It’s not super extreme for those that haven’t read the article. Technically it bans everything less efficient than 45 lumens per watt if it’s over 310 lumens. This typically translates to most “60W” bulbs and up.
This means a lot of appliance bulbs, small candelabra fixture bulbs, and things like lava lamp bulbs that need the heat to function are going to stick around for the foreseeable future.
Im glad this is happening now since LED tech at this point looks better than incandescent if you spend enough (like $3 bulb). If this happened 5 years ago like planned it would have been a small disaster.
While I generally like them, in the lamp in my main room, which has 3 sockets, they are very audibly humming (Philips).
Still insane going from like regular 40W bulbs to something like 13W LED bulbs, which are about as bright as regular 100W ones (it says 1521 lumen). It's such a stark difference in brightness while eating just a fraction of the previous wattage.
That’s not really true. Read up on CRI. Most consumer LED bulbs are only 80 CRI. LED bulbs are definitely the right choice, but you do have to pay a bit more (upfront at least, it should still work out better in the long run) if you want good lighting quality in an LED bulb.
For some reason LED bulbs in my condo start flickering and die after only a few months of use. No idea why, but I actually switched back to incandescent because throwing away so many LED bulbs is more inefficient than running higher power bulbs.
Sounds like your condo may not have properly grounded power, some of mine flicker for that same reason. Have you tried CFLs? Not as nice light but it might solve your issue.
Yeah, those worked fine, but all the stores around me stopped selling them. I can only get LEDs, or I can get decorative style incandescents, so I’ve been buying the latter.
Probably not heat, place is 21C at all times. Only have one lamp with a triac dimmer, but the bulbs die in the rest as well. I’ve tried a few brands, none of them cheap, and they all face the same fate on me. Never had an issue with CFLs or incandescents, but I can’t buy CFLs anywhere near me anymore.
LED drivers can get quite hot even when the room is at a comfortable temperature, causing them to die early. Airflow and orientation can matter a lot with retrofit bulbs.
I had bad luck with the expensive bulbs I tried several years ago, but trying different bulbs and switches seems to have paid off. I almost never get flicker any more, and none of my new bulbs have burned out yet (roughly 2 years so far).
Sorry to hear you’re having a hard time with it, too. It might be worth having an electrician check for faults and bad wiring. Good luck!
I mentioned to someone else I have a free standing lamp with good airflow and the bulbs crapped out in that one too, so something weird with my condos electricals most likely.
Have you tried a different brand? Grounding could be an issue, but when I had a similar issue, switching to a different brand made it stop. Some of my LED bulbs are many years old at this point.
Yeah, couple different brands. Same issue with all of them sadly. Longest I’ve got one going was 6 months, most are closer to 3 before the flickering starts
Check the enclosures. LED lights have controller boards that have to be cooled, lest they burn up. Some enclosures are just not compatible with LED bulbs or you may need a different style. You might consider halogen. They're still incandescent but far more energy efficient and, unlike CFLs, they don't require s hazmat suit to clean up when they break.
That said, CFLs are pretty awesome little feats of engineering too.
Check out the Technology Connections YouTube page. Dude has a few videos on lighting you might benefit from having watched.
They managed to go faulty in a free standing lamp without a shade, just completely open, so I don’t think heat is an issue; something in the wiring must be messing with them.
I have used some halogens, but I haven’t found many I like the light of. Might try some others to see how they look.
All of the cheaper brand of Lowe’s and Home Depot LEDs are absolutely terrible about this. In my experience. They work for a couple months and then flicker and die.
Which really sucks because the cheaper LEDs are still more expensive and don’t last as long as the equivalent incandescent bulbs
Honestly, this is very annoying for me as I use an incandescent bulb to keep my well pump just above freezing during the winter months. It’s going to be a huge pain finding a low power heater as a replacement. Most of what I’m finding are made for submersible use for things like fish tanks and burn up if not used underwater.
You can purchase a heat lamp instead, as it's designed for the purpose you describe. They're larger in diameter, but they fit in a standard light socket.
When I had a well house, I used a 'brooder' lamp bulb. They're pretty easy to find. The ones for reptiles are usually around 150 watts. The ones for birds are a bit more wattage and possibly overkill depending on your region and how well insulated your well house is.
Pipe heating cables are easy to find at hardware stores or online. You can use them to wrap poorly insulated pipes in the winter to avoid them freezing.
I'm guessing something like this would work for you and last a lot longer than a bulb anyway.
Wont that use the same amout of electricity as a 60w light bulb, but with the added annoyance of it not just screwing into the place the light bulb was?
I am no electrician, but this looks to be applicable to longer sections of pipes. Instead of the heat being focused to just the areas reachable by visible light, this would allow for thawing around bends, longer distances, tighter / smaller spaces, etc.
It still uses power to generate heat, but that 60W will likely be way more efficiently applied to pipes. Bulbs will be quite lossy because heat goes through the air to reach nearby pipes (and any other nearby objects), whereas this is physical wires applied directly around said pipes.
To step back a bit, don’t you consider it annoying that you need to heat pipes full of water and the best solution they could come up with 70 years ago was to add a lightbulb socket several feet away from the pipes?
The new rule bans the manufacture and sale of inefficient “general service lamps,” which largely refers to the standard kinds of light bulbs you’d use to illuminate your home. Most incandescent and halogen light bulbs fail to meet these new energy efficiency standards, and are therefore banned by the rule.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has carved out exceptions for many different kinds of light bulbs in its ban on the manufacturing and sale of energy inefficient light bulbs.
“It does not ban the sale or manufacture of ALL incandescent bulbs, just those common household incandescent (and other) bulbs that are not energy-efficient,” the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says of the new ban. “Many bulbs, including specialty bulbs, three-way bulbs, chandelier bulbs, refrigerator bulbs, plant grow lights and others, are exempt from the law's requirements.”
If it's supposed to just produce light, but is wildly inefficient and disposable, banned, since we have vastly superior tech for that, and have for a while.
If it's actually got a purpose, like heating things at a specific level, that is not a lightbulb, that is a heater and/or a light.
Get a million hour low power led light, and a super low power radiant heat coil. You're already paying a bunch of money and making a bunch of trash, just buy them once now, all y'all hillbilly mechanics.
I get the usecases, most of them are absolutely valid. But with the need, eventually comes a solution.
To doricub @doricub: if you believe it's a widespread issue, you could be the first to design and sell energy efficient and durable, low-cost solutions to this problem. With problems, come opportunities. Help the commonwealth, make some profit. Just be real and don't inaccurately misjudge the demand and potential and make either really cheap crap or really expensive stuff. Check out copyright law in your region and internationally, and investigate the problem and possible solutions, science is your friend. I hope you make something cool.
After highschool, one of my best friends had a 4runner that he built up in the marine corps on the east coast. He was a mechanic. When he drove back to the west coast, where we live, that thing was stored in his dad's backyard for like two years under a blue tarp. He kept a (incandescent) work light on an extension cord in there, and it effectively kept the thing clean and dry. I later helped him rebuild that 22R motor over a week in the snow and learned a ton. That was such a cool experience that I'm really thankful to have.
My point is, there are needs all over. Yours is, most likely, totally valid. But, technologically, we gotta go forwards, and honestly, you could be a step forwards with that. You've said you can only find things not meant for what you want? That's FANTASTIC. Buy a few incandescent bulbs now, to hold you over, but start researching a solution that fits. I know a lot of this stuff requires some investment, but that's the ACTUAL point to copyright law. Seriously, I hope you do this and make it work. That would be awesome to see. You can absolutely do it, it really isn't hard to design something, and find fabrication plants to make parts and send them to you, then sell your COPYRIGHTED goods (for the love of god, look up basic copyright law) at a profit to people that need them. I hope you AT LEAST make back your time and resource investment.
Also, there are a few main ways to advertise. Because once you get your product made, you'll have to show THE RIGHT PEOPLE THAT IT EXISTS AND THAT THEY NEED IT AND HOW TO GET IT;) (big, overly-obvious wink).
I’m thinking the elements used in a car’s heated seats should work and not require submersion. Solutions exist out there but they may not be rolled up into convenient kits
My Hue bulbs cost like $15 but god damn I love them. Every ceiling fan in my house is now dimmable from my phone. My game room has lights that I can change the colors of to make my DnD games more immersive. And since they're LED they'll probably last for ages.
Yeah they really are a big quality of life upgrade. Being able to shift your lights to a nice warm color and dim them all instantly is amazing. Makes the house so much cozier at night. Every time we do it, it’s and instant mood shift.
It made it a lot easier for me to sleep, too. Being able to go from "lightly lit and more cool" to "very little but quite warm" light about an hour before bed helps my brain figure out that sleeping should be done at night.
I got a couple of smart bulbs a while ago, but I’m apparently the only one in the house willing to use them through a phone or smart speaker Everyone else just turns the lamps of at the switch, which completely defeats the purpose. I gave up on the idea until such time as I can buy some with a manual toggle included.
Hue makes programmable wall switches, but if you have a smart speaker hooked up to them you can just ask it to dim the lights or make them red or whatever. I find that's handy for color modes and settings that one might not use very often.
I bought smart switches for mine. While I often use my phone or voice, switches are often faster to use, particularly if the switch is well located (eg, turning the light on as you enter the room). Even though I have widgets on one of my home screens for my main light modes, I have to basically interrupt what I’m doing on my phone to use my phone. And voice control is just frustratingly unreliable (I’m also not sure how to use what Philips calls a “scene” from Google Assistant – I don’t usually want to turn my lights off, but rather I have different programmed colour + brightness).
For strangers and guests, switches are usually the only thing they can easily use.
Yeah I remember when they largely stopped being a thing in the UK and for a while we put up with those crappy CFLs that took ages to warm up and had a bleak colour temperature. Modern LED bulbs are fantastic though, my ones even look like old incandescent bulbs.
I do miss the old low-pressure sodium street lights though, the yellow light that ate the colours out of everything was such a cool aesthetic and there’s got to be generations of British kids with a core memory of reading a book in the back of the family car at night by it.
Why not just subsidize LED bulbs to make them cheaper? Banning Americans’ rights to buy things as innocuous as certain kinds of light bulbs is petty government overreach.
[TL;DR: they already are, if you really can't afford them (and your local government isn't ran by shadow-fearing cavemen).]
Legit question, wrapped in incredibly ignorant, destructive, patriotic, inflammatory brainworms.
That is why you are getting downvoted, fyi.
Stop confusing innovation with government tyranny. Stop being a tool and using false dichotomies and other logical fallacies that always results in loss of innovation, enrichment of unethical companies, and biological and ecological damage and destruction.
The role of government is to enforce the will of the people for the good of the people, and finally forcing everybody to adopt superior lighting that is WAY more energy efficient AND way more durable is ABSOLUTELY the right thing to do.
However, to actually answer your ACTUAL question (why don't they subsidize LED bulbs?), that is a question of what you consider a need. The idea of subsidizing is one usually of need, and sometimes also to assist in adoption to push ideas people are hesitant on.
That being said: we aren't talking about cars, bruh. It's like a 2-3x increase in price, but will last 10000x longer and use 0.01x the electricity compared to an incandescent bulb. And basically everybody can afford them. And when they can't, they already have systems in place for that, such as the affordable care act (federally expanded medicaid) and other social net programs like welfare, set up poor people don't get fucked and have to buy stupid incandescent bulbs for all their lives, living incredibly inefficiently.
All the time, responsible governments implement shit like this to get people off of dummfuck ancient technology that people refuse to give up. And whether or not this is "government overreach" or simply forcing the hands of curmudgeons is a matter of purpose and perspective, and ignorance is often that perspective, and hollow-facetiousness and cynical plausible deniability in place of the "purpose".
"Stop eating lead. That is now illegal." - the government, when huge corporations refused to do the right thing.
"Why would I even need that? I've never needed that before" - the dumb monkey, looking at the the monkey using fire.
Yes, clearly being opposed to the government banning the sale of certain lightbulbs and suggesting it instead subsidize more environmentally-friendly models to incentivize their adoption directly translates into a desire to roll coal and slash all funding of nonessential government programs. Excellent inference.
Your explanation makes sense, but I disagree that banning a product from sale is a good approach to phasing out the use of inefficient technologies. The curmudgeons are a small minority and probably can’t be convinced to change over anyway. The bigger demographic to convert are, as you mentioned, penny-wise, dollar-foolish folks who don’t understand that an LED bulb will save far more money over time than the price differential between it and the incandescent bulb. Subsidies to lower the cost of the LED bulbs to match the prices of incandescent ones would be effective, as would education campaigns about cost savings. Neither of these options would restrict citizens’ rights the way the proposed ban would, nor would they feed culture war blowback.
Seems to be working fine because nobody’s gonna be able to buy them. Just like I can’t go buy lead paint at the home improvement store.
People will get over it and we’ll reduce a lot of electricity waste. Who gives a shit of red hats don’t like it because they have a chronic issue with anyone ever telling them to do anything. They’ll literally complain no matter what you do.
It doesn’t ban any rights to buy, just to sell. It’s no different than laws preventing bakeries from selling adulterated bread. Incandescent bulbs aren’t as good at producing light as LEDs, and they are more expensive to operate. The law basically prevents people from falling prey to the boots theory. The main thing incandescent bulbs are good for is producing heat, and you can still buy them for that purpose.
Banning Americans’ rights to buy things as innocuous as certain kinds of light bulbs is petty government overreach.
It's not innocuous. We are literally destroying our habitat with emissions and this helps prevent that:
222 million metric tons: Estimated emissions cut as a result of the DOE rules’ implementation over the next 30 years, equivalent to the emissions generated by 28 million homes in one year.
Bummer, you might be out of luck then. I'd stock up if you can. Out of curiosity I looked some of those up on amazon and every page said they won't ship them to my location, so I suspect they might be included in the ban. Either that or it has to do with my state which has a similar restriction.
I had to look up the bulbs I bought. Three pack of 50w Halogen bulb that’s most likely 550 lumens. Not the normal bulbs for it, but I rebuilt it to be clear with transparent lava. Why it’s crazy bright, too.
www.amazon.com/…/B00NX9J3EOAre the bulbs. Amazon… rolls eyes all the reviews are talking about overalls & a box of 5 says 5500 lumens. Such a great site…
They stopped using the super toxic chemicals in them, so the bulb is the only thing I can think of that’s blocking you. Cali I’m guessing?
I have a large lava lamp someone gave me for Xmas some years ago. It’s 27"/68.6cm tall. The problem is, it needs a 100W floodlight bulb to work (normal 100W bulbs don’t work) and I haven’t been able to find decent 100W floodlight bulbs for years. I’d like to use the lamp again, but honestly one weird dude with a huge lava lamp shouldn’t be holding up progress.
Also, I'm not sure if floodlight bulbs would be included in this, since those seem like they would fall under specialty bulbs, not normal household bulbs.
You can find incandescents for ok-ish prices on eBay pretty readily for the time being. Maybe buy a small supply of bulbs for the future if you want to keep using it.
As long as I get to keep my flicker flame candelabra bulbs, this is good news lol. Nothing compares to those intentionally defective incandescent flames in the LED market tragically. Just something warm and sciencey about seeing the electricity bounce around before your eyes.
If we’re talking about the same thing you should be fine, I’m not sure how the flickering works exactly but they’re pretty much little neon sign lights. They have more in common with fluorescent lights and old-school street lights than incandescent bulbs.
My experience is that there are different grades of artificial flicker-flame LEDs, some look good, some look very fake. You can get decent ones if you invest a few bucks and you'll probably never have to replace them.
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