<p>The first bulbs to emerge from this push, Philips Lightings Halogena Energy Savers, are expensive compared with older incandescents. They sell for $5 apiece and more, compared with as little as 25 cents for standard bulbs.</p>
<p>But they are also 30 percent more efficient than older bulbs. Philips says that a 70-watt Halogena Energy Saver gives off the same amount of light as a traditional 100-watt bulb and lasts about three times as long, eventually paying for itself.</p>
<p>I’m going to see if I can pick up some of these at Home Depot. I like the idea of greater efficiency but don’t like mercury in my light bulbs. LED bulbs are taking forever to get the costs down - this looks like a decent compromise for now.</p>
<p>My problem with the “energy efficient” bulbs is that some of them take forever to light up. Does anyone know any way to tell (before you buy and try) which light instantly?</p>
<p>I picked up a few from the local Home Depot at lunchtime. They had 40 Watt bulbs producing 60 watts equiv and 70 Watts producing 100 watts equiv. I will try them out tonight. The shape is a little different as you can see in the picture in the article. The Home Depot had an ample supply of these in addition to flood lights and candle lights.</p>
<p>The household bulbs cost $4.50.</p>
<p>I expect the price to drop. The article also mentions a technology that drops power consumption by 50% but it isn’t in commercial production yet.</p>
<p>I had a look at the LED options and it was pretty disappointing. A technology that looks aways off for household lighting.</p>
<p>I was thinking that another solution would be to put light amplifiers in glasses. Power consumption would be miniscule.</p>
<p>I want to see how long these new bulbs last. The compact flourescents claim to last 3-5 times longer but we find we are regularly replacing burnt out ones. They are NOT lasting 3-5 times as long. I thought I was imagining the problem so I started writing down the dates of replacement…some lasted less than a year. My old incandescents lasted longer than that!</p>
<p>Florescent light bulbs are designed for use over long periods of time. They don’t take well to turning them on and off a lot for short periods of time.</p>
<p>Slightly OT, but I’m trying to figure out if the following was a dream or actually something I learned in college…</p>
<p>Did anyone else receive a “light bulb” lesson in their Marketing 101 class? The concept was that early light bulbs were invented to last for years, decades even. But when GE realized they could make more money if light bulbs needed replacing, they designed them to burn out. </p>
<p>I just checked snopes, but didn’t see anything about this. Dang. I hope I didn’t imagine this.</p>
<p>DougBetsy…actually, I had a similar thought about cars. I seem to recall that someone said that there was NO REASON why the car companies couldn’t build a car that would last for decades AND get great mileage. BUT if the built a car that would last for decades…no one would need to buy a new car every two or three years…so they “made them” so that after a few years, they started to self destruct.</p>
<p>^^ Not so sure about cars. There are a lot of mechanical parts that suffer wear-and-tear in ordinary usage. Besides, many people don’t do the routine maintenance—oil & fluid changes, etc.—that are needed to prolong their life. That said, today’s cars regularly get roughly twice the lifetime use (measured in vehicle-miles) as compared to cars of a couple decades ago. As recently as the 1980s, a lot of people thought a car was doing well to go over 100,000 miles; today 200,000 or more is pretty common, though they may last as many years because people tend to drive more miles/year these days. </p>
<p>This isn’t to say there’s no “planned obsolescence” in the auto industry, but historically that’s been more about styling and design changes, marketing campaigns, and gimmicky little add-on features that made a car seem out-of-date and unfashionable 2 or 3 years after it came out. That’s where Detroit made its money in its heyday, in the design and marketing end, not in the engineering and mechanical end. They didn’t need to design in mechanical failure because most people bought new cars every few years anyway to keep up with the latest design fads and marketing trends, and a strong secondary market for used cars allowed new-car purchasers to partially mitigate the cost of a new car every few years. I think the structure of the market is going to look very different going forward, though.</p>
<p>Oh, sure, I know about planned obsolesense. I just can’t recall whether the light bulb lesson was a dream or real. :o</p>
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<p>And speaking of gimmicky little add-ons, I sure wish On-Star was available to any car manufacturer. I haven’t driven a GM since my Camaro died in 1982. But, as the mother of 2 teens, I find myself coveting that service. (Still won’t buy GM, but I like what On-Star is selling.)</p>
<p>I tried the 40/60 bulbs in 40 sockets. It appears that they put out more light than a regular 40 but I’d rather judge it at night. The new bulbs run cooler too. I turned off a light after it had been on for a minute and unscrewed it from the socket and the bulb wasn’t hot - just warm. I’m going to put in a few hundreds in places where they are used a lot and see if there’s a difference later on. They have the round top to lampshades should fit correctly. They just have a cylindrical midsection.</p>
<p>I know what you mean about fluorescent lamps going bad fast. We have 240 Watts worth in the basement and I only replaced them last year. I’d rather run a 40 Watt incandescent + an additional 100 Watt when we need the whole room lit.</p>
<p>That’s interesting, because we’ve been using nothing but the new compact flourescents for several years and I don’t think we’ve replaced a single one yet!</p>
<p>I put in 3 70/100s. Daughter noticed that they were brighter - more intense than regular incandescents. They come on instantly so there’s no delay or flicker. I will look for these things on sale and also look for energy rebate coupons for our state. They had some at Home Depot but I forgot to grab them on my way out.</p>
<p>Normal incandescent light bulbs can actually be manufactured with any expected lifespan (within reason), but the tradeoff is generally increased power usage. </p>
<p>Traffic light bulbs, for example, are usually incandescent bulbs that are made to last significantly longer than your average household kind, but use much more power. Your city eats the extra electricity cost because it would cost them much more to pay someone to replace bulbs more frequently.</p>
<p>Traffic light bulbs are perfect for LED’s though - monochromatic red, green, yellow (blue and white are the hardest LED’s to make), always on (increased electricity savings), and extremely low maintainance (the biggest cost to a city by far)</p>