Let the hoarding of 60-watt and 40-watt bulbs begin

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/12/18/incandescent-phaseout-leds/3828627/

by hornokplease • 13 years ago

8 8 13 years ago

koberstein• 13 years ago

60-watt lightbulbs to the moon!

transfire• 13 years ago

Don't bother. I have bought more than a few LED bulbs now and they absolutely rock. On the other hand, I don't think incandescents should be illegal. How am I going to heat my chicken coup? ;-)

jgeorge• 13 years ago

All of my home lighting is LED or CFL except for one specific use case - a collection of vintage Lava Lamps (don't judge me.) These need incandescent bulbs not for light but for a specific heat output to melt the wax.

Now I'm going to have to design some kind of replacement that's LED lighting and some kind of heating coil. :/

rbanffy• 13 years ago

How much energy will that transition save? How much of the total energy footprint is used in lighting?

toomuchtodo• 13 years ago

Let's be conservative, and instead of assuming 75-90% efficiency gains, we round down to 50% savings based on a majority of lighting moving to LED. That's a savings of almost 215-230 billion kWh of electricity a year.

EIA US Data:

http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=99&t=3

"EIA estimates that in 2011, about 461 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity were used for lighting by the residential and commercial sectors. This was equal to about 17% of the total electricity consumed by both of these sectors and about 12% of total U.S. electricity consumption.

Residential lighting consumption was about 186 billion kWh or 13% of all residential electricity consumption.

The commercial sector, which includes commercial and institutional buildings and public street and highway lighting, consumed about 275 billion kWh for lighting or 21% of commercial sector electricity consumption in 2011.

EIA does not have an estimate for only public street and highway lighting.

Our most recent data available indicates that in 2006, 63 billion kWh were consumed for lighting in manufacturing facilities, which was equal to about 2% of total U.S. electricity consumption in 2006."

upofadown• 13 years ago

There is almost no use of incandescent lighting in commercial applications these days so I think your estimate might be on the high side.

From your numbers I get that 4.4% of US electrical consumption is residential lighting. So switching out all the existing residential incandescent lighting would be useful, but not all that significant when looking at the bigger picture. If compared against energy consumption in general, residential lighting pretty much disappears.

goombastic• 13 years ago

Not sure if the issue is related to bulb quality but I don't like the temperature/color of most LED lighting I see here in India and somehow it feels a little feeble like tubelights do sometimes.

retrogradeorbit• 13 years ago

The Lightbulb Conspiracy (2010)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfzQzGNYaiU

Let the hoarding of 60-watt and 40-watt bulbs begin

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