Bulbs first, flatscreens second, vacuum cleaners next?

[valo403]

Originally Posted by Flame Of Liberty

Because they have no right to tell me what kind of a vacuum cleaner i can or cannot buy. What is this, Soviet Russia controlling every aspect of our lives? Saving energy? Where does it stop? What's the point of producing energy anyway? Maybe so people can power their home appliances? And now a bunch of useless bureacrats in A/C offices/limo's/jets is telling me that my vacuum cleaners uses too much energy? &$%# them!

The fact that European parliament is moving back and forth between Brussels and Strasbourg wasting resources without blinking an eye is just a icing on the cake.

You lose any ability to make a reasoned argument with stuff like this. You come off as that weird guy with the pube beard sitting in the corner of the lecture hall randomly blurting out nonsense and earning the hatred of everyone around you.

[FlameOn]

EU basically has everything decided by committee and always ends up in compromise solutions that aren't efficient or make any sense for that matter. You thought one government's bureaucracy was bad? Try layering another one on top of that.

So many examples of this, if anyone is following the Galileo program they'll know how much of a clusterfata that is. Too many strongly differing opinions, one solution that has to come out of that mess.

[Bring_Back_Shantz]

First they came for the lightbulbs, and I said nothing because I already used CF bulbs.
Then they came for the CRT tvs, and I said nothing because I had a plasma.
Then they came for my vacuum, and no one was around to say anything for me, becuase it was all dark, and thier tv's weren't very good.

Not going to happen. They can take my vacuum from my cold dead hands!

[Ashartus]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

Flame of Liberty: did you know the Soviet Russian-esque Harper Government (TM) announced way back in 2007 that incandescent light bulbs would be banned for sale in Canada as of 2012?

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/...unn-bulbs.html

Technically incandescents aren't banned, they just need to meet certain energy efficiency requirements. You can get incandescent bulbs that meet the 2012 requirements.

[bizaro86]

Everything humans do has an energy cost. It kind of GMG when the government tries to decide what that acceptable cost is for me. It would save lots of energy for the EU to shut down it's entire apparatus, but they seem to think that's valuable enough to continue. Why can't clean floors use a bit of energy if bureaucratic hot air gets to?

The dangerous products listed upthread are an excellent example of a false analogy. A car with an exploding gas tank is a consumer protection issue, just like Chinese baby food with extra lead shouldn't be allowed.

The difference is, nobody was trying to buy baby food with lead or exploding cars, those were defects not disclosed. If the vacuum has a disclosure notice (energy star mandated style) on it saying how much energy it uses and the average bill associated with that, I should be able to buy it.

[Handsome B. Wonderful]

Saving energy? Where does it stop? What's the point of producing energy anyway? Maybe so people can power their home appliances?

Seriously? You think that's what energy is for?

[Tinordi]

The stupid burns.

No one demands energy, we demand energy services. Like lumens per square meter, or kilometers travelled. The job of energy planners and analysts is to satisfy the energy services demanded while minimizing energy production. Because with energy production comes significant costs and environmental damage.

On CFL bulbs, they will drop in price as economies of scale pick up Slava. They already give off very comparable levels of likght warmth and luminosity, and are now able to dim and do all the rest. In the end you will save considerable money over the life of the CFL bulb next to the incandescent and at the same time save environmental damages of electricity production.

What a crappy trade off.

[Tinordi]

Also, what a painful but typical rhetorical device FoL is submitting. The EU can't set efficiency standards because they waste energy themselves. Go back to grade school with that kind of crap. Want to talk efficiency standards? Then lets talk about them. I don't want to hear about Al Gore's house in the process.

[photon]

http://www.lightingprize.org/philips-winner.stm

I think CFLs are a bump in the road that leads to LEDs.

But yeah you can get warm CFLs now, as well as ones that have 90% their brightness when turned on.

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by Tinordi

Also, what a painful but typical rhetorical device FoL is submitting.

If we're not having painful rhetorical devices in the thread, then I want the false analogy about safety standards struck from the record!

Safety standards and energy efficiency standards are only the same thing if you believe that energy efficiency as important as a human life.

[Slava]

Originally Posted by Tinordi

The stupid burns.

No one demands energy, we demand energy services. Like lumens per square meter, or kilometers travelled. The job of energy planners and analysts is to satisfy the energy services demanded while minimizing energy production. Because with energy production comes significant costs and environmental damage.

On CFL bulbs, they will drop in price as economies of scale pick up Slava. They already give off very comparable levels of likght warmth and luminosity, and are now able to dim and do all the rest. In the end you will save considerable money over the life of the CFL bulb next to the incandescent and at the same time save environmental damages of electricity production.

What a crappy trade off.

All I know is that for $100 worth of light bulbs the incandescents will light my home for a very long time. That same $100 for the CFLs would probably replace every bulb once. I know that they have guaratees for 10 years or whatever, but they don't actually last that long in my experience....and I don't save the packaging, let alone would I bother sending back the bulb for a measly $3.

Once they get the cost of the bulb down to something comparable I might convert, but until then I'm going with the cheaper, more effective way of lighting my home.

btw, the idea that the CFLs would save money over the longer run is laughable to me. The miniscule charge on my power bill that is for actual electricity would need to drop by a huge amount to notice an impact. Lets say it saves me $1/month (which is on the high end IMO). Thats about 100 months just to break even from making the switch....over 8 years!

Lastly you shouldn't just throw those things in the landfill, so when it comes to the ten year mark and they burn out (lmao) I suppose to dispose of them properly you load them up and roll down to Staples for the electronics recycling?

Its foolish. The energy savings are so miniscule as to not be concerned about them, and the costs surely outweigh that benefit by a lot. If people really want to make a difference here they should shop at used stores, bike to work and compost/recycle. Worrying about light bulbs is just a misuse of another kind of energy.

/rant

[You Need a Thneed]

^^^

let's say you have your bulbs on 8 hours a day on average. A 60W bulb would cost you ~$14 per year per bulb. A 6W LED replacement bulb will cost you $1.40 per year per bulb, and last 10 times as long. I picked up some 6W LED bulbs online for $10 a piece (on sale) a couple of months ago. At that price, I recoup the cost of the bulbs in less than a year, and considering my kitchen has four such bulbs, every year after that, I save $50 in electricity cost. That's just for ONE room in my house.

[You Need a Thneed]

On the topic, Lightbulbs are on approximately 8 hours a day, or 33% of the time. TV's are on 3-4 hours a day, or 16.6% of the time.

If we say that some vacuums for an hour every two weeks, that's 1 hour out of every 336, or 0.3% of the time.

Shouldn't they be looking at appliances that are used a little bit more often first?

[photon]

Originally Posted by Slava

btw, the idea that the CFLs would save money over the longer run is laughable to me. The miniscule charge on my power bill that is for actual electricity would need to drop by a huge amount to notice an impact. Lets say it saves me $1/month (which is on the high end IMO). Thats about 100 months just to break even from making the switch....over 8 years!

It's more like $1/month per bulb, which means each bulb should pay for itself in about a year.

Originally Posted by Slava

Its foolish. The energy savings are so miniscule as to not be concerned about them, and the costs surely outweigh that benefit by a lot.

Switching from 60W bulbs to 12W CFLs would save over 15 terawatt-hours of electricity each year in the US. That's $billions, or the equivalent of saving the electricity to light all the homes in Chicago.

Going to 6W LEDs, double those savings.. You could light the homes of all of Chicago, Boston, and San Francisco with the electricity savings.

That's not minuscule.

[Slava]

Originally Posted by photon

It's more like $1/month per bulb, which means each bulb should pay for itself in about a year.



Switching from 60W bulbs to 12W CFLs would save over 15 terawatt-hours of electricity each year in the US. That's $billions, or the equivalent of saving the electricity to light all the homes in Chicago.

Going to 6W LEDs, double those savings.. You could light the homes of all of Chicago, Boston, and San Francisco with the electricity savings.

That's not minuscule.

So if I switch 20 bulbs in my house my utility bill would drop by $20/month? I can't see that at all!

[You Need a Thneed]

Originally Posted by Slava

So if I switch 20 bulbs in my house my utility bill would drop by $20/month? I can't see that at all!

You can pretty easily calculate how much you would save in a month, just estimate how many hours a day that each of the bulbs you would replace is on.

At current power rates, a bulb left on for an average of 8 hours a day would save you more than $1 per month if it was switched from a 60W incandescent to a 6W LED.

For every single bulb switched you save over a kwh per month (about 1.6 actually) PER hour of use per day.

[The Yen Man]

Originally Posted by Slava

Those damn commies!

Seriously though, from my cold dead hands. I hate the CF bulbs. They're way too expensive, don't seem to last longer than the incandescents and cost about 10-15x as much. If I spend $100-150 in light bulbs I would expect my energy bill to recover that cost over the next year, but instead the bill is basically the same, or not notably different. The most irritating thing is that you turn on a light and it takes a few minutes to warm up...talk about the dark ages!

Anyway, sorry to derail thediscussion about vacuums and why the new law in Europe sucks.

Fully agreed! Those CF bulbs suck. The glow seems a lot more artifical than incandescent bulbs. It's like I'm in a hospital. And you're right. They last about the same as normal bulbs.

[photon]

Well it would of course depend on how much each bulb gets used, but work it out.

20 bulbs x 60W = 1.2kW
1.2kW x 8h per day = 9.6kWh per day
9.6kWh x 30 days per month = 288kWh per month

8 cents per kWh = $23.04 per month

Obviously bulbs that get used less than 8 hours per day will take longer to pay for themselves, but should also last longer.

I agree though that CFLs don't seem to last as long as proposed, but it seems to be just some, so it's more a faulty bulb rather than them wearing out early I think, I have ones that are 5+ years old and still work fine.

And the newer ones I have don't look like a hospital (they are as warm as an incandescent).

[Jodester]

How will my kids make me my mini cakes from their easy-bake oven once all of the incandescent bulbs are gone?

[You Need a Thneed]

You can get CFLs and LEDs in various colour temperatures. To get the warm white colour, you want bulbs that are in the 2700k to 3000k range (k = kelvin) I do think that you sacrifice a little bit of brightness in most bulbs to get light that colour.