Posted on 09/08/2010 1:40:25 PM PDT by freespirited
WINCHESTER, VA. - The last major GE factory making ordinary incandescent light bulbs in the United States is closing this month, marking a small, sad exit for a product and company that can trace their roots to Thomas Alva Edison's innovations in the 1870s.
The remaining 200 workers at the plant here will lose their jobs.
"Now what're we going to do?" said Toby Savolainen, 49, who like many others worked for decades at the factory, making bulbs now deemed wasteful.
During the recession, political and business leaders have held out the promise that American advances, particularly in green technology, might stem the decades-long decline in U.S. manufacturing jobs. But as the lighting industry shows, even when the government pushes companies toward environmental innovations and Americans come up with them, the manufacture of the next generation technology can still end up overseas.
What made the plant here vulnerable is, in part, a 2007 energy conservation measure passed by Congress that set standards essentially banning ordinary incandescents by 2014. The law will force millions of American households to switch to more efficient bulbs.
The resulting savings in energy and greenhouse-gas emissions are expected to be immense. But the move also had unintended consequences.
Rather than setting off a boom in the U.S. manufacture of replacement lights, the leading replacement lights are compact fluorescents, or CFLs, which are made almost entirely overseas, mostly in China.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I replaced a couple spots (incandescent) with LED spots. The LED light is very blue and the load is completely wrong for the dimmer. LED needs to be controller with a PWM style of dimmer. Incandescent dimmers are based on triacs and a variable oscillator. The LED lamps don't present enough load to operate the dimmer properly.
The LED lights that I added for outside are also a problem. They are attached to motion detectors. The circuitry leaks enough current to maintain a dim glow of the LEDs. When motion is detected, the LEDs illuminate fully. A motion detector style of LED lighting controller should use a relay to fully break the circuit to the LED elements.
Yeah, everytime I read of another plant closure, the three words "Giant sucking sound" (spoken in Perot's Texas twang) always pop into my head.
With our government's long record of being totally unable to foresee the consequences of their actions, there will probably be a significant and very expensive increase in eye problems after a few years of mandatory use of these fluorescent mini bulbs.
Non-existent greenhouse-gas problems now trump existing jobs.
The only thing immense here, is the level of stupidity exhibited.
Good post. You’re right. And id like to add the danger of the the new bulbs. Do these crazies realize the lawsuits that are to pop up because these new bulbs are extremely hazardous to your health when they break. Lawmakers are putting american citizens in harms way to satisfy global warming bullies. There should be class action lawsuits against the gov for putting us in harms way and stealing our f*****g liberties. When is it going to stop.
This has nothing to do with CFL's vs incandescants. It has everything to do with allowing our manufacturing base along with its infrastructure flee our country for cheap labor AND less stringent eco standards imposed on manufacturing.
The Left won’t be satisfied until Americans are all starving, shivering in the cold, and sitting in the dark.
This is an AP story.
I have been stocking up on incandescents. They’re really cheap.
I could go on and on about how stupid the feds are about these CFLs, but I’m still so pissed about having to flush my toilet 12 times instead of one, because of the water conservation ideas from congress, that I can’t think about it.
Time to Lay Off the District of Corruption.
Pray for America
Just another victory for the frickin’ communist in their war against the USAs economy.
Light bulb factory closes; End of era for U.S. means more jobs overseas
Article, and # 27.
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From post # 27:
Also new research has come to light that indicates that CFLs emit a high humming sound that is not in our range of hearing but is in the range of hearing of cats and dogs.
[Thanks, MamaDearest.]
And even more people don't remember (or choose to forget) that even McCain warned us about Fannie and Freddie.
And now we'd rather blame them (Bush, McCain, RINO's, whoever) instead of ourselves. Perfectly natural.
LEDs are only viable commercially, and in select industries. It’ll be years until they hit the home market.
I’m using them in numerous ways already ~ kitchen lights, spirit catchers, and so on. The price is dropping rapidly as they become a larger part of the market.
Yep.
GE cares about one thing and one thing only - profits. They don’t care about America or American jobs. Jeffrey Immelt (chairman of GE) is on Obama’s “Economic Recovery Advisory Board” - lol. Oh, and Immelt’s on the Board of Directors for the NY Federal Reserve too...
It’s just total bs and nonsense 24/7 from this administration and these so called “business leaders”. Meanwhile, these poor people in Winchester VA just lost their jobs. America needs to wake up.
For a brief time I had the CFL bulbs in our master bathroom. (eight of them in a light bar over the mirrors) Our dogs and kitty avoided that room like the plague. (Maybe not such a bad thing....at least it kept the shedding down in there) I hated the light from them, it made me look even older than I am. I’m making a run to town tomorrow to buy all the incandescents I can find. I refuse to use the CFLs.
Perhaps it’s time to boycott GE...
Perhaps the new green jobs will be Haz-Mat disposal for CFL bulbs and mercury clean up services. Of course there will be class action law suits for cases of mercury poisoning and birth defects as a result of mercury exposure....more work for tort lawyers. I am betting that not one CFL will be found in Congressional offices, the US Capitol or the White House.
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