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Not all of us have time to get a degree in electrical engineering to make sure our home doesn’t look like the inside of an alien spaceship... Aren’t LED lights supposed to outlast the heat death of the universe or some unbelievably long amount of time? Under this guise and the guise of energy efficiency, the Biden administration finally allowed a 2007 ban on incandescent light bulbs to go through at the end of July this year. The problem is that LED lights are not more efficient in a meaningful economic sense, and, as my story illustrates, they don't necessarily...

President Joe Biden’s (D) ban on incandescent light bulbs begins today, limiting what types of lighting will be available for purchase. American consumers will only be able to buy LED lights because of the Department of Energy rules that require manufacturers to only offer such bulbs, MLive.com reported Tuesday. Leada Gore writes: The switch means were [sic] incandescent or halogen incandescent – which accounted for roughly 30% of light bulbs sold in the U.S. in 2020 – will soon be a thing of the past. And while retailers won’t be allowed to sell the bulbs, there are no prohibitions stopping...

The Biden Administration will implement a ban on incandescent light bulbs starting next week in favor of energy-efficient bulbs, following a yearslong bipartisan effort to phase out the bulbs after earlier regulations and standards were blocked by former President Donald Trump. The Department of Energy approved new rules for light bulbs last year that will take effect on August 1, including a new minimum standard for light bulbs at 45 lumens—or brightness—per watt, an increase over the average 12 to 18 lumens per watt for incandescent bulbs. Retailers will be prohibited from selling any bulbs—including incandescent bulbs—that don’t match the...

Starting next week, Americans will only be able to purchase LED lights from retailers across the nation as an official ban on incandescent lightbulbs will go into effect. Come Tuesday, while it won’t be illegal to own incandescent light bulbs, it will be illegal for stores to sell them and companies to manufacture them.

LED light bulbs 'currently cost more than incandescent bulbs and are inferior,' consumer groups said in letter to U.S. Department of Energy The Biden administration is preparing to implement a sweeping nationwide ban on commonly used light bulbs as part of its energy efficiency and climate agenda. The regulations, which prohibit retailers from selling incandescent light bulbs, were finalized by the Department of Energy (DOE) in April 2022 and are slated to go into effect on Aug. 1, 2023. The DOE will begin full enforcement of the ban on that date, but it has already urged retailers to begin transitioning...

A proposed Department of Energy rule would phase out the use of compact fluorescent light bulbs as part of the Biden administration’s efforts to remove less energy-efficient bulbs from the market. Current standards require light bulbs to be at least 45 lumens, the unit used to measure brightness, per watt. Under the proposed update, first reported by CNN, the standard would be more than doubled to more than 120 lumens per watt. Commonplace 60-watt equivalent lightbulbs would only require a maximum of 6.5 watts, according to an analysis by the Appliance Standards Awareness Project (ASAP). “Today’s announcement is the latest...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration is scrapping old-fashioned incandescent light bulbs, speeding an ongoing trend toward more efficient lighting that officials say will save households, schools and businesses billions of dollars a year. Rules finalized by the Energy Department will require manufacturers to sell energy-efficient light bulbs, accelerating a longtime industry practice to use compact fluorescent and LED bulbs that last 25 to 50 times longer than incandescent bulbs. The Trump administration had slowed an earlier phaseout of incandescents, saying it was targeting rules that burden businesses. Once the new rules are fully in place next year, consumers should...

The Trump administration on Friday said it has finalized a decision to roll back a George W. Bush-era rule to phase out incandescent light bulbs, saying that requirements for energy efficient bulbs would be costly to consumers. The administration finalized a proposal made in September to roll back the standard that was to come into effect next year. The move has been challenged by 16 states including New York and California who say it would harm state efforts to fight climate change.

Environmental groups and 18 state attorneys general are suing the Trump administration over its efforts to keep incandescent light bulbs on the market. They filed suit against the Department of Energy on Monday, claiming the agency's decision to allow sales of these hot-burning bulbs would hurt the environment and waste billions of dollars. "The rule is harmful to the environment and also to consumers," said Mike Landis, litigation director at U.S. PIRG, one of the consumer advocacy groups that filed the suit. "In our view, this is an unlawful action the Department of Energy is taking. Once an energy-efficiency standard...

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...

The Department of Energy announced this week that it’s withdrawing the Obama administration’s energy-rationing mandate for certain lightbulbs. Opponents criticized the rule change, arguing that the move would be bad for consumers and the climate. The reality, however, is that families and businesses will be better off, and the change will have a negligible impact on the environment. The Energy Department’s decision to withdraw energy-efficiency standards for candle-shaped, globe-shaped, three-way and reflector lightbulbs is a victory for consumer choice. Whether it’s buying a lightbulb or a new car, families have different preferences and needs. They consider the various trade-offs in...

The US is scrapping a ban on energy-inefficient light bulbs which was due to come in at the beginning of 2020. The rule would have prohibited the sale of bulbs that do not reach a standard of efficiency, and could have seen an end to incandescent bulbs. Many countries have phased out older bulbs because they waste energy. But the US energy department said banning incandescent bulbs would be bad for consumers because of the higher cost of more efficient bulbs. The Department of Energy said it had withdrawn the ban because it was a misinterpretation of the 2007 Energy...

Light bulbs

Your smart lightbulb is probably storing your wifi password in the clear, ready to be recovered by wily dumpster-divers; Limited Results discovered the security worst-practice during a teardown of a Lifx bulb; and that's just for starters: the bulbs also store their RSA private key and root passwords in the clear and have no security measures to prevent malicious reflashings of their ROMs with exploits, network probes and other nasties.

Protoytpe of a new energy efficient incandescent light bulb. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Six years after the last incandescent light bulb factory in the U.S. shut down due to strict new federal energy conservation standards, scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have come up with a technological breakthrough that could make incandescent bulbs twice as energy-efficient as their replacements.MIT researchers discovered that by wrapping the filament of an incandescent bulb with a “photonic crystal,” they could “recycle” the energy that was typically lost as heat to create more light.The new technique “makes a dramatic difference in how...

By the end of the year, GE will cease production and sales of compact fluorescent lights (CFLs), the manufacturer announced this morning. Moving forward, the company's focus will fall entirely on halogen incandescents and on high-efficiency LEDs. "CFL's kind of been the light bulb that everybody loves to hate," explained John Strainic, chief operating officer of GE Lighting, citing the history of complaints about CFL dimmer compatibility, brightness delay, and quality of light. Strainic says that the industry has come a long way, but admits that the perception of inferior performance lingers. "Ultimately, LED offers a better solution at a...

US researchers say they have developed a technique that can significantly improve the efficiency of the traditional incandescent lightbulb. These older bulbs have been phased out in many countries because they waste huge amounts of energy as heat. But scientists at MIT have found a way of recycling the waste energy and focussing it back on the filament where it is re-emitted as visible light. The development has been reported in the journal Nature Nanotechnology. Little has changed in the technology of the incandescent lightbulb since they were commercially developed by Thomas Edison in the US in the 1880s. Incandescent...

Ever since the EU restricted sales of traditional incandescent light bulbs, homeowners have complained about the shortcomings of their energy-efficient replacements. The clinical white beam of LEDs and frustrating time-delay of 'green' lighting has left many hankering after the instant, bright warm glow of traditional filament bulbs. But now scientists in the US believe they have come up with a solution which could see a reprieve for incandescent bulbs. Researchers at MIT have shown that by surrounding the filament with a special crystal structure in the glass they can bounce back the energy which is usually lost in heat, while...

Light bulb manufacturers will cease making traditional 40 and 60-watt light bulbs -- the most popular in the country -- at the start of 2014. This comes after the controversial phasing out of incandescent 75 and 100-watt light bulbs at the beginning of 2013. In their place will be halogen bulbs, compact fluorescent bulbs, LED bulbs and high efficiency incandescents -- which are just regular incandescents that have the filament wrapped in gas. All are significantly more expensive than traditional light bulbs, but offer significant energy and costs savings over the long run. (Some specialty incandescents -- such as three-way...

The least expensive LED light of the bunch at $14.97 per bulb, Cree’s Wi-Fi enabled, soft white 60 watt-replacements cast a good glow over my kitchen table. In fact, when I installed the new web-connected Edison bulbs, they replaced older (by a year), non-Wi-Fi-enabled, 60 watt Cree LED bulbs — and these newer bulbs seemed even brighter, though they boasted the same 815 lumens. Luckily, I could dial back the Cree’s brightness through the Philips Hue app I used to control them, which is another feature worth mentioning. The Connected Cree bulbs are marketed as being Wink App compatible, which...