

Let the hoarding of 60-watt and 40-watt bulbs begin - hornokplease
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/12/18/incandescent-phaseout-leds/3828627/

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goombastic
Not sure if the issue is related to bulb quality but I don't like the
temperature/color of most LED lighting I see here in India and somehow it
feels a little feeble like tubelights do sometimes.

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transfire
Don't bother. I have bought more than a few LED bulbs now and they absolutely
rock. On the other hand, I don't think incandescents should be illegal. How am
I going to heat my chicken coup? ;-)

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jgeorge
All of my home lighting is LED or CFL except for one specific use case - a
collection of vintage Lava Lamps (don't judge me.) These need incandescent
bulbs not for light but for a specific heat output to melt the wax.

Now I'm going to have to design some kind of replacement that's LED lighting
and some kind of heating coil. :/

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retrogradeorbit
The Lightbulb Conspiracy (2010)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfzQzGNYaiU](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfzQzGNYaiU)

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rbanffy
How much energy will that transition save? How much of the total energy
footprint is used in lighting?

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toomuchtodo
Let's be conservative, and instead of assuming 75-90% efficiency gains, we
round down to 50% savings based on a majority of lighting moving to LED.
That's a savings of almost 215-230 _billion_ kWh of electricity a year.

EIA US Data:

[http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=99&t=3](http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=99&t=3)

"EIA estimates that in 2011, about 461 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of
electricity were used for lighting by the residential and commercial sectors.
This was equal to about 17% of the total electricity consumed by both of these
sectors and about 12% of total U.S. electricity consumption.

Residential lighting consumption was about 186 billion kWh or 13% of all
residential electricity consumption.

The commercial sector, which includes commercial and institutional buildings
and public street and highway lighting, consumed about 275 billion kWh for
lighting or 21% of commercial sector electricity consumption in 2011.

EIA does not have an estimate for only public street and highway lighting.

Our most recent data available indicates that in 2006, 63 billion kWh were
consumed for lighting in manufacturing facilities, which was equal to about 2%
of total U.S. electricity consumption in 2006."

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upofadown
There is almost no use of incandescent lighting in commercial applications
these days so I think your estimate might be on the high side.

From your numbers I get that 4.4% of US electrical consumption is residential
lighting. So switching out all the existing residential incandescent lighting
would be useful, but not all that significant when looking at the bigger
picture. If compared against energy consumption in general, residential
lighting pretty much disappears.

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koberstein
60-watt lightbulbs to the moon!

