Yagotcha! Industrial Ideas

Thomas Edison was a great inventor and the father of the electric light bulb. In fact, the incandescent lamp used today is virtually unchanged from his original design.  His genius gave us a light source that opened up the 20^th century for our well-lit, modern caves. It’s been fun, but now it’s done.

In December of 2008, former president George W. Bush signed into law the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2008, (HR-6). In section 321, this definitive energy regulation declares that other than a few exceptions, the general purpose incandescent lamp is being extinguished. The phase-out begins in the next 3 years, with only tougher regulations foreseen in the future. The European Union begins in September of this year.  Oh, there are certainly light sources that will take its place. We have LEDs, O-LEDs, fluorescents, HIDs, cathodes, and induction lamps to name a few. Each of the replacement light sources has its own strong points. Some have a long life, some boast reduce heat or give more light per what. But can they duplicate what Mr. Edison and his tungsten wrapped threads accomplished in the late 1800s? The answer is NO. Here’s why.

Through the past, oh say 200 million years, life on planet earth has had the luxury of seeing with the complements of our sun. The sun produces generates a good mixture of colors that is delivered to us in what we know as ‘white light’. It establishes for all of us a common platform to see and agree on what is Red or what is Blue  and so forth (never mind the philosophical questions of the existence of either). This is because you don’t actually see an object, but only the light that is reflected from it. It absorbes some of it and reflects back the ‘color’.  Since we (as a species) grew up under the sun, all that we see under it is true color–or at least a consistant electromagnetic wavelength reflected from objects into our eyes.Yet when you bring the same object indoors under a non-incandescent light source, these items do not receive the 100% of colors that they receive outdoors. They only receive what we can technologically give them with our science. This property of a lamp is called the color rendering index or CRI. The sun has a CRI value of 100, of course.

Granted, our science will always get better and I have no doubt that there are future Edison’s that will make it so. Yet, right now we just don’t have the know-how. What Thomas Edison happened upon was a lamp that could be economically produced with low cost supplies that has a CRI of 100-or equal to the sun in the sky. All other lamps not based in that technology have CRI ratings below this. Some have a high 92, while others can be found in the low 70s. 

Still, the sad time has come for quantity to win out over the quality. Since we are all on this planet together, it’s time we took responsibility for our gluttonous energy ways. The problem with our lighting is that in most cases we just don’t get enough quality for what we have to pay for in energy. When gauging a lamp’s energy appeal, we use the term efficacy. Efficacy is the ratio between the total visible light and the total amount of input power it consumes. Here’s a chart that demonstrates where Edison’s lamp falls into the most common manufactured light sources:

You can see that short of an open flame, the incandescent lamp has the poorest efficacy in our lighting family. But there are other factors that make a lamp source acceptable for incandescent replacement. Here are a few: 

Color Temperature: This is the feeling of warm and cool that we get from a lamp source. It’s reflected in Kelvin degrees and opposite to what you’d think. A warm lamp actually carries a lower Kelvin temperature than a cooler lamp, which burn higher. Make sense? No? Try this then: a standard incandescent lamp burns at around 2800-3300 degrees Kelvin. While a cooler fluorescent tube burns at 4100-5500k. Daylight is at 6500k.

Disposal: Some lamps, such as HID or fluorescents have small amounts of mercury. We all know that mercury has a nasty little habit of finding its way into our food supply. Therefore, mercury=bad. No mercury=good. There are mandatory recycling initiatives for standard fluorescent tubes that keep the mercury out of our kids’ DNA. Yet, in recent times the lamp manufacturers and government authorities hatched an ingenious plan to lower the mercury content so that we could throw them away. This still means mercury is getting into our environment. Wouldn’t it make sense to quadruple the mercury content and make sure that everyone recycles? Show them: recycle anyway.

Price: Alternatives for the Edison lamp aren’t cheap. However, by choosing the right lamp, such as a good fluorescent or LED source, you can actually plot a Return of Investment (ROI) or even make money once it is paid off. This is easy to accomplish due to the very appetizing lamp lives that they have.

It’s no doubt that once we start to push the incandescent bulb out of distribution, the consumer will need a little more savvy in their lamp purchases. With proper understanding of the replacement technologies at our disposal, we can mimic the properties of the Edison lamp.  But as far as duplication, we’ll need to settle for around 80-90% for a while at least.

Thanks for reading.

John Maclay

Political Musings ASHRAE, Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, EPAct, fluorescent, green energy, green lighting, IES, illuminating engineering socioty, LED, light bulb, lighting