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Beginning in 2012, common light bulbs sold in the U.S. will typically use about 25% to 80% less energy. Many bulbs meet these new standards, including incandescents, CFLs, and LEDs, and are already available for purchase today. The newer bulbs provide a wide range of choices in color and brightness, and many of them will last much longer than traditional light bulbs. The lighting standards, which phase in from 2012-2014, do not ban incandescent or any specific bulb type; they say that bulbs need to use about 25% less energy. The bipartisan Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA...

Of the 6,100 Edison customers in the San Gabriel Valley still without power after last week's windstorm, few suffered like 40-year-old Tim Cutress of Altadena. When the power came back on Sunday, Cutress celebrated along with his wife, 4-year-old son and elderly mother visiting from New Zealand. After four days of darkness, the family eagerly cleaned out their stinky refrigerator, heated up the home and bought $400 worth of groceries to replace the food that had spoiled. "Everybody rejoices," Cutress said. But then at 1 p.m. Monday, the power went out again. And more than 24 hours later, as the...

Should energy consumers pay extra taxes to fund government-mandated and subsidized renewable energy technologies? "Absolutely yes," says John Bryson, President Obama's nominee for Commerce Secretary. He made the remark at a meeting of the Commonwealth Club of California in 2009 and went on to extol the virtues of hidden rates in California, a state encumbered with some of the nation's highest electricity and unemployment rates. Bryson, retired CEO of the electric utility Southern California Edison (SCE) and its parent company Edison International, excused the practice, saying, "That's been a part of the regulatory environment for the investor-owned utilities for as...

The wise man smiled and proclaimed that government should use "regulatory steps" as well as market forces to intervene in the power generation sector. The man also told his UC Berkeley audience that government should set higher targets for non-fossil-fuel-based energy production and penalize producers that don't comply. The issuer of these decrees was John Bryson, who at the time just happened to be CEO of Edison International, a company whose fortunes would increase under alternative energy mandates. Bryson now happens to be President Obama's nominee to head the Commerce Department. Just another day in Barack Obama's crony capitalist paradise....

FULL TITLE: Voice of Thomas Edison's talking doll is heard again after 123 years as scientists crack the code of mysterious metal ring For decades it lay in the bottom of a secretary's desk drawer, its purpose unknown. But now, 123 year after it was made, the secret of this bent metal ring, which was found in Thomas Edison's laboratory, has finally been uncovered. Scientists have found that the microscopic grooves on the ring make up the tune of 'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star' and mark the world's first attempt at a talking doll and the dawn of America's recording industry...

The light bulb is dead. The incandescent bulb which has pushed back the night since an American named Thomas Edison invented it, will soon be no more. It was killed, like the innovation it symbolizes, by the federal government. In one more demonstration of the we-know-better-than-you arrogance which has come to define Washington, the switch has been flipped on the light bulb’s last chance at life. In a vote earlier this week, 233 voted to keep the bulb and 193 voted to get rid of it, but in the new-math world of parliamentary procedure, the bulb still lost. Actually, the...

WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama will nominate businessman John Bryson to lead the Commerce Department, a White House official said Tuesday. Bryson's appointment brings another private sector player into an administration that has been making a concerted effort to improve its relationship with the business community.

On June 23, 1911 the Miami Metropolis published predictions about the year 2011 from the one and only Tommy "Dumbo Killah" Edison. Edison makes some amazing predictions about a future of golden automobiles, the discontinuation of gold as currency, the rise of steel and the death of the steam engine. I'm especially interested in his prediction about books of the year 2011. Edison claimed that books would be printed on leaves of nickel, "so light to hold that the reader can enjoy a small library in a single volume." On June 23, 1911 the Miami Metropolis published predictions about the...

Why is Paris known as the City of Lights ? Is it because the U.S. Congress banned Thomas Edison’s incandescent light bulbs, so he had to take his invention offshore? Well, not actually. Thomas Edison was an honoree at the 1889 Paris Universal Exposition and he did go up in the Eiffel Tower . The Italian government conferred a knighthood at that event on the man who gave the world a brighter idea. No, Congress in the 1880s would not have been so foolish as to extinguish Edison ’s light bulb. But the liberal Congress in 2007 was so foolish....

San Jose-based SunPower, Silicon Valley's dominant solar panel manufacturer, on Monday announced three power purchase agreements with Southern California Edison to deliver 711 megawatts of solar power. The deal, one of the largest for photovoltaic solar power in the United States, would produce enough power for about 460,000 California homes. "This is an unprecedented time for solar photovoltaic," Marc Ulrich, the utility's vice president of renewable and alternative power, said in a statement. "We're seeing growth in technological advances and manufacturing efficiencies that result in competitive prices for green, emission-free energy for our customers." ... California's three largest utilities have...

Yesterday’s Politico article: “Our work on light bulbs wasn’t an arbitrary mandate,” he said. “We didn’t just pick a standard out of the air, or look for a catchy sounding standard like 25 by 2025 not based in science or feasibility. Instead, we worked with both industry and environmental groups to come up with a standard that made sense and was doable.” Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/45059.html#ixzz15AsSPtxL Congressman Fred Upton's work with environmental groups is what needs to be highlighted in this article. Global Warming theory is thoroughly debunked. It is not only not caused by human industry, it is not happening....

Congressman Fred Upton has been receiving harsh criticism of his quest to become chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The Republican has co-sponsored a bill with a liberal Democrat to ban the incandescent light bulb, which was originally made available to the masses by Thomas Edison, because, in Upton’s view, it uses too much energy. Upton believes we, as a society, must focus on energy savings since our energy needs will double in a certain time frame due to a study done by God knows who, and paid for probably by a green group. Upton argued that only...

Congressman Fred Upton is the grandson of the co-founder of Whirlpool. I find that interesting. Thomas Edison has been credited with bringing light to a world of darkness, but he also has been credited with coming up with the FIRST MODEL OF A COMPLETE CENTRAL POWER STATION.Power generation to the masses gave rise to many more inventions, like the electric clothes washer. So, basically if not for Edison, Whirlpool may never have been founded, because at the time, Edison was competing with other scientists in both America and Europe. If Edison had not exhibited electric generation to the masses in...

Lunacy dims Edison's inventionAlan Levine Casa Grande Dispatch Published: Tuesday, September 21, 2010 10:33 AM MST The General Electric factory in Winchester, Va., the last major U.S. plant making standard incandescent light bulbs, is scheduled to close at the end of the month. When it does, the remaining 200 workers will lose their jobs, marking a rather ignominious end for a company that produced a product that Thomas Alva Edison gave to us and the rest of the world back in the late 1870s. This is a direct result of Al Gore’s global-warming scare tactic, which is largely responsible for...

As the U.S.A. celebrates its 234th birthday, the plight of a quintessentially American innovation says volumes about the state of the union. As American as the grand slam, the Mustang convertible, and the constitutional republic, Thomas Alva Edison’s incandescent light bulb is among this nation’s most enduring gifts to mankind. Granted U.S. Patent No. 223,898 on January 27, 1880 (after some 1,200 experiments), Edison’s “Electric-Lamp” essentially made night optional for most Earthlings. Days stopped ending at sunset. Simple, convenient, and cheap, Edison’s greatest invention also was far safer than the flammable kerosene lamps they replaced. Today’s federal government, naturally, had...

His Name Is Branding Magic; Thomas Edison Is 'So 20th Century' Decades after he died penniless, Nikola Tesla is elbowing aside his old adversary Thomas Edison in the pantheon of geek gods. When California engineers wanted to brand their new $100,000 electric sports car, one name stood out: Tesla. When circuit designers at microchip producer Nvidia Corp. in 2007 launched a new line of advanced processors, they called them Tesla. And when videogame writers at Capcom Entertainment in Silicon Valley needed a character who could understand alien spaceships for their new Dark Void saga, they found him in Nikola Tesla....

Energy Savings: Europe's ban on the incandescent light bulb began phasing in this month, and the U.S. will soon follow. Is Thomas Edison to blame for global warming? And why are we exporting green jobs?When the warm-mongers assemble in Copenhagen this December to hammer out a successor to the failed Kyoto Protocol, no doubt their work to save the earth from the carbon dioxide that gives it life will take place under the eerie light thrown off by compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) mandated by the European Union to fight climate change. The bulbs are more expensive, costing up to...

The utility's ratepayer-financed plan to outfit 150 buildings with the panels is cheered by business owners but criticized by consumer activists. Southern California Edison on Monday unveiled its newest power plant: 33,700 solar panels atop a warehouse in Fontana that will feed green energy directly into the grid. It's the first piece of what the utility says could become the largest rooftop solar installation in the world, a swath of photovoltaic panels spanning two square miles. The 600,000-square-foot warehouse rooftop, owned by logistics firm ProLogis Inc., is the first of 150 commercial buildings that Edison is looking to outfit with...

A three-day erotica convention may have found a new home, but it's not being welcomed with open arms. In fact, Edison Mayor Jun Choi sounded remarkably like his counterpart in Secaucus, Mayor Dennis Elwell, in expressing his displeasure. “We strongly object to this type of gathering in Edison.There is no place for it here,” Choi said this afternoon. However, he said, “we’re not in the same legal position as Secaucus. We don’t have the legal standing to stop it.” Elwell got his wish today when organizers of the "sex-po" pulled out of Secaucus and moved the event nearly 30 miles...

Today, Con Edison will end 125 years of direct current electricity service that began when Thomas Edison opened his Pearl Street power station on Sept. 4, 1882. Con Ed will now only provide alternating current, in a final, vestigial triumph by Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse, Mr. Edison’s rivals who were the main proponents of alternating current in the AC/DC debates of the turn of the 20th century.