The Truth About the New Light Bulb Law

I gave up of "energy efficient" light bulbs. Most of them last few months anyway. I have tried Sylvania, Phillips, GE...

Mostly knee-jerk misinformation from the objectors here. My experience is that CFL's vastly outperform incandescents. Example: I replaced the incandescents on my front porch and garage 2.5 years ago -- today they are still burning bright and used daily. Before replacing those incandescents, the incandescents burned out about every 4-5 months. I'm getting the same type of longevity in my kitchen canned lighting, flood light bulb CFL's. As for disposal, what's so difficult about that? If I continue to get 6+ times the life of incandescents out of my CFL, I'm winning financially Big Time, both in bulb cost and efficiency return on my monthly bill.

Many of the countries in Europe have enacted an even stricter ban for many years now and there are few problems. After living in Denmark where incandescent virtually don't even exist anymore, I have actually found many of the new bulbs to produce much more and better light than the old styles. I admit that you will spend a bit of money until you find the ones that work best for you, but don't resist the change. It really is for the better in ALL aspects. Price, luminosity, and the environment. GE Reveals are pretty awesome, albeit a bit pricey. I know some people are just against regulation by the government in general. I can appreciate that, but there are better battles to fight than this one. There really aren't many negatives with this law.

Why can't the USA make bulbs ensted of buying them from China.???

Well what I want to know is if they new fangled incandescent bulbs will still be effective for chick brooders...a regular 100 watt bulb actually puts out enough heat to keep baby chickens comfortable. I tried a CFL of equal light, but it did not put out any heat and my chicks got chilled. I may have to find a different kind of safe heat source for my baby chickens I hatch in the future if they don't put out enough heat to keep my babies comfortable.

They didn't even try to hide the #$%$ this time! "What is different is that they have an improved filament design, which makes them 28% more efficient as the law requires." - I cut that right out of the article. In the same paragraph is the statement: "look for new ones labeled "72-watt soft white."Improved filament design my rosey red rectum. When you replace a 100 watt bulb with a 72 watt bulb, you get a 28% cut in power consumed. You also get less light.You aren't being forced to buy CF bul#$%$ - They just want to force you to buy less powerful lights.Look, I'm no "incandescent or die" fanatic. I converted to CF lights when they first came out. I have replaced exactly 2 since then. They cut $20 off my monthly electric bills and paid for themselves in less than 6 months - this was when they were new and cost as much as $8 apiece. I am perfectly happy with the CF bul#$%$.I just know #$%$ when I see it.

They are worried about my lightbulbs in my house ?? REALLY ? So govt grants and studies and millions of dollars to MAKE me purchase energy efficient lighting? Wow, thanks big brother, for cornering the market, which you say private companies CANNOT do, but you let GE, whoever, to once again, make billions off the poor man. I know that all the big wigs need their yearly vacation to places only the 1% can afford, which is on the backs of the poor man.

Great artical, They said CFL's are cheaper, what did not say was they are made in China, I buy Led's, As an electrician I can tell You fluorescents are approx. 1/10th of wattage compared to incadescent, and LED's are even better.

Don't care. The fluorescents and stupidly held-back LED is almost always a better choice for the power bill; LEDs have a 50000 hour life expectancy, fluorescents vastly outlive incandescents (you just have to watch for which ones can be dimmed - most can't) so they had to enact a stupid law? - really? we need some jackass in DC to tell us to do something we probably would have decided was usually the better choice all by ourselves? F U! 28% more efficient - here's my guess - they make it 14% dimmer, tell you it's 14% brighter than that - and there's your 28%

It doesn't matter if the new bulbs are more efficient; the government has no right to do this.

Matt Reed: "Repeal of lightbulb 'ban' a dim move" (you'll have to google it) said it much better than anything I could write. Looks like the light bulb ban hasn't been entirely repealed in the last budget bill, but close to it.

Q: How many congressmen does it take to screw up a light bulb?
A: A simple majority.

Q: How many environmentalists does it take to screw up the environment?
A: A vocal minority.

How many of you realize that you can reduce your thermostat by 10% or more in the evenings while you are occupying primarily just one room for watching TV, computing or (gasp) reading?
We utilize two end table lamps in our den, each holding two 100 watt incandescent in "Y" adapters which gives us supplemental heating of nearly 400 watts. Our thermostat maintains 64 degrees in our seven bedroom home during the evening hours but the den/family room stays at a warm70 to 72 degrees from the heat produced by the bulbs plus waste heat from the electronics.

(Overnight we cut back to 58 degrees but sleep warmly on top of an electric mattress pad that consumes roughly the energy of a 60 watt bulb)

This "point source heat" results in an enormous savings in our home heating costs AND IN OUR ENERGY CONSUMPTION!

During the warm months we switch out the incandescents for "warm" fluorescents because we
don't need the cheap heat..

We are in our late 70's so this is not something that requires a lot of youth and inexperience.
With proper training, even an environmentalist could handle this (or not).

I've got several CFL's that quit working after a very short time. Now I'm trying to firgure how to get them to a recycling place without breaking them ,and poluting the air in my car.

for those of us that raise chickens, will we be able to get new bulbs that put out enough heat to keep the chicks warm???????

These bulbs are like the so-called "green" cars. You'll never use them enough over YOUR lifetime to pay the cost difference. Most bulbs in your house... how long do they burn (on the average) every day? Bet its not more than a half hour a day averaged over all bulbs in the house. Remember, these "savings" are calculated by the same government you trust to handle your health care (not).

"so inefficient 90% of the electricity used was wasted as heat." I live in Michigan and I can tell you that about 8 months out of the year that heat is not wasted. It goes straight into the house.

I had 2 of the new ones burn out in less than a year. Of course, made in china by the people who want to own us completely.

Well hold onto your socks! The Electric company here in NE Ohio (Centerior) has gotten permission from PUCO to raise their prices by claiming the efficient bulbs don't use as much electric so they are loosing money! Eh? was that not the object of the new pigtail bulbs?
Another Rip off as GE moves to China.

i bought LED's a few at a time for 3 years, now my whole house is on LED's. I think the highest wattage bulb i have is #$%$ I can't wait for the prices to come down more thanx to this law and i will go stock up on extra LED's. NO MERCURY THERE. I am planning on setting up a solar panel and battery just for my lights and ceiling fans since china just dumped solar panels that were subsidized by their government. It helped them put our panel manufacturers out of business by selling panels for less than it took to make them. But the price drop only last as long as it takes to end the competition. I hope the discounts make it to retail. I know i should buy american but the prices will never come down if they cant compete with china. we only loan money to make solar panels makers, but china gives manufacturers money to pay for the panels to put us out of business and has cheap labor. I would prefer to pay more and make sure an american gets a decent wage and retirement but i don't get a decent wage so i can't afford it. I think that last sentence just illustrates america's most important problem. They just laid off my girlfriend right before christmas to hire a temp agency. They don't speak english so my girlfriend can't work go for them for their minimum wage cause she only speaks english. In tennessee some labor companies are spanish only. The corporation will save a lot of money and some of it will go to help their family members in other countries, who haven't made it over yet.

Good thing the government is concerned about light bulbs....Its not like there is anything else to be focused on right now. What a joke!!!!