Incandescent lightbulbs are now banned in the US
Incandescent lightbulbs are now banned in the US
The Biden Administration's rules seek to make lighting cheaper and less polluting
The Biden Administration's rules seek to make lighting cheaper and less polluting
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.
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.
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.”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.
https://www.amazon.com/WRAP-Pipe-Heating-Cable-Built/dp/B0002YWMM8
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.
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.
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.
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.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.
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.
Awesome! A small but important step forward
But my lava lamp!
Lava lamp bulbs are typically less than 310 lumens, so you're, like, good, dude. Wow.
Sick
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.
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.
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.
Why don’t we just let people make bad decisions that affect the health and safety of everyone else! Gosh
[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.
If they enacted subsidies for LED bulbs he’d have a conniption about government spending on hippie bullshit
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.
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.
Or things like the restrictions on the sale of raw milk as well.
They subsidize them by giving you back the extra $2 in your energy bill.
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.
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.
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.
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.