The great EU lightbulb ban, 10 years on

What units do people use wherever your mother is from? ergs per second?

Wife is from China, I'm guessing maybe they do use 'watts' and lumens, it's just she was last living in China 10 years ago, presumably before more energy efficient bulbs were widely available, thus it was pretty simple to not compare watt usage to brightness as all incandescents were basically the same (more power/watts=brighter). Translating from different languages and familiarity with possible labelling and packaging differences between the two countries, etc. I know a decade or two ago I never looked at lumens, just the wattage (low watts if I don't need much light, more wattage if I need more light).
 
Sorry for confusing your wife with your mother.

#awkward
 
Better than #kinky I suppose.
 
Ironically, those are not banned: they do not consume electricity! They just ceased being used because there was a superior technology available. If you get the point...

CFL lights are also disappearing before the EU managed to ban them, because there is a better alternative available. And they probably took their time to ban them because it would be... embarrassing to ban something that had been pushed so strongly just a few years before.

An update 4 years later.

U.S. has now banned the manufacturing of incandescent lightbulbs in 2023.


The standard is now 45 lumens per watt minimum, which is impossible for incandescents to meet.


California's ban on CFL's starts in a few months.


Next up should be mathematically impossible fuel efficiency standards for internal combustion engines.
 
Thanks for posting this.

I'm going to run to the store this week and try to pickup as many incandescent bulbs as possible before they are not available anymore.
 
They last much less, consumes much more, radiates a lot of heat and the light is much more yellowish. It is like preferring cassettes to mp3.
.
 
They last much less, consumes much more, radiates a lot of heat and the light is much more yellowish. It is like preferring cassettes to mp3.
.
There are some (not me!) that say the extra heat is a good thing (winter). Of course, they just gloss over the fact of it being a negative for summer, and even during the winter it is an inefficient source of heat generation.

When the alternative to the 'old style' light bulbs first came out, 15-20 years ago or whenever it was, they were ugly (bulb was spiral shaped, I didn't mind, but some certainly did). Hanging light/fan setup over my parents dining room table used 6-8 light bulbs and they refused to switch to the spiral light bulbs because of appearances, thus had to spend alot more in electric bill.

But now they have them in styles that can replicate the old fashioned bulbs in appearance. Get the same good look, but cheaper electric bill.
 
I only use leds at home. The only incandescent bulbs i have are in my car.
 
Incandescent bulbs give off heat which is nice in the winter time. I live in a cold winter climate area.

I also think the light hue given off by an incandescent light bulb is softer on the eyes. LED/fluorescent bulbs burn out my retinas. Wait 'till you get to be my age then you'll see. Or not...:lol:


Haha, just read Bamspeedy's post. Well there ya go. I said the unthinkable. LOL
Yes it gets hot like an inferno in the summer. Oh well....


Edit: Oh and another thing. I didn't notice a difference in my electric bill when I switched over to 80% LED. In fact my electric bill got higher because of the rate changes post pandemic era.
 
The new bulbs that whine as they get old are a bit of an irritation.
 
Are new lightbulbs designed wrong?

New lightbulbs are an led array/fluorescent tube attached to a ballast/driver in the base. They usually fail because of the temperature of the base, degrading the electronics in one way or another. The surface of the base is made from white plastic, which is quite a good insulator of heat.

Surely the surface of the base should be optimised to dissipate heat? Googling for an image I came across the below from 2014, so they have thought about this. It would not need to be a finely cast bit of metal, simply making the body out of a sheet of metal attached to the components, perhaps with some air gaps to allow circulation of air, would seem it would make it much better. They are put in places that are designed to get hot and dangerous when in use.

I do not know about others, but the promise of 20 year lifespans seems like fantasy to me. I have not worked out what frequency they got at, but I think it is closer to 2 than 20. It must be a sustainability issue that these things are not being designed to last.

BTW it appears that this applies less to the filament style of LED bulb.

led-bulb-with-heat-sink.jpg


Spoiler Reference youtube :

Spoiler IR cameras showing heating of different lighting equipment :
RgK0Kix.png

Standard LED bulb on right, LED light fixture on left
SGmoGLk.png

Filament lightbulb, note the number is wrong because it cannot read glass, but the base is cooler which is the important thing
 
Planned obsolescence.
 
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