Imagine if electric cars, heat pumps, LED lights, really are the bees’ patellae. Excellent – as people look to replace their current systems then they’ll naturally gravitate towards these better technologies. That way we’ll make more progress in solving climate change because we’re doing at the least cost.
Hmmm.. As part of my work in the homeless shelter I mentioned here and there I’m responsible for Keeping the Lights On in some 700-odd fixtures in two buildings, ranging from kitchens, offices, rooms, wards, and some specialised outdoors sundries. ( over 4000 fixtures if you add the stock we keep for the Other Buildings elsewhere in the region..)
According to rules and specs that come with large buildings/work environments and all that.
Fun bit is, we’re fighting to get more funding to rip and replace the old stuff faster. Because LED is one of the few EcoShyte things that work.
Better power to lux ratio, better power to lumen ratio with the correct fixtures, 60×60 cm office ceiling plates that don’t weigh a ton and last years, hallway lighting that doesn’t act as a second heating system so all problems associated with hot pipes that are supposed to be cold, including Legionella bursts, that disappear, Light colour that can be chosen and even adjusted from 2.5K to 6K depending on application/requirements, dimmable without frying the filaments/strobe effects/heat dissipation problems. I could go on…
But fixture for fixture LED is both cheaper to buy/replace and to run, by a Very Decent Margin.
The effect might be less in the average houshold, but LED makes a ton of difference in large-scale/professional settings.
And we do not have to present old elements/tubes as Hazardous Waste ( with the associated costs of that…) as we have to with all the fluorescents…
So yeah… the banning of halogen bulbs may be premature, and possibly even forced, but LED lighting will win out..
Just wait until people realise you will not be allowed to sell a house unless you rip out the central heating.
Just wait until the Chancellor realises that inheritance tax has vanished because all the legacy homes are unsellable and worthless.
I’m hoping the Greens win the balance of power in Germany and f*ck it up quickly enough as an example to the rest of us.
LED headlights on cars are more dazzling at night for other drivers, I don’t know if it’s caused any additional accidents but they are annoying.
https://www.unz.com/isteve/headlights-really-are-getting-harder-on-the-eyes/
Jonathan, that might have something to do with the fad of being able to light up everything in front of you as if it was broad daylight, even while doing a pedestrian gridlock pace on a well-lit highway…
The fact that for some silly reason it’s not required to adjust your lights to a maximum elevation anymore as it used to be does not really help..
So yeah.. you get cars with the punch of a small lighthouse shining their stuff all over the place..
Sorry Grik, TPTB have decided they know what is best and what we must be allowed to have.
They decided incandescent bulbs must be banned to save the planet, and that WE had to use compact fluorescent bulbs to save the planet, despite the mercury and other hazardous by-products in CF bulbs.
Then they decided WE were wrong to use CF bulbs, despite them telling us we had to use CF bulbs to save the planet and WE must now use halogen bulbs to save the planet…..Oh, sorry, that’s so ten years ago, WE must stop using halogen bulbs despite them telling us WE must use halogen bulbs to save the planet and must now only use LED’s to save the planet…..
Tim, are you watching this insanity?
Hmmm.. Addolff.. I have as much “love” for TPTB as most peeps frequenting here, and even less patience for the EcoFreaks…
The thing that bugs me about the article is that our host picked, at least in my opinion, the wrong example to make his point..
LED lighting is one of the examples of innovation that would have made it on its own without any interference anyway. It’s that much easier/cheaper to use compared to anything we already have in most use-cases.
Which is one of the main points our host makes every other day: If something is economically advantageous it will be adapted on its own power, unless external forces ( TPTB ) interfere with the economic balance, of course.
The main point of the article is valid.. The example chosen is poor.
Grikath: I’ve found that the LEDs work fine. What fails is the power supply. I’ve had 3 or 4 go in a kitchen with LED downlighters put in about ten years ago. What’s annoying is that a replacement power supply module costs quite a bit more than a full LED replacement unit.
What’s your failure experience in what looks like a much bigger installation?
@Grikath: “LED lighting is one of the examples of innovation that would have made it on its own without any interference anyway.”
So why not let it?
The first generation of LED bulbs, available at the time incandescent bulbs became bulba non grata, were terrible. Dim and irritating colour temperatures.
But Nanny knew best.
The idea behind a lot of these things (from banning incandescent bulbs to banning smoking) is to force longer time preferences. Because the people making the rules have long time-preferences themselves. That’s largely how they became rule-makers in the first place.
We still have a stock of incandescents at home because, at the time, the quality of light was much kinder. We’ve got a small selection of more modern bulbs but I have no idea which is which. We’ll just run them till they die.
@Tractor Gent.
You mean the drivers.. We order generic drivers in two power flavours for replacement where there still are separate drivers. In one case we’ve even adapted PLC/SCADA/Control Box transformers for line feeds.
We have to be ….Creative.. sometimes… ( and our buildings are true Fankenstein’s Monsters..)
A stack of LEDs is no different now than from the …say.. 80’s, just a hella lot cheaper.. Simple Rules Apply… 😉
The drivers themselves are, in my experience, the Weak Point anyway. Those are Lowest Bidder type and good replacements are, like any switching/adjusting power supply, expensive-ish. You do tend to get what you pay for, though.
My experience is that the power ratings/voltages tend to be.. victims of PR.. It pays to buy stuff with margin. So if you got 12V units, demanding [x]Watt total, you want a unit capable of 24Veff and at least 50% more on the power rating.
And definitely filtered.. The Cheap Stuff does a number on anything digital on the same line.. Even worse for wireless.. You’d think people learned from the old thyristor dimmers… nooooope…
Since there’s still a lot of movement it’s hard to decide sometimes. We’ve settled for Opple as a brand ( 5 years of trying Promotions/Offers..) , because price/dropout/availability is good, and at least their stuff takes Copied in China as a quick and dirty solution. Plus at least stuff is the same/available two years on..
The fact that their IP65 “bathroom” stuff does as well in porches and other Outside in Dutch Weather applications for half the money helped there…
Overall… Since we buy often we’ve got a very good discount built ( 40% overall, 60% for specific items..) , so it’s quite often a matter of “what’s on offer this month, and what other projects do we have lined up, and do we get the Discount for…” whether simple replacement or actually fixing existing stuff is cheaper.
Part of my job is mucking about with the ordering to see which is…
Whether that works for any one-off project.. depends on your supplier and …Stuff…
Since there is no climate crisis, until we reach the end of this current interglacial, the continued mantra of “That way we’ll make more progress in solving climate change” is feeding the monster.
Farage stayed clear of “let’s not keep importing all these Muslims”, and “there is no climate change problem”. He would go no further than “not worth destroying our economy for an insignificant reduction in CO2 emissions”.
If you agree to play on their turf by their rules, you have already lost. We have, and so we have.
OK I am going to have to get on my soapbox for the umpteenth time ( admittedly not for a while) and explain how this all started.
Philips, Siemens (Osram) and GE formed a cartel in the early 2000s. They had found that they were losing money hand over fist because China was dumping Edison Incandescent bulbs on the international markets. They hired lobbyists who then travelled the world campaigning to various govts, but above all the EU, that these bulbs were the work of Satan . They had to be banned and everyone must buy the flourescent and halogen bulbs for which the aforementioned companies held the licences.
Because the Labour govt at the time was populated by fucking morons like Hilary Benn and the Milibands the EU directive was passed in Parliament never once mentioning that it was actually an EU directive. Moreover because British journalists are equally moronic no one ever bothered to investigate how this directive came about.
It was uncovered in the Austrian magazine “Profil” around 2010, where they interviewed the CEO of GE in Europe and he fessed up to the plot. Like a lot of Greenwash it took up a life of its own and now stuff is being banned left right and centre, orobably to the detriment of Siemens, Philips and GE.
I used to try to explain to the hard of thinking that market forces would determine the future of lighting, LEDs would eventually and inevitably win, but they had a way to go before they were as friendly and bright as incandescents. I gave up because so many simply couldn’t grasp the concept.
As a domestic user, it was clear that the bulbs that were supposed to replace the incandescent bulb were a scam: less eco-friendly (as if that mattered), no longer-lived (that was a downright lie), far more costly, and barely less power hungry. The few that I bought were only because I could no longer find the right shape incandescent bulbs.
However, my experience with LEDs is that they definitely save power, and if bought from the right place, they aren’t that much more expensive. I have progressively changed the bulbs that are left on for long periods to LEDs, and moved the incandescent bulbs to places in the house that are used infrequently or for short periods. After all, they still have value.
The thing which I don’t understand is why governments hurl cash/bans/taxation around to accelerate changes which are obviously going to occur anyway.
Led lighting is a case in point – at work we took down 20 1KW sodium hi-Bay lights and swapped them for 150w Led units – I think we worked out the payback time was about 12 months. We did this without any government incentives. The world was always going to move to using leds for all but very specialised lighting applications – all the government’s various interventions have really achieved is loads of compact fluorescents being manufactured and eventually dumped into landfill over the last 15 years.
The same with things like low emission zones – they just force people to replace their vehicles a little bit sooner (at considerable personal expense). Almost all the desired change would occur naturally anyway in due course as people replace their vehicles – all the lez do is bring forward a natural process by about 5 years, at not inconsiderable expense.
The electrification of vehicles is another case in point – as and when the tech is mature, people will switch to it naturally. No need to ban new IC engined vehicles or daft stuff like that. It’s pretty obvious that plug in hybrids are probably the future for most applications, and that would have happened anyway (best of pretty much all worlds).
Over and over again, governments waste our money, or really inconvence a small number of people who have really good reasons to stick with a particular technology for no good reason other than to trivially accelerate a change which is inevitable anyway… Why do they do it?
“dumping Edison Incandescent bulbs”: Swan bulbs, surely. Edison lost his patent case against Swan.
Rev. Spooner
June 9, 2021 at 6:42 pm
I agree. The damn LED’s are only about the equivalent of 60 watts. This is ok for my living room, where I’d normally have 25 watt bulbs in the chandeliers, but in my kitchen the only things that work are those coiled fluorescent things that give a nice white light. But of course the bloody things have loathsome Yank screw fittings, instead of bayonet fittings as God intended. I had to buy bayonet to screw converters from Amazon to sort that one out.
One may also note that coils are poorly labelled in the shops. You can’t really tell whether they have bayonet or screw fittings and the right sort of light unless you open each box and check it. And naturally the things are labelled in lumens instead of watt equivalents, so you’ve no idea whether the light’ll be sufficiently bright.
Clearly if I’d been given the choice, I’d have stuck with the old bulbs. I could just walk into the shop and buy one in 5 mins. Instead they’re determined to shove their woke rubbish down my throat. As you’ve guessed, I’ve still some bulbs that haven’t burned out yet. I’m certainly not hurrying to replace them.
Bogan: The boxes are so confusingly labelled that one time I got home and opened the box to discover the bloody thing had a screw fitting and was so frustrated I stamped it into the ground.
And the suppliers have somehow managed to brainwash so much of the public and the retailers that it’s “standard”. No. It’s. Not. It’s all down to “if it’s compliant anywhere in the EU, it’s compliant anywhere in the EU”*. If bloody screwfix bulbs are banned as a result of Brexit that single sole result will be worth all the hassle.
*Which also gives use bloody damn chandeliers that are impossible to install without the entire weight being supported by the *electrical* *connections* instead of a mechanial connection, in complete contravention of any sane and sensible engineering, and the BS7671/IEE Regs – but, because it’s compliant *somewhere* it’s compliant *everywhere*.
Bajonet fittings? The B-type? Those Abominations Unto Nuggan still exist in anything but museums? 😛
( Seriously.. We do encounter those on occasion. Usually in Inherited Professional Appliances of “a certain age and ancestry”.
It’s a sign for us to break out the Furrin’ Toolbox ( US/Brit imperial, Cyrillic Weird, and sundries. Nice collection worthy of a museum in and of itself.. 😉 ) because you just know modern proper standardised tools won’t fit… )
Cyprus has just (as far as I can see) replaced all street lights with LED units.
I’m sure the energy saving is considerable but somewhere there must be a dump with literally millions of perfectly functional light units and bulbs that they have thrown away. Madness…
There’s scandium in them there light bulbs. No, really, sodium/scandium cycle is oft used in street lights. Or was.
Thing is, you need 4 million bulbs to scavenge 1 kg of Sc2O3 worth, perhaps, $800.
The replacement by LEDs is ongoing everywhere. It’s one of those technologies which really does improve.
@ theProle
“The electrification of vehicles is another case in point – as and when the tech is mature, people will switch to it naturally. No need to ban new IC engined vehicles or daft stuff like that. It’s pretty obvious that plug in hybrids are probably the future for most applications, and that would have happened anyway (best of pretty much all worlds).”
It strikes me that ICE vehicles will just be exported to countries with lower emissions standards so any savings in CO2 emissions will be minimal.
We seem to get all of the old trucks and vans from the UK. IKEA has a fleet of old Parcel Force vans that they use for deliveries – presumably sold on because because they don’t meet the UK emissions standards.
If the film Dr Who:Dalek Invasion of Earth is to be believed, the GPO will still be using Commer vans in the 22nd Century.
“the things are labelled in lumens instead of watt equivalents, so you’ve no idea whether the light’ll be sufficiently bright”
What an odd thing to write. The lumen rating tells you exactly how much light you will get. Just going by power is the weird approach. A 50 watt halogen light is much much brighter than a 50 watt incandescent
“presumably sold on because because they don’t meet the UK emissions standards”: ah well, you see, Cyprus can afford to be relaxed about emissions being exposed to plenty of winds, being an island. Hang on, …
Widescale defiance of eco-bullshit is needed if we are to beat the green Marxist crew.
Bogus Johnson wants a social credit tyranny as that is the ONLY way he can force Marxist greenfreak ruin on us.
There are not enough cops,squaddies nor courts/jails to force the eco-crap. Only if UK is open-air jail under social credit is it possible to force people to submission without expending more resources than the state has.
@Diogenes
Few people have any idea how much light is given out by a lamp with a power of 1 lumen (is that equivalent to a glow-worm or a lighthouse?), but everyone knows the difference between a 40W, 60W or 100W incandescent. It was the EU that insisted upon lm as the unit, so that nobody could tell how dim were the fluorescent bulbs they were being (mis)sold.
One of the reasons why newer car lights seem so bright is that the regulations were written incorrectly and specified the amount of electricity the bulb should consume (in watts) rather than the amount of light it should emit (in lumens). For a long time this did not matter as the technology tied the two together. Then new, more efficient, types of bulbs started appearing and the error became obvious.
The only reason you should ever choose a bulb based on its wattage is if you want it to be as bright as possible but are constrained by available power. This may well have been the case with old cars which had feeble dynamos and feeble batteries.