Recent items:
Builb ban starts Jan. 1 (from Canada)
Beginning January 1, there will be a ban on the (75W and 100W) incandescent light bulbs, followed by a ban of the 40 watt to 60 watt bulbs on December 31, 2014.
The incandescent ain’t dead yet.
Note 1: “Advanced Lighting Technologies has introduced a light bulb that Edison would recognize and envy, called the 2X Bulb, which greatly exceeds the 2007 law’s efficiency requirements while costing only slightly more than the ones currently disappearing from store shelves.”
Note 2: “Of the four billion sockets estimated in the United States, three-fourths of them are still filled with incandescent bulbs.”
Congressional Republicans act to restore incandescents – it won’t work (says the Washington Post)
“This is just a messaging amendment for [Republicans in the] House to say they made the Senate take this thing,” said a senior Democratic congressional aide. “It practically, at least in the short term, really doesn’t make any difference, because everyone’s following these rules anyway.”
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EleBlog take: The law banning incandescent bulbs — passed in 2007 and signed by one of those Bush guys — is in effect. You will soon be unable to buy a 40W or 60W incandescent light bulb. The advice from EleBlog: If you see ‘em, buy ‘em and put them into stock. Our reasoning:
a. You can pay almost nothing for a bulb to stick in a socket — or you can pay nearly $10 for an LED. Yes, the long-term economics of the LED are great. But we live in the present.
b. The amount of energy saved will vary with the user. Some will not find it possible to equip an entire house with LEDs. You might put LEDs in places where the lights are always on . . . and incandescents in the places where you want to enjoy high-quality light.
c. LEDs are electronic devices. Incandescents are not. If there are power outages or power quality problems in the area in which you live, this might end up mattering. If a power surge blows out 5 of your $10 light bulbs one stormy night . . . you are going to be out $50.
d. There was (in 2006-7) a lot of crap about incandescent light bulbs adding heat to the environment and being wasteful (you have to get rid of the heat on a summer day). I live in the Washington DC area. I drove by a bank clock/temperature display yesterday that said 3 (THREE) . . . and it wasn’t giving the time. Unless you live in So. California, Florida, a hot dry area of Texas, or Hawaii — the added heat might be welcome.
e. The government’s action in banning the incandescent makes no sense, in any way you analyze it. It’s not like more efficient dishwashers. A dishwasher delivers a valued service — clean dishes. Ditto a refrigerator.
But humans SWIM IN LIGHT. We live in it. The introduction of electric light (beginning in the 1880s, with the coming of distributed electrical power) changed how humans live.
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FINALLY, to get personal:
I’m sitting in my office. It’s around 430AM, there is no natural light avaialble.
There are 6 light bulbs burning right now. I’ve got another 4 that can be added, if need be.
These are incandescent bulbs. They are on a great deal of the time. They rarely burn out. I paid probably less than $5 for the group. That’s right — below $5.00 for 10 light bulbs, all together. If one burns out, I’ll take another incandescent (I have a bunch in storage) and screw it in.
The heat they are adding to my environment is welcome. It’s 8 degrees right now, according to Weather.com, where I live. I understand there’s a lot of snow in Philly and NYC and other Eastern Seaboard places . . . and probably cold there. “Heat” is appreciated in these environments, generally speaking, starting at least at Halloween and running at least through Easter.
To replace the incandescents I now have burning (or waiting to provide service) with LEDs, I’ll need to pull a $100 bill out of my pocket. If just one burns out, I’ll be furious. I won’t have $10 LEDs in storage, so I would have to make a trip to the Lowe’s or Home Depot to get another.
None of this makes sense to me. NOW, it might make sense to you — fine. But why does what makes sense to you have to become a law? I’m a vegetarian, for chrissake — have been since 1978. I DON’T TELL YOU WHAT TO EAT, DO I?
Why is the government telling me how to light my workspace? As a former liberal Democrat, I can’t come up with the answer now — and I couldn’t in 2007, when this was a “hot” issue.
TO THE POINT: I am a “former liberal Democrat” for a number of reasons . . . and this is one of them.
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