yellowish to me. I found that Cree has some 3000K bulbs on the Home Depot web site (I've never seen them in a store) and I plan to try buying some."
Agreed. I am a warm-white person for home use, generally. This has always meant around 2700K. I don't like "daylight" bulbs (5K) at all (except at work and in the garage). However, I have been able
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Consumers are just starting to grasp color temperature, perhaps they can't handle CRI yet.
It's on the box but it's in the fine print. I haven't seen anyone make a big deal about CRI as such. I read about it when doing my homework before investing in LED bulbs.
I did a web search and found a page that goes into some detail. It has some great examples of how the CRI isn't perfect... it shows one light with a CRI of 80 whose spectrum has three strong peaks, so it passes the test but won't look very good in n
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Initially, I thought I liked ~3500K best. Over time, I realized ~2500-2700K significanty relaxed me, and I leave them there, now.
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Not true. LEDs actually have a much more uniform spectrum [soundandvision.com] than CFLs. That's because the light you see is really coming from phosphors that absorb the (often ultraviolet) light from the LED and emit a broad spectrum.
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Obvious solution: Buy them online, after reading the reviews.
I buy mine from Amazon, and only if they have at least 4.5 stars after several hundred reviews.
No problems so far.
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They did the same thing to the curly Q bulbs. I still have two Phillips bulbs that still work after 20 years of daily use screwed into a vibrating nearly dead Genie Screw Drive garage door opener.
A scam happened somewhere.
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Some people have found that LED bulbs interfere with the RF communications between the remote and the garage door opener.
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But overall there are no good reason to use old fashions light bulbs. And in the EU production is not allowed since September 2012.
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>"Am I wrong to consider energy efficiency problem with light bulbs largely solved? LED bulb are affordable and efficient. Is there anything else left to do? "
You are not wrong. The market is taking care of the "specialty" bulbs just fine. I can walk into any store now and find LED versions for almost all those bulbs. It look the invention of the "LED Filament" type bulbs, and wham- the floodgates opened. Clear bulbs with small bases and real filaments that project light in all the right places. It
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They sort of work for some use cases. They are not remotely a good replacement, though, for a whole host of reasons, from spectrum difference
Re:Solution looking for a problem? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd like to know when your numbers came from. Because the age of those numbers is quite important.
However, it can help to force new standards. Even by your numbers (which again, need more detail as to when they are referring to) it lowers the total electricity usage in the US by 5%. That doesn't linearly mean that we produce 5% less pollution. It means that some coal burning plants might get shut down. And that makes a difference. Because, ultimately, plants don't tend to be turned off and on willy-nilly, because turning them on is hugely expensive. So saving energy can have outsized effects.
Also, making LED bulbs required was the only way to get them bought at scale, which was the only way to get them made at scale, which was the best way to make them cheap, which means I bought them, which has saved me money over time.
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> Am I wrong to consider energy efficiency problem with light bulbs largely solved?
No, you're not wrong.
> Is there anything else left to do?
Yes, energy efficiency isn't the entire problem:
1. The first batch of LED bulbs were extremely harsh [decorative...covers.com] / "cold" on the eyes due to producing more blue light compared to an incandescent. Here is a graph [sunlightinside.com] showing how LEDs reproduced an extremely narrow band of intensity on the spectrum. Notice how incandescent are similar to sunset -- they are easier on the eyes then
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$20 for an LED bulb? Unless it's a really special bulb, you're over paying. At my local grocery they cost just a few dollows and I've had no problems with them. My house is full of them, and I think I've only had maybe one fail ever.
Of COURSE Trump wants to overturn it... (Score:3, Informative)
...it has nothing to do with the benefit to either the consumer or the industry and is totally about trying to erase anything Obama did as a way of getting his petty revenge.
Re:Of COURSE Trump wants to overturn it... (Score:5, Informative)
Let's not forget when Obama tried to work out compromises with Republicans on health care by picking a Republican plan, taking months to vote on Republican amendments, and then they still all voted against it. When the GOP leader said their #1 priority was to make Obama a one term president, they weren't really looking to compromise.
Re:Of COURSE Trump wants to overturn it... (Score:4, Informative)
...Obama tried to work out compromises with Republicans on health care by picking a Republican plan, taking months to vote on Republican amendments...
The Republican amendments were not in the final bill. The final bill was made by rewriting a totally unrelated bill, and less than a week elapsed between the introduction of this final bill and its being voted into law in the Senate (on a 60-39 straight party lines vote). Please read this history by the Washington Post's fact checker guy Glenn Kessler.
History Lesson: How the Democrats pushed Obamacare through the Senate [washingtonpost.com]
But you said that President Obama, specifically, "tried to work out compromises" with the Republicans. Could you please show me some kind of news story or something where he told Harry Reid not to do what Harry Reid did? I don't remember anything like that.
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As others have said, I'm going to point out that most of what you said is outright garbage.
I'm also going to point out that due to the way the Senate in the US is laid out, the members in the Senate likely do not represent the will of the populace as accurately as they should. Your final paragraph -- especially, "they are even more the voice of the people" is a bunch of bullshit.
California and New York are large. Between them they get four senators. Combined, they are 8 times the size of Kentucky and Kansas
Re:Of COURSE Trump wants to overturn it... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's also bullshit. Hear me out.
With the current setup, low-population states have more control over the Senate. This usually means more rural states. So, rural states have more power over urban states in one of the houses of congress. So, a minority of the US has control over the majority.
If we were to make the Senate work like the House, high-population states would have more control. Guess what? This flips, obviously. A majority of the US has control over the rest.
And guess what? In the past couple of elections, Republicans should have taken neither the presidency nor control of the House. You know why? That's exactly how the votes went. The US as a whole didn't want want the Republican party to take anything. Why should low-population states have control over the larger ones? If you make senators regional across state lines, there will be more senators for higher-population areas.
Should this really change? I refuse to answer that at this time. The problem isn't so much the setup of the senate. One party has been actively attacking the system for a long time and no one has noticed until the fat orange fuck in the White House.
And I ask: why does a minority of the US have control over a majority? This boils down to two problems: gerrymandering and a party corrupt enough to not give a fuck about the people who voted for them, that also seems to have a problem with allowing people to vote freely. As for gerrymandering, yep, both parties do it. Unfortunately, there's ample evidence pointing to Republicans going to all-out war with the concept. REDMAP is a thing. Google that. I mentioned 41-59. Or something. In North Carolina. A federal judge ruled it unconstitutional. Voter ID laws also fall under this same bullshit. A federal judge ruled that some of those "targeted African Americans with surgical precision" in I forget which state. Why does one party seem to want to prevent people from voting?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Why the fuck does this video exist? He's admitting that the less people vote, the more Republicans win. This is because the people least likely to vote are minorities. Because they become impoverished. Because they get sent to jail. Because voter ID laws target them. Because less polling places exist. Because wait times go up. Because they can't take off work to go vote. Because they can't afford to take a day off. Because they can't drive there themselves. Because the bus or other transportation costs too much. Quite simply, the Republican party doesn't want them to vote. I walked my ass into a polling place in November 2016 and didn't wait at all. I live in a good neighborhood. There were videos of lines down a fucking block. Eight hour waits. They shut down polling places for no good reason. The 2016 election set a participation record. It would have been even more astounding if Republicans weren't attacking voting rights.
If we solve the voting problems, one party will lose control for a long time. And it should, because it stopped representing the people a long fucking time ago.
"If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy." This is EXACTLY what is happening. The party is becoming irrelevant in the face of people recognizing the party is corrupt as fuck, is ignoring them, and the party at large is has abandoned the democratic process.
Do I sound pissed? You're damn right. Why the fuck is one party holding the country hostage when the people have clearly voted against it?
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If we were to make the Senate work like the House, high-population states would have more control. Guess what? This flips, obviously. A majority of the US has control over the rest.
If you "make the Senate work like the House" then what the hell is point of the Senate? The Senate was created to represent the states, the Congress was created to represent the population.
And guess what? In the past couple of elections, Republicans should have taken neither the presidency nor control of the House. You know why? That's exactly how the votes went. The US as a whole didn't [want] the Republican party to take anything.
Oddly, the number of Republican Senators increased in the 2018 election, yet you ignore that fact and focus on the smaller than average increase the Democrats enjoyed in the House.
Exaggeration (Score:5, Insightful)
Now we're going to have to generate about 25 large coal-burning power plants' worth of extra electricity if this rollback goes through
They assume everybody is going to remove the LED lights, and replace them with incandescents ?
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Of course they do. And they ignore the cost of manufacturing the LED bulbs. Incandescents are ultra low impact. A bit of glass, a bit of tungsten, basic bitch metal to fit the socket, and a dab of solder. LEDs require PWM controllers, often other microprocessors, expensive metals, and hell, often a fucking fan. All wrapped in plastic. (Even the fucking Hue bulbs switched from glass for the bulb to plastic!)
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" LEDs require PWM controllers, often other microprocessors, expensive metals, and hell, often a fucking fan."
Which bullshit ones are you buying? Every single LED in my home is constant current driven, has a tiny bit of bitch metal for a heatsink (excepting my aquarium LED which is extruded aluminum,) and many have lasted over a decade now. No fans. No microprocessors. No flicker. No headaches.
Sounds like you don't bother doing research on your bulbs before buying. Oh, and all my non-specialty LEDs were $0.
LED All the Way (Score:5, Interesting)
CFL light bulbs sucked in every way imaginable. Not only were they bad for outdoor use (slow to light up), I never had one that lived up to its supposed 7 year lifespan. Then you had to package them up and bring them to a store to dispose of them. I wonder how many of those are lying busted in landfills across the country, leaking mercury into the water table?
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Did you ever bother to read how they arrive at that figure? It's not 7 years on continuously, it's on 8 hours a day and off the rest.
Yes, I leave all of the light bulbs on in my house continuously. Thanks for the pro-tip!
Re:LED All the Way (Score:5, Interesting)
Your HVAC is the big energy consumer in your house.
And a lot of that power is spent pumping out the heat from the lights. So if the lights result in less heat, the HVAC runs less and also uses less power. Win-win.
Standard incandescents run about 2.2% efficiency. So for one unit of light energy they burn over 45 units of power. It all ends up as heat for the HVAC to pump out on cooling days.
Modern LEDs run about 1/10th the power for a given amount of light. (The 1/5th of TFA is a couple years out of date.) Cutting your lighting power by a factor of 10 is a lot. (LEDs are now only a couple more doublings from emitting nothing but the light, with no waste.)
While cooling your lights is only part of an HVAC's work, it's a BIG part. (A resting person, for instance, only emits about 75 watts of heat, so even a single table lamp may be loading the HVAC more than a person.) That part is reduced proportion to the reduction in the heat from the lighting . HVACs in cooling mode have an Energy Efficiency Ratio in the ballpark of 3.3. So for every three watts of power you save on your lights, you save about another watt on HVAC power on cooling days.
S
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Problem with energy efficent specialty lights (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Problem with energy efficent specialty lights (Score:4, Informative)
Many specialty bulbs are very odd shapes. CFL and LED lights are difficult to fit into these shapes, and end up being highly unreliable. For what the special nature of these bulbs, the conventional style works more reliably.
Very odd? Most of them are round, round is not an odd shape. If they could fit a filament into it, with their space requirements etc., there should be no problem fitting an LED into one. I have LED candelabra bulbs which work quite well, is there a shape more awkward to fit into than those?
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I don't think fitting in the LEDs is the problem. It's fitting in the 120VAC - 5VDC converter to power the LEDs is the problem. You have a squeeze in "wall-wart" in every bulb.
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Other problem - directionality (Score:2)
We have a lot of recessed overhead lighting in our house, that uses rose larger flood bulbs.
I have switched to LED bulbs for other purposes, but for the overhead fill lighting I've never been able to find a good LED replacement. The main problem is that they are pretty much all way, way too directional - they shine very brightly down instead of filling an area.
Eventually they may get there with good fill lighting but until then they need to keep the standard bulbs, it's not like the go out rapidly.
This story is ridiculous. (Score:2, Insightful)
Why is legislation defined as automatically meaning higher energy bills and more pollution? Aren't people free to buy the bulbs they want to buy? I have a whole bunch of candle-type LED bulbs; they're already on the market. I chose to buy them because of the energy savings of using them. Presumably, many more people will do the same. Regulation had nothing to do with my purchasing them.
Why should anybody care about what the government says about this when you can already make the choice yourself? Regulation
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This is not case of "externalized costs" either. The consumer pays for the electricity if he chooses a less efficient bulb. This is the sort of situation where the market works well.
Some lightbulbs are on whenever I'm home and awake. Those were quickly replaced with LEDs. Some are really just decorative, and seldom on. Energy efficiency isn't important there, but the look of the light is, and LED doesn't always work.
Re:This story is ridiculous. (Score:4, Insightful)
Where do you live where all of the external costs of electricity are reflected by its price?
Boot theory of economics at play (Score:3)
The solution to this use
Re:This story is ridiculous. (Score:5, Insightful)
The point of the legislation is to save energy and reduce CO2 emissions by getting rid of incandescent bulbs, - which the original legislation did very effectively for standard sized bulbs. If that legislation hadn't passed, you'd still shelves full of incandescent bulbs and people would still be buying them.
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Because LED lightbulbs would not have become a thing unless the government started forcing efficiency rules. The efficiency rules first caused corporations to create CFLs, which sucked; then LED bulbs, which didn't.
Not even close. CFLs first became available way back in 1980, and designs date back as far back as the mid-1970s. That's long before any government light bulb efficiency standards. In fact, they predate the entire Energy Star program by more than a decade.
The main driver of LED lighting was not residential lighting or government mandates, but rather the need for more power-efficient backlighting for mobile electronics, where battery life matters a great deal. By the time the U.S. government got around t
Fighting a rearguard action (Score:2, Insightful)
Why do people hate LED lights (Score:4, Insightful)
My whole house has been LED for years. I've had zero issues and only had to replace 1 bulb. That issue wasn't that the LED failed, but the smart components failed and I coudn't use the app to control it. My house is fairly large for this area and the power company sends us averages every month. I'm always well under the power usage of houses in my area. I don't see any issues with quality of light as they now sell LED bulbs in different spectrums or even with adjustable spectrum. The cost is nominal you can get 24 60W equivalent bulbs now for $22.
This legislation was a good thing. It pushed manufactures to find a way to lower costs on LED bulbs and brought lower consumption of electrical use. Why change it?
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My whole house has been LED for years. I've had zero issues and only had to replace 1 bulb.
My house only has a 100A service and I was concerned that with my additional computers (way more than the previous owner had) that I'd be running into that limit. But the first thing I did was rip out all of his old fluorescent fixtures and swapped out a bunch of halogens for LEDs, and I've never even come close.
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My house only has a 100A service and I was concerned that with my additional computers.
Good news: newer computers are more energy efficient.
As for your service size, you need to know your square footage as well as: a/c?(minimum amperage), air handler + heat strips?(min amps), electric water heater?, electric range/oven/cooktop?, electric dryer?, any other fixed appliances?
With gas heat, dryer, range, and water heater, 100 amps might be overkill, yet be the smallest service allowed to be installed.
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"My whole house has been LED for years."
Mine is about 90% there. Some of the fixtures use halogen etc (the range hood, undercounter lighting, one of the bathrooms...) Almost everything else except a couple fixtures using edison style light bulbs are LED now. The edison bulbs are available in LED but do not look nearly as nice.
My main and still ongoing complaint with LED is that 50%+ of the lights in my home are dimmable. Other than a couple hallways and my office, pretty much everything is dimmable.
LED dimm
Only morons buy Trump bulbs (Score:2)
Look, give your money to the power company if you want, but you have to be crazy to be spending 4-5 times as much for electricity using old bulbs.
My electric bills are a shadow of their former self since replacing all my bulbs with modern LEDs, including dimmable ones.
Just in time (Score:2)
suffer little children (Score:2)
Suffer the children, for these shall become tomorrow's consumers of news for nerds. (Oh, really?)
———
I have one beef with energy-efficient lighting. The recessed sockets for the central lighting in my kitchen do a great job of preventing the glare of the bulb from meeting me at eye level.
But only the old-fashioned incandescent floods.
All the replacement LED floods I've examined place the bright, light-emittin
And you wonder... (Score:2)
Too late for me... (Score:2)
Possibly for personal benefit? (Score:2)
Could this benefit Trump via his ownership of a collection of energy-wasting shitbox buildings? [nydailynews.com] Perhaps through reduced retrofit costs, or simply greater aesthetic flexibility (energy efficiency be damned?)
Protectionism at its best (Score:2)
The reason why the "Lighting Industry" wants these rolled back is that the US manufacturers didn't re-tool their factories to produce LED lights, and now Chinese manufacturers have the bulk of the sales. They've had a couple years to know this is coming for this second class of lamps/bulbs, and *still* didn't re-tool.
This does not benefit the consumer in any way, it's strictly a bailout for the dinosaur bulb manufacturers.
LED upgrade is still an option (Score:2)
Consumers still have the option to upgrade to the more energy efficient ones. Market forces of supply and demand will prevail.
Re:What will it take.. (Score:5, Insightful)
...to stop these people?
I honestly have no idea who you mean by "these people".
Do you mean:
1. Obamatards who imposed silly rules?
2. Trumptards who don't care about pollution?
3. Stupid consumers incapable of understand long vs short term costs?
4. Greedy light bulb companies wanting short-lifetime bulbs?
5. Slashdot editors who post silly articles?
6. Frist-posters?
Please clarify.
Re: (Score:2)
I can't speak for that guy but... yes?
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"Have LEDs at home, not saving me any money based on my hours of usage per day. Now, if they last 10 years, then they start paying off.."
Sure it does for the same reason it saves those corporations tons of money. The power that they don't bother metering in residences still has to be generated and still costs money to generate... the power company isn't exactly known for charity, they certainly aren't going to take that cost out of THEIR pockets. Of course they aren't going to stop making you pay for it eit
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Voting
Which after this week and the fall out of the Mueller report and the spectacular flameout of AOC's "Green" new deal in the Senate soon to come is looking to be a pretty tall hill to climb.
Don't be too sure. Trump just put health care in play. I doubt he'll get votes by withdrawing protection for pre-existing conditions.
And although Trump may have been left unscathed by Mueller's probe, he is still facing lots of other legal issues.
Re: What will it take.. (Score:4, Interesting)
It isn't clear Trump is left unscathed by Mueller. We don't see the full report.
Put yourself in Mueller's shoes. If he issued an indictment of Trump, the right-wing nuts would froth at the mouth...well, more so than they already do. And his boss has already declared Presidents are above the law. So by failing to issue an indictment in the way he did, i.e., evidence on both sides, he makes Barr decide not to indict and now Barr has to defend being a toadie...my apologies to toads.
And Mueller seemed to do a fair job of spawning off other investigations that were not in his direct purview. So now Barr has to contend with the rank and file knowing what a sleeze Trump is and attempt to bottle up those investigations.
In my opinion, Barr got the job because the Republicans needed a patsy and he was pleasured to oblige.
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Fair points. I should have said Trump was left unscathed by William Barr. And yes, we most definitely do need to see the report to get the full picture. I predict it will contain stuff that both sides will try to weaponize.
As for how/why Barr got the AG job, I'm not the only one who thinks he basically auditioned for it. [nationalreview.com]
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It's pretty horrifying how many people are so deep into TDS, that they are willing to say "we should go back several centuries on progress on judicial system and adopt presumption of guilt", just to avoid having to face being wrong for two years.
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And although Trump may have been left unscathed by Mueller's probe
All we've seen so far is a summary written by the guy who literally covered up Iran-Contra. And even that summary explicitly states the report did not exonerate Trump:
While this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him
Btw, one of Barr's "interesting" legal positions is that you can not be charged with obstructing justice unless you can be charged with the crime you obstructed justice to hide. Which would seem to fit extremely well with that quote. It's also an insane opinion that isn't backed by anything other than convenience to the powerful.
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"It's also an insane opinion that isn't backed by anything other than convenience to the powerful."
How is that an insane position for something like the alleged obstruction didn't impact the outcome of the investigation? I could see your point in a case where the charge can't be proven because of some ongoing obstruction or the destruction of evidence but for something like this it is bit like charging someone for breaking out of prison when they are subsequently proven not guilty. The crime was locking the
Re: What will it take.. (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, I agree with all of that, and have made similar points in other stories. Please see my reply to gtall above.
Barr's claim that there was no obstruction because there was no crime of conspiracy is ridiculous. Tell that to Martha Stewart, who was not convicted for insider trading, but was convicted for obstructing the investigation of her alleged insider trading.
And it gets better with Barr. He maintains that the President cannot obstruct justice. Not hard to see how he got the nod from the WH to be the new AG.
Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)
I prefer it when people actually post what's happening in the headline instead of trying to use stupid puns.
Ya, but they used the words "Trump" and "Dim" in the same sentence, so ... :-)
FYI (Score:2)
(And just in case you miss it, I'm being sarcastic.. )
But for those who really wonder about this:
I thought we should all be driving electric cars because they where emission free... So how does using more electricity for light bulbs create pollution when charging my car doesn't?
Electric cars are emission free where they operate, but fuel-driven power plants that make the electricity to charge them, of course, are not.
However: Fuel-driven power plants can run hotter and scavenge better, resulting in a lot l
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(And just in case you miss it, I'm being sarcastic.. )
And an idiot, just in case you missed it.
That's it? A personal insult is all you got to argue with here?
There is one thing that being an electrical engineer has helped me with is seeing the absolute hogwash that gets said about electricity production in terms of "green" energy or "zero emissions" for your electric cars. The truth of industrial scale electrical energy production is that it's a dirty business no matter how you do it. If you think you are saving the planet by driving one, you are at best misinformed or at worst actively lying abo
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IMHO, if you want to do the least amount of emitting when you drive, you need to remember that nearly 70% of domestic electrical energy production in the USA comes from fossil fuels, including the energy you used to charge that battery.
Actually it's 63.5% (for 2018.) [eia.gov] Natural gas provided 35.1% and coal provided 27.4%. Coal has been trending downward since 2008 -- largely due to market forces, not regulations. Nuclear has stayed pretty constant, but renewables have been trending upward.
Somehow I wonder if we'd be better off burning Natural Gas in internal combustion engines over burning it to charge my EV's battery given transmission losses, conversion losses and charge/discharge efficiency and losses you have to over come...
You may have a point, but let's review. Natural gas is relatively cheap and abundant, and while hardly carbon-neutral, it is better on the environment than coal or oil. It will be hard to talk people out of using it, and it may make more sense to burn it in
Re: (Score:3)
I am a EE graduate turned computer programmer in the 25+ years of my professional career. I've worked in many industries like the arts (theater lights and sound), aviation, telecommunications, defense and held all sorts of positions and title from trainee to Principle Engineer, from junior developer to Development Manager. I've done a lot of related stuff because I have a "I'll try" attitude and the ability to work independently or in groups. I get stuff done, on time, within budget and I don't require a
Re: (Score:2)
IMHO, you use LED bulbs where they make sense, let the market drive this.
I actually have been slowly moving my whole house over to LED bulbs *because* they generate less heat. My primary consumer of electrical power is the Air Conditioning, so I benefit from the lower heat dissipation two ways. If one lives in a colder climate, the older light bulbs might be a good option.
So as LED's come down in price (and they have recently) more of them will be used, limiting electrical power consumption growth, maki
Re: (Score:2)
Mines the same. But it's a rental and I can't replace fixtures. And cost effective LEDs can't be put in enclosed fixtures because they generate too much heat and shorten the life of the bulb. I don't know why tits thought they don't generate heat. They make tons
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Eh. Haha on the autocorrect making it "tits"
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Clever remark. More of the same critical thinking. Incandescents emit light and heat, and many homes are increasingly heated by electricity, emission free. Why ban incadescents, using a fraction of power compared to heating, with the rest heating your home and thus reducing your heating bills? Letâ(TM)s follow the money to understand obamas buying cartels of Philips and Co types. Profit for incandescents few cents per bulb. But scared with global warming guilt, you are happily paying $20 per short-lived LED bulb instead to 50 cents per incandescent bulb, satisfied that the planet Earth would not overheat tomorrow. Meanwhile Philips and Co are going laughing all the way to their bank.
Stick it to the man and get $0.99 led bulbs at ikea https://www.ikea.com/us/en/cat... [ikea.com]
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I'm sure all those crypto-miners have something to say about that!
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Yes but not everyone just puts lights in the ceiling you know. Some of us - me for example - live in 150 year old farm houses which were not originally electrified. We don't have wiring or light fixtures in ceilings or walls for that matter because they are in many cased not stud walls like in a modern home. So we have outlets usually located in floors; and use lamps.
Guess what resistance heat at waist level isn't as bad a away to heat a room. When its your reading lamp near your face its actually a pre
Re: (Score:2)
Is "curly-cue" [sic] the American way of saying compact fluorescent or CFL?
Yes; "curly fry" bulb is another one I've heard. Yuk Yuk!
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
This argument might be persuasive if Trump hadn't just seized the power of the purse from Congress.
Re: (Score:3)
This argument might be persuasive if Trump hadn't just seized the power of the purse from Congress.
Wow, your analysis is so insightful!
President Trump is only doing what Congress said he could - re-allocate certain funds for a declared emergency
So far $1BN has been re-assigned, out of a $3.5TN budget - that's hardly seizing "the power of the purse from Congress."