OT: Wow, compact fluorescent light bulbs already obsolete

[Rick C]

On Monday, January 20, 2020 at 3:10:14 PM UTC-5, tabb...@gmail.com wrote:

On Sunday, 19 January 2020 01:03:51 UTC, Rick C wrote:
On Saturday, January 18, 2020 at 6:23:02 PM UTC-5, Phil Hobbs wrote:

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 got away with it by comparing to IIRC a softone lamp (or something like that), not a standard GLS lamp. It was a bit of iffy marketing speak that backfired on them.

Sorry, I don't know what a "softone" lamp is and if Google knows, it isn't telling. Sounds like a marketing term. What is standard about the lumens/watts of a GLS bulb? The number varies as I said, as a tradeoff with longer life. Wattage in an incandescent bulb has never indicated lumens. The two vary significantly.

Anyone who tries to buy brightness in a non-incandescent lamp by "equivalent watts" will be disappointed by the inconsistency... same as an incandescent. People typically don't worry about a 20% difference in brightness in incandescents. But we get all wigged out when a CFL or LED doesn't put out *exactly* 1690 lumens as opposed to 1600 (~5%).

--

Rick C.

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

 

On Sunday, 19 January 2020 01:11:05 UTC, Rick C wrote:

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???

actually there was a 2nd upside, far less fire risk.

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.

many were slightly pink. High CCT were of course bluish.


NT

 

On Sunday, 19 January 2020 01:03:51 UTC, Rick C wrote:

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

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 got away with it by comparing to IIRC a softone lamp (or something like that), not a standard GLS lamp. It was a bit of iffy marketing speak that backfired on them.


NT

 

On Sunday, 19 January 2020 00:35:47 UTC, Clifford Heath wrote:

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

I guess you're referring to amalgam, which was used to regulate vapour pressure. The mercury condensed when cold in all CFLs.


NT

 

On Sunday, 19 January 2020 08:23:40 UTC, whit3rd wrote:

On Saturday, January 18, 2020 at 3:23:02 PM UTC-8, Phil Hobbs wrote:


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

They're called 'neon lights' when they get that big, and they
weren't ever compact. But, definitely could go to a few hundred watts.
White color wasn't required, for the usual signage uses.

different animal.

 

On Sunday, 19 January 2020 16:00:38 UTC, mpm wrote:

On Sunday, January 19, 2020 at 8:35:18 AM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:

Of course the test of colour rendition is the human, which has three different colour sensitive pigments in the cone cells in the retina, and rhodopsin in the rod cells, which is only active at very low light levels.

There's not a lot of point in getting too fussy about the spectral content of your light source, when the detectors in your eyes are sensitive over relatively wide spectral intervals, with a lot of overlap in their ranges.


Then what about CMOS imaging sensors used in digital cameras?
In general, I find photos taken under fluorescent lighting unappealing.
Color balancing (with physical filters, and/or light modifiers for strobes, etc..) can be problematic with fluorescent (and I presume CFL) as the color temperature can be all over the place. Same is true for mercury vapor lights.

Is that hard to correct now? We've always had to contend with widely varying CCT due to skylight, sunlight & filament light. At least we don't still have carbon filament to deal with. AFAIK all CFLs and linear fls are within the skylight to 2700K range.


> Fluorescent lights combined with higher shutter speed can also lead to color cast problems, and light/dark exposure "bands" as the shutter curtain captures the falling intensity cycle of the light source.

true of obsolete iron ballasted lamps, not more modern electronic.

Just something to think about.
As a hobbyist photographer, I am not sad that LED's have made CFL's obsolete.
Part of that, no doubt, is laziness on my part, as I'm sure professional photographers could deal with any scene lighting imaginable. Even if they just use lots of expensive artificial lights to overcome the problem.

More to the point they're making sodium obsolete, that is the handful to deal with photographically.


NT

 

On Sunday, 19 January 2020 23:02:41 UTC, Sjouke Burry wrote:

All my cfls which stopped working, failed with a bad electrolytic mains
cap,
dried out and failed.

curious, I had something like 2.5% bad reservoir caps

> None of them had a bad light tube.

I had around 50% tube failures

(a simple test was to touch your tv screen with one of the wires of the
tube,
causing light flashes for each sparc from the tv tube.)

that does not test the filament, which is the part that usually fails in the tube.

It was possible to use failed tubes by capacitively coupling through the glass; had prices remained high that may have been worth doing.


> Badly designed and cooled electronics, in all of them.

They were value engineered to provide enough life at minimum cost. Better made ballasts would have increased lamp life expectancy, but lumen output did reduce over time significantly.


> Might be the same for a lot of LED lights too.....................

Most failures are the LED dice overheating, but PSUs do fail too.


NT

 

[Phil Hobbs]

tabbypurr@gmail.com wrote:

On Sunday, 19 January 2020 01:42:25 UTC, Phil Hobbs wrote:
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 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'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 thought we were talking about CFLs rated 100s of watts. I was anyway. No-one is likely to put those into standard domestic luminaires.


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.

I assume you used an integrating sphere & waited for them to warm up fully. I encountered very few that bad.


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).

I don't know quite what you mean by apples to apples geometry, I'm aware that the light output pattern was typically different to filament lamps.


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.

it was a common issue. Changes in lightbulb technology usually do result in some light fittings needing to be changed or using not the ideal bulb. But FWIW most people did not try to put 100w equivalents into small tablelamps..


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.

Some were rated to give full output in cold conditions. All CFLs had to warm up, how quickly depended on how the ballast handled a cool tube and how the tube dealt with its mercury content. You can't change the physics of mercury but lamp makers did change the quantities put in the lamps, and use amalgam versus just mercury. Other gas content could also be changed - I know less about that.


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.

glass, metals, putty. They tolerated 250C albeit with some putty failures.


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.

whose fault was that? Either supermarkets or end users or mfrs for not making the issue clearer on the box, or more likely some of all 3.

The government's, for forcing us all to buy their crap.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

 

[Rick C]

On Monday, January 20, 2020 at 3:41:03 PM UTC-5, tabb...@gmail.com wrote:

On Sunday, 19 January 2020 02:45:52 UTC, Rick C wrote:
On Saturday, January 18, 2020 at 8:42:25 PM UTC-5, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 2020-01-18 20:03, Rick C wrote:
On Saturday, January 18, 2020 at 6:23:02 PM UTC-5, Phil Hobbs wrote:

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??? What does the vapor pressure of mercury have to do with it? As long as it is a vapor, it's the same amount mercury no matter what the vapor pressure it.

Vapour pressure has everything to do with it. The reduced output at start is due to most of the mercury not being in vapour phase.

That's a different issue, phase, not vapor pressure.

--

Rick C.

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

 

[Rick C]

On Monday, January 20, 2020 at 4:14:57 PM UTC-5, Phil Hobbs wrote:

tabbypurr@gmail.com wrote:
On Sunday, 19 January 2020 01:42:25 UTC, Phil Hobbs wrote:
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 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'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 thought we were talking about CFLs rated 100s of watts. I was anyway. No-one is likely to put those into standard domestic luminaires.


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.

I assume you used an integrating sphere & waited for them to warm up fully. I encountered very few that bad.


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).

I don't know quite what you mean by apples to apples geometry, I'm aware that the light output pattern was typically different to filament lamps.


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.

it was a common issue. Changes in lightbulb technology usually do result in some light fittings needing to be changed or using not the ideal bulb. But FWIW most people did not try to put 100w equivalents into small tablelamps..


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.

Some were rated to give full output in cold conditions. All CFLs had to warm up, how quickly depended on how the ballast handled a cool tube and how the tube dealt with its mercury content. You can't change the physics of mercury but lamp makers did change the quantities put in the lamps, and use amalgam versus just mercury. Other gas content could also be changed - I know less about that.


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.

glass, metals, putty. They tolerated 250C albeit with some putty failures.


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.

whose fault was that? Either supermarkets or end users or mfrs for not making the issue clearer on the box, or more likely some of all 3.

The government's, for forcing us all to buy their crap.

You mean making it illegal to purposelessly wasting energy and adding carbon to the atmosphere? Yeah, governments suck don't they! I bet you wish you could drive at whatever speed you want too, eh?

--

Rick C.

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

 

[Martin Brown]

On 20/01/2020 17:11, Lasse Langwadt Christensen wrote:

mandag den 20. januar 2020 kl. 10.16.17 UTC+1 skrev Martin Brown:
On 19/01/2020 19:56, Lasse Langwadt Christensen wrote:

and afaiu the human is not very sensitive at sodiums main spectral line
in dark conditions, so not all lumens are the same

That isn't correct. The human eye is most sensitive to a mid green 520nm
but it is already very sensitive to yellow. The cones sensitivity is to
Orange, Green and Blue with red being a construction of the brain from
the Orange-Green sensor channel. It means that with a sodium D-line
Didynium filter you get some strange visual effects with out of gamut
colours that look almost cartoon like. Most pronounced in autumn leaves.


https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8f/LumEffCIE.jpeg

scotopic seems pretty low at sodiums 589 nm

Scotopic vision would be but for that to be relevant you would no longer
be able to see any colours at all. Road lighting is well into the bright
photopic cone vision regime where you can see in colour even if it is
strictly limited to being along the monochrome yellow to black axis.

You don't get into monochrome scotopic vision until about 5 minutes in
near total darkness and continue to gain sensitivity for nearly an hour.
You can boost it even more by breathing pure oxygen (especially at high
altitude observatories where the air is very thin).

It used to be policy to use red light in such dark adapted environments
and submarines but it has been found that dim white light with a full
cutoff shield avoids problems with reading charts and maps in red light.
It is still quite useful to have a pair of Wratten 29 glasses/goggles.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[Robert Baer]

piglet wrote:

On 19/01/2020 2:32 am, Sylvia Else wrote:

The main issue I had with them was their tendency to take longer and
longer to reach maximum brightness as they aged. I think this was more
due to excessive economy in the electrolytic capacitors used in their
manufacture rather than an inherent limitation.

Sylvia.

Sometimes the electrolytic is just fine and the problem is mercury vapor
loss due to combining with electrodes or phosphor poisoning. Gas mixture
and phosphor quality varied a lot between manufacturers.

piglet
Isn't mercury banned,and illegal?

 

[Robert Baer]

John Doe wrote:

That history seems strange considering the fact the first consumer
CFLs were inferior technology, resembling early technology LED
flashlights. If the technology had been around so long, they would
have been ready for prime time the day they were first made
available to consumers.

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).

 

upsidedown@downunder.com wrote in
news:as2d2fh9uu0f696a8h01skssuufbqdkcqj@4ax.com:

On Mon, 20 Jan 2020 09:11:19 -0800 (PST), Lasse Langwadt
Christensen <langwadt@fonz.dk> wrote:

mandag den 20. januar 2020 kl. 10.16.17 UTC+1 skrev Martin Brown:
On 19/01/2020 19:56, Lasse Langwadt Christensen wrote:
sřndag den 19. januar 2020 kl. 15.16.22 UTC+1 skrev Martin
Brown:
On 18/01/2020 09:01, DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@decadence.org
wrote:
Phil Hobbs <pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote in
news:56d2b61b-d473-d2fe-9dc8-d74adb4f2e78@electrooptical.net:

LED street lights could use some diffusers too.

They're hell on astromomers, too.

Amateurs and professionals have learnt a few tricks to help
ameliorate the situation. The switch from HPS and mercury is
generally slightly advantageous to astronomers in that the
LED units can be totally off for part of the night and are
generally in full cutoff fixtures with no light going above
the horizontal. Low pressure sodium is still the thing
to beat in terms of efficacy at over 200 lumens/W.


isn't street-lights commonly high pressure sodium?

Depends on the country. Historically the UK had a very high
proportion of LPS in major towns and cities for street lighting
as did Belgium.

Increasingly city centres were lit by HPS but there is still
some installed base of LPS lamps even now. They are being
replaced by LED fixtures but the councils are being surprised
that they do not save any of the money promised by the
"consultants" (aka salesmen). Swapping 200Lm/W for 100Lm/W
lighting is never going to save energy.

Unfortunately LPS/HPS fixtures are not very good, spewing light
all over the place. With LEDs it is possible to aim the light to
where it is needed, thus reducing the power needed, thus
compensating for the lower efficiency.


and afaiu the human is not very sensitive at sodiums main
spectral line in dark conditions, so not all lumens are the
same

That isn't correct. The human eye is most sensitive to a mid
green 520nm but it is already very sensitive to yellow. The
cones sensitivity is to Orange, Green and Blue with red being a
construction of the brain from the Orange-Green sensor channel.
It means that with a sodium D-line Didynium filter you get some
strange visual effects with out of gamut colours that look
almost cartoon like. Most pronounced in autumn leaves.


https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8f/LumEffCIE.jpeg

scotopic seems pretty low at sodiums 589 nm

An absolute graph with numerical values are at
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/vision/efficacy.html#c1

At 589 nm, the photopic sensitivity is about 517 lm/W (76 %) while
the scotopic vision it would be 111 lm/W (6.5 %).

It should ne noted that scotopic numbers are relevant for a dark
adapted eye. i.e. first spend half an hour in darkness before
looking at light levels at moonlight levels. Of course scotopic
viewing is not relevant to street lighting.

The thing astronomers have to make sure they do not point their
telescopes at...

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tmbeLTHC_0>

(725MB)

 

On Mon, 20 Jan 2020 09:11:19 -0800 (PST), Lasse Langwadt Christensen
<langwadt@fonz.dk> wrote:

mandag den 20. januar 2020 kl. 10.16.17 UTC+1 skrev Martin Brown:
On 19/01/2020 19:56, Lasse Langwadt Christensen wrote:
sřndag den 19. januar 2020 kl. 15.16.22 UTC+1 skrev Martin Brown:
On 18/01/2020 09:01, DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@decadence.org wrote:
Phil Hobbs <pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote in
news:56d2b61b-d473-d2fe-9dc8-d74adb4f2e78@electrooptical.net:

LED street lights could use some diffusers too.

They're hell on astromomers, too.

Amateurs and professionals have learnt a few tricks to help ameliorate
the situation. The switch from HPS and mercury is generally slightly
advantageous to astronomers in that the LED units can be totally off for
part of the night and are generally in full cutoff fixtures with no
light going above the horizontal. Low pressure sodium is still the thing
to beat in terms of efficacy at over 200 lumens/W.


isn't street-lights commonly high pressure sodium?

Depends on the country. Historically the UK had a very high proportion
of LPS in major towns and cities for street lighting as did Belgium.

Increasingly city centres were lit by HPS but there is still some
installed base of LPS lamps even now. They are being replaced by LED
fixtures but the councils are being surprised that they do not save any
of the money promised by the "consultants" (aka salesmen). Swapping
200Lm/W for 100Lm/W lighting is never going to save energy.

Unfortunately LPS/HPS fixtures are not very good, spewing light all
over the place. With LEDs it is possible to aim the light to where it
is needed, thus reducing the power needed, thus compensating for the
lower efficiency.

and afaiu the human is not very sensitive at sodiums main spectral line
in dark conditions, so not all lumens are the same

That isn't correct. The human eye is most sensitive to a mid green 520nm
but it is already very sensitive to yellow. The cones sensitivity is to
Orange, Green and Blue with red being a construction of the brain from
the Orange-Green sensor channel. It means that with a sodium D-line
Didynium filter you get some strange visual effects with out of gamut
colours that look almost cartoon like. Most pronounced in autumn leaves.


https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8f/LumEffCIE.jpeg

scotopic seems pretty low at sodiums 589 nm

An absolute graph with numerical values are at
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/vision/efficacy.html#c1

At 589 nm, the photopic sensitivity is about 517 lm/W (76 %) while the
scotopic vision it would be 111 lm/W (6.5 %).

It should ne noted that scotopic numbers are relevant for a dark
adapted eye. i.e. first spend half an hour in darkness before looking
at light levels at moonlight levels. Of course scotopic viewing is not
relevant to street lighting.

 

[Rick C]

On Tuesday, January 21, 2020 at 1:07:16 AM UTC-5, Robert Baer wrote:

piglet wrote:
On 19/01/2020 2:32 am, Sylvia Else wrote:

The main issue I had with them was their tendency to take longer and
longer to reach maximum brightness as they aged. I think this was more
due to excessive economy in the electrolytic capacitors used in their
manufacture rather than an inherent limitation.

Sylvia.

Sometimes the electrolytic is just fine and the problem is mercury vapor
loss due to combining with electrodes or phosphor poisoning. Gas mixture
and phosphor quality varied a lot between manufacturers.

piglet
Isn't mercury banned,and illegal?

No.

--

Rick C.

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

 

[Rick C]

On Tuesday, January 21, 2020 at 1:05:00 AM UTC-5, Robert Baer wrote:

John Doe wrote:
That history seems strange considering the fact the first consumer
CFLs were inferior technology, resembling early technology LED
flashlights. If the technology had been around so long, they would
have been ready for prime time the day they were first made
available to consumers.

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).

Your premise is faulty. If the total energy in making and using CFL lights were higher than making and using incandescent lights it would be apparent in the total costs. Since it is clear that CFLs have a lower cost per hour of illumination, your claim about energy savings must be false, unless you are going to say there is something else making incandescents more expensive to use.

Since you don't seem to understand that it is very inexpensive to make electronics inexpensively with a variety of components, I would have to assume you don't actually work in electronics.

--

Rick C.

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

 

[Martin Brown]

On 18/01/2020 22:04, John Robertson wrote:

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

   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.

I have also seen some that have failed to a really annoying intermittent
bright flicker about two years from new. That doesn't bode well...

And the UK isn't a particularly hot country so they must be cooking
their capacitors internally rather than by environmental stress.

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

John :-#(#

Rectify it and use the right number of diodes in series is the other
technology but that has dismal MTBF with the first die to fail. I have
seen domestic LED units done this way and they fail in the predictable
manner when just one weak LED expires prematurely. Cheap and nasty
design also with dangerous voltages far too easily accessible.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[piglet]

On 21/01/2020 6:07 am, Robert Baer wrote:

piglet wrote:
On 19/01/2020 2:32 am, Sylvia Else wrote:

The main issue I had with them was their tendency to take longer and
longer to reach maximum brightness as they aged. I think this was
more due to excessive economy in the electrolytic capacitors used in
their manufacture rather than an inherent limitation.

Sylvia.

Sometimes the electrolytic is just fine and the problem is mercury
vapor loss due to combining with electrodes or phosphor poisoning. Gas
mixture and phosphor quality varied a lot between manufacturers.

piglet
  Isn't mercury banned,and illegal?

Undesirable certainly and with many legal restrictions but the word
"illegal" is possibly inaccurate.

Dentists are still placing mercury amalgam fillings. One of the biggest
causes of mercury release is burning coal with traces of mercury ore
embedded. But volcanoes do that too - should we declare volcanoes illegal?

piglet

 

[Clifford Heath]

On 21/1/20 7:05 am, tabbypurr@gmail.com wrote:

On Sunday, 19 January 2020 00:35:47 UTC, Clifford Heath wrote:
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

I guess you're referring to amalgam, which was used to regulate vapour pressure. The mercury condensed when cold in all CFLs.

Yes, that. All CFL's here? Under what regulatory system? Not all the
ones sold here had amalgams.