It is 2026 and incandescent is still better than LED

I would like incandescents unbanned simply so I can buy one in the rare situations where I want heat from a bulb more than light. 90% of the times that I want light, heat is irrelevant or undesirable, and wood is less expensive for me than electricity when I do want heat. Steady constant heat without a fan motor or high-power coil is a nice function of incandescent bulbs in a space like a pump house.

Glenn Herbert wrote:I would like incandescents unbanned simply so I can buy one in the rare situations where I want heat from a bulb more than light.

Were "heat lamp" incandescents also banned? I suspect there was an exemption there. As you suggest, they are a good solution for certain problems.

Any farm store should still have heat lamp bulbs for chickens; pet stores will have heat lamps for reptiles; and replacement bulbs for those "step out of the shower" heat lamps are likely available. I know they are available up here, and I can see them on homedepot dot com which is the US site.

I'm sure there's also a lively black market for the bulbs you want. Garage sales, thrift shops, and that seedy guy down the street who will sell you anything you crave. Psst, buddy, wanna buy some incandescents?

Heat lamp bulbs are available; I was talking about 60-100 watt bulbs which are sufficient for keeping a pumphouse or something like that from freezing, without danger of fire or excessive electricity cost.

Heat tape works fine for runs of pipe, but irregular things like a pump with controls are more difficult to warm that way.

I totally agree; I have used incandescents for exactly these kinds of jobs, and I keep a stash of them in case I need them. I wonder if the rough-service bulbs used in trouble lights might still be available.

A lot of farm heat bulb fixtures have a diode that lets you switch between, the standard 250W to 125W. I also have Philips heat bulbs that are 100W. A dimmer switch works on these as well, and if you know a renovations guy you can have a pail of the old style ones for a six-pack of Bud.

Anyway, there are options. It's fair to say these regulations didn't have country dwellers in mind.

So having bought the LED pitch hook, line and sinker (while always thinking "hmm, doesn't some of this hype reverse in winter?" [I'm in CT]), Paul has convinced me that, at least for the half+ of the year that we're running heat incandescents are the way to go. But I haven't been keeping up with the political situation: I both hear that incandescents have been band, but I can find expensive incandescents on line. Which is it? And if I want to keep buying 40-100w incandescents, does anyone know of either a cheap source, or a design that has overcome the designed obsolescence problem? Are the "Edison" bulbs longer-lived than the old white-glass bulbs we used to use in everything?

There are lots of ideas for sources in the posts above.

I'm not sure incandescents were actually banned, just made impossible to manufacture and sell in retail stores because they don't meet the new energy efficiency regulations.

Anybody with a stash can sell them privately if they want.

I also still see halogen bulbs around here, which are more efficient and yet kick out tons of heat.

I think if you posted a "wanted: incandescent bulbs" ad on Craigslist you would get as many as you can handle. They're still kicking around in basements and garages everywhere. Tell them you want incandescents to keep your chicken coop warm or your septic system unfrozen or something credible like that.

Not finding the challenge to build a bulb so posting here.  Someone please move to correct location.  Non vacuum pump answer to eliminating oxygen in the

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/w0EsdV5MlZ8

Dr. Alexander Wunsch is a doctor, researcher, and consultant in the fields of light therapy, photobiology, and biophysics. He has posted a lot of fascinating information on light and how it affects the body and much more.
https://vimeopro.com/alexanderwunsch/alexander-wunsch-in-english

While I may not agree that incandescent are inherently better than LEDs, one big positive to incandescents is that no designer ever thought it would be a good idea to have an incandescent filament integrated into a light fixture. LEDs integrated into a light fixture are terrible. Sure, the LEDs in the fixture might supposedly last for 25,000 hours, but the light itself only lasts until the first of about 20 different components fails. One bad capacitor and the whole light needs to be replaced. Of course, if you have multiple of the same integrated LED fixture, the style you bought last year will no longer be available so you'll have one oddball looking light when one of the burns out.

**end rant**

Another interesting short video showing the difference between incandescents, LEDs and CFLs.

https://rumble.com/v64dfg7-are-dangerous-led-light-bulbs-making-you-sick-solution-use-incandescent-lig.html?playlist_id=Y2Ne4PXm4HM

John Wolfram makes an excellent point.  I've been avoiding those kind of lights for precisely that reason. In my house though there's not one incandescent light.  For my work spaces I like a cool or daylight light and that's inefficient to do with incandescent, even with the modern ones with a halogen lamp inside: There used to be special "northlight" bulbs for artists with a blue glass envelope and you needed about twice the power rating to get the same amount of usable light.  

Other lights are a mix of cool or warm, depending on what was to hand and where they are fitted.  My partner prefers the warm one for a bedroom light. In the kitchen I have a 4000K 4ft fluorescent tube replacement which uses less power than the original 4ft tube did to give more light, it doesn't have a starter (it comes with a plug-in "starter replacement" which I guess simply connects the power to it) and has the added advantage of instant full power light just like the other LEDs.

Going back to Paul's original point about altering other, much more power-hungry aspects of your life such as using a washing line or clothes rack vs. using an electric dryer, or washing up by hand in a sink and putting the dishes on a drainer vs. using a dishwasher: I think the point is that swapping out the lights is a low-effort thing that most anyone can do at more or less zero inconvenience.  Making those other changes would have much more effect but many people don't do that because they don't want the extra effort.

There is one aspect of LED lighting where I can see a definitive benefit in electricity cost and that's traffic signals.  Some years back they began converting all the traffic signals in the UK to LED lamp units.  The old signals used a 250W incandescent bulb in each of the 3 lamps (I know because I asked a chap who was changing out a bad bulb once).  Consider a simple 4-way cross road.  In the UK that will have 3 signals facing each direction: one either side of the road at the stop line, and one on the opposite side of the road so you can see it when parked at the line.  That's a total of 12 signals on that one junction, and all of them have 1 light illuminated 24/7* for an ongoing consumption of 72KWh per day, or 26,280KWh per year for just ONE road junction. 26MWh of energy for ONE road junction!

Now consider the same junction with LEDs. Even if the LED lamps are 25W which I doubt, that would still cut the power consumption by 90%.

It's not the same everywhere as the lights differ: for example, I believe US rail signals use a mere 35CP bulb due to clever design of the lamp.

However I found this webpage about traffic signals in the city of Yakima.  They had 100W bulbs in their signals and their LED replacements are 15W, and the bottom line is that they cut the energy use per 100 intersections by about 80%.

* OK in the UK they have a red+yellow phase, but that just makes the consumption higher.  Other places only have 1 lamp lit at a time

I think, for me, this was a key quote in the  original post:

"Next:  

if you are trying to save energy, and you are still using a clothes dryer, then you really should not be exploring "which light bulb saves the most energy"

Heating and cooling use more energy - so those should also be explored first.?"

Austen Shackles wrote:

That's a total of 12 signals on that one junction, and all of them have 1 light illuminated 24/7* for an ongoing consumption of 72KWh per day, or 26,280KWh per year for just ONE road junction.

The technology already exists for vehicle activated lights. I wonder if that technology used to only light up the signal light when there are cars approaching from that direction, would use more or less power?

Maybe not in big cities with traffic round the clock, but in many smaller communities or housing development areas, I suspect you could manage a net gain. We appear to have already done that with some of our people lighting for paths in my area. The people paths are also making more of an effort to keep the light pointed downward to minimize light pollution.

I truly wish we would do more publicity about the damage of light pollution to all living creatures, including humans, and work on reducing it. One downside I have observed about the supposedly 'cheap' LED's is the proliferation of outdoor lighting when none is really required.

I remembered this thread, and while I was on another forum they mentioned a location to get incondesant  light bulbs..

https://www.1000bulbs.com/category/incandescent-light-bulbs

For those who want to still buy them here is a source.    FYI

The Rumble video gives true facts about device wavelengths, but errs in saying the incandescent spectrum matches the sun's. The solar spectrum at sea level is relatively evenly highest across the visible range (that's why our visible sensitivity is what it is), and falls off at infrared wavelengths, not rising steadily into the infrared like an incandescent bulb. The LED spectrum shown there, while jagged, matches the solar spectrum more than the other devices.
Graph from Science Direct.

Jay Angler wrote:Austen Shackles wrote:

That's a total of 12 signals on that one junction, and all of them have 1 light illuminated 24/7* for an ongoing consumption of 72KWh per day, or 26,280KWh per year for just ONE road junction.

The technology already exists for vehicle activated lights. I wonder if that technology used to only light up the signal light when there are cars approaching from that direction, would use more or less power?

Maybe not in big cities with traffic round the clock, but in many smaller communities or housing development areas, I suspect you could manage a net gain. We appear to have already done that with some of our people lighting for paths in my area. The people paths are also making more of an effort to keep the light pointed downward to minimize light pollution.

I truly wish we would do more publicity about the damage of light pollution to all living creatures, including humans, and work on reducing it. One downside I have observed about the supposedly 'cheap' LED's is the proliferation of outdoor lighting when none is really required.

A signal activated by an approaching car might be hard to make work reliably at a long enough distance.  Signals which change when a car approaches have been around for years - but if we're talking about a stop light, it needs to be on when the vehicle is far enough away to see it and stop safely.  I daresay that could be made to work.  

As for the street lighting, that reminds me:  When I first moved here about 5 years ago, looking out over the plain from my mountain there were orange sodium street lamps all over the place.  The plain has lots of little villages dotted all over it.  Fast forward 5 years and many of them including the one near our house which I'm not 100% convinced we need have been swapped to LED.  From where we are we're looking down on the plain from a few hundred feet up and there's way less light shining upwards than there used to be.  The remaining clumps of sodium lamps stand out from the rest.

and the conversation continues;  
"Was the global ban on incandescent light bulbs really a climate breakthrough — or did we rush into a lighting revolution without fully understanding the biological and environmental consequences?

In this episode, Dave speaks with journalist and author Anna about her book Incandescent and her unexpected journey into the politics and science of modern lighting. What began as a personal health reaction to new “energy-efficient” bulbs became a much deeper investigation into how we regulate light, how we measure it, and how profoundly it shapes human life.
"

Today I stumbled upon a recent study that showed that exposure to red LED lights for 15 minutes reduced blood sugar levels in study participants by 27.7% (see summary of the here at the University of London's website).

I went and tried to find the wave length distribution of white LEDs vs incandescent, and this is what I found (in a study on the "impact of exposure to light emitting diode (LED) domestic lighting"):

Emission spectra of different light sources: (a) incandescent tungsten light bulb; (b) fluorescent white light bulb; (c) energy efficient light bulb; (d) white LED light bulb; (e) blue LED light bulb; (f) black LED light bulb; (g) morning sunlight; (h) midday sunlight; (i) sunlight at sunset; and (j) comparison of sunlight at midday (red), morning (yellow) and at sunset (green).

Normal white LED light has a lot less red light than incandescent bulb (as well as candlelight as seen here).

The first study tested the affects of red light before eating. It kind of makes the idea of candle-lit (or at least incandescent-lit) dinners and other meals being a rather good idea.

Well, this is fascinating. Apparently red light has also been shown to ("Red light therapy: What the science says" from Stanford Medicine)

The word for it might be new, Rahman said, but the studies that evaluated the effects of red light on biology date back to the 1960s, when a Hungarian scientist was investigating whether exposure to low levels would cause mice to develop skin cancer. Instead, they found that those receiving red light treatment sprouted more hair. Additional studies — in mice and in humans — bolstered evidence of red light's ability to generate hair growth.

Hair growth and skin care: Studies have shown that red light penetrates the skin at shallow depths and stimulates follicle growth. There's evidence that the light causes vasodilation, a widening of blood vessels. "We know some hair products, such as topical minoxidil, harness that to stimulate hair growth," Rahman said. "The dilation of blood vessels enables more blood and nutrients to reach the hair follicles. Used over multiple months consistently, red light has been shown to regrow thinning hair. But it should also be noted, when the person stops applying red light, the effects stop."

I honestly wonder if this has been part of what's contributing to my thinning hair. I spent the last year stressed and largely inside in LED-lit rooms lesson planning, caring for my sick husband, and teaching. And, when I go outside, I wear a hat to prevent sun damage on my face (my family is prone to skin cancer). I take vitamin D daily, but never knew lack of red light could have these effects on my health.

From another website ("Why LED Light is Becoming Increasingly Bad for Your Health" by the Light Doctor), here's a list of different things the various spectrums of light can cause:



I've always noticed that I can see better in the dark if it's by candle light than with LED flashlights. I recently changed my night bathroom lighting from an warm-white LED lantern, to a Himalayan salt lamp I was given. I can see so much better, even though it's markedly less bright.

The Centennial Light is an incandescent light bulb recognized as the oldest known operating light bulb. It was first illuminated in 1901, and has only been turned off a few brief times since. It is located at 4550 East Avenue, Livermore, California, and is open to public viewing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centennial_Light