OT: Wow, compact fluorescent light bulbs already obsolete

On Sat, 18 Jan 2020 14:41:07 -0500, Phil Hobbs
<pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

and produce ugly colours.

nonsense. The vast majority were triphosphor in sane CCTs, but it was
possible to find outliers with excessively high CCT, and occasional
junk products with old halophosphate phosphors.

Most CFL tubes use /7xx or /8xx phosphors. Some manufacturers claim
also /9xx models in their catalogs, but I have not seen any CFLs in
real life in the /9xx range. I use some /965 (CRI=9x 6500 K)
"daylight" tubes but they are full size fluorescent tubes.

Okay, what's the exact significance of that?

You must be colour blind.

Let indirect daylight fall on a white surface. Aim the lamp towards
the same surface to a chive similar illumination. With /965 phosphors
is hard to tell the difference and I have often forgot to switch off
the /965 uplighters in the morning when there are sufficient light
outside . Unfortunately /965 CFLs are extremely rare and
unobtainable as LEDs.

It isn't white surfaces that have the problem, it's coloured ones. The
output of CFLs consists of a weak continuum plus several very bright
emission bands.

True for /7xx and /7xx phosphors, not for /9xx phosphors (full size or
CFL if available).

The problem with white LEDs is that it radiates a very strong blue
spectral line from the chip itself and a continuum of red and
yellowish colors from the phosphors. Unfortunately you would have to
select 2700 K or below models to limit the blue emission and hence get
a more balanced total spectrums. With better fluorescent tubes 4000 K
looks quite balanced and even /965 (6500 K) looks good, but 4000 K or
6500 K LEDs would look awful.

 

[Phil Hobbs]

On 2020-01-18 14:38, upsidedown@downunder.com wrote:

On Sat, 18 Jan 2020 13:19:52 -0500, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-01-18 11:16, Winfield Hill wrote:
Cursitor Doom wrote...

On 18 Jan 2020 07:10:25 -0800, Winfield Hill wrote:

Not so short; History from Wikipedia:

1976: GE engineer, Edward E. Hammer, invents spiral CFL.
1980: Philips model SL, screw-in, integral magnetic ballast.
1985: Osram model EL lamp, including an electronic ballast.
next: development of high-efficacy phosphors...
1995: by Shanghai Xiangshan in China, helical CFLs.
2011: China CFLs were the "dominant technology".
2015: LED prices fell well below US$5 for a basic bulb.
2016: GE, announced phase out of CFL production in the US.
2020: 40 years later, John Doe writes, that was short-lived.

Osram. Now there was a company that knew how to make bulbs.

They still make superior LED light sources. Yesterday I
pushed our 120W green Osram theatre LED to a peak pulse
current of 360 amps, up from its continuous 20 amp rating.
The competing 100W Luminous theatre LEDs failed at 200A.
Also, it's forward voltage increase was modest; I only had
to raise the RIS-796 pulser's voltage up to 30V, from 24V.



I'd be interested in how the lifetime is affected. Overcurrent causes
dislocations to grow, so that the nonradiative recombination becomes
more and more of a problem.

LEDs run at DC are fairly intolerant of overcurrent.

The problem with "white" LEDs is the lifetime of the phosphor.
Stressing it too much and the conversion efficiency drops quite fast.
To achieve usable life times of tens of thousand hours, you need to
run the LED at Imax/2 or even Imax/3.

Not so. The phosphor is mostly inorganic salts, and so is very stable.
See e.g.
<https://www.electrochem.org/dl/interface/wtr/wtr09/wtr09_p032-036.pdf> or
<https://www.led-professional.com/resources-1/articles/new-glass-based-phosphors-for-white-light-emitting-diodes>

You could get some yellowing of the organic binder, of course--that's
mostly what causes optocouplers to degrade at high drive currents.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com

 

On Sat, 18 Jan 2020 11:42:59 -0800 (PST), Lasse Langwadt Christensen
<langwadt@fonz.dk> wrote:

lřrdag den 18. januar 2020 kl. 20.18.00 UTC+1 skrev jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com:

I wonder how the LED fake Edisons work. They seem to have a bunch of
LEDs encapsulated into long skinny tube shapes. Where is the current
limiting?


there's a pcb with rectifier and constant current driver in the base

https://youtu.be/NffhdAz9pc4 money shot around 10 minutes

Amazon offers 10 ea of cyt1000b regulator for $4.48 total with free
shipping. Under 10 cents each in larger quantities.




--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.
"Bunter", he said, "I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason"

 

[piglet]

On 18/01/2020 1:24 am, Phil Hobbs wrote:

On 2020-01-17 19:57, John Doe wrote:
I bought CFL lightbulbs once. Now I need some more, I turn around and
they're gone! Replaced by LED light bulbs. That was a short-lived
technology.


Good riddance.  CFLs stink on ice.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

I found old CFL ballasts a useful source of ferrite mH range inductors
for prototyping and quick-dirty emi filter lashups with better current
ratings than little drum core inductors. I salvaged a heap of the little
base driver toroids but haven't found a use for them yet.

piglet

 

On Sat, 18 Jan 2020 14:41:07 -0500, Phil Hobbs
<pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-01-18 14:29, upsidedown@downunder.com wrote:
On Sat, 18 Jan 2020 12:30:47 -0500, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-01-18 06:10, tabbypurr@gmail.com wrote:
On Saturday, 18 January 2020 01:57:45 UTC, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 2020-01-17 20:46, John Doe wrote:
clip

highly temperature-sensitive,

some were intolerant of small enclosed spaces, most weren't. Depended
on the mercury technology & dose.

The problem with all kinds of fluorescent lamps is starting at cold
(below -20 C) temperatures. In a closed enclosure, if you manage to
start it, it will take 5-30 minutes, until it has warmed the enclosure
so much that normal operating temperature is reached and full output
available.

It's a lot worse then, but compared with tungsten, it's a serious
problem anywhere below about 50F. Using a CFL as a porch light here in
the Northeast is a non-starter.

It's cold I'm talking about. Those of us who actually save significant
amounts of energy generally do it by turning down the thermostat, which
makes the lights go dim.

Isn't it uncomfortable to live in a house with indoor temperature
below freezing . The light output variation at room temperatures is
small.

Not so small as not to be very noticeable. In the winter, we keep the
thermostat at 63 during the day and 57 at night. CFLs are noticeably
slower and dimmer at night or first thing in the morning.


clip

and produce ugly colours.

nonsense. The vast majority were triphosphor in sane CCTs, but it was
possible to find outliers with excessively high CCT, and occasional
junk products with old halophosphate phosphors.

Most CFL tubes use /7xx or /8xx phosphors. Some manufacturers claim
also /9xx models in their catalogs, but I have not seen any CFLs in
real life in the /9xx range. I use some /965 (CRI=9x 6500 K)
"daylight" tubes but they are full size fluorescent tubes.

Okay, what's the exact significance of that?

You must be colour blind.

Let indirect daylight fall on a white surface. Aim the lamp towards
the same surface to a chive similar illumination. With /965 phosphors
is hard to tell the difference and I have often forgot to switch off
the /965 uplighters in the morning when there are sufficient light
outside . Unfortunately /965 CFLs are extremely rare and
unobtainable as LEDs.

It isn't white surfaces that have the problem, it's coloured ones. The
output of CFLs consists of a weak continuum plus several very bright
emission bands.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

I have two on the outside of my house, lighting up the short driveway,
and they have been working for years. Maybe the trick is to never turn
them off.

But it doesn't get very cold here.



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.
"Bunter", he said, "I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason"

 

On Saturday, 18 January 2020 12:22:53 UTC, mpm wrote:

On Saturday, January 18, 2020 at 4:44:58 AM UTC-5, Martin Brown wrote:

It is impressive how much LEDs have improved in QE since the early
indicator LEDs of the 1970's which could barely be seen in daylight.
Though they did brighten up enormously when dunked in LN2 to stiffen the
crystal lattice (at least until thermal cycling killed them).

An (older and wiser) friend and colleague once told me: "Successful technologies tend to take off immediately."
The internal combustion engine overtook steam very quickly in transportation. Trains replaced canal barges. Word processors replaced typewriters. The list goes on and on.

By comparison, "game-changing" advances in wind, solar, and even battery design have been significantly more sluggish. The business lesson here is that a technology venture that takes off quickly, has a chance, but one that struggles too long to launch is probably doomed from the start! (He puts nuclear power into this latter category, for example.) I haven't asked him (yet) where he might slot Tesla electric cars.

He has two PhD degrees from MIT.

I would add LED lighting to that list. Look around and there can be little doubt it is a highly successful technology. They are everywhere. They have plenty of advantages over just about every other lighting technology. Specifically including, I would add, CFL - which in my limited, (i.e., short-lived) experience with them, they were fairly expensive (but so were early LED blubs), not particularly bright for their size, didn't last very long, were fragile, and often wouldn't even fit a lamp shade.

Maybe the question should be:
What real advantages do CFL have over LED (or other types of lighting).
I can't think of any?

Only one now: the low cost of large high power lamps


NT

 

On Saturday, 18 January 2020 17:30:57 UTC, Phil Hobbs wrote:

On 2020-01-18 06:10, tabbypurr wrote:
On Saturday, 18 January 2020 01:57:45 UTC, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 2020-01-17 20:46, John Doe wrote:
Phil Hobbs wrote:
John Doe wrote:

I bought CFL lightbulbs once. Now I need some more, I turn
around and they're gone! Replaced by LED light bulbs. That
was a short-lived technology.

Good riddance. CFLs stink on ice.

The poster is uninformed.


They're dim,

not a bit, they're available from 3w to 100s of watts & many thousand
lumens. There was an issue with mfrs claiming wattage equivalence to
nonstandard filament lamps, but that is not due to any problem with
the CFLs obviously.

...just with the ones you could actually buy and use conveniently. And

I've long been able to buy & use upto a few hundred watts at least. I forget the larget that fit into ceiling pendant fittings, somewhere around the 60w real watts mark which is way too much light for a pendant fitting.

they are intrinsically dim--their surface brightness is dramatically
lower than a 100W incandescent's, so very often an equivalently-bright
CFL wouldn't fit the fixture. Lamp harps especially.

dim no, larger yes

slow,

There were 2 types of CFL, general purpose & facilities. The former
were not slow.

The facilities ones aren't CFLs, and the domestic ones really are slow,
especially in cold weather. They take seconds to come up to full
brightness, vs. tens of milliseconds for an incandescent or LED. (The
LED is intrinsically a ~100 ns device, but the power supplies are slower.)

Most CFLs weren't rated for cold service. You could get ones that were.

The latter were very slow to warm up, trading that off
for better efficacy, and were never intended for domestic use. I
think the reason facilities lamps occasionally ended up in homes was
the complete failure of mfrs to explain what they were on the pack -
just stating 'facilities' meant nothing to the home buyer.


highly temperature-sensitive,

some were intolerant of small enclosed spaces, most weren't. Depended
on the mercury technology & dose.

It's cold I'm talking about. Those of us who actually save significant
amounts of energy generally do it by turning down the thermostat, which
makes the lights go dim.

you got the wrong ones then

and produce ugly colours.

nonsense. The vast majority were triphosphor in sane CCTs, but it was
possible to find outliers with excessively high CCT, and occasional
junk products with old halophosphate phosphors.

You must be colour blind.

no. CFLs used the same phoshors as linear fluorescent, just with less choice.

Other than that, they rock.

They do save a bit of money, but the amount I spend on electric
light is pretty trivial.

they were a move forward in technology, saving more than they cost.

And making it hard to read my book, all to save two cents an hour. No
thanks.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

You got the wrong ones! Freedom isn't usually a bad thing.


NT

 

[John Robertson]

On 2020/01/18 1:16 a.m., DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@decadence.org wrote:

upsidedown@downunder.com wrote in
news:ajf52fhe9j5i5e57bia71hi9q9v89fh4pm@4ax.com:

Contrary to gas discharge lamps, the light output from LEDs is
easily adjustable, so fitting a light sensor into a street lamp,
it is possible to adjust lamp power depending of amount of
reflected light from dry, wet or snowy surfaces. Using movement
sensors it is possible to switch between half and full power, when
there are actually someone moving on a quiet street.

Possible but major overkill.

They turn them on. They do not adjust them outside the mfg
facility.

And your "adjustment" version is pulse width modulation, which my
eyes would dislike even more.

Proper adjustment would be a 50 lamp array where they turn off some
of the array to lessen the light without modulating it with pulsed
power. Hell, that way, they could run 25 and then run the other 25
the next period providing twice the life and at least one extra
service call buffer period after a failure.

The biggest fail I have seen with the "new technology" LED street
lamps are the fact that the total retards are STILL using 65 year old
day/night sensors up on top of the light. KEERIMANY boys! Clock
chips have been around for decades! They could KNOW when it was day
or night. I see units that do not know when to turn on, others that
do not know how to turn off... with the sodiums it was a HUGE waste
of power to sit there and cycle on and off and on and off. Those old
sensors and that entire wait for daylight paradigm is STUPID. We
know better now. These lamps could ALL have 8 hr battery backups for
power outages. They could ALL be controlled by one lamp in the
street's entire string that tells them when to turn on and off. They
could talk by the power line or by radio. This stuff is easy.

I had LED designs for street lamps years ago that would even
eliminate the bucket truck service vehicle fleet to just a few per
yard.


I also have traffic light revamps that put the super rich jerks
that have been selling cities '70s technology for the last 50 years
but at huge prices and service contracts to shame.

I would put the entire nation to work on the nation's
infrastructure.

We installed a new LED street light for testing in our strata
complex...after two years it is now flickering.

I take it these have the same stupid cap issues as all the rest of the
indoor units that die after a few years.

Is there no way to reduce the line voltage other than a switcher? Are
there no fuse resistors?

John :-#(#

 

[John S]

On 1/18/2020 8:22 AM, Cursitor Doom wrote:

On Sat, 18 Jan 2020 03:09:14 -0500, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

They're hell on astromomers, too.

That's *very* surprising. I was under the impression they're highly
directional. For example in car headlights now they require next to
nothing in the way of reflector bowls. That's why all the newest cars
only have mean lookin' slits where headlamps used to be.

Next time you fly over a city, look down at the reflected lights along
the streets. They are especially bright on freeways. You can even see
where the lighted side streets are more orange. If you can see it, so
can astronomers because the atmosphere gets illuminated by it all.

 

On Saturday, 18 January 2020 19:30:01 UTC, upsid...@downunder.com wrote:

On Sat, 18 Jan 2020 12:30:47 -0500, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:
On 2020-01-18 06:10, tabbypurr wrote:
On Saturday, 18 January 2020 01:57:45 UTC, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 2020-01-17 20:46, John Doe wrote:
clip

highly temperature-sensitive,

some were intolerant of small enclosed spaces, most weren't. Depended
on the mercury technology & dose.

The problem with all kinds of fluorescent lamps is starting at cold
(below -20 C) temperatures. In a closed enclosure, if you manage to
start it, it will take 5-30 minutes, until it has warmed the enclosure
so much that normal operating temperature is reached and full output
available.


It's cold I'm talking about. Those of us who actually save significant
amounts of energy generally do it by turning down the thermostat, which
makes the lights go dim.

Isn't it uncomfortable to live in a house with indoor temperature
below freezing . The light output variation at room temperatures is
small.

clip

and produce ugly colours.

nonsense. The vast majority were triphosphor in sane CCTs, but it was
possible to find outliers with excessively high CCT, and occasional
junk products with old halophosphate phosphors.

Most CFL tubes use /7xx or /8xx phosphors. Some manufacturers claim
also /9xx models in their catalogs, but I have not seen any CFLs in
real life in the /9xx range. I use some /965 (CRI=9x 6500 K)
"daylight" tubes but they are full size fluorescent tubes.

You must be colour blind.

Let indirect daylight fall on a white surface. Aim the lamp towards
the same surface to a chive similar illumination. With /965 phosphors
is hard to tell the difference and I have often forgot to switch off
the /965 uplighters in the morning when there are sufficient light
outside . Unfortunately /965 CFLs are extremely rare and
unobtainable as LEDs.

Light dropoff with cold gets worse as tube size goes down. Thin tubes like T4, T5 are terrible, with 80% loss if you go down to something like 5C. CFLs likewise if you go too cold. Few people run their houses that cool here, but if you do you could compensate by using closed fittings or even a clear sandwich bag, or by buying the right lamps. No longer an issue with LEDs.


NT

 

[Phil Hobbs]

On 2020-01-18 17:43, tabbypurr@gmail.com wrote:

On Saturday, 18 January 2020 17:30:57 UTC, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 2020-01-18 06:10, tabbypurr wrote:
On Saturday, 18 January 2020 01:57:45 UTC, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 2020-01-17 20:46, John Doe wrote:
Phil Hobbs wrote:
John Doe wrote:

I bought CFL lightbulbs once. Now I need some more, I
turn around and they're gone! Replaced by LED light
bulbs. That was a short-lived technology.

Good riddance. CFLs stink on ice.

The poster is uninformed.


They're dim,

not a bit, they're available from 3w to 100s of watts & many
thousand lumens. There was an issue with mfrs claiming wattage
equivalence to nonstandard filament lamps, but that is not due to
any problem with the CFLs obviously.

...just with the ones you could actually buy and use conveniently.
And

I've long been able to buy & use upto a few hundred watts at least.

CFLs of a few hundred watts? Riiiiiigggghhhhttt. Let's see a few links.

I forget the larget that fit into ceiling pendant fittings, somewhere
around the 60w real watts mark which is way too much light for a
pendant fitting.

I'm talking about table and standard lamps. The gummint banned the
bulbs they were designed for. 100W incandescent (1690 lumens) is about
right for reading by, if it's within 2-3 feet. Good luck getting a
genuine 1690 lumen CFL to fit in a normal table lamp harp, even assuming
you could find such a thing. Most of the '100w equivalent' CFLs claimed
to be around 1100 lumens, and actually came in well below that.

Using the ambient light sensor on my phone (a BlackBerry Classic) in an
apples-to-apples geometry, '100W equivalent' CFLs from the supermarket
produced about a third of what they claimed (assuming that the 1690
lumens quoted by GE for their incandescent bulbs wasn't overstated).

they are intrinsically dim--their surface brightness is
dramatically lower than a 100W incandescent's, so very often an
equivalently-bright CFL wouldn't fit the fixture. Lamp harps
especially.

dim no, larger yes

I'm talking about lumens per square metre, not total lumens. Lower
surface brightness -> larger surface for the same output -> larger
physical size for the same luminous output.

So they don't fit. Point made.

slow,

There were 2 types of CFL, general purpose & facilities. The
former were not slow.

The facilities ones aren't CFLs, and the domestic ones really are
slow, especially in cold weather. They take seconds to come up to
full brightness, vs. tens of milliseconds for an incandescent or
LED. (The LED is intrinsically a ~100 ns device, but the power
supplies are slower.)

Most CFLs weren't rated for cold service. You could get ones that
were.

Have you got a link for porch light CFLs that work down to 0 F? What
supermarket did you buy them from? Ordinary incandescents work fine
over a huge temperature range.

The latter were very slow to warm up, trading that off for better
efficacy, and were never intended for domestic use. I think the
reason facilities lamps occasionally ended up in homes was the
complete failure of mfrs to explain what they were on the pack -
just stating 'facilities' meant nothing to the home buyer.


highly temperature-sensitive,

some were intolerant of small enclosed spaces, most weren't.
Depended on the mercury technology & dose.

It's cold I'm talking about. Those of us who actually save
significant amounts of energy generally do it by turning down the
thermostat, which makes the lights go dim.

you got the wrong ones then

So what exactly would the right ones have been? Any old tungsten or LED
bulb from the corner store works fine there.

and produce ugly colours.

nonsense. The vast majority were triphosphor in sane CCTs, but it
was possible to find outliers with excessively high CCT, and
occasional junk products with old halophosphate phosphors.

You must be colour blind.

no. CFLs used the same phoshors as linear fluorescent, just with
less choice.

As everybody knows, linear fluorescent bulbs also have horrible CRI. If
you don't see that, you must be colour blind as I said.

Other than that, they rock.

They do save a bit of money, but the amount I spend on
electric light is pretty trivial.

they were a move forward in technology, saving more than they
cost.

And making it hard to read my book, all to save two cents an hour.
No thanks.

You got the wrong ones! Freedom isn't usually a bad thing.

You said it. In a free society I'd be able to buy whatever light bulbs
I like, but I can't any more. Freedom here in the US has been
progressively eroded since 9/11. From the relatively trivial POV of
light bulbs it ended in 2012. (Some fraction or our freedoms remain,
but many irreplaceable ones have been lost.)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs


--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com

 

On Saturday, 18 January 2020 18:34:47 UTC, Robert Baer wrote:

John Doe wrote:

I bought CFL lightbulbs once. Now I need some more, I turn around and
they're gone! Replaced by LED light bulbs. That was a short-lived
technology.

CFLs were based on a few lies.
Mainly based on "economy" and "efficiency" and "power savings".

CFLs were technically illegal as they used banned mercury.
That was ignored: lie #1 big time.
They take a fair amount of varied electronic components, so "economy"
becomes a lie.
"Power savings" and "efficiency" become untrue in the extended sense,
due to all of the energy poured into the making of those components as
well as the manufacturing of the CFLs.

Incandescents take very little variety of materials to make,and
rather low technology ("simple" comes to mind).

Well done - wrong on every point.


NT

 

[Clifford Heath]

On 19/1/20 5:34 am, Robert Baer wrote:
>   CFLs were technically illegal as they used banned mercury.
Better fluorescents used a thing that condensed the mercury vapour when
cold so it was less of an environmental hazard. So perhaps the
regulation was bypassed that way.

CH

 

[Clifford Heath]

On 19/1/20 10:54 am, mpm wrote:

On Saturday, January 18, 2020 at 8:22:17 AM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:

The right question is what advantages did CFLs have over filament lamps when they were first introduced.

You're right. That is a better question.
I'm still coming up empty on it, though.

They provided a sales bulge for the lighting industry lobby groups who
convinced the government that the reduction in electricity consumption
was worth promoting. The same industry knew that another wave (LEDs) was
coming soon and so they only had a limited period to abuse the market.

CH

 

[mpm]

On Saturday, January 18, 2020 at 8:22:17 AM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:

> The right question is what advantages did CFLs have over filament lamps when they were first introduced.

You're right. That is a better question.
I'm still coming up empty on it, though.

I never purchased or used many of those bulbs so my experience with them is rather limited. But I recall them being significantly more expensive than traditional incandescent, and often weirdly shaped so as not to fit most (ok, "many") existing lamp fixtures. I also don't recall them having a life expectancy (in print or actual use) long enough to justify a return on investment.

Plus, I recall the light had a green-ish tint to it.

 

[Sylvia Else]

On 18/01/2020 11:57 am, John Doe wrote:

I bought CFL lightbulbs once. Now I need some more, I turn around and
they're gone! Replaced by LED light bulbs. That was a short-lived
technology.

They've been around for a lot longer than most people realise. It's just
that they didn't become popular until governments started banning
incandescent lamps.

Sylvia.

 

[Rick C]

On Saturday, January 18, 2020 at 6:23:02 PM UTC-5, Phil Hobbs wrote:

On 2020-01-18 17:43, tabbypurr@gmail.com wrote:
On Saturday, 18 January 2020 17:30:57 UTC, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 2020-01-18 06:10, tabbypurr wrote:
On Saturday, 18 January 2020 01:57:45 UTC, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 2020-01-17 20:46, John Doe wrote:
Phil Hobbs wrote:
John Doe wrote:

I bought CFL lightbulbs once. Now I need some more, I
turn around and they're gone! Replaced by LED light
bulbs. That was a short-lived technology.

Good riddance. CFLs stink on ice.

The poster is uninformed.


They're dim,

not a bit, they're available from 3w to 100s of watts & many
thousand lumens. There was an issue with mfrs claiming wattage
equivalence to nonstandard filament lamps, but that is not due to
any problem with the CFLs obviously.

...just with the ones you could actually buy and use conveniently.
And

I've long been able to buy & use upto a few hundred watts at least.

CFLs of a few hundred watts? Riiiiiigggghhhhttt. Let's see a few links.

So do you do your work without researching??? This is just one link of many. Google is your friend. I searched on 400 watt CFL but the web site search showed lamps all the way up to this 600 watt bulb.

https://www.1000bulbs.com/product/7671/FC200-FEIIIB277.html

I forget the larget that fit into ceiling pendant fittings, somewhere
around the 60w real watts mark which is way too much light for a
pendant fitting.

I'm talking about table and standard lamps. The gummint banned the
bulbs they were designed for. 100W incandescent (1690 lumens) is about
right for reading by, if it's within 2-3 feet. Good luck getting a
genuine 1690 lumen CFL to fit in a normal table lamp harp, even assuming
you could find such a thing. Most of the '100w equivalent' CFLs claimed
to be around 1100 lumens, and actually came in well below that.

That's why I ignore the "equivalent" numbers, they are often fiction. Again, did you do any looking at all?

https://www.1000bulbs.com/search?breadcrumbs%5B0%5D=light-bulbs&breadcrumbs%5B1%5D=cfl-bulbs&breadcrumbs%5B2%5D=cfl&facet.multiselect=true&page=1&q=%2A&rows=15&son=0&sort=price+asc&start=0&filter=(category:%221870%22)&filter=(a_lumens_d_fq:[1550%20TO%201850])&filter=(a_color_temperature_n_fq:[2500%20TO%202750])

As cheap as $3!!!

Using the ambient light sensor on my phone (a BlackBerry Classic) in an
apples-to-apples geometry, '100W equivalent' CFLs from the supermarket
produced about a third of what they claimed (assuming that the 1690
lumens quoted by GE for their incandescent bulbs wasn't overstated).

There is no standard number for a 100 watt lamp. The vary the diameter of the filament to give long life vs. brightness at the same wattage. That's why the manufacturers can get away with the nonsense numbers they post as "equivalent". I use 1600 lumens for a 100 watt bulb. I've checked my hoard of incandescents and they do vary.

they are intrinsically dim--their surface brightness is
dramatically lower than a 100W incandescent's, so very often an
equivalently-bright CFL wouldn't fit the fixture. Lamp harps
especially.

dim no, larger yes

I'm talking about lumens per square metre, not total lumens. Lower
surface brightness -> larger surface for the same output -> larger
physical size for the same luminous output.

So they don't fit. Point made.

???

What lamps are you using that you can't fit a 1600 lumen CFL into it? They may be a bit taller so the harp won't fit as well. I bought a couple of table lamps made in China and they had cut the harp wire so short it would bump the top of the CFL I was fitting into it. They fit all the older lamps just fine.

slow,

There were 2 types of CFL, general purpose & facilities. The
former were not slow.

The facilities ones aren't CFLs, and the domestic ones really are
slow, especially in cold weather. They take seconds to come up to
full brightness, vs. tens of milliseconds for an incandescent or
LED. (The LED is intrinsically a ~100 ns device, but the power
supplies are slower.)

Most CFLs weren't rated for cold service. You could get ones that
were.

Have you got a link for porch light CFLs that work down to 0 F?

https://www.1000bulbs.com/product/6781/FC23-801023.html

What
supermarket did you buy them from? Ordinary incandescents work fine
over a huge temperature range.

No, they only work at thousands of degrees, but the are self heating so it works out.

It's funny that a ceiling can has to be insulated or have air flow to prevent an incandescent bulb from starting a fire while a CFL or LED needs to have air flow to keep it cool.

The latter were very slow to warm up, trading that off for better
efficacy, and were never intended for domestic use. I think the
reason facilities lamps occasionally ended up in homes was the
complete failure of mfrs to explain what they were on the pack -
just stating 'facilities' meant nothing to the home buyer.


highly temperature-sensitive,

some were intolerant of small enclosed spaces, most weren't.
Depended on the mercury technology & dose.

It's cold I'm talking about. Those of us who actually save
significant amounts of energy generally do it by turning down the
thermostat, which makes the lights go dim.

you got the wrong ones then

So what exactly would the right ones have been? Any old tungsten or LED
bulb from the corner store works fine there.

Maybe you need to actually read in info. Just like many things CFLs can be made very cheaply and won't work well. Or they can work great if you buy good ones.

and produce ugly colours.

nonsense. The vast majority were triphosphor in sane CCTs, but it
was possible to find outliers with excessively high CCT, and
occasional junk products with old halophosphate phosphors.

You must be colour blind.

no. CFLs used the same phoshors as linear fluorescent, just with
less choice.

As everybody knows, linear fluorescent bulbs also have horrible CRI. If
you don't see that, you must be colour blind as I said.

You are wound up today. Is your underwear riding up on you?

Other than that, they rock.

They do save a bit of money, but the amount I spend on
electric light is pretty trivial.

they were a move forward in technology, saving more than they
cost.

And making it hard to read my book, all to save two cents an hour.
No thanks.

You got the wrong ones! Freedom isn't usually a bad thing.

You said it. In a free society I'd be able to buy whatever light bulbs
I like, but I can't any more. Freedom here in the US has been
progressively eroded since 9/11. From the relatively trivial POV of
light bulbs it ended in 2012. (Some fraction or our freedoms remain,
but many irreplaceable ones have been lost.)

It is never true that you can buy anything you want. You can't buy things nobody makes. That's a problem that has always existed. I run into it pretty much every year when I want to buy the same clothes I bought last year and they are out of style. Incandescents are out of style. It is still legal to make and sell them. You seem to be batting 100 today.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Bulbrite-100-Watt-A19-Frost-Tough-Coat-Dimmable-Warm-White-Light-Incandescent-Light-Bulb-12-Pack-860874/305910194

--

Rick C.

-- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
-- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Rick C]

On Saturday, January 18, 2020 at 6:55:00 PM UTC-5, mpm wrote:

On Saturday, January 18, 2020 at 8:22:17 AM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:

The right question is what advantages did CFLs have over filament lamps when they were first introduced.

You're right. That is a better question.
I'm still coming up empty on it, though.

You mean other than the 1/4 power consumption???

I never purchased or used many of those bulbs so my experience with them is rather limited. But I recall them being significantly more expensive than traditional incandescent, and often weirdly shaped so as not to fit most (ok, "many") existing lamp fixtures. I also don't recall them having a life expectancy (in print or actual use) long enough to justify a return on investment.

Plus, I recall the light had a green-ish tint to it.

I never saw that. The bulbs I've used mostly fit any fixture I put them in.. One outdoor fixture had an enclosing glass the size and shape of a peanut butter jar. When I screwed it on it would just touch the bulb when I put the final turn on it and crack the bulb. lol Another 1/16th of an inch and it would have cleared. Otherwise they've all fit other than the harps that fit over the bulb. Often the CFL isn't the right shape.

I have bulbs that have been in daily operation for going on a decade now. They have definitely paid for themselves. I had a few die early from being in small glass globes which raises their operating temps. So, no enclosed fixtures. Otherwise they seem reliable.

There was a rebate that brought the price down to something like $2 a bulb many years ago. I bought a bunch and still have not used them all. If they aren't enclosed they just seem to keep working and working and working...

--

Rick C.

-+ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
-+ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Phil Hobbs]

On 2020-01-18 19:55, Sylvia Else wrote:

On 18/01/2020 11:57 am, John Doe wrote:
I bought CFL lightbulbs once. Now I need some more, I turn around and
they're gone! Replaced by LED light bulbs. That was a short-lived
technology.


They've been around for a lot longer than most people realise. It's just
that they didn't become popular until governments started banning
incandescent lamps.

Because they suck.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com

 

[Phil Hobbs]

On 2020-01-18 20:03, Rick C wrote:

On Saturday, January 18, 2020 at 6:23:02 PM UTC-5, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 2020-01-18 17:43, tabbypurr@gmail.com wrote:
On Saturday, 18 January 2020 17:30:57 UTC, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 2020-01-18 06:10, tabbypurr wrote:
On Saturday, 18 January 2020 01:57:45 UTC, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 2020-01-17 20:46, John Doe wrote:
Phil Hobbs wrote:
John Doe wrote:

I bought CFL lightbulbs once. Now I need some more, I
turn around and they're gone! Replaced by LED light
bulbs. That was a short-lived technology.

Good riddance. CFLs stink on ice.

The poster is uninformed.


They're dim,

not a bit, they're available from 3w to 100s of watts & many
thousand lumens. There was an issue with mfrs claiming
wattage equivalence to nonstandard filament lamps, but that
is not due to any problem with the CFLs obviously.

...just with the ones you could actually buy and use
conveniently. And

I've long been able to buy & use upto a few hundred watts at
least.

CFLs of a few hundred watts? Riiiiiigggghhhhttt. Let's see a few
links.

So do you do your work without researching??? This is just one link
of many. Google is your friend. I searched on 400 watt CFL but the
web site search showed lamps all the way up to this 600 watt bulb.

https://www.1000bulbs.com/product/7671/FC200-FEIIIB277.html

We're talking about domestic bulbs, here. That's a mogul-base bulb--I
have zero mogul-base fixtures in my house--do you have any? The last
one I used was in about 1978 in a photo shoot.

I forget the larget that fit into ceiling pendant fittings,
somewhere around the 60w real watts mark which is way too much
light for a pendant fitting.

I'm talking about table and standard lamps. The gummint banned the
bulbs they were designed for. 100W incandescent (1690 lumens) is
about right for reading by, if it's within 2-3 feet. Good luck
getting a genuine 1690 lumen CFL to fit in a normal table lamp
harp, even assuming you could find such a thing. Most of the
'100w equivalent' CFLs claimed to be around 1100 lumens, and
actually came in well below that.

That's why I ignore the "equivalent" numbers, they are often
fiction. Again, did you do any looking at all?

https://www.1000bulbs.com/search?breadcrumbs%5B0%5D=light-bulbs&breadcrumbs%5B1%5D=cfl-bulbs&breadcrumbs%5B2%5D=cfl&facet.multiselect=true&page=1&q=%2A&rows=15&son=0&sort=price+asc&start=0&filter=(category:%221870%22)&filter=(a_lumens_d_fq:[1550%20TO%201850])&filter=(a_color_temperature_n_fq:[2500%20TO%202750])



As cheap as $3!!!

A 100-W tungsten lamp was about 75 cents, iirc. Have you ever measured
any of those "100W-equivalent" bulbs? I have. They all sucked.

Using the ambient light sensor on my phone (a BlackBerry Classic)
in an apples-to-apples geometry, '100W equivalent' CFLs from the
supermarket produced about a third of what they claimed (assuming
that the 1690 lumens quoted by GE for their incandescent bulbs
wasn't overstated).

There is no standard number for a 100 watt lamp. The vary the
diameter of the filament to give long life vs. brightness at the
same wattage. That's why the manufacturers can get away with the
nonsense numbers they post as "equivalent". I use 1600 lumens for a
100 watt bulb. I've checked my hoard of incandescents and they do
vary.

The ones I have in stock are 1690 lumens.

they are intrinsically dim--their surface brightness is
dramatically lower than a 100W incandescent's, so very often an
equivalently-bright CFL wouldn't fit the fixture. Lamp harps
especially.

dim no, larger yes

I'm talking about lumens per square metre, not total lumens. Lower
surface brightness -> larger surface for the same output -> larger
physical size for the same luminous output.

So they don't fit. Point made.

???

What lamps are you using that you can't fit a 1600 lumen CFL into
it? They may be a bit taller so the harp won't fit as well. I bought
a couple of table lamps made in China and they had cut the harp wire
so short it would bump the top of the CFL I was fitting into it.
They fit all the older lamps just fine.

Lots.

slow,

There were 2 types of CFL, general purpose & facilities. The
former were not slow.

The facilities ones aren't CFLs, and the domestic ones really
are slow, especially in cold weather. They take seconds to
come up to full brightness, vs. tens of milliseconds for an
incandescent or LED. (The LED is intrinsically a ~100 ns
device, but the power supplies are slower.)

Most CFLs weren't rated for cold service. You could get ones that
were.

Have you got a link for porch light CFLs that work down to 0 F?

https://www.1000bulbs.com/product/6781/FC23-801023.html

I'm seeing zero specs for light output at low temperature there. They
say it 'starts' at -20 degrees, but so did the one I used to have on my
porch. It sure didn't make anything like rated output below 50 F,
though--below freezing you couldn't even see to put the key in the lock.
The vapour pressure of mercury is what it is, hype or no hype.

What supermarket did you buy them from? Ordinary incandescents
work fine over a huge temperature range.

No, they only work at thousands of degrees, but the are self heating
so it works out.

Thousands of degrees? The housing is made of plastic, dude.

It's funny that a ceiling can has to be insulated or have air flow
to prevent an incandescent bulb from starting a fire while a CFL or
LED needs to have air flow to keep it cool.

The latter were very slow to warm up, trading that off for
better efficacy, and were never intended for domestic use. I
think the reason facilities lamps occasionally ended up in
homes was the complete failure of mfrs to explain what they
were on the pack - just stating 'facilities' meant nothing
to the home buyer.


highly temperature-sensitive,

some were intolerant of small enclosed spaces, most weren't.
Depended on the mercury technology & dose.

It's cold I'm talking about. Those of us who actually save
significant amounts of energy generally do it by turning down
the thermostat, which makes the lights go dim.

you got the wrong ones then

So what exactly would the right ones have been? Any old tungsten
or LED bulb from the corner store works fine there.

Maybe you need to actually read in info. Just like many things CFLs
can be made very cheaply and won't work well. Or they can work
great if you buy good ones.

BITD you could get good bulbs at the supermarket. With newer LED bulbs,
that happy state may be returning. Not in the CFL period, however.

and produce ugly colours.

nonsense. The vast majority were triphosphor in sane CCTs,
but it was possible to find outliers with excessively high
CCT, and occasional junk products with old halophosphate
phosphors.

You must be colour blind.

no. CFLs used the same phoshors as linear fluorescent, just with
less choice.

As everybody knows, linear fluorescent bulbs also have horrible
CRI. If you don't see that, you must be colour blind as I said.

You are wound up today. Is your underwear riding up on you?

Other than that, they rock.

They do save a bit of money, but the amount I spend on
electric light is pretty trivial.

they were a move forward in technology, saving more than they
cost.

And making it hard to read my book, all to save two cents an
hour. No thanks.

You got the wrong ones! Freedom isn't usually a bad thing.

You said it. In a free society I'd be able to buy whatever light
bulbs I like, but I can't any more. Freedom here in the US has
been progressively eroded since 9/11. From the relatively trivial
POV of light bulbs it ended in 2012. (Some fraction or our
freedoms remain, but many irreplaceable ones have been lost.)

It is never true that you can buy anything you want.

Except that your team ensured that I haven't been able to go to the
market and just buy normal 75-cent, 1690-lumen incandescents since 2012.

> You can't buy things nobody makes.

Well, duh, your guys outlawed them.

That's a problem that has always
existed. I run into it pretty much every year when I want to buy the
same clothes I bought last year and they are out of style.
Incandescents are out of style. It is still legal to make and sell
them.

Except for the ones people wanted to buy, circa 2012. Those ones were
made illegal.

You seem to be batting 100 today.

Sure am. You, not so much.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Bulbrite-100-Watt-A19-Frost-Tough-Coat-Dimmable-Warm-White-Light-Incandescent-Light-Bulb-12-Pack-860874/305910194

900 lumens for 100W--about half the efficiency of the old supermarket
kind, besides being three or four times the price. You're losing your
touch.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com