Canada makes another mistake

Cariboocoot

Our country is going to outlaw incandescent lights by 2012. This goes along with mandating high-efficiency furnaces, which probably is a good idea.
When you think of all the energy-wasting that goes on, that doesn't seem like a sensible plan of attack.
It certainly won't be good news for consumers.
Especially after Consumer Reports' latest testing of CFL's, showing everything from short lifetime on some to poor power factor and excessive cost. To say nothing of the mercury content.

I guess we Canucks are going to be stocking up on ordinary light bulbs now.

russ

Re: Canada makes another mistake

US law is different - they are forcing improvement in the efficiency of the 40 to 100 watt range of incandescents. Other wattages are not touched.

'Especially after Consumer Reports' latest testing of CFL's, showing everything from short lifetime on some to poor power factor and excessive cost. To say nothing of the mercury content.'

The mercury content of a cfl is less than in a normal serving of fish. The EPA has made a scare thing out of nothing.

Power factor - a bit low but improving and better to have the problem at the generator site

Short life- if you buy from the bargain bin then quite likely yes - if you buy the more expensive name brands the life should be as expected.

Excessive cost? Like everything a person needs to shop to get quality and price together

n3qik

Re: Canada makes another mistake

The world is going to end in 2012, so this should be a non-issue. If like everything else, they are wrong. CFL should be much improved by then. I have only 3 incandescent bulbs in my house. The rest is LED or CFL.

I am having good luck with the cheap Home Depot CFL's. Had only one that was noisy. That one was moved to the basement.

russ

Re: Canada makes another mistake

Nothing wrong in trying the cheaper CFLs but some try them, have a failure and then blame all CFLs which is not correct.

GreenPowerManiac

Re: Canada makes another mistake

We've got til December 21st, 2012 to figure on saving energy until the end. Maybe they meant the "Mayans" deaths and not the rest of the world.

"Our country is going to outlaw incandescent lights by 2012"

Does this mean that they'll outlaw the sales of incandescents ?

Outlawing anything that already has these installed should be an interesting Search Warrant, if not laughable.

russ

Re: Canada makes another mistake

Just won't be able to buy more in Canada. No search warrants or anything like that. The border crossings might get interesting.

icarus

Re: Canada makes another mistake

Marc, (Coot),

I disagree with you on this one. By mandating the phase out of conventional bulbs, the push will be towards better/cheaper bulbs. Certainly there will be some exceptions for specialty use bulbs, no a ban is a bit of a misnomer.

My personal prediction is that by the end of this new decade, LED lighting will be where cfls were 10 years ago. The real difference is the further reduction in energy use and mercury contained in them.

I have never been a big fan of mandates, but clearly there are ways that the market can be pushed. The market doesn't always lead in the right direction.

Don't want to run the risk of getting too political here however!

Happy new year to all!

Tony

hillbilly

Re: Canada makes another mistake

I'm not sure about the reports you're referring to specifically, but I think that overall CFL's have gotten a very bad rap that is not entirely deserved. I'm personally not crazy about the idea outlawing incandescent bulbs, as I think that they do have some place. Thing about it is though, there is a LOT of waste in lighting if you start adding up all the hours that many (most?) people leave lights on. Unless if people are paying a substantially higher amount for the energy they are consuming, then I don't know how else we can get people to conserve more and use more efficient products where appropriate. Unfortunately I think that most folks are totally oblivious to how much energy they are wasting, or what it took to produce that energy... and probably wouldn't change wasteful habits without laws forcing them to do so.

As Tony points out, this will also probably turn out to push technology along a bit faster. Ten years down the road this may end up delivering us some better and more efficient lighting options. Since I first heard discussion of this as an option here in California, I also had the opinion that this was intended to be a bit of a hint to all appliance manufacturers. If they see tighter restrictions on one thing, it's sure to get them thinking about how to stay ahead of regulations that may be coming down the road for them too. So long term impact *could* be ultimately to the benefit of consumers. Time will tell... or perhaps the Mayans had it right and we'll not have to worry :-)

Cariboocoot

Re: Canada makes another mistake

Clarification: it is sales of incandescents that will be banned. The info wasn't clear, but I think it applies only to those with comparable CFL's available. Else what would we do about refrigerators, ovens, and microwaves?

I'm against this sort of mandate. There are some very good applications for standard incandescent bulbs, such as occasional-use lights (attics, basements) and outdoor fixtures where CFL's won't function well.

In BC CFL's are selling well despite BC Hydro's low rates. People have made a conscious decision to reduce energy usage and can see the improvement even at 7 cents/kWhr. LED Christmas lights practically originated here, and are very popular. No one had to pass a law to force us to buy them either.

This latest move by GOC is just a typical political knee-jerk reaction to a situation law makers don't really understand. Like when they provided incentives to buy hybrid cars and only hybrids, even though there were strictly-gasoline vehicles which actually use less fuel than the hybrids.

But heck, once they put the sales tax back on all energy saving devices and RE equipment via the hated HST that will make up for it, right? (No, I don't see how it will either.)

Annum novo, similis annum seneca.
Happy New Year.

AntronX

Re: Canada makes another mistake

I don't like banning sale of incandescent lights. Because the quality of fluorescent light is not the same. Better way is to subsidise CFLs to bring price down to same level as incandescents. Or to increase price of incandescents and put that money towards subsidising CFLs.

BB.

Re: Canada makes another mistake

OK... The Mayan Calendar thingy:

NOTE: The astronomer Philip Plait has stated very clearly that the Mayan calendar does not end in 2012 at all, that it is like the odometer on your car, as each section of the odometer reaches 9 and then clicks over to 0, the next number to it starts a new cycle, so that when all the numbers again reach 0 all the way across the odometer - the last number will change from 1 to 2 and the new cycle starts all over again.

Now--if a politician could have figured out how to raise taxes based on the Mayan Calendar 2012 "event" -- they would have :grr. (Perhaps Federal, California, and New York government/financial meltdowns this year will be the result of the Mayan calendar problem :roll: ).

In the US--I think that Halogen type lamps are not banned--so we are seeing more of the regular shaped bulbs with halogen (and/or Xenon?) high pressure lamp inside. So--we will still have a good filament type bulb still available (I wonder if they have UV filters--straight Halogen lamps with quartz glass have significant UV output (fading of fabrics, damage to eyes).

High temperature filaments emit some energy in the UV region. Small amounts of other elements can be mixed into the quartz, so that the doped quartz (or selective optical coating) blocks harmful UV radiation. Hard glass blocks UV and has been used extensively for the bulbs of car headlights.[11] Alternatively, the halogen lamp can be mounted inside an outer bulb, similar to an ordinary incandescent lamp, which also reduces the risks from the high bulb temperature. Undoped quartz halogen lamps are used in some scientific, medical and dental instruments as a UV-B source.

Oh well--what government mandate has not had 50x the downside (the positive for the government is always increased tax revenues).

-Bill

BB.

Re: Canada makes another mistake

If you like the subsidy / increase costs model... That is what we have in Northern California. They require our utility to increase power charges and use the money to subsidize the cost of CFL's...

The CFL's are current subsidizes at close to 50% off retail. And our power costs are from $0.12-$0.60+ per kWhr (the more power you use, the more you pay).

Of course, we now all have cheap CFL's and our industries are leaving the state faster than government ever thought possible (after cutting $20 billion dollars out of a $100+ billion budget, they are still $20 billion short of revenue).

Frankly, I would rather pay $1 more per bulb and have a job...

-Bill

AntronX

Re: Canada makes another mistake

Aren't you guys pay so much per KWh due to deregulation which attracted "profit at any means" type individuals into your electricity industry?

Cariboocoot

Re: Canada makes another mistake

I'd like to personally thank Bill and all the other Californians for subsidizing our cheap electric rates every time they are forced to buy power from BC Hydro at ridiculous prices ...

We've had subsidized CFL and other energy-saving programs (like the refrigerator buy-back). Paid for at least in part by the capital Hydro would have had to spend on finding power elsewhere: instead of spending money on generating more electricity they spend money on conserving what they can already produce. This is a rare act of sensibility not often seen in government (BC Hydro is a Crown Monopoly. Er, I mean Crown Corporation.)

Sorry this is getting more political than I intended. It was supposed to be about how CFL's may save energy, but don't always save money and how we can have bad laws passed in the guise of saving energy that end up costing in other ways. Okay, I guess that is pretty political to begin with.

BB.

Re: Canada makes another mistake

We never had "deregulation" in California -- What we had was actually a forced devistiture (Utilities had to sell off their generating assets--although, I think they kept the Hydro). And the state PUC forbid long term power contracts between utilities and generators by law... The longest allowed was 24 hours. Basically, a highly regulated consumer pricing + less regulated spot market setup.

And when there was lots of excess power available--the system worked fine.

But, no investors would build a new power plant with 20+ year life with 1 day contracted power pricing (so we had zero power plants built for years). And, in a free market, you don't have to run your power plants if they don't make money.

Well, you can guess what would happen. Spot market pricing went through the roof, and the regulated consumer pricing did not change hardly at all. The major utilities had to buy power at spot pricing and sell power at regulated pricing--which drove them to the edge of bankruptcy--as the State PUC did not allow them to raise the rates charged to their customers to reflect the higher cost of power. And the state government just argued about the problems.

Texas did go to a deregulated market--and they did not have near the issues (that I have read about) that California did (cheaper rates, lots of power, etc.)... We had rolling blackouts, bankrupt utility companies and the "fix" was to take a summer's worth of power and have the state issue $20,000,000,000.00 of 40 year bonds to dig out the utility companies.

Yes, Enron was in this mess--but it turns out that the "Public" irrigation districts and City of Los Angeles Power and Light made huge profits too (they had long term power contracts and lots of cheap publicly financed hydro too so they could buy cheap and sell dear). In our case, the publicly owned utilities where not our friends either.

And as Marc thanks us--we are forced to purchase out-of-country hydro for ridiculous amounts of money vs "cheap coal power" from Utah and Wyoming (and Indian reservations).

And, we got in the 2000's:

The California electricity crisis (also known as the Western U.S. Energy Crisis) of 2000 and 2001 was a situation where California had a shortage of electricity.

By keeping the consumer price of electricity artificially low, the California government discouraged citizens from practicing conservation.I][URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed"]citation needed[/URL][/I In February 2001, California governor Gray Davis stated, "Believe me, if I wanted to raise rates I could have solved this problem in 20 minutes."I][URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed"]citation needed[/URL][/I Blame has also been placed on the gaming of a partially deregulated California energy system by energy companies such as Enron and Reliant Energy.
...
New regulations

In the mid-90's, under Republican Governor Pete Wilson, California began changing the electricity industry. Democratic State Senator Steve Peace, the chair of the energy committee and the author of the bill that put these changes into effect, is often credited as "the father of deregulation".I][URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Avoid_weasel_words"]who?[/URL][/I Wilson admitted publicly that defects in the deregulation system would need fixing by "the next governor".

The new rules called for the Investor Owned Utilities, or IOUs, (primarily Pacific Gas and Electric, Southern California Edison, and San Diego Gas and Electric) to sell off a significant part of their electricity generation to wholly private, unregulated companies such as AES, Reliant, and Enron. The buyers of those power plants then became the wholesalers from which the IOUs needed to buy the electricity that they used to own themselves.
While the selling of power plants to private companies was labeled "deregulation", in fact Steve Peace and the California legislature expected that there would be regulation by the FERC which would prevent manipulation. The FERC's job, in theory, is to regulate and enforce Federal law, preventing market manipulation and price manipulation of energy markets. When called upon to regulate the out-of-state privateers which were clearly manipulating the California energy market, the FERC hardly reacted at all and did not take serious action against Enron, Reliant, or any other privateers. FERC's resources are in fact quite sparse in comparison to their entrusted task of policing the energy market. Lobbying by private companies may also have slowed down regulation and enforcement.[6]
...
Chronology[1][2][3]

• 1996 California begins to loosen controls on its energy market and takes measures to increase competition.
• April 1998 Spot market for energy begins operation.
• May 2000 Significant energy price rises.
• June 14, 2000 Blackouts affect 97,000 customers in San Francisco Bay area during a heat wave.
• August 2000 San Diego Gas & Electric Company files a complaint alleging manipulation of the markets.
• January 17-18, 2001 Blackouts affect several hundred thousand customers.
• January 17, 2001 Governor Davis declares a state of emergency.
• March 19-20, 2001 Blackouts affect 1.5 million customers.
• April 2001 Pacific Gas & Electric Co. files for bankruptcy.
• May 7-8, 2001 Blackouts affect upwards of 167,000 customers.
• September 2001 Energy prices normalize.
• December 2001 Following the bankruptcy of Enron, it is alleged that energy prices were manipulated by Enron.
• February 2002 Federal Energy Regulatory Commission begins investigation of Enron's involvement.
• Winter 2002 The Enron Tapes scandal begins to surface.
• November 13, 2003 Governor Davis ends the state of emergency.

-Bill

russ

Status of İncandescent in the US

Copied from a post İ made previously on another site:

What do recent initiatives mean?
The Energy Independence And Security Act of 2007 created higher efficiency standards targeting today’s 40–100W incandescent and halogen general-service lamps.
Starting Jan. 1, 2012, 100W lamps will have to become 30 percent more efficient or be prohibited from manufacture and import; Jan. 1, 2013, targets 75W lamps; and Jan. 1, 2014, targets 40W and 60W lamps.

My notes:
1. Are the incandescent bulbs being banned? NO
2. Are manufacturers being forced to improve the energy efficiency of 40 to 100 watt bulbs? YES
3. Are manufacturers doing so? YES and they are reaching the market at this time
4. Will the new bulbs be more expensive? YES - virtually any new tech item costs more than something that has been made forever until the competition catches up
5. The new incandescent bulbs will pay for the additional cost in energy savings

mike95490

Re: Canada makes another mistake

russ wrote: »

The mercury content of a cfl is less than in a normal serving of fish. The EPA has made a scare thing out of nothing.

I'll be sure to follow the guidelines for broken CFL, the next time I cook fish.

Maine did a follow up study, and found lots of HG.
http://www.maine.gov/dep/rwm/homeowner/cflreport.htm

http://www.epa.gov/hg/spills/

russ

Re: Canada makes another mistake

İ've read the stuff put out by the EPA about mercury and the states more or less replicate it. The part about possibly replacing the carpet the lamp fell on rips it for me!

When İ was a kid we used to use it to polish dimes - playing with mercury! That wasn't a good idea maybe but İ am not going to get overly worried about cleanup of a broken lamp though (recycling) is important.

For many years the stuff was used in manometers for pressure measurement. Those were filled and worked on - by many including me. Mercoid switches were common even into the 80's.

Being careful is one thing (properly disposing of old lamps) but no reason to panic over the whole thing.

RandomJoe

Re: Canada makes another mistake

Not to mention we've had fluorescent lamps for decades, and the older ones contained MUCH higher quantities of mercury than do the current crop of CFLs. I know plenty of people who had (and have) regular tube fixtures in their homes. But all the vile hatred seems reserved for CFLs...

I remember as a kid finding a large number of old 8-foot tubes in a dumpster once... We sure had fun making them go "boom"! :-) We did keep our distance, but that was for protection from flying shards of glass...!

russ

Re: Canada makes another mistake

For some strange reason mercury seems to be a lot more dangerous than years past. İt is a hazard but on e scale of 1 to 10 your car is a lot more dangerous. Some of the green sites İ read really surprise me with the scares they manage to dream up.

Look at all the stuff we are 'protected' from by government rules that we grew up with, played with or whatever but managed to survive. The Nanny state really thinks it is helping people by making ever increasing stupid rules and pronouncements!

TOMMYB1

Re: Canada makes another mistake

Well I'm 64 and I really don't know how I made it this far with all the hype that the EPA comes up with. There is a lot of pro and con out there but some of these people have gone nuts with some of this stuff.

Most of this stuff is just money making for themselves but they want admit that.

Cariboocoot

Re: Canada makes another mistake

I know what you mean; how did we ever live so long without all those safety measures that are everywhere today? When I was young I actually ground the remains of asbestos brake linings off for re-lining - no respirator.

I just find it odd that the gov't always knows what's best for us, and ends up telling us CFL's are dangerous mercury sources - but we must buy them because incandescents are not good for the environment.

Another clear case of not thinking things all the way through.

vcallaway

Re: Canada makes another mistake

I used to get mercury switches out of old cars and play with them.

Maybe that explains a few things....

BB.

Re: Canada makes another mistake

Been there, done that... :roll:

I used to try and freeze the mercury with dry ice and in our very deep freeze freezer (very old ice cream chest that went down to -40 F or more--IIRC

The old freezer worked really well for "press fit work" (freeze the shaft, heat the bearing race type stuff). Stuff would "fall" together (did not have a bearing press).

-Bill).

russ

Re: Canada makes another mistake

İ remember when İ was in the Navy in San Diego and rebuilding the engine room on a 40 foot motor launch - covered with asbestos - we would come out of the engine room pure white.

Rebuilding car brakes - the home had asbestos shingles on the exterior - lead in paint was common.

İf you got caught in chemicals you were not supposed to be in you got your butt beat

İ remember flagging for the crop spray plane - malathion - parathion - toxophine - you held the flag up until the last minute and then ran like hell. A minutelater you retrieved the flag, moved so many paces and started over again.

The nanny state gets too worried over some things and misses others.

icarus

Re: Canada makes another mistake

"The nanny state gets too worried over some things and misses others."

True, but (even though I did, and still do dumb things!) I am glad that we don't have mercury in our switches, asbestos in our pipe insulation, lead in our paint, etc, etc.

Slowly and hopefully surely ( and stop calling me Shirley!) we are learning that nasty stuff is just that, nasty, and indeed we can and should, and indeed do come up with alternatives. Call it the nanny state if you will, but the reality is that the government (at many levels) plays an important role here. I firmly believe that few of the important environmental regs that have come around in the last generation or so would have happened if we had "left it to the private sector". The private sector is interested nearly exclusively on the bottom line, especially the next fiscal quarters bottom line. That is not a bad this per se, but it doesn't leave much room for doing the more expensive cleaner option.

Teetering dangerously close to the edge of being political, I think I will go spray some used transformer oil (laden with PCB's) on my concrete forms! (Free from the power company C. 1970!).

Tony

mike95490

Re: Canada makes another mistake

In California, oil base house paint (indoor & outdoor) is being forced out, to provide clean air. The replacement paints, because of more frequent repainting, suck homeowners pockets dry. And there is more waste because of it. I can't say it's made the air any better, having lousy paint. And the list of native trees that are "bad" because they contribute to smog. Called "BIOGENIC EMISSIONS"

http://www.arb.ca.gov/research/ecosys/tree-aq/tree-aq.htm
http://www.fraqmd.org/Biogenics.htm Many Oaks, figs and palms on the list.

Cariboocoot

Re: Canada makes another mistake

I don't think anyone is arguing that these things aren't dangerous. It's a question of how dangerous something is relative to other dangerous things. Most of the time you're more likely to suffer ill effects from involuntarily inhaling automobile exhaust or second-hand smoke than from the average person's exposure to mercury, asbestos, or toxic agricultural chemicals.

Of course there's also the theory of the cumulative effect of dissimilar contaminants; that you may be exposed to safe levels of 'A', 'B', and 'C' individually, but in combination the result is hazardous.

Canada particularly sends out excessive alarms about how dangerous things are. Our H1N1 hype was unbelievable (I had the virus - sorry, didn't die). When Avian flu was detected here in BC the Gov't response was annihilation of every bird on every farm. They even went so far as to suggest it would be necessary to kill pet parrots. (No joke.) If they'd handled the SARS outbreak the same way they would have killed everyone stepping off a plane at YVR.

There's no doubt in my mind that the statistics presented regarding the dangers of any given thing are at least partially exaggerated. The same goes for climate change, global warming, fossil fuels, et cetera. Given that, it becomes very difficult for anyone to make intelligent choices about public policies on environment or energy. The picture presented is a narrow view, and all-too-often short-sighted.

One of the best things about this forum, in addition to the intelligent contributors and open discussion, is the practical, pragmatic approach to RE. None of the "go green at any cost" hype; but a realistic attitude vis-a-vis the capital costs of RE and its potential return. Let us never retreat from that sensible stance.

mike95490

Re: Canada makes another mistake

Cariboocoot wrote: »

Let us never retreat from that sensible stance.

Absolutely ! No Turning Back ! It's a Moral Imperative !
Damm the torpedoes, full speed ahead !

russ

Re: Canada makes another mistake

There are a lot of things İ have done in my lifetime that were a bit dumb and İ would not recommend to my sons! Wouldn't want to see them try to see if they would be lucky or not.

A lot of the warnings in the news today make me think of the OSHA designed horse though.

hillbilly

Re: Canada makes another mistake

I tend to agree about the whole "nanny state" mentality that we've grown into as a society, I mean have you all seen how many damn sanitary wipes there are around us today? The ones at the grocery store for instance to wipe down the handles of the grocery carts, I think we've gone a bit paranoid there. I think a large part is the whole concept of liability has caused us to look at every little thing that could harm someone in a new light. Not all countries are this way, some will pretty much allow you to do just about whatever you wish, weather it's a safe practice or not. Like a lot of you, I've done my fair share of stupid things, and I hope that we all will continue to have the right to do stupid/dangerous things to ourselves anytime we see fit.
Key distinction to me though, is when our stupidity affects the safety and health of others. They should not have to suffer from our stupidity, recklessness, laziness, greed, stubbornness... etc.