See F L: Stripping the Light Fantastic, part 2

 
Having looked inside a LED bulb,
there are naturally enough a lot more examples of CFL dissections out there,
having been around longer as replacements for regular incandescent bulbs...



From the EE Times article
"How compact fluorescent lamps work--and how to dim them"
A good, very technical description of CFL function.

From Australian engineer Rod Elliott's article
"Should There be a Ban on Incandescent Lamps?"
A good lengthy account also for the layman, which despite the title actually mainly deals with CFL issues in all aspects, in usage, safety issues and more.

From Save the Bulb "CFL Autopsy" article

This is an Osram CFL from a few years ago that has stopped working. I cut the base in half with an angle grinder as a hacksaw would not cut the black insulating material in the bayonet connector. This rather brutal approach destroyed quite a few components on the board. This is basically a pretty crude electronic fluorescent gear that is not nearly as efficient as it could be as evidenced by the rather large choke, the thing that looks like a transformer with an iron core and copper windings at the back. This lamp (when it was working!) started with a brief flicker. One of the broken bits was a neon lamp as are found in old fashioned starters so I suspect this was part of a crude and inefficient capacitor start, these are also likely to fail before other parts of the lamp.

The weight of this lamp was 82 grammes, 20 grammes was the circuit board that may well have been working and certainly is in many lamps that are thrown away. The glass tube is 40 grammes, the metal lamp cap 6 grammes therefore 16 grammes of plastics derived from fossil fuels makes the remainder. The mercury content will be anything between 2mg and 5mg depending on the age and manufacturer of the lamp.

The construction of this lamp allows the electronics module to be easily separated from the tube however the plastic base is fixed to the tube with expanded foam so it would be difficult to separate the plastic and glass for recycling.

A typical equivalent Incandescent lamp weighs 34 grammes approximately 27 grammes of this being the glass envelope, cap approximately 6 grammes and approximately 1 gramme of metals including the filament.

Since writing this page some further information has come to my attention. As part of the EuP work done by VITO, spreadsheets were used to analyse the environmental impact of different lamp types. The spreadsheets were originally written for the assessment of the impact of general domestic electrical equipment so there may be errors due to the relative size of lamps. The outputs of the spreadsheet included the following numbers:

• Energy used in manufacture:
GLS 1 MJ = 0.28KwH
CFLi 12MJ = 3.33 KwH
[ed- as from similar Osram and Philips CFL manufacture data, such energy usage quoted is from the assembly of already made components. Including the energy needed to make the components themselves, raises CFL energy use to 40 times or more that of incandescents, as from Dr Stanjek's study (commissioned by Greenpeace, so hardly research biased): Referenced, with more on the issue: ceolas.net/#li16x]

• Pollutants created in manufacture and winning the materials required:
GLS 5 grammes, non hazardous
CFLi 128 grammes, 78 grammes being hazardous waste

So basically each CFLi manufactured causes one and a half times its weight in waste and a weight equal to itself in hazardous waste. As I said above these figures are subject to question but are alarming as they stand.

On a lighter, nay, dimmer note...
a reminder from a previous post






Imagine calling a fluorescent bulb Tru Dim ;-)
(it's dimmable, apparently, and full of fun components)

 

(S)tripping the Light Fantastic

 
What? Candles or simple regular bulbs?
Simplicity is sooo old-fashioned, don't you know!
Put a plug to this lot, and light up the future!

In past weeks here, an extensive coverage of the political, technical, and other issues around the new Philips bulb that was launched in the USA on "Earth Day", (yes, maybe all those components need good "earthing", for safety... LEDs - like CFLs - have component and environmental concerns, as covered on ceolas.net/#li20ledax).

So, what about a look inside?

The following is from the Earth Led Store, Golden, Colorado USA, who - as a counterbalance to previous critical article references posted here - enthusiastically support the bulb
(as it happens, "original price: $ 59.99, offer $ 49.94, and Philips is offering a $10 rebate when you purchase $30 worth of Philips LED products", so perhaps the sale enthusiasm has some financial justification too, given such taxpayer funded rebate programs ;-) )


They do go on to an interesting dissection of the bulb,
on this web page (there are more images on it).

This is the final production version of the EnduraLED A19 L-Prize off, as you can see it is a streamlined three light chamber design compared to the original L-Prize submission which used four chambers. You will also notice that the remote phosphor caps are much more yellowish when compared to the AmbientLED 12.5 Watt which is shown below for comparison.

So why the shift in color of the phosphor from an orange color to a yellowish tint? Lets open the bulb up to find out:

Removing the phosphor caps reveals the L-Prize bulb actually contains two different looking LEDs. Since the old AmbientLED used royal blue LEDs, could this bulb be mixing colors (Red + Blue LEDs) to achieve its high 92 CRI?

Indeed it does and this also explains the shift in the color of the outside phosphor caps as well.

Digging in deeper, we removed the LED circuit boards and found them to be extremely well built with individual ribbon connectors.
The LED circuit boards are secured to the heatsink with a face plate that ensures a tight bonding to the adhesive thermal interface material.

The heatsink itself is quite high quality and as mentioned before has 3 cavities or chambers where the above LED module assemblies reside.

Deep inside the heatsink resides the main driver board. It is covered in rubber to prevent humming and is very difficult to remove in one piece. We tried unsuccessfully to do so but were still able to remove it fairly intact. Its one of the most elegant drivers we've seen thus far and is primarily built around Cypress Semiconductors CY8CLEDAC03L microcontroller.
The CY8CLED is quite powerful and you can read more about it here at Cypress Semi's Site: http://www.cypress.com/?rID=38553

Other components of note are a main distribution board that exists at the top of the bulb to direct power to each of the main led modules.


Here is pretty much everything spread out on an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper:

The top right shows some of the capacitors contained inside. All are high quality japanese made rubycon capacitors. Overall, quite an amazing product both inside and out. Easily the best built LED we have seen so far.


If you would like to see a video of the L-Prize in action, check it out below. We hope you enjoyed our first "On The Inside" feature. Stay tuned for our next in the near future.

Comment

Certainly, as mentioned before, the bulb has some attractive qualities,
whatever about the price, specification and prize issues covered before.

But again, as also covered, the point is not that LEDs don't have their advantages, rather that all bulbs, including incandescents do:
There is a massive focus - particularly in the USA - on energy and money saving that may or may not arise from using different bulbs.
Ironically the energy and money saving aspects hardly hold overall, as covered on the "Deception behind Banning Bulbs" rundown.

But even if supposed savings arise, that is of course only part of the issue - arguably, light quality and other usage issues are the main reason for using any light bulb, and houses or apartments have many different conditions calling for different types of lighting.

The above article mentions how the blue and red LED mix allows for a higher CRI (color rendering index) rating of 92.
Incandescents are 100, an optimal rating, but more importantly such engineered improved CRI ratings for LEDs ignores that pure color sources are mixed, so that a true broad light spectrum is not obtained - just a spiky spectrum light output, whether as part of Red-Green-Blue LEDs or, as here, white LEDs, that use phosphorescent coating - which is why photographers and filmakers and indeed those who are sensitive to their light surroundings are unhappy with the supposed CRI ratings.

LEDs have their own spotlight and other advantages.
It is therefore ironic that, like here, "warm incandescent" light quality is chased, rather than own innate LED flexibly altered pure color light output advantages (colors alterable just like RGB red-green-blue light points on TV screens, which of course is indeed often nowadays similar Light-Emitting-Diode technology, and is what OLED type sheet lighting is about).

To (badly) copy incandescent light quality - like with the Philips bulb here, which has a fixed color temperature of 2700, just like an incandescent - is just another part of the irony of banning light sources optimal for such usage requirements.
The above bulb would be better served either by a white daylight balance, at least as an option, or by adding green leds to have the advantage that some LED bulbs have of a modifiable light color output (as color temperature), particularly for the price asked, subsidised or not.
 

Philips LED Bulb Prize Technical Review Document Copy

 
Post updated April 28

Regarding last post on the Philips prize committee technical review (the right side comments),
a copy of the document below.
As said earlier, it was obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

 


 
See the original post about the L-Prize for a full rundown of the issues, including more about the testing procedure, the results, and the review comments as in the document copied above:
That post is also kept updated, for overview clarity, with the information here.


Some recent relevant comments on different posts relating to the testing, extra highlighting (capital letters in original) and direct linking added:

To address the points above as to whether the contest was rigged. If the L-Prize bulb clearly FAILED a technical test where there is a clear cut pass or fail outcome that any freshman engineering student can judge, but the technical review committee writes in PASS and explains, in SECRET, without publishing a rules update, that they are lowering the standard so that they can write in PASS, this is clear cut CORRUPTION.

The technical review committee sought to justify secretly altering the uniformity standard stating
“..however, independent data verifies that this distribution is actually much more uniform than a standard incandescent lamp …“

While there can be no justification for secretly lowering the standard to rigg the contest, astoundingly (or not) this statement is false.
Calculating the standard deviation for the L-Prize bulb tested by the DoE and a standard incandescent lamp, using data provided by the Department of Energy shows that L-Prize lamp tested by the DoE was actually less uniform.
See Light Distribution Analysis (alt link)

The production version of the L-Prize (which by the way appears to be a Chinese product) also does not meet the published L-Prize uniformity criteria of +/-10% of average in the zone 0 to 150 degrees.
See data on page 41 of usa.lighting.philips.com document
Also see: Lab plots of light distribution of Philips bulb (alt link)

The stated procedure for the contest was that if the entry failed a required test the entry would fail.
See flowchart on page 15 of L-Prize competition rules.

Southern California Edison (SCE) which was involved in field testing Philips L-Prize entry, decided to lab test 16 of the bulbs.

It turns out 1 of the 16 exhibited a failure mode in which the light turned red by the time it had 1502 hours of run time. This early failure casts doubt on the 20,000 hour (with 95% confidence) lifetime touted by the Department of Energy.
See link on (Emerging Technologies Coordinating Council) web page http://www.etcc-ca.com/component/content/article/48-Commercial/3044-l-prize-lab-evaluation which has link to report

Quoting from the mentioned Emerging Technologies Coordinating Council (ETCC) webpage

This independent lab assessment was initiated in support of both SCE’s L Prize field testing efforts, as well as its energy efficiency incentive/rebate programs.

SCE’s lab testing capabilities present an enormous resource in understanding and developing confidence in the performance of these units. A winning product stands to undergo considerable mileage in terms of usage/acceptance across the United States. As leaders in energy efficiency, it is important that California utilities stay active in monitoring/assessing such technologies.

Regarding the SCE report about the bulb (long pdf document), from the summary:

The technology shows promise in terms of meeting the efficiency and performance criteria set forth in the L Prize.
However, to better assess feasible implementation into incentive
programs, more investigation is recommended in three key areas:

- Lifetime Testing
o The variation of savings realized with these products throughout their lifetime is not well understood at this point.
Long lifetimes are one of the significant advantages of SSL technology, and should be better understood with this product application.

- Dimming capabilities/issues
o It is not currently known how these products perform when used with other dimmers.
o Their observed inability to toggle off with the selected ELV dimmer presents a large barrier, which needs to be overcome for successful implementation.
(When the ON/OFF function was toggled on the dimmer paired with this product, the product was not able to shut off. It encountered visible flickering at a dimly lit state in the OFF position.)
o The issue of green color shift at low dimming is a barrier to investigate/address for successful implementation

- Thermal effects on product performance
o These lamps are specified to use in dry locations, and not within totally enclosed fixtures. The effects of ambient temperatures/humidities on this technology’s performance and lifetime are not well understood at this point.

The conditions these lamps were subjected to in this lab assessment are within a narrow range, when taking into consideration the various climate zones/applications these general-purpose devices may see.


These key areas represent significant barriers,
to acceptance of this technology when compared with baseline CFLs and incandescents.
Further efforts are recommended to fully understand the benefits of SSL technology in this application, and ensure that product utility is not significantly impacted when encouraging customers to purchase products that are more efficient.
It is recommended that the results of the DOE’s evaluation of the first entry to the “60 Watt incandescent” category be closely monitored;
further understanding of this technology may be achieved through more collaboration with DOE testing, as DOE efforts are initiated/completed.

Comment

Regarding this bulb,
dimming is also criticized along with other issues in the committee technical review, above.

Regarding LED technology in general,
as this report also takes up, there are indeed several questionable issues relating to lifespan, enduring brightness, ambient temperature effects etc - apart from the light quality itself:
See the Ceolas website referenced rundown.

The "save energy/money in usage" push should not ignore such factors,
or for that matter the life cycle environmental impact, in terms of components in manufacture (more), energy/emissions in production and (overseas) transport, and environmental dumping when not recycled.
 

Update: More Questions about the Quality of the Philips LED bulb, and its Prize Award

 

Issues over the Philips LED Prize bulb was originally extensively covered in a March post, that has been comprehensively updated in the last couple of days.

A further post about Philips lobbying finance activities in the USA,
as per Senate and other records, also in relation to the LED bulb, was covered in the last post here.


But there is more...

As seen in the comments to the original post about it March post, the understandable point was raised that the prize testing committee had passed the bulb in all respects, so how could the
criticism be relevant.

All the referenced criticism relating to the bulb quality (and other issues about the bulb and the award) will not be repeated here - see previous posts.

But with respect to the lab testing,
in looking at the Test Review Comments themselves on the right hand side of their own document (click on it to enlarge), more discrepancies start to show up.
[ed- a copy of the document also in the post following this one]

While the bulb obviously passes the tests (or of course the prize could not be awarded!), it therefore does so with a lot of provisos, such that Philips own prototype testing are accepted when prize testing lab results show otherwise, and Philips promises about "criterions will be met in production lamp" are also accepted.

Moreover, prize testing lab names whose results conflict are rubbed out (at least 2 labs involved, possibly run by the DOE, judging by the article below).
Why not test results of publicly named labs, in a publicly awarded prize with public money?
As seen in other parts of the assessment the testing by a certain PNNL is not rubbed out. (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) is one of the United States Department of Energy National Laboratories).
In one part, additional to the other criticism mentioned: "Testing conducted by PNNL with a wide variety of dimmers showed several issues with the submitted lamps".


The Washington Beacon (see previous posts) in a further article in April by Bill McMorris, has more on this and other previously mentioned issues. Notice that they also point out how the prize testing lab names were rubbed out. My highlighting again:

The Department of Energy awarded lighting giant Philips the $10 million L Prize despite the fact that the winning energy-efficient bulb failed to meet several contest criteria requirements, according to documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

Philips raised eyebrows when it debuted the winning bulb with a $50 price tag. That is far beyond the $22 cost recommended by the department, which is now working with utility companies to cut back on the upfront cost through rebates.

Department documents, however, cast doubt on whether the expensive LED bulb was even worthy of the prize.

Contest rules outlined by the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act required the winning L Prize bulb to shine at 900 lumens. A department report on 200 bulbs tested at two different facilities showed that nearly 70 bulbs failed to meet that standard, including more than 60 percent of the bulbs tested at one of the labs.

“The integrating sphere test from the [lab name redacted] shows that only 5 of 100 samples tested were below 900 lumens, but the [lab name redacted] integrating sphere testing shows 38 samples that were over 900lm and 62 were under,” the report reads.

Despite Philips’ poor showing at the DOE lab tests, the department passed the bulb after receiving reassurance from the Dutch company.

“Philips data shows all tested lamps (2000) were above 900 lumens. Philips test and modeling data indicate…this criterion will be met in the production lamp,” the report continued.

[More such acceptances of Philips own lab results and promise for production lamp compliance can as said be seen directly on the Test Committee Review comments on the right side of their document report (click on it to enlarge)]

A department spokeswoman insisted that the bulbs met the requirements.

“The minimum output measured in this sample of 200 lamps was 873 lumens and the maximum was 967 lumens, a range consistent with normal manufacturing tolerances,” the spokeswoman said. “The average light output of the 200 samples tested was 910 lumens.”

One lighting expert, however, said the average is not a good indicator of LED performance.

“You have to be very careful in choosing LEDs because there is difficulty in uniformity,” the expert said. “Having that many bulbs fail is suspect, especially if you plan on taking these bulbs to the market.”

Philips spokeswoman Silvie Casanova said the L Prize bulb that will hit store shelves later this spring fulfills every L Prize requirement.

“I’m sure that in the test run, there might have been some that had some performance issues, but I’m sure the department is looking at a baseline of the bulbs overall performance,” she said. “It does meet the requirements; we’re going through Energy Star testing right now” that will verify the company data.

Contest rules mandated that an entrant that failed to meet basic standards would be “terminated” and forced to return to square one of the competition.

There is no indication that Philips’ entry was disqualified, however.

Scientists who developed rival bulbs were outraged when they heard that the department allowed Philips to move forward.

“We treated the standards as Gospel: you had to have 900 lumens, you had to have the right color, the right temperature, the right (light distribution),” said one engineer who worked on the Lighting Sciences Group’s L Prize design.

“We went through revision after revision because if you change the (brightness), the color could be wrong and we’d start over. If we had known we could have fudged the (brightness) then everything else becomes easy,” the engineer said.

In 2009, when other lighting companies were still at the design phase of the process, Philips submitted a 2,000-bulb sample to the department. The quick submission intimidated many others vying for the L Prize, according to multiple industry insiders.

“Not once did the DOE ever let anyone know about the testing results; there was no transparency,” another lighting expert said. “If they had made it known in 2010 that Philips didn’t pass the test, then other competitors would have proceeded forward. The inference was that they passed.”

The department closed the competition and awarded Philips the $10 million prize in August 2011.

The brightness test was not the only requirement that Philips may not have reached. Department notes also indicate that reviewers changed the light distribution criteria to Philips’ favor.

“Testing and modeling of prototype production lamps show the luminous intensity distribution falling below 10 percent from the mean near 150 degrees,” the report said. “However, the TSC finds the use of the 0-135 degree zone acceptable … this is different than the 0-150 zone specified.”

“The department cannot just change the rules on how they are going to test, especially if they don’t tell other competitors about the rule change,” said a second lighting insider. “Only Philips benefited from the criteria change.”


The contest has been marred by several controversies since it opened in 2008.

A House Appropriations Committee report issued in June slammed the department for announcing the $10 million prize without prior approval from Congress.

“The Committee strongly opposes the Department announcing funding opportunities when those funds have not yet been made available by Congress,” the report said. “In the case of the L Prize, the Department risks damaging its credibility.”

The warning was enough to worry higher-ups at Philips, which spent nearly $1.8 million lobbying Congress to fund the program.

The bulb’s $50 price tag also produced sticker shock among industry insiders. It is about double the cost of existing LED bulbs and about fifty times higher than the 60-watt incandescent bulb it was designed to replace.

“I’m impressed with the technology, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who’s not,” the former LSG engineer said. “But we were going for a $22 bulb, forget rebates, and Philips missed it by a mile.”

The L Prize winner is expected to last 25,000 hours and save consumers $160 over the lifetime of the bulb compared to 60-watt incandescent bulbs, which were outlawed by the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA).

Secretary of Energy Steven Chu said the competition helped move LED technology forward by providing companies with incentives to make energy efficient bulbs.

“The idea of that light bulb contest was to provide for a goal going further down to get a light bulb that eventually, Americans can afford,” he told Congress in March.

The former LSG executive is not convinced.

“Letting (the bulb) come out that expensive, I think it set the market back … people are looking for a return on investment and this just tells them they can’t afford any LED bulbs,” he said. “I can’t blame the U.S. citizens for saying, ‘my God, the government is wasting our money.’”

In March, DOE opened the second round of the L Prize competition, which will aim to replace the existing halogen floodlight.

 

More on Philips lobbying:for Ban (incandescent) and for Prize (LED)!

 




"Sense and Simplicity" as it says in the image!
They must be talking about simple sensible safe and easily made incandescents?

The above image is from the Foundry, at Heritage.org, thanks...
I told them about my post on Philips, Osram and the UN en.lighten program,
and I now see they happened to have an article on the same topic the day after without any reply or credit (and it was not a topical news item, covered by anyone else at the time) - though in fairness it's a well laid out summary of the issues.


Given the number of recent posts about Philips on this blog,
it might seem that I have something against them.

Actually it's rather the news, reports and research that keep coming up about Philips.

Regarding the LED prize 50 dollar bulb,
covered in this earlier post, the reported comment by a Philip Premysler (Philip's take on Philips!) was particularly interesting in its thoroughness.


He has since updated this with some more information,
íncluding a reference list with further links regarding Philips lobbying, not just for the LED prize, but also with respect to Philips supporting the ban on unprofitable simple incandescents

• In 2007, Phillips Holding USA Inc. Spent At Least $418,446 Lobbying The Department Of Energy On H.R. 6.
(Senate Office Of Public Records, Lobbying Disclosure Form, 8/01/07; Senate Office Of Public Records, Lobbying Disclosure Form, 2/14/08)
• Philips Spent An Additional $160,000 Lobbying Congress On H.R. 6 Through Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker LLP.
(Senate Office Of Public Records, Lobbying Disclosure Form, 8/8/07)

also, from the quoted article by Bill Mc Morris...

Philips received about $5.6 million from the federal stimulus to advance its LED lighting technology.
It spent nearly as much—$4.5 million since 2008—lobbying Congress and the Obama administration for bills friendly to lighting appropriations.

For completeteness,
the whole updated statement by Philip Premysler, relating to the LED prize
(author's emphasis in capital letters, my highlights in bold style):

There are greater troubling issues beyond the price.

The problem is that the L-Prize contest which was supposed to foster U.S. green technology competitiveness was RIGGED.

As a foreign based (headquartered) corporation Philips was excluded from eligibility according to the law that established the L-Prize, in particular public law 110-140 section 655(f)(1).
Under U.S. federal law the term “a primary place of business” used in the statute refers to the single headquarters location, which in the case of Philips is Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Philips, of course, would have known that they were ineligible, so they put out PR flak alleging that the bulb was the result of a global effort. The truth, as evidenced in Philips patent on the bulb, is otherwise.
See Philips L-Bulb Patent.
The bulb was developed in the Netherlands: The patent application which was, originally filed in Europe in 2008, but published in the U.S. two months after the Philips executive made his misrepresentations, lists only Dutch inventors, no U.S. inventors and assignes the patent to the Dutch Philips entity, not to a U.S. entity.

When this issue arose after the announcement of Philips as the L-Prize "winner",
the CEO of Philips Lighting North America Zia Eftekhar went on record falsely stating that the L-Prize bulb was "conceived" and had its "origins" in the U.S.
See EE Times article

[Quoting the article:
"But what about the development of the bulb, and where will it be manufactured?
Zia Eftekhar, CEO of Philips Lighting North America, wanted to set the record straight:
He told me the L Prize bulb “..was conceived, designed, and will be manufactured in the United States.... He repeated this for emphasis: “The origins and development of this product, as well as its future manufacturing are all in the United States."]

These were falsehoods.
In fact Philips' L-Prize entry was invented by three dutch inventors and assigned to Philips of the Netherlands. [As from patent document previously mentioned]


Philips also spent $1.79 Million lobbying for appropriation for the L-PRIZE,
(as referenced, including from Senate Office Of Public Records, Lobbying Disclosure Forms).

Moreover, "A House Appropriations Committee report issued in June slammed the department for announcing the $10 million prize without prior approval from Congress." (Washington Beacon article by Bill McMorris)


The L-Prize entry also failed to meet key technical requirements of the contest. The Philips entry does not meet the stated uniformity requirement of the contest. This is admitted in a document [in its review comments] obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, see http://tinyurl.com/43ECMQM
[alt link to the document source here, easier magnifiable document copy here (click on it to enlarge)].
The curt justification asserted in that document based on comparing uniformity to a standard incandescent lamp is factually (quantifiably) false. The putative L-Prize winner is actually less uniform.

The Philips entry also failed to produce the required amount of light.
In one test 62 out of 100 bulbs failed (see the above linked document).
Whether the commercialized version will consistently produce the required amount of light is an open question [ed- unlikely given that the commercial version is not as good see above]. HOWEVER the stated procedure for the contest was that if the entry failed a required test, the entry would fail.

What happened is that Philips wanted prematurely to claim the prize
(as in Reason.com article) and the Department of Energy did not want to follow the rules and fail them, rather they embarked on RIGGING the contest. They kept the failure secret and proceeded with other tests.

[ed- more on the testing debacle below, also see the comments below to this post]


The result is that a bulb developed by Dutch inventors, built with some (possibly most) of its parts made in Shenzhen China (see http://www.dailytech.com/Philips...) has been given a great initial advantage which may allow it to dominate U.S. competitors, even though the contest is RIGGED.

We may wind up with Dutch citizens enjoying social welfare benefits such as vacations for the unemployed, supported by Chinese workers working 12 hours a day and American consumers squeezed by $50 light bulb prices whether they pay that amount at the check out counter or indirectly pay for subsidies through their electric bill [ed- including the currently planned taxpayer subsidies passed on to stores for price reductions at point of sale].

 

Ausgebrannt - Vom Ende der Glühbirne Burned Out - The End of the Incandescent

 
German critical TV documentary about the light bulb ban
45 minutes to be broadcast on Thursday 19 April
(in German - but the visuals make much of the criticism of the ban clear enough, including of the replacement lighting like the main ones offered and pushed, the fluorescent bulbs or CFLs)

Link to video here
or click on image





German and Austrian criticism has been dominant in the otherwise acquiescent European Union,
as also covered in
The Politics behind Banning Light Bulbs and the EU Light Bulb Ban Story on the Ceolas.net site.


Thank you to Rudolf Hannot and Siegfried Rotthäuser of Heatball (heatball.de) for the information:
The Heatball concept has been covered several times on this blog, the last and most comprehensive post at time of writing being here.
 

Missouri Freedom Bill passes in Committee

 

The Missouri light bulb bill was favorably passed in the House Small Business Committee on April 4th.
It now moves on to the Joint House and Senate Rules Committee, then hopefully to the House floor.
Many thanks to Committee Vice Chairman Noel Torpey for this information.

Small Business Committee reports can be seen here

HB 1146 (LR# 4327L.01I)
Voted Do Pass (H)



>> to Joint Rules Committee
Currently without any assigned bills listed, assuming that page gets updated.

Action:

(f)Review of Bills Reported from Regular or Special Standing Committees

1. Whenever a committee reports a bill with a recommendation that it "Do Pass" or "Without Recommendation" , the bill shall stand automatically referred to the Committee on Rules. The Committee on Rules is hereby authorized to:
a. Report the bill "Do Pass" to the House without a limitation on time of debate on the bill or amendments.
b. Report the bill "Do Pass" to the House with a limitation on the time of debate.
c. Send the bill back to the originating committee.
When the Committee on Rules sends the bill back to the originating committee, that committee may amend the bill and report the bill again without the need to reconsider the initial vote by which the committee voted the bill "Do Pass".

Also, there is a big 2 to 1 Republican majority from the last 2010 elections (as it now stands, with 106 Republicans, 56 Democrats, 1 Independent). Next elections for all seats November 2012.
So presumably any House vote would be favourable to the bill, also given the proximity of elections, which might sharpen attitudes.

[As an aside curiosa, according to Wikipedia,
"Missouri's house (with 163 members), is the fourth largest in the United States although the state ranks 18th in population. Legislation was introduced in 2011 to cut its size to 103 in 2020. Bigger legislatures in the United States are New Hampshire (400), Pennsylvania (203) and Georgia (180)...
In 1992 Missouri approved a constitutional amendment providing term limits (previously there were no limits). No Representative may serve more than eight years in the House"]


American light bulb freedom bills from 10 states, updates (legislated Texas, June 2011):
http://ceolas.net/#bills



# # # # #

Previous post 13 February 2012 announced the first committee meeting.
The initial post 24 January copied below.

# # # # #

 

Just learned that Missouri local state Rep. Chuck Gatschenberger and Bart Korman have also, January 4, launched a bill 1146, that "Specifies that the intrastate manufacturing of certain incandescent lightbulbs is not subject to federal law or regulation".
The bill has on January 19 been referred to the House Small Business Committee.



Missouri also had an earlier bill (2468) in 2010 with Cynthia Davis as chief sponsor, that stalled.

 

Missouri Bill Committee News Update

 
Another post on this the next day, Wednesday April 11th, with more information.


The Missouri bill was favorably passed out of the House Small Business Committee on April 4th.
It now moves on to House Rules, and then hopefully the House floor.
Many thanks to Committee Vice Chairman Noel Torpey for this information.

Committee reports can be seen here

HB 1146 (LR# 4327L.01I)
Voted Do Pass (H)


10 American local state light bulb freedom bills, updates (legislated Texas, June 2011):
http://ceolas.net/#bills



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Previous post 13 February 2012 announced the first committee meeting.
The initial post 24 January copied below.

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Just learned that Missouri local state Rep. Chuck Gatschenberger and Bart Korman have also, January 4, launched a bill 1146, that "Specifies that the intrastate manufacturing of certain incandescent lightbulbs is not subject to federal law or regulation".
The bill has on January 19 been referred to the House Small Business Committee.



Missouri also had an earlier bill (2468) in 2010 with Cynthia Davis as chief sponsor, that stalled.