Happy Bulbs To You

Lumens, Watts, Lumens / Watt, Lifetime

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Interesting side note. The Wiki on incandescent bulbs includes this bit of trivia. It may matter as it means that low voltage track lighting may be ‘available’ long after other incandescent lights are banned:

Lamps designed for different voltages have different luminous efficacy. For example, a 100-watt, 120-volt lamp will produce about 17.1 lumens per watt. A lamp with the same rated lifetime but designed for 230 V would produce only around 12.8 lumens per watt, and a similar lamp designed for 30 volts (train lighting) would produce as much as 19.8 lumens per watt. Lower voltage lamps have a thicker filament, for the same power rating. They can run hotter for the same lifetime before the filament evaporates.

Remember that 17.1 number, and that 19.8 number especially. We’ll see why they matter down below.

This implies that 12 VDC lighting is very efficient and very long lived…

Today has been an interesting day in Bulb Land.

First off, it’s not as bad as it first looked, at least if the Wiki can be believed. (Don’t know why, but it had not occurred to me that there would be a wiki on the Bulb Ban… but there is.)

Second, I got a variety of new bulbs to play with and have been ‘experimenting’.

As of now, per the wiki, there will be plenty of bulbs that will be ‘good enough’ for what I want, even after the Ban Begins.

What started me looking for more information was that I’d bought a variety of “odd bulbs” and was wondering how much I was just wasting money should these particular bulbs not be on the banned list. Which raised the question of what WAS the “list” or even “Is there a list? Or is it a Standard?”

Much to my surprise, there’s a wiki for that:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-out_of_incandescent_light_bulbs

The very good news is “There are exceptions”. I love exceptions… I’ll be mostly listing the USA law and some California bits. I cover a bit for folks in Australia, the UK, and the EU. For elsewhere, you’ll want to do your own “looking up”. I expect you will find some similar exception to your liking. For most folks in Europe, this tid bit is probably the most important:

Switzerland banned the sale of all light bulbs of the Energy Efficiency Class F and G, which affects a few types of incandescent light bulbs. Most normal light bulbs are of Energy Efficiency Class E, and the Swiss regulation has exceptions for various kinds of special-purpose and decorative bulbs.

So a brief trip to Switzerland to turn some Euro’s into gold for your numbered account and you can pick up a suitcase of lightbulbs while you are at it. Nice.

Back at the USA:

United States

Individual State efforts

California will phase out the use of incandescent bulbs by 2018 as part of bill by California State Assembly member Jared Huffman (D-Santa Rosa) that was signed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on October 12, 2007. The bill aims to establish a minimum standard of twenty-five lumens per watt by 2013 and sixty lumens per watt by 2018.
[…]
Federal legislation

In December 2007, many of these state efforts became moot when the federal government enacted the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, which requires all general-purpose light bulbs that produce 310–2600 lumens of light be 30% more energy efficient (similar to current halogen lamps) than current incandescent bulbs by 2012 to 2014. The efficiency standards will start with 100-watt bulbs in January 2012 and end with 40-watt bulbs in January 2014.

Light bulbs outside of this range are exempt from the restrictions (historically, less than 40 Watts or more than 150 Watts). Also exempt are several classes of specialty lights, including appliance lamps, rough service bulbs, 3-way, colored lamps, and plant lights.

By 2020, a second tier of restrictions would become effective, which requires all general-purpose bulbs to produce at least 45 lumens per watt (similar to current CFLs). Exemptions from the Act include reflector flood, 3-way, candelabra, colored, and other specialty bulbs.

OK, I can make a lot of that work. Worst case is I have to pick them up when in Nevada or on a Texas / Florida trip. The ‘3 way’ exception alone just means I pay more for a feature I don’t use, worst case.

For another option, today I picked up a “Sylvania 200 W Clear Utility” bulb just to see if running one of them at about 1/2 bright was acceptable on color temperature ( it is ). That bulb is 3880 Lumens, so outside the scope of this law until 2020. So for the next decade, I’ve got a solution I can buy at the store (though depending on what California does, it might take a trip to Vegas or Reno ;-). 200 W bulb, run dim. The 150W “utility clear” bulb is rated 2740 lumens so it, too, is ‘outside the scope’ for a decade. For comparison, I bought a GE Rough Service bulb in 150W that is 1580 Lumens (or about the same light output as the cheap 95 W bulbs, but at 15 times the price) but with a service life of 2600 hours (vs 750). It, too, is ‘outside the scope’. Running it, it’s fine at full power, but a bit redder than I like on partial power.

So what this says is that I’ve bought 3 bulbs that I didn’t need to buy, but will be fine to have ‘in storage’ anyway. Worth it for the information learned. More on that below. As these were $3.xx each, it’s not a big deal.

Just for grins, I also picked up a “Sylvania 300 W Clear Utility” bulb. That puppy is big. The box is a bit under 9 inches by 3 inches. It has a regular base, but will not fit between the lamp shade hoop in one of my lamps. It does fit in the reflector in the other room, though the end sticks out some. In a way it’s kind of ‘way cool’ as you can watch the filament ;-) On the dimmer it’s “way bright” at even 1/2 setting. At full on it’s nearly blinding :-) Specs? 5900 Lumens, 300 W, 750 hours. So run that puppy down to the 1000 to 2000 lumens range, it’s going to last forever…

I also picked up some Halogen GE “Edison” brand bulbs. The wiki led me to think I’d wasted that $20 as halogens ought to be efficient enough to ‘qualify’ for acceptance… but putting the bulb specs into my spread sheet said they were not nearly as efficient as the typical halogen. The 150 W, for example, is 2430 Lumens (so would fall within the law) and only makes 16.2 Lumens / Watt, thus would be banned as that is almost exactly the same as the regular incandescents. In fact, that 200W Utility bulb was cranking out 19 Lumens / Watt. All I can figure is that a clear glass helps more than expected and that the “Coated bulb reduces glare” on the GE Halogens is not a very efficient coating… Reading up on halogen bulbs, I also found out that the life extension on a dimmer is not nearly as straight forward, nor as much, as a regular incandescent. More on that below too…

BTW, that “plant bulbs” is a big deal. You can find all kinds of plants with particular spectrum requirements. Some need more blue, some more red, some need longer, some shorter. So, your local greenhouse supply store will be able to supply to you all kinds of interesting lights. There is a ‘black art’ of mixing incandescent with fluorescent to make various things bloom at different times. I think this is a great exception to have. I think I’ll put in a small Potting Shed Greenhouse with a “special bulb forcing fixture” that needs extra warmth and a nice yellow light ;-)

The Rugged Bulbs exception means I can hold off on buying that case of 20,000 hour bulbs until about 2016. Nice to have that in the hip pocket. And that 2600 Lumens cut off means that the bigger bulbs that will last longest on dimmers will be available for a while as well. All in all, a very workable set.

Oddly, if the wiki is to be believed, Australia has fewer ‘exceptions’ but a lower standard:

Australia

[…]The new minimum standard efficiency level is 15 lumens per watt (lm/W). In November 2008, the importation of non-compliant lighting (which includes some incandescent globes) into Australia was banned, and from November 2009, the retail sale of non-compliant lighting was banned.[30] According to the current proposal,[31] all regular light bulbs and some other kinds of light bulbs sold from October 2009 will have to meet the new minimum energy performance standards. Incandescent light bulbs that meet the new standards, for example high-efficiency halogen bulbs, will continue to be available.

So you ought to be able to get halogen bulbs and even some incandescents meet 15 Lumens / Watt. (Several of them in my spread sheet, including the Philips 100W at 16.2, the GE Halogens, the Sylvania 130 V at 17 though they are only 14.7 when run on 120 Vac, even the GE 95W Energy Saver Long Life is at 16.1 lumens / Watt. So unless Australia has some strange way of measuring L/Watt, they ought to be legal. Heck, that 200 W job is pumping out 19.4 L/W so it ought to be “In like Flint”… (The 150 W clear utility bulb is “only” 18.3 L/W ;-)

So if someone is saying “No More Incandescents”, try the specialty and industrial lighting store… and look for clear bulbs.

The UK entry just says they are banned, but the EU entry is more interesting:

European Union

The initial Europe wide ban only applies to general-purpose, non-directional incandescent bulbs, so does not affect any bulbs with reflective surfaces (e.g. spotlights and halogen down lighters) or special purpose bulbs including those used in ovens, fridges, traffic lights, infrared lamps etc. The sale of the most inefficient bulbs will be banned in a phased approach. The first types to go are non-clear (frosted) bulbs, which will be off the market by September 2009. Also from September 2009 clear bulbs over 100W must be made of more efficient types. This limit will be moved down to lower wattages, and the efficiency levels raised by the end of 2012.[12] Also, the EU has given the target of 2016 to phase out halogen bulbs, and any bulb available for purchase after the 2016 date must have at least a ‘B’ energy rating.[13] The Finnish parliament has been discussing banning sales of incandescent light bulbs by the beginning of 2011.[14]

So you folks ought to be able to buy Halogens for a few more years at least. After that, you ought to still be able to get “appliance bulbs” that as near as I can tell are indistinguishable from regular bulbs other than the shape of the glass… Oh, and that exception for “reflector bulbs” means a load of flood lights are or ought to be available. I found a GE Halogen Flood 95 W at Lowe’s here in the USA, with a 6000 hour life. For 2 of my ‘dimmers’, I can put a small flood in them and never notice the difference.

LED Land

I’ve made my first plunge into the land of LED home lighting. (I’ve already got it in my flashlights).

I bought a Sylvania “40W replacement” “Ultra High Performance Series LED” that uses 8 Watts. $22. Package says it’s 430 lumens, but it seems like more. Rated life: 50,000 hours.

First up, the bad news. It claims on the package to be “Dimmable”. It isn’t.

You can dim it a little bit, but at less than about 3/4 bright it starts to flicker. We’re talking major flicker at 1/2 power or less. Full off, then back on, kind of flicker. There may be some specialized kind of dimmer this works with, but it doesn’t work worth a damn with the ones in my wall switches. The good news is that it’s already dim enough so you don’t need to dim it 8-{

OK, it immediately left the bedroom in search of a place to be used. Most of my lamps and fixtures want at least a 60W incandescent level of light. More good news is that the “40W replacement” is conservative. The color is a very pleasing 3000 K, so just a touch more ‘white’ than your typical 2700 K incandescent or crappy CFL bulb. (Good CFLs are in the 3000K to 4000K range and look very crisp white). This has the side effect that the light seems brighter. Furthermore, while it’s packaged in a ’round bulb shape’ the light is preferentially emitted out the “top” 1/2. Not in a beam, but none wasted headed “down” toward the base.

I’ve put it into a lamp in the living room that is usually left on as “background” lighting. I also took out the “curly bulb” that was in that fixture. The lamp shade now sits nice and level as it can ‘grip’ the round globe of the LED nicely… no longer looking like a drunken sailor bumped into it… The “upward” direction of the bulb means more of the light goes out the top to hit the white wall and ceiling, thus more efficiently lighting the area. (NOT a feature for a reading lamp you would sit below…)

The light is smooth and even. None of the “mottle” that I get with the flashlight bulbs. It comes on instantly, and there is no detectable bad behaviours (though I am somewhat deaf, so a fine ear ought to listen to one and see if it really has NO hum…)

It is modestly heavy (about like a CFL) so any weight balanced light that has trouble with a CFL will likely also “drift” with one of these.

For general use, though, I’d rate it highly. For fixtures where the directionality is OK and for lamps that can hold the bulb pointed at the work area, it ought to be a stellar choice. Over the years, I’ll likely be replacing a couple of other lamps bulbs with these. The kitchen main fixture, too, if they ever get one that’s a “100 W replacement”. (The only ones like that at LOWE’S were spots and directional floods. Not what I need.)

OK, for my purposes, it will “work” in roughly 2 fixtures. (Where a low light level is OK). A higher power version “some day” may work in 3 more, possibly 5. The only lights it will be replacing are CFL bulbs. The fixtures with dimmers will be staying incandescents. MAYBE, I’ll put the time in to find out if there is some kind of special dimmer they take… in about a decade… I expect I’ll be buying roughly one per year. Maybe one every other year if the higher power ones don’t show up ‘soon’ and cheaper than the $50 price tag that was on the ‘spot’ bulbs.

At any rate, it’s nice for the “leave it on all the time” lamp in the living room, and I may even get a LOWER power one to replace the 7 w ‘curly bulb’ in the entry way lamp that’s “always on”. At near zero operating cost, I see no reason to power cycle them and stress the electronics.

Clear Utility Bulbs

These are marketed for use in things like yard lights and shop lights where aesthetics are not the main driver. The idea being that a frosted bulb is a smoother light, with less harsh shadows. But in a lamp with a shade, who cares? And, in fact, I’m finding the ‘sharper’ character of the light a benefit in clarity and focus. Things just look sharper to me. That they are also more efficient is just icing on the cake. How much more efficient? The 150 W is 18.3 Lumens / Watt, the 200 is 19.4 L/W and the 300 W is 19.7 L/W. Compare that with a “Rugged Service” bulb at 11.9 and you can see it’s close to a “double”. I’ll take 2 times the light for the same power any day. That the high efficiency and high lumens output keeps these available for a few more years is A Very Nice Thing.

The 150 W bulb puts out 2740 lumens. That’s like running two of the 100 Watt bulbs. (Sylvania or GE Reveal) That is a very nice economical tradeoff. At that point giving up a little bit of efficiency for a longer life by dimming a few percent will not hurt the light quality, quantity, or economics one bit.

I bought the 300 W Clear Utility Bulb just to see what light quality looked like when you dimmed it down to about 1000 lumens. (It is 5900 at full power – about the same as 7 generic 60 W bulbs). The light quality is significantly reddened. But it’s curiously interesting to look at the filament. It’s a comfortable brightness to look at and a color that reminds me of looking into a fire. Oddly interesting. Again, at all of $3.44 for the bulb, I’m not feeling like I wasted the money. I’ll most likely put it in a ‘flood enclosure’ I’ve got (metal conical lamp with a cord and big “clip” that grabs things) on a dimmer in my work room. Where I can turn it on Real Low for times of contemplation, or Real Bright if I want “daytime bright” for anything. It DOES get hot, though!

The main “takeaway” from this section is just that a visit to the local “industrial lighting store” is likely to be useful. Even without resorting to things like High Intensity Discharge or Metal Discharge lamps (that are nice color temperature and no flicker, but have minor issues like exploding ;-) so mostly used in industrial lighting…) you could benefit from the “industrial sized” clear bulbs. The industrial lighting store is on my list for next week some time. That, and a visit to the local hydroponics / greenhouse supply store to see what kind of lamps they have.

Halogen and Dimmers

FWIW, the wiki on Halogen lamps was instructive about operating these things on dimmers.

Because of their peculiar operating ‘feature’ of scavenging the tungsten, they want a certain heat profile to work right. Running them on a dimmer can disrupt that profile, so you don’t get as much life extension as you would for a regular incandescent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halogen_lamp

Tungsten halogen lamps behave in a similar manner to other incandescent lamps when run on a different voltage. However the light output is reported as proportional to V^3, and the efficacy proportional to V^1.3. The normal relationship regarding the lifetime is that it is proportional to V^ − 14.

Got that? Volts to the MINUS 14 power. A little drop in voltage goes a long ways. Sure, output gets cut as a cube, but life extension… wow.

For example, a bulb operated at 5% higher than its design voltage would produce about 15% more light, and the efficacy would be about 6.5% higher, but would be expected to have only half the rated life.

Halogen lamps are manufactured with enough halogen to match the rate of tungsten evaporation at their design voltage. Increasing the applied voltage increases the rate of evaporation, so at some point there may be insufficient halogen and the lamp goes black. Over-voltage operation is not generally recommended. With a reduced voltage the evaporation is lower and there may be too much halogen, which can lead to abnormal failure. At much lower voltages, the bulb temperature may be too low to support the halogen cycle, but by this time the evaporation rate is too low for the bulb to blacken significantly. There are many situations where halogen lamps are dimmed successfully. However, lamp life may not be extended as much as predicted. The life span on dimming depends on lamp construction, the halogen additive used and whether dimming is normally expected for this type.

So stocking up on halogens for use with dimmers is probably not the best idea, unless they spend most of their life near full power. Occasional dimming? Ok. Run at 1/2 or 3/4 power their whole life? Probably not a good idea.

So store halogens for things that will not be dimmed (much). The GE ones I bought have a 3000 hour lifetime, so are a good choice for things expected to run ‘full on’ most of the time or only slightly dimmed. If you do run them on dimmers often, run them up to full power for a while from time to time to extend their life.

In Conclusion

At this point I’ve got 1/2 dozen Halogen bulbs in 95W and 150 W that will be ‘deep archive’. Don’t need them right now, but will want them for some future time for rooms that are dimmed, but not often. I expect that a more efficient version will make the hurdle and be available after 2012.

I’ve got a 200 W clear incandescent “utility” bulb in the lamp of this room (and I’m LOVING It… very clean light. I can light up the whole room for things like detail work and cleaning, yet it’s a nice “kerosene lamp” ambiance when turned waaayy down low, with ‘very useful and pleasant’ at medium power settings. I’ve also turned the room heater down a notch, so I’m saving on my heating bill ;-) I also like the idea that at 19+ Lumens / Watt it’s very much more efficient than the lower power bulbs for full room lighting. I think I’ll be getting a couple more of these over the next decade. At $3.22 each, they are not cheap; but the lighting quality and range of luminosity settings and ambiance settings available are just a dream. The only ‘drawback’ is that it casts a strange shadow on the ceiling over the lamp. The “support wires” and screw on top … but even that is kind of interesting… This is now my “standard bulb”.

I’ll not be buying any more of the “rough service” bulbs for the next couple of years. Just don’t see the need. About 2016 I’ll buy a case lot of them “for the children” 8-) but until then, the (expected) continued availability of the 200 W (and even the 150 W) “utility” bulbs make them an inefficient and anaesthetic alternative.

On LEDs, slow additions as they make sense. Still waiting to find something that actually works well on dimmers. Still looking for a 100W “equivalent” with even luminosity downward from a lamp.

Finally, I’m going to spend a couple of days investigating “Low Voltage Track Lighting”. The bulbs are Very Small so easy to store, and it looks like they meet the efficiency hurdle such that they stay available for many years (at least in the USA) while having good dimming and long life to the bulbs. Hard to beat that combination.

With that, I think I’m nearing the end of The Great Bulb Adventure. I really do wish my government would just leave me alone so I could do things that are more valuable, but they don’t. Oh Well. FWIW, I’ve also learned enough about bulb construction that if I really needed to so so, I could make my own bulbs. Strange thought, that. Perhaps there will be boutique business in making “luminescent art” ;-) Just try to suppress me 1st Amendment freedom of expression ;-)

One passing note. There is a very curious kind of incandescent light. It is an antique kind, but needs no vacuum, no sealed bulb, and no special gasses. I’m tempted to make one just to play with it. They use a glowing bit of ceramic. It would be very easy to make in a home shop. Read and enjoy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nernst_lamp

The Nernst Lamp with Ceramic Element

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