OMG - What is this? - Dirty Energy Light Bulbs?

This is sensationalist.

I could just as easily take these bulbs and market them as Vitamin D producing lightbulbs "Never again rely on a supplement to get your daily dose of vitamin D, get it at home while you read, while you vacumn, while you watch television. Order now, only 14.99 for a package of 3."



Seriously - the main gripe of these people is that this bulb is too much like natural sunlight.

So get a different bulb?

Long Lance, even with higher frequencies, if a wire in series with a fuse gets hot, the fuse will too and will open up, not because of heat conduction, but from what ever eddy currents or effect thats going on. Now if it was a 100amp burst for less then 1 microsecond, it may not blow the fuse, but it also won't heat the wire either. Most standard house fuses are linked/connected inside with solder that will melt before the wires insulation as the fuse will get hotter then the wire by design. Wires should be cooler running at higher frequencies anyway, thats why transmission lines don't use DC (that and other reasons).

Greeneyedleo, CFL's are made so you can not see the flicker or hear the sound, many if not all people don't. Theres a part of the brian that DOES see and hear it though but you will not notice it at all unless the CFL or your gaze is moving fast enough in relation to each other. The SUBconscious part of the brian is like the code/processor of a computer, the conscious part is what you see on the screen. The screen can look normal while the processor is detecting stuff and heating up and none of it gets showen on the screen. CRT TV's flicker and emit sound but because of the fact that most people can't see over 60 frames per second or hear over 19-20kilohertz they will claim the picture is constant and there is no whine.

www.nationmaster.com...

Some pro CFL sites will say the flicker rate is from 10-40kilohertz, but I would contest that and say that some 60-120Hz slips though after the filter capacitor has given up due to heat.

The mercury is a big one though, it can be cleaned up with sulfur, but the vapour needs to be aired out. Heat the general impact zone with direct sunlight or some other SAFE way (not a space heater face down) and direct a fan blowing it out the window. Make sure theres an air pathway by opening the door in that room and another window or door on the other side of the house. Then possibly leave the fan out in direct sun for an hour, then run it.

lol while out getting a hair cut i noticed there was a stall in my local chopping center promoting the use of these exact same globes. it was a Eco friendly stall of some sort. i felt like going up to them and asking them if they knew the dangers of these globes?

Originally posted by XL5
Long Lance, even with higher frequencies, if a wire in series with a fuse gets hot, the fuse will too and will open up, not because of heat conduction, but from what ever eddy currents or effect thats going on. Now if it was a 100amp burst for less then 1 microsecond, it may not blow the fuse, but it also won't heat the wire either. Most standard house fuses are linked/connected inside with solder that will melt before the wires

if you're using expendable fuses you're of course right, but i haven't seen those in ages. the magnetic ones will only react after a given interval and HF therefore won't trigger them at all as far as i can tell, but it depends on the design of course.

it should also be noted that you don't need much power to start a fire, only high temperatures. iow, leak currents can start a fire, although in this case, the entire cable was apparently cooked.

speaking of cooking, what about the following pics of dead CFLs?

www.execulink.com...

take a look at the 4th image, the glass vessek might actually be compromised and mercury vapor released.

at any rate, selling this as 'normal' behaviour is ludicrous. some of these things pose an obvious fire hazard. i wonder how many burnt-down homes are included in the 'ecological calculations' which are nowadays reduced to just carbon dioxide.

[edit on 2009.1.27 by Long Lance]

well heres a fact for you that I know from being in the lighting business. Walmart Corp sold 145,000,000 compact flourescents in a 15 month period!

I am a manufacturer of LED lighting and this is great news for me that the world now knows the effects of CFL Bulbs. Not to mention that when these bulbs go to thye dump you are putting Mercury directly inot the earth. It is suggested that theres enough mercury from these bulbs going into the dumps that will it be enough to kill off every River, stream, lake in the USA and Canada.

LED is on its way and is totally clean.

I have the worlds first certified LED Flourescent tube thats now selling like hotcakes across the globe. Just think Walmart for example. They draw about 445,000,000 watts per hour of energy using flourescent tubes. With LED replacement we take that down to 119,000,000 and they last at least 6 years with NO BALLAST

if i where u i WOULDNT buy the energy efficiant light bulbs, for a start they emit rays that can give you arthritus and stuff. plus most dont work in dimmer switchers. and they dont tend to be as bright. :-P

I think the people in the story were making the crime fit the facts so to speak, and to be honest I dont really care, these bulbs are great, they dont affect me in a bad way so im gonna keep on using 'em.

reply to post by ModernAcademia


I had heard all this for a while now. We chunked all our twisted, dirty bulbs and replaced with normal incandescents. We will be stocking up on some of these to last a while after the ban. Again with the unintended consequences? Or, more sinister intentions?

LongLance, any fuse that allows heat due to ohmic losses (heating) and still works is just as bad as CFL's. Never heard of magnetic fuses, got any pics, not to say it didn't happen, but I'm interested.

Those CFL pics don't really suprise me, #4 is pretty bad, but it still wouldn't make wires melt unless the house caught fire already lol. IMO CFL's are poorly designed and were probably rushed through the system.

OLED's seem a bit dim in all the videos I've seen of them. Banks of many white LEDs will still cost lots for a long time because of the manufacturing costs for the circuit board and all the LEDs. It would be better if the 3-5Watt LEDs were used and plastic fiber optic like screen diffusers were used.

Unruly1...free samples free samples free samples please lol.

Originally posted by michael
reply to post by ModernAcademia

 

I had heard all this for a while now. We chunked all our twisted, dirty bulbs and replaced with normal incandescents. We will be stocking up on some of these to last a while after the ban. Again with the unintended consequences? Or, more sinister intentions?

If GE had let Tesla upgrade the power system we would have plenty
of power. Even if we had our own generators I see where upgrades
would come along.
Tesla did say lighting was detrimental in his day but he invented the
florescent so I have no clue to his reasoning.
Possibly a non Relativistic bulb mechanics involving atomic gases
(a gas of mercury) and the reason the Illuminati never explained
the operation, or can't and just know its non Relativistic.

reply to post by XL5


By 'magnetic fuse' which is a term I've never heard before either, I'm assuming it's a circuit breaker as opposed to the old style thermal fuse (wired or HRC type). Here it's now mandatory for all new or renovated installations to incorporate an RCD (Residual Current Device or once called Core Balance Relays) which is truly a magnetic relay as detects minute imbalances between the active and neutral conductor to trip the circuit breaker on earth leakage currents around the 30mA level or less to protect people when they contact the active conductor. They work by passing the active and neutral currents of the circuit through windings on a magnetic core arranged so that the magnetic fields cancel out when the currents are the exactly the same. They're also called ELCBs (Earth Leakage Circuit Breakers) although the original ELCB was somewhat different in the way it operated.

The problem with lighting circuits using incandescents or CFLs is that these lamps do not incorporate an earth so faults within the lamp will not produce any imbalance and the protection has to rely on plain old thermal detection of overcurrent situations (which is a secondary tripping element of RCDs btw). Plain old wired fuses have a 'fusing factor' of around 1.6 at ambient room temperature which means they will melt (fuse') at a current 1.6 x the fuse wire's rated current. This is the reason that a fuse for a circuit with 25A rated cable needs to be about 15A - to ensure that on the coldest day the fuse will break the circuit at a current below that which could overheat the wiring and damage insulation. Circuit breakers allow much more precise protection so that same 25A circuit can be protected by a 20A breaker instead of a 15A fuse as they will both operate safely below the maximum current, even in the worst case of a sustained fault level too close to the conductor maximum rating.

A poor power factor (high reactive loading) isn't really relavent in current sensing protection - it means the protection will operate at even lower active loadings than it would for a high power factor loading IE a low power factor load will consume more current and trip even sooner than a high power factor load. This is because thermal effects are based solely on the current and I^2.R.T determines how hot an element will get in any given time period, from a point of view of the fuse wire - R is its DC resistance. High power factor devices are being pushed because the power system still has to generate all the current being consumed and a higher power factor means less MVA loading on the system for the same active loading in MW.

I don't see any conspiracy in CFLs and the dangers of mercury vapour + toxic phosphors + UV have been around for a long time in flourescent lamps with no huge problems. They're just an easy way to reduce the demand on energy supplies which means less carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere from thermal power stations. 'They' have conveniently left out the figures for the amount of pollution generated in manufacturing these lamps in the first place which is what bugs me.

ModernAcademia-

"Much more offensive to me than the poor UV performance of the bulbs is the fact that you throw away the ballast every single time with the bulb. Ridiculous! Just like the bulbs that go into office ceilings there is no reason why they can't sell the glass tube separately from the ballast. I just don't get it... those ballasts cannot be that cheap which is evident by the high price of the bulbs. Does anybody understand the logic there?"


Sir sir sir! You read my mind!

Also, I'm sure they can engineer the newer bulbs (maybe by altering the internal phosphor coating) so they radiate whatever wavelengths are desired, e.g. to remove UV from the spectrum. What I plan to do is tread water with my CFLs until the LED types become affordable.

Originally posted by Pilgrum
reply to post by XL5

 

By 'magnetic fuse' which is a term I've never heard before either, I'm assuming it's a circuit breaker as opposed to the old style thermal fuse (wired or HRC type). Here it's now mandatory for all new or renovated installations to incorporate an RCD (Residual Current Device or once called Core Balance Relays) which is truly a magnetic relay as detects minute imbalances between the active and neutral conductor to trip the circuit breaker on earth leakage currents around the 30mA level or less to protect people when they contact the active conductor. They work by passing the active and neutral currents of the circuit through windings on a magnetic core arranged so that the magnetic fields cancel out when the currents are the exactly the same. They're also called ELCBs (Earth Leakage Circuit Breakers) although the original ELCB was somewhat different in the way it operated.

The problem with lighting circuits using incandescents or CFLs is that these lamps do not incorporate an earth so faults within the lamp will not produce any imbalance and the protection has to rely on plain old thermal detection of overcurrent situations (which is a secondary tripping element of RCDs btw). Plain old wired fuses have a 'fusing factor' of around 1.6 at ambient room temperature which means they will melt (fuse') at a current 1.6 x the fuse wire's rated current. This is the reason that a fuse for a circuit with 25A rated cable needs to be about 15A - to ensure that on the coldest day the fuse will break the circuit at a current below that which could overheat the wiring and damage insulation. Circuit breakers allow much more precise protection so that same 25A circuit can be protected by a 20A breaker instead of a 15A fuse as they will both operate safely below the maximum current, even in the worst case of a sustained fault level too close to the conductor maximum rating.

A poor power factor (high reactive loading) isn't really relavent in current sensing protection - it means the protection will operate at even lower active loadings than it would for a high power factor loading IE a low power factor load will consume more current and trip even sooner than a high power factor load. This is because thermal effects are based solely on the current and I^2.R.T determines how hot an element will get in any given time period, from a point of view of the fuse wire - R is its DC resistance. High power factor devices are being pushed because the power system still has to generate all the current being consumed and a higher power factor means less MVA loading on the system for the same active loading in MW.

I don't see any conspiracy in CFLs and the dangers of mercury vapour + toxic phosphors + UV have been around for a long time in flourescent lamps with no huge problems. They're just an easy way to reduce the demand on energy supplies which means less carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere from thermal power stations. 'They' have conveniently left out the figures for the amount of pollution generated in manufacturing these lamps in the first place which is what bugs me.

Would this be an alternative description of a GFCI (ground fault circuit interruptor) circuit?

reply to post by WhamBamTYM


I'd guess that every country has its own acronym for modern sensitive earth leakage protection. I've seen it evolve here with at least 3 different names since it was introduced in the 80s. On the other hand, overcurrent protection hasn't really changed much at all and still uses fuses and bimetallic strips as thermal sensing elements which is technology over 100 years old but it's proven and it works well plus it's cheap.

As for re-using the electronics in the base of a CFL - they're currently designed to barely last the lifetime of the tube and making them more robust would result in higher costs. I'd say the weakest single component is the HV electrolytic capacitor.

reply to post by ModernAcademia


Here is some more about them:

Important Information About Energy Light Saver Bulbs

Part 3 - Reaction to Rays

Part 4 - Electrical Shock

Please share with loved ones and friends!

Originally posted by XL5
LongLance, any fuse that allows heat due to ohmic losses (heating) and still works is just as bad as CFL's. Never heard of magnetic fuses, got any pics, not to say it didn't happen, but I'm interested.

en.wikipedia.org...

Originally posted by Pilgrum

By 'magnetic fuse' which is a term I've never heard before either, I'm assuming it's a circuit breaker

bingo, sorry for the confusion.

[edit on 2009.1.28 by Long Lance]

Hmm, pure magnetic type breakers seem like a bad idea then, unless large ferrite beads are used on the wire if high frequencies will not trigger them.

Sheesh, I changed all my bulbs to cfl's when they told us, if we all changed one bulb, it would be like taking a million cars off the road. Then I heard they had mercury in them which made me nervous, plus, how good can it really be for the environment if it's got mercury in it?

Personally, I'm not buying anymore... at least til I know more. Maybe I'll just use candles.

The really sad and pathetic thing is, light bulbs haven't really changed since they were invented over a century ago. Then their first real remake and our wonderful engineers or whoever the hell designs a lightbulb can't even do it right. Talk about incompetent... either that or pure genius for making us think we needed such crap.

these bulbs are not allowed in our home . Both miladie and I suffer from major migranes when these are present and also the fact of the size difference on most of the brands will also require new fixtures so as to accomodate these beasts. I have about a three year supply of the standard bulbs and am hitting Costco and any other store I can to get them while I can .

XLS I fear I may be one of a small percentage of people who can observe both the flicker of a CFL and also the sound it produces. That said my eyesight is ridiculous ... I have been known to read ten foot by two foot signs from a mile and a quater off. On the subject of the bulbs that are available to the consumer at this time, I have this to say. These energy efficient bulbs are a health hazard regardless of wether or not they are giving off harmful radiation (uv).You break one , and you have to leave the room, then come back half an hour later with a microfibre mask to clear up. Whats criminal about these things is the fact that they are still selling us bulbs which can "go" or break. The western military (intelligence not regular) have been using bulbs with a TWO HUNDRED YEAR life span for about 30 years. Its ALL a scam. I dont give a damn about the argument that manufacturers make, that if they sold us foreverbulbs then they wouldnt get return trade... who really cares ? Corperations are here for our benifit, not to benifit themselves... the CEOs who run them need to remember how lucky they are that the mob doesnt rule the west. If this was old school russia , they wouldnt have a damned choice.