The Incandescent Light-bulb gets an upgrade

Originally posted by Fiverz

Originally posted by hlesterjerome
Naw, that's not gonna happen anytime soon.

They last too long. Very little repeat business. Unless manufactures can convince the public they need to put in a frail "control" circuit board that happens to have a high failure rate.

Sad to say it, but I believe this is true. Consumers won't buy if the initial cost is too high, and it would need to be to offset the lack of replacement business.

Well, they'd be hard pressed to stop it, considering just how cheap LED's are to buy... and no, you don't need an expensive control circuit, you can make it yourself dirt cheap.
I believe you can build the LED pulser for about 20 cents, the AC/DC converter you can find in almost any electronic equipment. You can pick one up for about 50 cents... the LED's themselves will run you about 15 cents total.
Considering if you screw it up, you only need another 85 cents to build it again... thats pretty good. If you only screw up one of the parts, well, thats fine, whats a 5 cent capacitor going to run you? Oh right, 5 cents.


People will start building these things themselves. I know I am. I also know dozens of friends of mine who do the same... I told them how to build them, and gave each one a little diagram in case they need to build more.

It's not just the fact that you're saving money. LED light simply looks nicer for some reason, and you can rest knowing you will never have to pull out a chair to go and replace a blown bulb in the ceiling light.

Point is, if I and a group of friends already build our own, it's just a matter od time before people start making them for profit.

I'm already thinking about it... you can mark up the price of these things quite a bit, especially if you're selling to a market of people who don't know how to build it themselves!

I had to read the subject line three times before I figured it out that this thread is not about *indecent* light bulbs...

I would very much like to see these bulbs to become more popular, but it should be noted that in places were houses, offices etc. require heating you don't save anything in winter when the heat is on even if you have the most super-efficient bulbs there is... Because you need certain amount of heat to be there and it needs to come from somewhere - these days some of it comes from light bulbs as a byprodct. So the savings aspect isn't all that simple at the end.

Originally posted by Long Lance
nice find !

goes to show that ideologically motivated legislature, not matter how intended falls short of its alledged goals (australian incandescent ban). i'm a bit disappointed, though, because the technology is scheduled for 2010. who knows how good affordable LEDs will be by then.

I don't think the Aussies are all that ideological about the ban, it's more about saving money by not having to build extra power plants(or keep old existing plants open). The added heat from all those light-bulbs really puts just that much extra pressure on the air-conditioners, which in turn consumes more energy.

I do agree that if this ban is all encompassing, they'll be missing out on this new tech, though whether it will come in time to help bridge the gap towards LED's I'm not so sure... Format wars in the lighting sector, I thought I'd never see the day.

[edit on 13-3-2007 by sardion2000]

IN Sydney, we could get a houseful of free long lasting long prongy lights (sorry not sure of the exact name for them) from our local shopping centre. Apparently the company that was giving them away for free could get money back in some sort of carbon credit scheme that was operating for a short while.

It was abused by companies not distributing the globes but chucking them in rubbish tips and still claiming the credits for them. And so the whole scheme has been tossed out. Which is a huge shame.

My lights have been in for at least a year and as yet, none of them has fused.

To replace them is expensive at around $8 aus each. It's a huge jump from paying 80cents. Which turns a lot of people off. To do a whole house could cost up to $100 compared to the old bulbs $10.

I personally haven't noticed a huge drop in my electric bill which I was assured that I would see. That could be due to the price rise in electricity, although I'm not sure. I still need to use a lamp with an old globe when I read, as it's a lot crisper. I find it a little hard to read with the soft glow of the enviro globes.

Hopefully, with mass marketing, the price of these new globes will come down in price and be almost as cheap as the old ones with time.

Even though old globes are being banned here in a few years, I know of some people who are stocking up on the old cheapies. So I don't think we'll see the benefit for a lot longer afterwards.

You see, that's the thing with these new High Efficiency bulbs, they are as traditional as can be. I'm a proponent for both and if these can match the efficiency of CFL(Compact Fluorescent Lights), then I'll switch my support around, though that is not expected for at least a decade. By that time, LED's will be economical and the lighting industry will undergo a revolution. Also if you don't see much of a drop, then you were probably not using your old lights as much as you think. Same goes if you don't use Air conditioning.

Yeah, you're right about that. I've always been pretty energy conscious and only have lights on when I absolutely need them. I don't have air conditioning but use a pedestal fan during Summer and jumpers and an electric blanket instead of a Heater during Winter.

I suppose you would really have to use lighting a lot to get the maximum savings benefit from the new globes.

Well, I'm pretty energy concious too, but there's only so far you can go without alot of money.

For instance, my radio is anchored to my wall, next to the window... extracted solar panels from other devices slowly charge the NiCAD batteries I have there, which then feeds power to the radio, and my wall mounted CD player... the Amp is a small scale Amp I built myself... no bass, will power laptop speakers easily enough for a long period of time.
The amp is shared by both the radio, and the CD player... all of these things I either built, or extracted from other things... all of which have no problem with the Amperage I can give it from a solar source.
I also have a hand crank dynamo attached along side the solar panels, should I over-use the whole thing overnight. That way I can just hand crank the batteries to full again. (Which oddly enough seems to charge the batteries in seconds... I'm probably doing damage, but it's all scrap parts so who cares).

Either way, I'm slowly making my way around the apartment doing things like that. Replacing and modifying all the electronics so they don't require household electricity.

Why?
Because our rent is not going to have electricity included by the end of this year... so I'm hoping to be using very little power by the time that comes... this computer and the refrigerator are going to be the hardest things to get off the grid.

I saw a nice hack the other week about a basic bucket freezer that was modified with a temperature guage hooked up to a switch that toggles whenever it hits a certain temperature making that freezer into an ultra efficient fridge. The reason why it's so efficient is simply because cold air is heavier then warm air.

By "bucket freezer" this is what I mean.



[edit on 16-3-2007 by sardion2000]

Originally posted by damajikninja
Anything htat lowers my bills, AND my carbon footprint is good in my book.

Why do you care what your "carbon footprint" is?

Originally posted by Murcielago

Originally posted by damajikninja
Anything htat lowers my bills, AND my carbon footprint is good in my book.

Why do you care what your "carbon footprint" is?

Why do you care that he cares?

Want to add anything substantial to this thread Murc?

Originally posted by sardion2000
Why do you care that he cares?

Want to add anything substantial to this thread Murc?

Didn't you ever learn not to answer a question with a question. (especially if it wasn't directed at you to begin with)

"Carbon footprint" is rediculous, I could care less how much CO2 I put into the atmosphere. I'm sure according to Gore everytime I exhale...I'm killing a penguin.

The Incandescent light ban passed in Australia, and the similar one passed in California, are perfect examples of backward political thinking. Politicians are horrible at progressive, intelligent thinking. Instead of banning a technology, they should mandate a level of quality. If newer Incandescent can produce light efficiently then they should be OK'd. They need to set a level of power consumption per lumen, and not simply ban one type of lighting.

Bat, if you don't care how much you pollute, you will end up drinking your own poop sooner or later. Your carbon footprint, if you don't care about it, is what is polluting the air you breath and causing global warming. Sooner or later, that is gonna come back and bite you. Even bats need a clean environment to live in. (For those of you wondering why I mention bats... Murcielago means Bat in Spanish)