Anyone else hate the new light bulbs?

[buckeyefarmer]

My box of 3 "free" cfl light bulbs (one arrived broken), and a low flow shower head from first energy has cost me $73.52 since feb2012. The cost is added to our bill as EmPower MD surcharge. I will never save the energy to pay for what these cost. I hate these programs that sucks our wallets dry for things I don't need or want.

 

[dave1949]

As someone who lives near latitude 45 degrees, the heat by-product from any device is fine in winter, but not in summer.

Total costs need to include more than manufacturing, disposal and point-of-use. Reducing total energy consumption has a cost benefit of reducing pollution, the habitat impacts of mining, and carbon transfer from the burning of fossils fuels.

Due to more frequent and longer lasting warm spells, many people in this area are opting for air conditioning that they didn't need before. That is a cost to buy and operate that is directly attributed to a warming climate. Nobody really knows what the net costs of global warming will be, but they appear to be significant. The costs do not appear to be offset by coincidental benefits.

The cost of power generation, from any source solar to coal, and the cost to build capacity and operate the distribution grid also benefit from energy conservation. Whatever energy is conserved, the reduction of costs roll back into the infrastructure.

The major portion of home energy use for lighting is not the two minutes a closet light is on, or the 30 minutes in a bathroom. It's true there is not much to conserve there on an individual basis, multiplied by millions of closets though it adds up. The lights that are used all afternoon until bedtime do offer a larger chance to conserve. CFL and LED lights will make a ~66% reduction in energy consumption for those long usage lights. That is a significant amount of energy conservation that they make possible in each home.

I really don't think it is possible to defend incandescent bulbs from a true total cost or energy conservation perspective.

As to being forced to bring a toxic device into your home, whether or not your home is really non-toxic already, the risk is low and largely depends on your handling and care to see that they are properly disposed of. Proper disposal is difficult. I'm pretty sure when I return a CFL to the point of purchase, there is a good chance it gets put in the dumpster. I have no solution for that in a rural area with a sparse population, but I don't see how blaming the bulb really makes sense either.

If incandescent bulbs remained on the market, people would buy the lowest apparent cost bulb with the highest true costs. It's that simple really because they aren't directly paying those true costs--well they are but it's invisible; it's certainly not showing up in the comparative cost of the light bulbs. It's like shopping at stores that sell mostly imported products and wondering why no one has a decent job.

I think what is unfortunate is that it impossible to educate people in-depth on true costs, some of which aren't even easily quantifiable. It's also unfortunate we are losing our ability to identify and address commonly held goals with clear benefits. The more complex and challenging the needs become, the more it matters to be able to pull on the oars together, but it's also easier to gain or retain advantages by introducing confusion and distrust.

 

[Scooby074]

Scoob:

I think you missed point almost entirely, what I was talking about is "Total Cost" for a bulb, that the cost of the CFL or LED vs Energy Saved and Energy to make, run and disposal costs overall. When do you use lights? (is when it is dark for 95% of the lights made, they are on when needed in the dark.)

So lets take a regular light inside someones home, they get up in AM and turn on the bathroom lights and bedroom lights. While getting ready for work or school these lights run maybe 30 min in the AM. Same for after work/school during the winter you get home and it gets dark at 4:30 so on come lights. These lights are now on from 5ish till 11pm say. The use of lights can now come into play for overall costs, LED vs CFL vs standard Incandescent bulbs. If you look at them in terms of cost to buy, LED $20 to $40 bucks, CFL $2 to $15bucks and the incandescent is .40cents to maybe a buck. So now for real world you have to figure electricity cost vs bulb cost and the expected life span. A bulb that has a high cycle rate vs time on rate will burn out sooner (hours of actual use) vs one that is on till it burns out 1000s of hours later. Conditions also comes into play one used in a dark cold damp spot vs a warm dry living room
also comes into play as to what bulb you should use.

This is where a LOT of different things needs to come into play, for example how many times a day it is turned ON/OFF or how long it is ON vs time OFF. How many times the bulb will last under these ON/OFF cycles and times. A bulb that is put ON in a commercial bathroom & stays on till it burns out vs a bulb in a home closet or basement or one outside that turns ON when someone walks by then goes out some time later.

A Bulb that is on 24/7/365 till it burns out is excellent candidate for LED or CFL where as a closet/basement bulb used maybe a few times a month then the incandescent is the way to go for best use of your purchasing dollar. This is the no nonsense easy to see because they are at the outside areas of the point of use graph you could draw. The real number crunching comes into play when the use (number of times turned on/off and when/where used) falls in this peak of a graph that cost to buy vs energy saved vs bulbs life or easy replacement really is the guts of what is better for every particular situation..

That is probably less than 1%, over regular light-bulbs that are momentary used inside a home/office. If there is a can fixture 30 feet in the air and difficult to get to then the 40buck high lumen LED would be the choice over a incandescent version.


On the regular incandescent bulbs which are not efficient at producing light but produce heat better. This added heat in winter is not wasted but is a gain to overall homes efficiency when total calculations are done. Remember that Electrical Heating is about the most efficient in heating applications as none of that goes up a chimney. So when you have a bulb say on the coffee table that is run 4 hours a night in winter or maybe 1hr in summer only when needed. The energy used in the 4 hours in winter is not quite the same VALUE in $ as one would might think. Lets look at a 100Watt incandescent light under these conditions. 100Watts = 1740 lumens and that is only ~2% efficient so 98 watts are given off as HEAT and 2% as lumens. This heat in winter can help out the heating side by that additional 98watts given off in the room. (FUNNY NOTE: I do heating systems for a living and had several calls to same place where lady kept saying the heat was very inconstant that it would get real cold in much of the house. When I went to take a look I found the issue, she had a side table with a lamp setting under the thermostat. She would set and read by the 3 way lamp which would keep the thermostat from coming on when room temps dropped. Showed her what was going on by having her hold her hand over the top of the shade to feel the warmth vs rest of the room.) She learned that having 100+ watts of heat under her thermostat caused the furnace to NOT run and home cooled off.

Our bathroom is only maybe 36 SF (270CF) but we have 200 watts of lights inside it. In the winter close the door and turn on the lights and it warms it up nicely after a few minutes, we dont have to be COLD climbing into the shower do to the heating from the lights. does that cost more $ vs using LEDs no not when you have a warm room

Even CFLs are better at producing HEAT than LIGHT (CFL=45-75 lm/W) vs 12.5-17.5 lm/Watt from Incandescent.

There are a lot of items to consider when you decide to do a buildings load calculations for lighting/heating and the like so just to let you know what does go into these things.

Mark

First, let me say I agree with your assessment that an LED or CFL may not be the best cost/benefit for a extreme occasional use like a closet. I also agree that they can generate benificial heat, like in a bathroom, although a proper IR heatlamp is a better way to make that same heat. However, incandescents still need to be phased out and removed from sale to prevent them from being used in other locations where they are too wasteful. Nature of the beast that man will almost always take the cheapest route, regardless of the long term savings.

I just crunched some numbers here, and for an 11W LED (60W equivalent) that costs $~20 to purchase, it costs a mere $3.32 to run for 6 hours/day/year. Now compare that to a single 60W incandescent that costs $18.12 for 6 hrs/day/year. Thats using my local rate. You people with cheap power wont save as much.

So one year of running that 60W incan, pays for that LED, basically. And thats only the first year(2190h), The Philips LEDs are rated to almost 25,000h! The math is clearly in the LED's favour, regardless if they cost more up front.

As to total cost involved from cradle to grave, glass making is resource intensive, and Im sure that manufacturing Tungsten is every bit as intense as glass or more so. Of course making semiconductors is intensive too. As to what is more intensive, I dont know, but you have to take into consideration that for every one LED, you'd have to make 25(?) incandescent. So you have to ask is making a single LED 25x as intensive as making a single Incandescent and I dont believe it is.

While we're on total cost, given LED's 5-6x efficiency as compared to incandescent that means we can effectively reduce load on the grid, which saves not only in adding power plants (how many billion is a new generating station these days?) and grid capacity, but it also saves on power plant emissions, which also leads to health care savings and other environmental cost savings.

If you look at the whole picture, from manufacturing the LED to powering the LED, I think there is HUGE cost advantages for LEDs, not just for myself and my community, but to the hydro producers too.

 

[Marveltone]

My problem with all this has been in my area, I've never been able to find an LED light with acceptable light output. Those I've tried left me with a very dark room. Now, I live out in a retail black hole; 130+ miles to the nearest Home Depot, Lowes or other big box home improvement center. Our local shops have a very limited selection to choose from. This makes experimentation with LED's a very costly and time consuming process which I am just not willing to partake in on a regular basis. I just don't have the time and money to make multiple day-trips to franchiseville just to try a different light bulb in hopes of saving a few bucks. We have a few florescents in various forms scattered around the house along with a bunch of incandescents. Until I can find an LED (actually see it with my own eyes) that produces a bright, white light, as opposed to the dim, blue light I've experienced, I'm not likely to change anything soon.

Just my :2cents:.

Joe

 

[dave1949]

My problem with all this has been in my area, I've never been able to find an LED light with acceptable light output. Those I've tried left me with a very dark room. Now, I live out in a retail black hole; 130+ miles to the nearest Home Depot, Lowes or other big box home improvement center. Our local shops have a very limited selection to choose from. This makes experimentation with LED's a very costly and time consuming process which I am just not willing to partake in on a regular basis. I just don't have the time and money to make multiple day-trips to franchiseville just to try a different light bulb in hopes of saving a few bucks. We have a few florescents in various forms scattered around the house along with a bunch of incandescents. Until I can find an LED (actually see it with my own eyes) that produces a bright, white light, as opposed to the dim, blue light I've experienced, I'm not likely to change anything soon.

Just my :2cents:.

Joe

That's understandable. You could always pick the TBN brain trust on things like that, log on to Amazon and done if you get a good feeling for a product.

I'm not ready to look at LCD's yet. My CFL's are seven years old now and most by far are the originals. When they start going in numbers I will consider doing all the fixtures in one room with LCD's.

 

[SPIKER]

As someone who lives near latitude 45 degrees, the heat by-product from any device is fine in winter, but not in summer.

Total costs need to include more than manufacturing, disposal and point-of-use. Reducing total energy consumption has a cost benefit of reducing pollution, the habitat impacts of mining, and carbon transfer from the burning of fossils fuels.

Due to more frequent and longer lasting warm spells, many people in this area are opting for air conditioning that they didn't need before. That is a cost to buy and operate that is directly attributed to a warming climate. Nobody really knows what the net costs of global warming will be, but they appear to be significant. The costs do not appear to be offset by coincidental benefits.

The cost of power generation, from any source solar to coal, and the cost to build capacity and operate the distribution grid also benefit from energy conservation. Whatever energy is conserved, the reduction of costs roll back into the infrastructure.

The major portion of home energy use for lighting is not the two minutes a closet light is on, or the 30 minutes in a bathroom. It's true there is not much to conserve there on an individual basis, multiplied by millions of closets though it adds up. The lights that are used all afternoon until bedtime do offer a larger chance to conserve. CFL and LED lights will make a ~66% reduction in energy consumption for those long usage lights. That is a significant amount of energy conservation that they make possible in each home.

I really don't think it is possible to defend incandescent bulbs from a true total cost or energy conservation perspective.

As to being forced to bring a toxic device into your home, whether or not your home is really non-toxic already, the risk is low and largely depends on your handling and care to see that they are properly disposed of. Proper disposal is difficult. I'm pretty sure when I return a CFL to the point of purchase, there is a good chance it gets put in the dumpster. I have no solution for that in a rural area with a sparse population, but I don't see how blaming the bulb really makes sense either.

If incandescent bulbs remained on the market, people would buy the lowest apparent cost bulb with the highest true costs. It's that simple really because they aren't directly paying those true costs--well they are but it's invisible; it's certainly not showing up in the comparative cost of the light bulbs. It's like shopping at stores that sell mostly imported products and wondering why no one has a decent job.

I think what is unfortunate is that it impossible to educate people in-depth on true costs, some of which aren't even easily quantifiable. It's also unfortunate we are losing our ability to identify and address commonly held goals with clear benefits. The more complex and challenging the needs become, the more it matters to be able to pull on the oars together, but it's also easier to gain or retain advantages by introducing confusion and distrust.

Just my perspective to what you were saying.

Yes the heat from bulbs is not good in summer, BUT you need lots less light in summer as the sun is out till way later in PM 8PM it still is light out, now it is dark at 5PM 3 hours less run time.

Summers have not been that much warmer the people are more conditioned to AC in work and home cars etc, it is actually not much difference in HEAT and on the last few years there has been only a few HOT spells while rest of the summers have been below average.

Power Generation (actual consumption of power) has been dropping by a large amount in US, there are a LOT less factories now than 15 years ago, we actually have an abundance of power for NORMAL use. They have been closing Coal power plants in last year by large numbers being replaced by small Nat Gas point of use type generators gone by the way side are the massive coal burning plants. The ones remaining are being powered at lower rates & are using cleaner technologies & lower sulfur coals. Wind and Solar plants are helping off set the De-commissioning of old coal plants & lower consumption devices are reducing actual used KWs. The only real issue is the PEAK demands during a few days per year when everyone thinks they HAVE to have AC on..


I agree there are people (I know a lot of them) that have nearly every light ON in the home this is a PERSONAL problem not a Government Energy Mandate Problem. If you drive by any of the HUD (Government Assisted Housing Complexes) there you will see lights burning everywhere with the people having doors windows and balconies open with the AC cranked... oh did I mention these places people pay small amount of rent and get Heat and Electricity for 25bucks per month regardless of what they use... (Ya dated a girl that lived in one, sure must be nice to only have to pay 25 bucks for heat, Lights AC etc...)


Edit in: FYI right now we have on 1 LED nightlight, one Florescent floor-desk type lamp and a fluorescent fish-tank light, along with the lap top & LED TV. This is where a great deal of LOWER energy consumption has happened in last 10 years. We switched from a BIG Floor model TV (TUBE) style and two desk tops with 19" Tube type Monitors to two lap tops. This probably cut our consumption by 40% as the old desk top tower style computer with a tube monitor used 1200+ watts and old style TV was probably 1000 watts. New TV is probably 300 Watts, the Lap tops are 120watts so with the NEW technology there is saving ~1780 watts which is multiplied across the USA which is where just updating old tech is better than all the Government Mandates which usually are behind the curve and cause more issues than they fix... Healthcare is a perfect example...


Mark

 

[dave1949]

Just my perspective to what you were saying.

Yes the heat from bulbs is not good in summer, BUT you need lots less light in summer as the sun is out till way later in PM 8PM it still is light out, now it is dark at 5PM 3 hours less run time.

Summers have not been that much warmer the people are more conditioned to AC in work and home cars etc, it is actually not much difference in HEAT and on the last few years there has been only a few HOT spells while rest of the summers have been below average.

Power Generation (actual consumption of power) has been dropping by a large amount in US, there are a LOT less factories now than 15 years ago, we actually have an abundance of power for NORMAL use. They have been closing Coal power plants in last year by large numbers being replaced by small Nat Gas point of use type generators gone by the way side are the massive coal burning plants. The ones remaining are being powered at lower rates & are using cleaner technologies & lower sulfur coals. Wind and Solar plants are helping off set the De-commissioning of old coal plants & lower consumption devices are reducing actual used KWs. The only real issue is the PEAK demands during a few days per year when everyone thinks they HAVE to have AC on..


I agree there are people (I know a lot of them) that have nearly every light ON in the home this is a PERSONAL problem not a Government Energy Mandate Problem. If you drive by any of the HUD (Government Assisted Housing Complexes) there you will see lights burning everywhere with the people having doors windows and balconies open with the AC cranked... oh did I mention these places people pay small amount of rent and get Heat and Electricity for 25bucks per month regardless of what they use... (Ya dated a girl that lived in one, sure must be nice to only have to pay 25 bucks for heat, Lights AC etc...)


Edit in: FYI right now we have on 1 LED nightlight, one Florescent floor-desk type lamp and a fluorescent fish-tank light, along with the lap top & LED TV. This is where a great deal of LOWER energy consumption has happened in last 10 years. We switched from a BIG Floor model TV (TUBE) style and two desk tops with 19" Tube type Monitors to two lap tops. This probably cut our consumption by 40% as the old desk top tower style computer with a tube monitor used 1200+ watts and old style TV was probably 1000 watts. New TV is probably 300 Watts, the Lap tops are 120watts so with the NEW technology there is saving ~1780 watts which is multiplied across the USA which is where just updating old tech is better than all the Government Mandates which usually are behind the curve and cause more issues than they fix... Healthcare is a perfect example...

Mark

Reasonable points, Mark.

I really don't want to get into the politics of healthcare and all that. I will say that government mandates are an expression of leadership. Phasing out leaded gasoline is an example of something that would not have occurred without leadership expressed as a mandate. Granted, some mandates are better than others.

Coal plants are switching to natural gas in part due to mandated pressures applied via the EPA and environmentalists. Natural gas is the best thing that ever happened to them, from the plant owner's perspective. The coal companies are still digging up the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and shipping it to China and India, and we will continue to share the downside of that.

Wind power is a result of government mandates and subsidies for renewable energy source targets. Large solar PV installations are growing for the same reasons. These things all have their downsides, but are ultimately necessary to get done. They will not happen without leadership.

I agree the grid is going to be transformed over the next several decades. I think it will be much less centralized and have the ability to trim peak loads in ways that are not objectionable to the end users.

In New England the top ten peak loads have all occurred since 2005:
ISO New England - Top 10 Demand Days

Open the xl spreadsheet at this link to see peak summer and peak winter history since 1980 in New England:
ISO New England - Annual Seasonal Peaks

ISO New England is the grid operator for most of northern and central New England, excluding Vermont, Northern Maine, and New York State IIRC. They expect to need more capacity over time, not less.

As far as summer temps, I can only tell you what is happening here. There isn't appreciably more AC in work places, stores, autos, etc. than there was 20 years ago. Yet, more and more people, including me, are installing or considering installing home AC.

July, 2012 was the hottest month ever in Portland Maine. Not only is it warmer, we have had periods of humidity that are unusual. The national temperature records for the lower 48 states do not show cooling. It's possible to pick a year here or there that was cooler than the years before, but the overall trend is warmer.
National Overview - June 2012 | Warmest 12-month consecutive periods for the CONUS | State of the Climate | National Climatic Data Center (NCDC)

 

[k0ua]

I will say that government mandates are an expression of leadership. Phasing out leaded gasoline is an example of something that would not have occurred without leadership expressed as a mandate. Granted, some mandates are better than others.[/QUOTE

yeah, and that Ethanol mandate was a really really really bad one.

 

[Scooby074]

My problem with all this has been in my area, I've never been able to find an LED light with acceptable light output. Those I've tried left me with a very dark room. Now, I live out in a retail black hole; 130+ miles to the nearest Home Depot, Lowes or other big box home improvement center. Our local shops have a very limited selection to choose from. This makes experimentation with LED's a very costly and time consuming process which I am just not willing to partake in on a regular basis. I just don't have the time and money to make multiple day-trips to franchiseville just to try a different light bulb in hopes of saving a few bucks. We have a few florescents in various forms scattered around the house along with a bunch of incandescents. Until I can find an LED (actually see it with my own eyes) that produces a bright, white light, as opposed to the dim, blue light I've experienced, I'm not likely to change anything soon.

Just my :2cents:.


Joe

If you seriously want to get a high quality LED with excellent warm "white" colour, get one of the Philips LED's with the YELLOW lenses. They give light every bit as white as an incandescent, and they give a LOT of light, just as good as an incandescent. They come in several wattages. I have 11W which is a 60W equivalent. Under $20 when on sale. Very, very good lightbulb.

The argument that you cannot get the same amount of light (lumens) from a high quality LED is not accurate. High quality is the key. A typical incandescent 60w is about 780 lumens (many are less), the Philips LED is around 800. Certainly within the same ballpark

 

[dave1949]

I will say that government mandates are an expression of leadership. Phasing out leaded gasoline is an example of something that would not have occurred without leadership expressed as a mandate. Granted, some mandates are better than others.[/QUOTE

yeah, and that Ethanol mandate was a really really really bad one.

That mandate would be gone if not for the corn belt special interests. But there is a larger point there too. A market was artificially created for ethanol and a lot of farming and chemistry was done, but ended up not a winner. If you never fail, you never tried is what business people say. I don't expect different rules to apply, or vastly different outcomes, for something just because it is public or private. They are both done by humans.

Preserving a clearly failing program is the real sin IMO.