Posted on 07/11/2013 8:06:53 AM PDT by thackney
Texas Republican Michael Burgess just won another round in his fight against federal standards that could force consumers to abandon inefficient incandescent light bulbs for more expensive LED and fluorescent alternatives.
The House voted Wednesday to adopt an amendment by Burgess that would bar the Energy Department from using any funds to implement efficiency standards for light bulbs, six years after Congress first mandated the change.
The provision in a 2007 energy law was designed to encourage manufacturers to produce more energy efficient light bulbs; although it didn’t rule out traditional incandescents, they would need a redesign to qualify under the new standards.
In response, manufacturers rolled out new bulbs that require less electricity, and over time, they have revamped them to have more aesthetic appeal.
LED and fluorescent models offer the promise of electricity bill savings over time and fewer lightbulb changes, since they have a longer lifespan. LED lights can last more than a decade. But some consumers criticize the quality of the light and the occasionally bulkier bodies of the newer alternatives, which may look garish poking out of chandeliers and other fixtures.
Burgess complained that the price of the replacements still hasn’t dropped, with some models fetching as much as $50. ”The technology is still years off in making light bulbs that are compliant with the 2007 law and at a price point that the average American can afford,” he said on the House floor.
He cast the 2007 mandate as Big Brother intruding into the living rooms — and light fixtures — of everyday Americans.
“If the new energy-efficient light bulbs save money and if they’re better for the environment, we should trust our constituents to make the choice on their own toward these bulbs,” he said. “Let the market decide. We should not be forcing these light bulbs on the American people.”
Burgess’ amendment was adopted by a voice vote, the same fate in the past two years. It was added to a broad spending bill that doles federal dollars to the Energy Department. The measure now heads to the Senate, which has its own competing version.
Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio, noted that American lighting manufacturers have committed to abiding by the standards, even if the Energy Department is barred from enforcing them. As a result, she said, Burgess’ proposal ends up giving an edge to foreign manufacturers producing old-school incandescents.
“The only benefit of this ill-informed rider is to allow foreign manufacturers who may not feel a similar obligation to import non-compliant light bulbs that will not only harm the investments made by U.S. companies, but place at risk the U.S. manufacturing jobs associated with making compliant bulbs,” she said.
And Kaptur stressed that the incandescent light bulb lives on, in newer, more-efficient designs.
“As a result of the 2007 law, manufacturers already are making a variety of new energy-saving bulbs for homes, including more efficient incandescent bulbs,” she said on the House floor. “These bulbs look like and turn on like the bulbs we have been using for decades, but are upwards of 28 to 33 percent more efficient. And that’s good for everyone.”
Previously, the design of incandescent light bulbs had changed little since it was first introduced more than a century ago.
The LEDs themselves are certainly available.
I recently bought a bicycle head light for $38, shipped from China.
Durn thing is 1800 lumens, about the equivalent of a 100w incandescent, and a good deal brighter than some car headlights.
It runs for two hours at full brightness on a rechargeable battery roughly the equivalent in size of four AAs. Don't know how much energy consumption that equates to, but at the end of two hours continuous running it is only slightly warmer than ambient.
The LED itself is made by Cree. They are also very white in color.
Another, actually widely known, fact is that residential lighting consumes around 12% of all electrical usage.
The bulk of energy/electricity is used for space heating and cooling.
Better insulation would be more of a factor in reducing energy consumption than making it more expensive to buy light bulbs.
A couple years ago, before the mandate was to take effect, I went to (gasp) Walmart, and paid $0.88 per box of four incandescent light bulbs. Altogether, I bought about 75 boxes of 100 watt and 75 watt bulbs. So for the price of about six of the newfangled toxic bulbs, I'm set for life and beyond.
re: “The warnings are sobering. You must “leave and seal the room” if one is broken. You must find a recycler who accepts them. Throwing them away can land you in court in some jurisdictions. And convincing evidence is available that they are a real fire hazard when they eventually burn out.”
And you touched on the biggest issue I have with these new bulbs. Even if they are as cost efficient as they say, who is going to dispose of these bulbs the way the instructions say to? The vast majority WILL NOT. They will just toss them into the trash like we’ve always done.
Then, years down the road, we’ll have a new problem with the crap in these bulbs getting into the soil and the water table.
“GWB signed that light bulb ban BTW.”
Yeah, another reason to put him on the list of failed presidents! No More Bushes!
RGB LED’s work great for multi-color displays. The current technology is to use LED’s that emit in the UV region, and use that to excite phosphors on the surface of the LED chip, much the same way as a fluorescent lamp works. Look closely ay a white LED, and you can see the phosphor la layer (yellowish colored). I have a huge supply of white LED’s, the only reason I don’t use them is the temperature color. They are “cold white”, like snow. I’ll find a workaround for that though.
“CFLs are pretty cheap.”
And the light they produce is harmful to your eyes. And I really like the mandate for “the first light in your bathroom has to be CFL” here in CA. Get up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night and you have to wait for a minute for the bulb to generate enough light for you to see the toilet. Good news is that the canned lights I had to put in in a recent remodel can accommodate the “guts” from a similar fixture that uses incandescent bulbs. Just pissed me off to have to buy two fixtures to pass inspection.
I was happy to try the CFL alternative, and in some applications it was fine. I'm waiting for LEDs to become cooler and more affordable, which they will. In the meantime incandescent lighting is superior in certain places. So, as a prudent consumer, I'll happily go with the most appropriate product. If I'm allowed.
Social activists' egos are being stroked and politician's power is being increased by this ridiculous nonsense, and the earth is not being "saved".
Cree makes good stuff.
We've already seen a big drop in our electric bill, and between that and the cost of replacing halogen bulbs every two months, we expect to fully recoup our investment in less than 12 months - even at current LED prices (forget Home Depot - they aren't so high online). Incandescent lighting is already dead - and though government mandates are just dumb, there's really no need to bother overturning this one.
Well that is stupid. Bathroom lights are ones that should be turned on only while you're in the room, need to be quick to turn on and should be on a dimmer (shaving light is different from the "hit the target at 3 AM" light). Thus the bathroom is the absolute worst room for CFLs.
I have no objection to having LED and CFL bulbs on the market. I’ve tried CFLs, and abandoned them, because of poor performance and short lifespan (their supposed long life is predicated on usage patterns that don’t come close to the way we use light bulbs.)
OTOH, after the last time I had to replace my “long-life” CFLs, I spent quite a bit on LED bulbs, for those locations where I had to use a ladder to replace the bulbs, and I’ve been very happy with them. They have lasted, and the extra cost is easily outweighed by the convenience of not having to drag the extension ladder out of the garage.
But that I find LED bulbs appropriate for some uses, and am quite happy that they are available on the market, does not mean that I am at all happy to see the government mandating their use.
I stocked up on 100 watt incandescents while I could for my detatched, unheated garage. Nothing else I’ve found will come up to full brightness right away in the winter. If I put curlies in there I could be in Ohio by the time they warmed up to full brightness.
The last US incandescent light bulb manufacturing plant already closed due to this insane law, adding to the unemployment rolls. Now all light bulbs are imported. One more industry gone. If this bill is passed, the incandescent plants will not reopen. There is no indication factories will be built in the USA for the newer technologies as the Wall Street banks prefer to fund manufacturing projects overseas.
Once more the globalists and environmentalists have killed another US industry. Bush could have stopped it by casting a veto. However, he chose to support the greens and the Chinese manufacturers.
Engineers should also consider these facts:
Spiral fluorescent lamps must be disposed of by specially designated hazardous waste facilities. Costly additional expense and infrastructure in waste management is required to do this,
If a spiral fluorescent lamp is broken inside a home, it becomes a hazmat cleanup site, which the average citizen is not trained to do properly, and counties apparently don’t care to inform things like, if a bulb breaks on your carpet, it cannot be cleaned, it must be disposed of... ostensibly at the hazardous waste facility. No doubt users of these bulbs fail most of the time to take the spent bulbs to a proper facility, instead dropping them in the trash where they can end up polluting the environment and/or groundwater.
Where do you drop off your spent bulbs, just curious?
Engineers should also be aware of the effect on the human body of these lights. Fluorescent lamps deplete the human body of vitamin d. Engineers may be aware of the epidemic of vitamin d deficiency currently in our society, and direct correlations can be drawn.
In addition, the LED lamps damage retinas and can cause blindness after prolonged use. Also demonstrated by researchers in Europe.
also available at:
http://1000bulbs.com/category/usa-made-led-lighting/
http://www.aerolights.com/index.html
“Well that is stupid. Bathroom lights are ones that should be turned on only while you’re in the room,.... “
Well that’s the way it is with California building codes. In Kitchens and Bathrooms, the first light HAS to be fluorescent.
I just had a new roof put on my primary residence. The building inspector didn’t inspect at all ( I know, because I was home every time he showed up). Then he required the roofing company provide a hold harmless letter on their company letterhead saying that if I sued for some defect, that the town was not a party to the lawsuit even though they hadn’t performed any of the required inspections. Good news was that the roofer was a quality firm, and I did my own inspections.
Topsy the elephant probably couldn’t care less about respect for Edison.
I’m all for killing the light bulb ban, although it’s probably too late to prevent the Boxers and Markeys of the Congress from scoring billions on their investments in the CFL market immediately following their ban.
As a side note, there have been some neat advances in the manufacture of LED bulbs, both in flashlights and home lighting. I’ve decided to try out a few in hopes of brighter, more uniform lighting, endurance and energy savings. We’ll see...
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