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Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

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Re: Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

#321

Post by marcosdumay »

bumby wrote: post #302
marcosdumay wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> does it imply any arbitrarily boundary of commerce is invalid? Yes. It says exactly that. Now, there are details that can change things either way. But the one thing about economics, that is known for about 3 centuries, is that usually arbitrary boundaries to commerce make people poorer. Usually, both on average and on the poor extreme. There is more variability of impact for rich people.

I’m not doubting that claim but do you have any further reading to back it up?

You want any introductory textbook on economics.

Just avoid anything advanced enough to have a small focus.

Re: Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

#322

Post by Syonyk »

tourmalinetaco wrote: post #280
nostromo wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worry we’ll find the high speed strobe almost all LEDs emit are harmful for humans or animals. We’re told they strobe too fast for us to perceive (sometimes true, sometimes not). But unperceptible doesn’t mean it’s not harmful. A lot of people that use their iPhone’s slow motion video function indoors at night are surprised to see they are surrounded by a disco of blinking lights.

Is this even an LED exclusive problem? I was taught this is mainly due to alternating current, and is seen in filaments as well.

LEDs flicker differently.

An incandescent has 10-15% brightness flicker at 120Hz. LEDs... vary. Some flicker a lot harder at 120Hz, some (mostly LED Christmas lights) are awful and flicker at 60Hz with a 50% duty cycle because they're a single diode rectifier.

Most LEDs flicker far faster, in the kHz range, which is theoretically beyond human impact, but we don't have many studies on it.

Incandescent flicker is also related to bulb wattage. A higher wattage bulb, with a thicker filament, will flicker less because it has more thermal inertia.

Re: Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

#323

Post by Syonyk »

jonwest wrote: post #246
_yb2s wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I resent the laws banning incandescent lights. I consider myself an environmentalist, and am very careful about wasting electricity. I love the warm dim light from an incandescent and think it helps me fall asleep... the light from one incandescent dimmed to about 20-40W is all I need after sunset, and all I want. It's like sitting near a campfire. My house is solar powered, and I keep a window open witho…

While I appreciate your reluctance, I’d recommend trying to find one of the Philips LED bulbs that dim like an incandescent bulb. I’m not sure they’re easy to find now, and to be honest I don’t remember the model name, but if you can find them they are wonderful. Basically they have multiple sets of diodes within them that dim at different rates which is an incredibly convincing “incandescent emulation”. They are a “…

Philips Warm Glow.

They seem to be obsoleted, all I can find for them is new old stock anymore. Which I've bought up a bunch of, because the damned things keep failing on me. I've had a set of 5 in service for about 6 years, and so far I've had to replace 4 of them for various failures. They're facing down in a hanging lamp with glass globes around them, and I guess that's close enough to "recessed or enclosed" that they fry themselves. I have them in a few places, though I've also purchased... "some" incandescents, before they went out of availability. I should be good for the rest of my life at this point, especially since I run my incandescents dimmed. The wiki article on bulb rerating is informative - as you reduce power, lifespan is "fraction of rated power" to the -12 or -16 - it's some stupidly high exponent, and it's why a lot of people empirically noticed that "bulbs on dimmers never seem to burn out."

Re: Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

#324

Post by Syonyk »

koyote wrote: post #240
Dalewyn wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I resent the banning of incandescent light bulbs for a practical reason: Heat. In colder regions it's been common sense to use an incandescent light bulb to keep a space heated so it's just above freezing (above 0C or 32F) during the winter months. This is to prevent things like plumbing and sensitive machinery from breaking due to ice formation. A full blown heater is generally complete overkill and impractical for…

This almost sounds like the popular xkcd around CPU overheating being a feature: https://xkcd.com/1172/ Surely there are other, more reliable ways, to keep a space heated during winter months?

> Surely there are other, more reliable ways, to keep a space heated during winter months?

Sure, there are plenty of other ways to keep a space heated.

They're all radically more expensive, and radically more failure prone, than a 60W or 100W bulb burning constantly, back when the bulb was $2 and the trouble lamp cord was $10.

Re: Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

#325

Post by Syonyk »

Obscurity4340 wrote: post #286
comfypotato wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just use an LED that produces the same color. They 100% exist. I agree that incandescent is better than cold LED. A little shopping and consumer research will 100% find you exactly the LED you want.

I truly cannot distinguish between real incandescent light and the "warm white" implemented on the Phillips Hue bulbs.

Visually, no, probably not.

But in terms of your body's melatonin production and sleep, the Philips smart bulbs can get very peaky in terms of blue, in the range that matters.

https://www.sevarg.net/2023/03/11/philips-smart-wifi-bulbs/

They're not obvious visually when they switch from the white emitter, which has "some blue" to the RGB emitters, which have "lots of blue" as you head out in the red/orange spectrum, but your body's "blue sensors" certainly notice.

Unfortunately, our visual system isn't sensitive to the same things our melatonin inhibiting system is sensitive to, so without a spectrometer, you can't really tell what you're seeing.

Re: Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

#326

Post by Syonyk »

thehappypm wrote: post #241
_yb2s wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making it more efficient just means people will think even less before brightly lighting things up all night long that either don’t need lighting at all or don’t need it so bright. LEDs are so efficient and cheap that the result is massive light pollution. The solution to energy waste is to make light dimmer and more localized.

That would be the case if LEDs weren’t so, so much more efficient. Like 5x more efficient, easily.

5-6x, yes.

And I can't help but think my neighbor with literally hundreds of watts of LED bulbs around the outside of their house might not decide to light the night quite as often if they were all incandescents. I can read a newspaper by their lights, which aren't even aimed at me, about 3/8 mile away. It's absurd.

Re: Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

#327

Post by Syonyk »

dredmorbius wrote: post #230
alfalfasprout wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't. Even the highest end ultra high CRI bulbs don't have the same CRI and dUV as a good halogen bulb for example.

I'd thought halogens weren't being banned, but apparently they are (in the US). Though the concern seems to be mercury content --- CFLs are also subject to the ban, according to April 2022 accounts: https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/3463992-biden-... >

Yeah.

Incandescents were "Deprecated but still available, and not many people worried about it" for about the past 7 years or so, and you could still find them at stores, if you cared.

Trump expressed his dislike for LED and CFL lighting, so, of course, the Biden administration went about actually banning sale of incandescents. I expect a robust black market in them for decades to come.

The overall energy use numbers really depend on how the bulbs are used - in many areas, lights are mostly used in the winter, when the heat is welcome. Saving energy on lighting and having to burn more natural gas or electricity for heat pumps is perhaps some savings over electricity, but not nearly the 5-6x often cited as "savings." In the summer, when the heat is unwelcome, the sun is up longer, so a well run home won't be using nearly as much artificial light.

Re: Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

#328

Post by charcircuit »

ceejayoz wrote: post #319
charcircuit wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I feel like you're unclear on what poverty, homelessness, and hunger are. And I feel like you do not understand that the average American is not homeless. If you are homeless you are not going to be a person who is spending >$40/mo for food and needing a cook book to make cheap food interesting to eat. You will just buy cheap food until you bootstrap yourself back to a house and a stable job.

Scroll up to where this comments thread says "You realize that there are people who are homeless", then talked about a box under a bridge, then not having a mailbox. Who did you think we were discussing?

>Who did you think we were discussing?

People who spend >$40 per month on food who live 40 miles away from the nearest library.

Re: Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

#329

Post by Syonyk »

brookst wrote: post #305
nostromo wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worry we’ll find the high speed strobe almost all LEDs emit are harmful for humans or animals. We’re told they strobe too fast for us to perceive (sometimes true, sometimes not). But unperceptible doesn’t mean it’s not harmful. A lot of people that use their iPhone’s slow motion video function indoors at night are surprised to see they are surrounded by a disco of blinking lights.

Not new at all. Many of those blinking lights are not even LEDs.

Try it.

A 240fps high speed is more than enough to observe a variety of LED flickering behaviors. Some flicker none (Bedtime Bulb is remarkable in the lack of flicker), some flicker at high enough frequency you can't really make out details, and others are just... gross.

Re: Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

#330

Post by Auracle »

bumby wrote: post #315
Auracle wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, I'm not blaming the people. If I were in their shoes I'd probably do the same thing. I'm blaming immigration policy. You shouldn't have politicians acting like they care about the price of housing while opposing doing anything to stem the tide of uncontrolled immigration.

Except when you talk to people who care about the cost of construction and food. You know what industries tend to lobby politicians for more lax immigration policies? Agricultural, food production, and construction. Why isn't the same argument being made about food? More people equals more demand, right? Shouldn't there be a commensurate increase in food costs? But people are able to mentally understand that immigran…

Food is a bit different in that we export a fair amount; it's not like we're running up against the limits of what our farmland can produce. For what it's worth I absolutely abhor the phrases "they're more willing to do that work" or "it's work that American's won't do." You're missing the last part of that sentence: for that pay.

Of course costs will go up. So will pay. You're right in that in the case of food it's hard to say how that would all equalize. However, are we to rely on what's essentially an underclass forever? That seems pretty dystopian, and unsustainable.

Home prices I'd argue wouldn't be affected as much. The "dumb" labor in building houses is pretty cheap. Framing, roofing, etc. isn't much of the labor cost and they aren't on the jobsite for that long. Skilled work such as plumbers, electricians, and the like cost much more. There are kind of inbetween jobs such as drywall taping and tiling and I don't know how much of that is done with immigrant labor. In my experience it's basically none but I could be off on that.

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