In yet another rollback of a Trump-era policy, President Joe Biden‘s Department of Energy on Tuesday finalized a new efficiency rule to phase out older, high-energy incandescent light bulbs.The new rule states that light bulbs must emit a minimum of 45 lumens per watt. Lumens are a measure of brightness. The rule is an effective nail in the coffin for incandescent bulbs, which use a higher wattage than LED bulbs for the same amount of brightness.
Old bulbs that don’t meet the new standard will need to be phased out of production within 75 days, and the Department of Energy will work with manufacturers to ease the transition. Full enforcement of the rule will go into effect in July 2023, which is also the deadline for retailers to stop selling them.
The move is the culmination of a decades-long, bipartisan effort to phase out inefficient light bulbs. Energy efficiency standards were included in an energy bill passed under the George W. Bush administration and implemented during the Obama administration.
But the […]
Bravo! another bright priority point, made by President Joe Biden.
The recent correspondent dinner speech POTUS made was also brilliant. President Biden used humor to educate the American public, about the absurd facts regarding his predecessor, Fox News, and the GOP.
LED light sources still are improving as regards their color rendering indexes but some still have a ways to go. Some “dimmable” LED bulbs don’t work well with older incandescent dimmers. And, what if I want a very low level of illumination at a bedside lamp? A two or three watt LED bulb – if you can find one – is still too much light in some cases. I used a half-wave rectifier disk diode with a 15 watt torpedo medium base incandescent bulb in my wife’s lamp by her bed. The fixture was a three-level low to high light output touch lamp. With the rectifier diode in the socket, we achieved the very low light level we wanted – about the same as a very small match flame. Incandescent bulb specifications are changed using a halfwave rectifier disk in the following ways: 1] Energy consumption is reduced by 42%, 2] life is extended up to 20+ times rated life, and 3] Light output of the bulb is reduce by approximately 70%. In the end, the 15 watt bulb I am using will only be drawing 2 or 3 watts with the diode touch-lamp on low – the combo providing the low light levels I wanted. NOTE: If anyone reading this is familiar with the efficiencies of direct current in a lighting application, I will let you know that I have an inventory of a few hundred half-wave rectifier diodes on hand. Just before compact fluorescent lighting systems were introduced as energy saving retrofits 40 plus years ago, the half-wave rectifier was used in hotels where lighting was on 24/7 as a bulb life extender. Higher watt bulbs replaced the existing ones and with the diode in use, the wattage consumed was reduced back to near what the original 1000 hour bulbs consumed. The light output was somewhat reduced, however the bulb life was extended substantially thus saving the hotel untold labor hours that were previously expended changing hundreds of hallway fixture bulbs many times each year. One other effect of using a half-wave rectifier diode is that the light output of the bulb will be much warmer [into the red spectrum] since the input voltage is reduced. Contact me if you are looking for half-wave rectifier diodes. bruce 360 320 2675 text or voice