Department of Energy Rolls Back Obama-Era Lightbulb Rules

pjmedia.com ^ | 9/4/2019 | Rick Moran

[rktman]

In a clear victory for consumer choice, the Trump administration's Department of Energy rolled back Obama-era rules that mandated the use of LED light bulbs.

The Hill:

DOE argued its rule will have little impact given the increasing demand for LED bulbs, which use less electricity than many other types.

“This rule does not prevent consumers from buying the lamps they desire, including efficient options,” the agency wrote in the rule. “The market is successfully transitioning to LEDs regardless of government regulation. Consumers are clearly taking advantage of the energy savings provided by LEDs.”

A senior DOE official told reporters that “concerns may be overstated” and the new rule would not have a large impact on the market.

“This regulation gives consumers more choices, and consumers are better off with more choices,” he said.

[left that other site]

Too bad my Dear Mom didn’t live to see this day. She hated Obozo and his steenking squiggly lightbulbs.

[Beagle8U]

Wally-World had 60 and 75 watt LED bulbs for...20 cents each!

You can’t beat that price, and they work great!

[_Jim]

re: “Immelt gave Obama support. Obama facilitated the ban.”

AND Fred Upton (R) wrote the bill ....

[Beagle8U]

Wally World has 4 packs of 75 watt LED bulbs for .80 cents!

[Farmerbob]

I agree. Other than needing them for the residual heat, if you are still using incandesces you are retarded. Light 6 rooms for the price of 1. Plus the range of color/warmth. You just have to be able to read a label.

[Kommodor]

Here in sunny TX, the spare heat from incandescents just makes the AC work harder. I bought a large pack of Philips slim 60W equivalent bulbs a few years back, and they’ve been champs. I just looked out of curiousity, and the big river has the newer version for about $1 each, not bad.

I still have a few incandescents around, but when they’re gone, I won’t be going back.

[Farmerbob]

Right...Just like my Grandma’s hoard of bed warmers and chamber pots.

[sphinx]

I would just like to get light bulbs twice in a row that matched in brightness and color warmth. It doesn’t seem to matter where I go: grocery store, local hardware store, Home Depot … inconsistent stocking is driving me nuts.

[wjcsux]

I installed LED’s around the perimeter of my shop and leave them on 24/7. I haven’t seen much of an increase in my electric bill. It’s around $5.00 per month.

[Svartalfiar]

I do wonder what Friedrich Hayek would say about this whole lightbulb thing, though. LEDs are superior to incandescents yet they probably wouldn’t have been developed if not for the government intervening. Nor do we seem to have suffered much in the way of unintended negative consequences. Is it possible the government’s coercive action has yielded a better net result than if it had stayed on the sidelines?

Um, you do realize that the first LEDs were invented in 1961, right? They've been around for a long time, most of those little power lights on all your electronics have been LEDs since the 60s/70s. It's only recently, however, that they've become that much brighter and that much cheaper to where they're worth switching to. The FedGov ban on incandescents only accelerated this by a couple years, that's it.

[Yardstick]

Um, you do realize that the first LEDs were invented in 1961, right?

---

Naw, man, I had no idea.

[OrioleFan]

Are incandescent bulbs still made in the US?

[dhs12345]

Lol.

You have to get DC out of AC somehow. They do it fairly cheaply with power adapters for cell phones and such. But it is still an inherent reliability problem. And cheap usually means less reliability.

The power adapter for my routers fail fairly frequently. More than they should. They do run 24 hrs a day. BTW, if your gizmo stops working always look at the AC power adapter as the culprit.

The simple filament solution is well, simple. And simple means reliable. I wonder if for the same price as an LED bulb, you could make a filament bulb (incandescent) as reliable or more reliable. Anyway, incandescent bulbs are designed to be cheap-throwaway and with an expected failure rate.

[zeugma]

This is a good thing. Banning standard light bulbs was stupid. For myself, I prefer LEDs because a standard incandescent bulb actually wastes most of the energy it consumes as heat, though the market is flooded with cheap chinese crap. A decently made LED should last for decades. "Modern" ones don't due largely to shoddy materials.

I always thought the push for CFLs was moronic, given that every single one contains mercury, which we now have contaminating our landfills to a much greater degree than we would have had otherwise. Also, the light from CFLs is sucky, as compared to either LED or incandescent.

[rktman]

I seem to remember that some enterprising folks started making incandescent bulbs that were 58 watts to replace the 60 watt bulbs. 98s for 100s or something like that. Anyone remember that? As for being made in the US? Don’t know. We could ask alexa I suppose. LOL!

[zeugma]

Yours is an interesting problem. Perhaps if you called the mfg of the bulb they can help you determine why the bulbs are failing so quickly.

What you might be seeing is unclean power. The electronics in both LEDs and CFLs is sensitive to such things. When I was younger (much), we had an issue with a transformer nearby that caused all kinds of havoc because it was crap, and was causing small voltage variances that some of our electronics didn't like at all.

[billyboy15]

I agree and I have had experience, thankfully not much with what you describe as “unclean” power although I had no idea it was referred to in that way.

I was having problems with my stereo power amps defaulting to safe mode quite often. It only happened in that location and quit once we moved. Funny thing it started to happen about 6 months before we left but was not a problem the first 6 or so years we were there.

[shotgun]

I had that same thought, except I run 6, 300 watt equivalent LEDs in my barn and those last a couple years