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Biden admin moving forward with light bulb bans in coming weeks

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james_s:

--- Quote from: Xena E on April 02, 2023, 01:59:07 pm ---However:

Being told what I must use boils my piss.

I get it that the administrations in the UK, Europe, and the US, do need to conserve energy. The reasons are not made clear though, to them it's just a freaking popularity contest to gain the acceptance of self-righteous snowflakes who think they're saving the world by buying millions of tonnes of eco approved technowaste to pollute the environment even more than it already is.

--- End quote ---

This. I made my own choice to phase out incandescent lighting many years ago in favor of first CFL and then starting around 2010 LED. At the time I was paying $40 each for the new Philips LED bulbs which was ok because I was an early adopter and LED lighting was a technology I believed in and wanted to succeed. BUT I absolutely loathe being told what to do, especially by self righteous twats and stupid politicians, and had they tried to force adoption back then I probably would have pushed back and refused. I want to make my own choices, if I choose to use inefficient products I pay for it in my energy bills. I'm ok with government subsidies to kickstart and encourage development of more efficient technologies, and I'm even ok with taxes on inefficient products, but I am not ok with mandates. There are always edge cases that nobody thinks of, antique or decorative fixtures that have a unique look, lava lamps and childrens toy ovens that rely on the heat of an incandescent lamp, oven lights that get much too hot for LED bulbs to survive, projector lamps, fixtures with precise optics, etc.

abeyer:

--- Quote from: Zoli on April 02, 2023, 05:31:12 pm ---For our future discussions, please remember.
Thank you.

--- End quote ---

I don't think anyone will not remember that you are either disingenuously obtuse or utterly unable to infer context and intent.

james_s:

--- Quote from: BrianHG on April 02, 2023, 11:06:58 am ---And yet, in some US states, it is still currently illegal to have 'Day Beam' headlights or run your headlights during the day because of the slight extra load on your alternator, wasting a few tea-spoons of gas over the year.

--- End quote ---

It sounds silly, but I can see the reasoning behind it. There are around 290 million cars in the USA for example, if we take a very rough estimate and say 1% of those cars are on the road at any given time that's almost 3 million cars. A pair of 55W H4 bulbs means 110 watts to power the low beams on each car, which works out to around 330 megawatts of electricity. These numbers are probably inaccurate but even if they're high by an order of magnitude that's still a LOT of energy. While it's true that the energy required to move the cars absolutely dwarfs what is used by the lights, hundreds of megawatts is still hundreds of megawatts, that energy has to come from somewhere, it comes from the fuel used to power the cars and it pollutes just the same as a 300MW gasoline fired power plant. This is just in the USA too, I suspect we have more cars per capita than most parts of the world but probably not THAT many more than other developed nations.

Does it make sense to try to regulate this with a law? Probably not, there are so many other variables, tire pressure being one of them, that have a much greater effect but when looking at the big picture it is not quite as silly as it first seems.

nctnico:
Nahh, that 110W is likely lost in just turning the alternator anyway.

james_s:

--- Quote from: nctnico on April 02, 2023, 07:21:31 pm ---Nahh, that 110W is likely lost in just turning the alternator anyway.

--- End quote ---

You will absolutely burn more fuel running the headlights than not. 110W is a very small amount of energy when dealing with an engine rated at 100kW or more, but it's not free and turning the alternator with no load requires almost no torque, it spins freely until you load it up. I can hear the idle sound of my car change slightly when turning the headlights on, the idle air control valve opens very slightly further to keep the RPM steady. On cars that I've driven that have electric primary radiator fans the load is significant, you can feel the engine lurch when the electric fan kicks in.

Actually measuring this added consumption is probably tricky because it gets lost in the noise, but if you could maintain a constant set of circumstances I bet it would be measurable.

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