Incandescent lights [Re: It's time to restore the 11/45.]

[Tothwolf]

On Thu, 5 Feb 2015, Mouse wrote:

>> Personally, I worry a bit about LED lamps supplanting the 
>> incandescents.
>
> Me too - though for a different reason: a (tungsten) incandescent bulb 
> is an extremely useful thing when working on small appliances.  Hook it 
> up in series with the mains and shorts in the appliance (a) don't do any 
> damage and (b) are obvious when the bulb goes full brightness.  (Of 
> course, the bulb has to be sized appropriately for the appliance's 
> normal draw; a 50W bulb will false-positive when testing an iron. :-)
>
> And then there are people who use them as heating elements in (eg) 
> wood-drying kilns.  And I'm sure there are plenty of other applications 
> I haven't heard/thought of.
>
> Perhaps fortunately, it appears that here, at least, incandescents 
> aren't completely banned, just vanilla 100W ones.  (I am, though, 
> somewhat worried about this being the camel's nose.)

I don't have links to all the relevant documents handy, but 100W, 75W, 60W 
and 40W are all banned from import or manufacture in the US (rough service 
bulbs are exempt...for now at least). Stores are allowed to sell off 
existing stocks and inventory, and many chains stocked up heavily before 
the second half (60W/40W) of the light bulb ban took effect.

T12 (1-1/2" diameter) fluorescent light tubes and magnetic ballasts were 
also similarly banned under the 'Energy Independence and Security Act of 
2007', and like with 60W and 40W incandescents, many chain stores stocked 
up heavily on T12 tubes. When they are gone though, they are gone (unless 
the law changes and consumers force the manufacturers to bring those 
product lines back).

The major manufacturers heavily lobbied the US government to pass 
legislation to ban these bulbs...and coincidentally, those horrible little 
compact fluorescents they had been wanting to push off on consumers have a 
much higher profit margin.