Are incandescent lightbulbs making a comeback? And if so, is it worth it?
Two years ago Congress passed a new lighting efficiency law scheduled to take effect in 2012. When the law was written, there were no incandescent lightbulbs on the market that would make the cut - they simply burned too much electricity. The technology was thought to be doomed, with newer, more efficient technologies ready to take over.
As it turns out, the market may have just needed a kick in the pants. In the past week everyone from Smart Planet, to Treehugger, to the New York Times, has been discussing the possibility of incandescents being upgraded to meet the 2012 standards. Research and development in the field of incandescent lighting, it seems, has been soaring. According to Chris Calwell, a consultant who recently spoke to the NYT about the future of incandescent lighting, “There have been more incandescent innovations in the last three years than in the last two decades.”
Indeed, more efficient incandescent lightbulbs are fast being developed. Philips' has developed a bulb - one of the first so-called "second generation incandescents" on the market - that uses only 70 watts to produce the same light as a 100 watt traditional incandescent, and lasts about three times as long.
Still, we have to ask: Is this enough? Even if "cutting edge" incandescents are 30% more efficient than those first used by Thomas Edison - efficient enough, perhaps, to be legal according to the 2012 standard - they're nowhere close to CFLs, which are 70-80% more efficient than standard incandescents - right now. And the rapidly growing field of LED lighting - which has already given us some extremely efficient, long lasting fixtures - promises even greater improvements. The first incarnation of the incandescent bulb was born in 1809 (Humphry Davy's charcoal light strip) - 200 years ago this year. 200 years and this is as far as the incandescent bulb has come? Seems like an awful long 15 minutes to me.
CFLs, meanwhile, have been greatly improved in recent years, and many of the issues that used to turned consumers away from them have been addressed. Dimmable CFLs are now available; electronic (rather than magnetic) ballasts have taken care of the flickering problem; and newer CFLs contain as little as 0.4 mg of mercury, compared to around 4 mg just a couple years ago (and just for reference, a mercury thermometer contains around 300 mg). With highly efficient, flicker-free, dimmable, low-mercury, pleasant light CFLs on the market, is research into incremental improvements in incandescent efficiency our best opportunity? Or are we just prolonging the death of an outdated technology?
Lighting innovation is truly important work, and we're glad to see some major players coming through with improvements on the incandescent front. Still, those improvements have a long way to go before we're convinced that the future of lighting is in incandescents. Right now, for most applications, CFLs seem to us the wiser choice. And as for our fresh-from-the-package, cool-burning, insect-free LEDs - well, it will be a good 20-25 years before we'll need to think about replacing them. By that time, I can hardly imagine that incandescents will still be playing in the big leagues.
Comments
Will --
I can see several sides of this debate. One one hand, if the lighting companies are just trying to weasel out of a regulation, that's not a good thing. On the other hand, if they have (finally) created a product that uses 30% less electricity that works the same as an incandescent, then they have done something that the CFL manufacturers haven't (yet) done completely.
I recently bought some Philips Halogena (indoor R20 flood) for the down-lights in our kitchen -- they are indistinguishable from the bulbs they replaced, yet use only a bit more than 1/2 the electricity (40W instead of 75W). This was a significant compromise for me, but I haven't found CFLs that can perform satisfactorily in this particular application. I tried numerous CFLs for this application, and all of them (so far) have not done the job.
And no doubt: within a few years, incandescent bulbs will be history -- but I think so will CFL; LED is not there yet, but when it does (and it will), it has characteristics that make it far superior to both other technologies. But we're not there, yet.
I am a strong proponent of CFL, and use them wherever possible in my house, and strongly favor using them over the remaining incandescent bulbs we have. I did a lot of testing and wrote a review of the best CFL bulbs I found. I am a true believer.
However, we have several cases, mainly in dimming circuits where we have not found CFLs acceptable (even the electronics ballast kind) -- we have tried a number of different brands and types. I don't mind so much that the dimming is not as smooth as incandescent. But while standard CFLs have a pleasant color (nearly identical to incandescent), all the dimmable CFL bulbs I have tried change the color temperature to a cold blue or even purple color cast as they dim (incandescent bulbs do, too, but they get warmer).
We have found one good dimmable CFL, but it is available in the "A" shape (standard light bulb shape) and the large ballast on the bottom interferes with the fixture we wanted to use it on. This was also an issue with the R20 size we needed for our kitchen -- some didn't actually fit, and others were long enough to be visible when turned on.
Again, I don't mean to throw more cold water on CFLs -- they are great for many application, and, as you say, most of the problems people associate with CFLs have been resolved over the last couple of years. If you buy high-quality bulbs, they do last an incredibly long time and are very durable, having nice light, short warm-up times and pleasant light.
And CFLs do use far, far less electricity -- 1/5th to 1/6th as much, far better than the "almost 1/2 as much" of the more efficient incandescent bulbs available.
In any case, the fact that Philips made such a bulb is certainly a testament to the efficacy of energy legislation -- it got them off their lazy butts ... a little.
Posted by Tom Harrison on Aug 4, 2009 8:11am