It's not the light bulbs that are the problem. It's not their fault. it's the psychotic people that are the problem.

/been using CFs for years. No they're not sexy looking in your table lamp. Yeah they cut down on the electric bill when you have a hundred of them going.

//enough of the squiggle bulbs. I want LEDs I can Fark by.

duskglow2000

No kidding. I took advantage of the Albertson's 3 pack for $1 deal too. They had 60W and 100W packs (brightness).

I do think there is another problem in California... home builders. My house has about 36 recessed lights that came with 75W bulbs. Hell, the kitchen has 6 of them alone! If I turned every bulb on in the house I would be using 2700 watts!!! That is like running 2 space heaters on high! Of course I never turn on all the lights at the same time, just saying.

I replaced almost all of the lights in the house with CFLs and they are brighter than the bulbs that they replaced.

Here is my kitchen example:
75W bulbs = 450
14W CFLs = 84

That means the kitchen is now using just over 1 original 75W bulb in power. And yes, the 60W CFLs produce slightly less light than the old ones, but the light is whiter and it actually makes the kitchen brighter.

And yes, this is a stupid law.

prjindigo
do they realize that they will be banning streetlights, flood lights, headlights, runway landing lights, flashlights, etc?

Streetlights are HPS - already more energy efficient.

Headlights? HID is the new standard.

Flood lights can be anything, HPM, HID, or CF

Runway landing lights? Seriously?

Flashlights? The best are already LED.

Smeggy Smurf: I'm a evil conservative warmongering capitalist pig but I love these things.

Wow. You're like the stupid of both parties combined.

My experience with CFL lamps is not what I'd consider positive. In my previous house I tried them and had many fail in less than a year of normal use... a couple of them with smoky, burny catastrophic badness.

Maybe the newer ones are better but I suspect not. CFL's (especially the good ones that use high-frequency ballasts to reduce flicker) are inherently vulnerable to spikes on the line. The bases need cooling to keep the electronics happy. They're not the best for wet or cold areas. And, constant switching will shorten life (especially the instant-start types) so motion light use isn't so great.

Even under the best of circumstances typical CFL life is still only 10k hours or so for a good bulb, and much less than that for a cheap one. And they contain small amounts of mercury (not to mention lead if non-RoHS materials are used in the driver board), so you have a little bundle of e-waste whenever one dies.

Wake me up when LED lamps become cheaper.

Dalar

Glad you have no problems with them, because I do. The light color is all wrong and the buzzing drives me nuts. And don't say I should try better ones; these are new, best-you-can-get-supposedly bulbs. I can't stand them.

I'm keeping my incandescents, and whoever tries to take them from me will feel my wrath.

who needs bulbs? i just bask in the glow of my lcd backlight anyways..
/working on a tan
//veeeerrryyyy slooooowly

A tiny fraction of a household's power usage goes to lighting. It's the TV's, computers, refrigerators, washers, dryers, and whatever other appliances that suck up the juice.

Air conditioners suck the juice, BIG TIME.

My farking air conditioner doubles the power bill. I am dead serious. The damn thing literally uses as much power as everything else combined, during the month of July.

/at least it did when I used it
//stopped using it a couple summers ago when I saw the power bill

seatown75

Flood lights can be anything, HPM, HID, or CF

Funny you should mention that. I was walking back to my car after class and noticed the old halogen floods on campus had been (or in the process of) been changed to 2 CFL bulbs per light. I thought to myself "self, it is about time they took a progressive approach to energy usage" ... then I rebutted with "self, I can't see shait out here!"

/good idea tho

gradatim: Air conditioners suck the juice, BIG TIME.

And a lot of that juice is to suck the energy out of the building that you are pumping in to light the place.

100 W light bulb equals AT LEAST 300 W of air conditioning to remove the heat.

In California it might be trickier than you think...

Deserves

If you feel inconvinienced, then you go ahead and die in a fire.

/Yes, we are the dominant most beligerent species on the planet
//How 'bout we stop shiatting on ourselves and wake the fark up?
///Every little bit helps
////Seriously

Personally, I hate flourescent bulbs. They sometimes flicker, usually don't produce very warm light, etc etc. I find it much harder to use a computer under flourescent lighting for an extended period of time, versus incandescent.

of themthe results of two tests.

as a migarine sufferer, I can tell you that flourescent lights kill me. A friend who is an electrician also told me that if you live close to a power station/plant, lightbulbs do not last as long becuase of higher than normal voltage. He gave me a box of 130 volt bulbs and they lasted 2X the normal ones I got at the market.


Sewing or jewlery designing for me is very painful under a CFL.

If you feel inconvinienced, then you go ahead and die in a fire.

If you turned off your computer and your smugness, you could save a bunch of electricity.

quixalicious

don't you dare make that a new cliche!

i have 2 comments

1. for those of you that keep saying that Hollywood is going to throw a shiat fit, the TV station that I work for replaced the old quarts lights in the news studio with banks of CFL lights about 6 months ago the lights have the same lum output for about 1/10 the power usage and the rely cool thing is that the reflectors have several different bulbs at different color tempters that can be turned on and off from the lighting controller that allows up to change color without having to get out the ladder and put a gel on the light, this saves a lot of time when switching over from the morning to the midday and late news (morning news has a red tent, midday has a white tent and late night has a blue tent) so I don't rely see Hollywood biatching too much.

2. there is going to be a huge problem with it comes time to change the light bulbs because CLF bulbs have a small amount of mercury gas in the bulb so you cant throw them out with the regular trash.

Ha! I use whale oil lamps.

/farking pinkos

ninja_jazza
who needs bulbs? i just bask in the glow of my lcd backlight anyways..

That LCD of yours also uses a CFL for the backlight.

KRSESQ: BULLSHAIT!!! I've tested dozens of these things over the years and I can state categorically that THIS IS NOT TRUE IN REAL-WORLD TESTS! A 40 or 60-watt CFL comes closer, but you CANNOT read comfortably with a 20-watt CFL.

It's important to understand the terminology.
A CFL consuming 18W might put out as much light as a 75W bulb.
However, the industry decided that bulbs labelled 18W wouldn't sell so they mention "75W bulb" on the label in some places and "uses only 18W" in other places.

This makes for a confusing situation. What I'm suggesting is your 20W bulb might be one that uses like 6W but is labelled a "20W bulb equivalent" (a 20W incandescent is not good for reading), as opposed to one that uses 20W and puts out the light equivalent to a 75W incandescent.

I've never noticed flickering off of CFL like you get with the old school fluorescent tubes. They're radically different technology. They also come in different color temperatures and you can find ones closer to the yellow of incandesent if you want. The color rendering index is still not as good though.

One flaw I've noticed- CFLs don't turn on for jack if they're cold. I have an outdoor porch light and when it was in the 40's it didn't put out any useful light for like a couple of minutes, when it warmed up.

Ringshadow wins.

Yes, let's go blind so lights will be useless in the future.

One flaw I've noticed- CFLs don't turn on for jack if they're cold. I have an outdoor porch light and when it was in the 40's it didn't put out any useful light for like a couple of minutes, when it warmed up.

QFT

However I have noticed that my 2 FL work lights in my garage take about 5 minutes to get full brightness... but the 2 CFLs I installed in the celing sockets of the garage deal with the cold a lot better.

CFL bulbs may be cheaper in the long run...doesn't mean they are safer.

At home, one failed, and it wasn't just a flash to a dead bulb...this CFL went out with a bang as the ballast failed, with enough acrid smoke to trigger the smoke detector.

Look for an increase in house-fires in CA after these douchebag lawmakers have their fun reaming you without the courtesy of a reach-around.

If you can't tell the difference in lighting color between a CFL and an incandescent bulb, you're blind.

As soon as they start making CFLs that put out nice, warm light like Edison intended, I'll put them in all my sockets. Until then, I've got the icy cold money savers installed in the rooms where I don't care so much about the light quality.

Crosshair: Why not make CFL's exempt from sales tax for 5 years? That would do alot more to encourage the use of CFL's than banning incandescent bulbs. If you buy 10 bulbs for $50 to use in your house that would be $3.75 less you would have to pay. Sure not alot of money, but it is an additional encouragement on top of CFL's other economic benifits that are making them more popular.

Remove taxes on the bulbs? Remove a tax? You're farkin nuts. Try raising taxes on the other bulbs. It's a sure winner that way.

I'm from CA, and don't think this is a terrible idea. I've already switched my whole house to CF. As for those who complain about the poor light or slow startup, just remember all CF bulbs are not equal. There are really bad ones and really good ones. The trick is to go to Home Depot and buy 1 of a couple brands, then figure out which ones are good and then buy several of those.

I'm not generally in favor of technology mandates or bans. I think the rules should be written to target what matters, i.e., electricity usage. Compact fluorescent makes perfect sense now, but they will soon be replaced by far more efficient white LEDs.

Wardrobe_Malfunction, like Edison intended? He intended to milk you dry and didn't care if you got electrocuted when installing the light bulbs into a direct current socket.

Iwood: Thank you. *bow*

/rant on

Changing lightbulbs isn't going to fix the increasing demand for AC, appliances, Christmas lights, etc. I have relatives there, and during the summer rolling brownouts are considered "normal." If that happened in the Great Lakes area, people would be freaking out. California is power hungry, give it what it wants.

Oh, and all you anti-nuclear people out there: give it up. You have NO idea how careful the industry is these days. There are reasons I suggested it, simple ones. The only byproduct is steam, the plants are extremely compact (space is a premium in CA), they don't demand trainloads of fuel daily, and they produce a lot of jobs.

/rant off
//OT'ness off

I like the flourescent bulbs, but they make me feel like I'm tripping on acid when they're the only light.

I try not to read or use a computer by flourescent light.

This is a dumb law.

Me too in most cases. But seeing the energy shortage here, and actually being in a "rolling blackout" group, it kind of hits home to me that something has to be done.

Cheap, long-lasting, eco-friendly LED's will be here soon. I'll be happy to slap a few glow panels on the wall and do away with lightbulbs entirely.

Those who live in other states don't really understand the energy situation in California.

Heh, of course we understand it. California has been totally mismanaged by Democrats and eco-nuts for many years, to the point where it had like half the power plants it needed before the Governator took command. Rather than admit this and actually build the rest of the power plants CA needs, however, the eco-nuts are forcing everyone to cut their energy consumption. I predict another 10 years of misery.

I certainly don't agree with the Governator on everything, but at least he's not corrupt or totally insane, and he's by far the best leader you're going to get in a state as screwed up as California. People need to listen to him a bit more if they're actually serious about fixing things.

/LED bulb, uses 0.7 Watts

j0ndas

What's wrong with forcing people to cut their energy consumption? If there's not enough power to go around, there isn't enough power to go around. That's like biatching that no one should make people conserve what when the lake is almost dried up.

I run a commercial recording studio, and there is NO WAY they are going to get every studio to switch to CFL's.

You may not think they make noise, but if you're in a dead silent room, they are the only source of noise. The only way to have fluorescent lights in a soundproof room is to have the inverter in a seperate room, which means you have to redo the electrical in your whole studio.

/uses halogens

If the powers that be in California don't like something, they just simply ban it. Thats the name of the game. Weather it's ciggarettes or light bulbs, the objective is to not give citizens a choice, but make up their minds for them. If memory serves me right, there was another group of rulers who left their citizens no choice... I believe they were called Nazi's.

So, California will see a substantial increase in house fires related to these bulbs. I have had several melt down or smoke out in a burst of flames over the years. Twice in the last year I've come home to a house full of nasty burnt plastic smoke and had to replace entire light fixtures. Those bulbs are unsafe, and the fact is the energy they save the consumer is massively overtaken by the energy and materials costs of manufacturing them in the first place. When they break, they spread murcury and phosphorous all over the place.

They are junk and they are unsafe, I will not use them. I Hate flourescent light anyway. Gives me a headache, its impossible to read with it and it messes with depth perception. Looks like the manufacturers lobby has been pretty successful.

Corporate socialism (fascism) strikes again.

All us Californians are just stupid liberals

Noted.

I was in a public school yesterday and watched four maintenance men watch the fifth maintenance man change fluorescent lightbulbs all the way down a hallway. The third graders I was spending the day with begin to ask, "Why don't they each change one set then they'll be done faster?" I was afraid to tell the truth (I was a guest for Immigrant Day), so I suggested the kids put it in writing and send it to the school board.

Did you ever get the feeling that government is a tad intrusive?

LEDs FTW

First they make me use a "low-flow" toilet that chokes on a cat turd... Now I have to give up my light bulbs for something that, when thrown away, will leech mercury into the groundwater! GAAAH! I need to move out of CA.

/Maybe somewhere with actual seasons

This politician should be dragged outside by his toenails and thrown into a well. Are you such a controlling-egotistical-farktard that you need to waste everyone's time coming up with shiat like this?

BTW, eraser8... the color is not the same. You may want to get your eyes checked.

BTW #2, What's going to become of all the "Easy Bake" ovens out there? CFL's ain't going to bake your brownie, baby.

Between white LED's and florescent replacement bulbs wich dont buzz humm or flicker (If you have a fixture that uses the rod's, then they would if the transformer part was not well housed and cheap as fark) , I wholy approve of this act.

If you have ever done the math, or read an article on someone who did the math, if everyone changed over from regular lightbulbs to cfl, wich uses roughly 1/4 to 1/6th the power of your current bulbs, you would beable to literally scrap all of our nuke power plants, and most coal and gas plants. Infact it would be an awsome setup for a move to compleatly rely on solar energy.

There may be a few sufferers who don't like some asspect about florescent bulbs, but I am sure if we moved over, we would see alot more bulb desins (sound proof housing, color shielding to soften the glow to the yellow/orangish we are used to) and research that would elliminated all of those caveats.

Crosshair: Remember, Capitalisim is the worst economic system except for all the others.

Uh... that statement was made about democracy, not capitalism, and while I agree that capitalism is the most natural and best-working system, unregulated capitalism has shown itself over and over again to be just as unworkable as pure communism or socialism.

Ricardo_Farktardo: If the powers that be in California don't like something, they just simply ban it. Thats the name of the game. Weather it's ciggarettes or light bulbs, the objective is to not give citizens a choice, but make up their minds for them. If memory serves me right, there was another group of rulers who left their citizens no choice... I believe they were called Nazi's.

Godwinnied!

Why don't these clever and innovative Californians just copy what was done in Arizona years ago: Establish intelligent outdoor lighting codes:

http://www.darksky.org/resources/

I'll bet the clever and innovative Californians haven't even considered reducing light pollution (and therefore energy use):

http://www.darksky.org/images/states/ca.gif

Can't they just go back to oil lamps?