Howard Brandston Defends The Incandescent Lamp
“If someone really wanted to do a green household, they could use dimmers, they could use occupancy sensors to turn off the lights in case they forgot to. Control of the light is really the most energy efficient way to gain benefit.”
–Howard Brandston
LightNOW says: Amen, brother!
Click here to read this interview with Howard Brandston by The New York Times green blog.
We should all follow Mr. Brandston’s lead in speaking out on this topic. There is a lot of bad science and bad aesthetics advocated by “ban the bulb” zealots. Our elected officials need to hear more about this from all of us who can make the point with clarity and persuasion.
In addition to speaking to elected officials, lighting professionals might also consider contacting the lamp manufacturers and asking them to produce a 45-60 LPW (or at least a 30 LPW for now) incandescent lamp. Then it’d be the CFL, not the incandescent, that would be in trouble. The technology appears to be possible if not immediately available. But the sense I’m getting is the manufacturers see the incandescent as a loser in the long term and are already looking at the LED lamp as the next favored household bulb, with the CFL being a stepping stone.
In many areas incandescent works best if properly controlled.
It is Low cost vs LED.
Put a chip in that will shut off lamp if run at 80-100% output for 30 min?
Bulbs that comply with the 2012 minimum standard are available now. In addition to the Philips Halogena Energy Savers at Home Depot, Philips now has a new line of EcoVantage halogen incandescent bulbs available on Amazon.com. They are cheap, only $1.50 each in some cases, have the same familiar A shape as standard bulbs, have a nicer whiter light and use 25% less energy. I got some and I like the bulbs. It’s very ironic that Philips became the first to market the lamps, despite that GE was the one who advocated improvements in incandescent technology.
Oh one more thing, I do think it’s stupid to ban the bulb. No way I’ll ever approve of a ban that would require CFLs as a technology!
Where do I begin…..
~Low hanging fruit~
Incandescent and halogen lights are the low hanging fruit in our current energy arena. The simple truth is this 5% of the total energy used to light up ANY incandescent light is translated into photons (light energy) the other 95% is translated into BTU’s (heat energy) this is not some great government cover up, it’s fact! The reason an incandescent light, lights up is based on the friction of the energy as it travels through the filament. Now if your AC unit (I live in Arizona AC units are very important)was only 5% efficient would you stand for that.
With the current speed at which manufacturers are introducing new light sources such as LED, OLED, SS Plasma and Induction lighting,
I think if anything as a lighting designer you will have more options then you ever had by 2012….
I would suggest that the government has/had a better option than ‘banning the bulb.’ Instead of an outright ban, I would propose a tax similar to the ‘gas guzzler’ tax on cars and trucks. Call it the ‘energy hog’ tax and require a prominent label on each box announcing that the lamps fail to meet minimum energy-efficiency requirements. Set the tax high enough to make the energy-saving lamps more attractive on a first-cost basis – say $1/bulb. This way, consumers would be aware of the disadvantage but still have the choice if they prefer it – whether because they have light sensitivities or simply prefer its quality of light.
Dave Inman says:
“The simple truth is this 5% of the total energy used to light up ANY incandescent light is translated into photons (light energy) the other 95% is translated into BTU’s (heat energy) this is not some great government cover up, it’s fact! The reason an incandescent light, lights up is based on the friction of the energy as it travels through the filament. Now if your AC unit (I live in Arizona AC units are very important)was only 5% efficient would you stand for that?”
Your complaint against incandescent lightbulbs, Dave,are like the points on the “Whose line is it anyway?” tv show – it doesn’t matter.BECAUSE if the lighting inside of our homes becomes too horrible to use , even though it is 95% more effecient energy wise, it is useless to us , i.o.w. 100% ineffective.