N:Vision CFL's

I know you've moved on from X-10 but FWIW, the above bulb restarts itself within seconds of being turned off remotely. Obviously not all the bulbs are the same, internally. It could also be that the floodlight's enclosed design traps heat and the hotter "off" temps somehow trigger the local sense feature of the appliance module. I will try them on a lamp module next to see if it's only appliance modules and the N:Vision floodlight CFL that have this interaction.

Every silver lining has a cloud!

-- Bobby G.

Reply to
Robert Green
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I was, but am not in California. SCE gives them away at events, sometimes tosses in LED nightlights too. Not enough to do a house, but it helps.

Hopefully, I've seen ice storms in your area this late in the year

I have not seen any, and I assume the PAR 30 replacement were designed for base up. Nothing on the packaging says one way or the other.

Dan Wright Starwolf Systems

Reply to
Dan Wright

WRONG. This is factually incorrect. Conventional fluorescents contain _more_ mercury per lumen output than modern CFLs. Had you read the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) reference I provided earlier, you would know this. So "[t]hey were putting ... mercury in the environment before" in the same way, and amenable to the same solutions.

THERE IS NO NEW FLUORESCENT LAMP 'RECYCLING ISSUE' (imho).

Rather, there are modern fluorescents that contain much less mercury than previous generations of fluorescents that _also_ *should* be recycled (along with batteries, thermostats, thermometers, old ammunition, and so on) but even if they aren't do less harm than the mercury in the coal that would otherwise be burnt. And where coal isn't burnt in the immediate vicinity for power generation (eg US Pacific NW) the grid system largely makes that point moot.

And temporal (timing) considerations are but another of the many factors that can be quantitatively estimated with meaningful models.

And where nuclear and hydro- power are the sources of electricity, are you asserting that dams and nukes have no environmental consequences ? (Or just not in the particular, small environmental box you are thinking about now.)

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. In that order.

Yes they can, in a real and meaningful way.

One need look no further down the periodic table from mercury (Hg, Atomic Weight = 80) than lead (Pb, AW = 82) and the great reduction of the proliferation of that comparably toxic metal from dispersed atmospheric (eg car exhaust) and stationary (eg paint) sources.

Bobby: I am entirely convinced that you mean well. But you assert as fact stuff that is flat-out wrong that others have spent life-times actually dealing with. This isn't "helpful" in my opinion.

Had you read and understood my previous post, you would understand that I assert, on the basis of 35 years of experience in hazardous waste hydrology, that a CFL deposited in a landfill is vastly less mobile in the environment (and therefore less harmful) than mercury that is put into the atmosphere by the burning of coal. Think of it as an increase in entropy if you will.

Yes. A typo. Not my last either. (I hope ! ;-)

Environmentally, the watt Dave wastes negates the watt you do save. Not everyone is cool with that. The effort I put into picking up around my house and Boy Scout Plaza is required because of slobs who throw it there. I'm not OK with that.

It does not cost Dave's power utility $0.00006 to provide him the first watt. there is a non-zero y-intercept on the cost-KW curve. IOW, it costs some minimum monthly charge, just like my land-line phone does even if I don't use it. Dave's argument is intellectually, economically, and mathematically bankrupt in my opinion. Posturing without substance.

The current administration would like to kick the can down the road for the sake of war and peace too.

But it is a Good Thing that you cannot legally discharge pollutants to waters of the United States through a pipe without a permit.

And ultimately there will need to be collective limits on the amount of pollutants we discharge to the atmosphere. (Re)Read Garrett Hardin's 1968 article in _Science_ "The Tragedy of the Commons " to refresh your memory why this is so.

So it's not "_their_" mileage that is at stake. If the naysayers were content to do what they wanted in the privacy of their own apartments, and only impact themselves, I would not take issue.

The problem is that they proselytize falsely and thus undo in part the real work that actually has to be done by real people who really want to address and really solve the problem --- not jist satisfy their own curmudgeonly ideas.

Note that I did that already. One very small, but quantitative data set, 'published' in CHA, and subject to corroboration and(or) refutation. Not entirely rigorous, but 'infinitely' better than generalization and conjecture in my opinion.

And actually the memory gods have smiled on me today. The PCMCIA card was in the case where it was supposed to be ...;-)

Is your Luna Pro one of the ones that needs the now-banned mercury batteries ? (Marc asks, running out and ducking to avoid potentially thrown objects ;-)

Take Care -- Thanks for the 'vent'... Marc Marc_F_Hult

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Reply to
Marc_F_Hult

In other words, for the vast majority of the industrialized world, all the mindlessly repeated, misleading statements made by know-nothing, nattering nabobs of negativism about CFLs and mercury are in fact demonstrably false.

And Norway will figger out the solution (if it hasn't already) long before the everybody-but-me bashers in the US get a clue.

Posts like this demonstrate how far the US lags other parts of the world in the three environmental R's : Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

On the Spanish Mediterranean island where I grew up and have a house, the main town has vacuum-operated recycling centers that suck segregated glass, paper, trash etc from separate. mailbox-sized receptacles located in public places in various locations in the town center, and carries the recycled materials and trash underground to the recycling center. This is in Spain!

The US has become the place of Mark Twain's famous quip about Cincinnati. He wanted to be in Cincinnati when the end of the world came because it would take 20 years for the news to get (t)here.

(By way of comment on the quality of "journalism" in CHA, Bobby's lead sentence and subject title in a new post don't agree. Who woulda thunk that a headline about CFLs sold at Home Depot in the US would lead with a 'graph on Norway's energy policies? ;-)

... Marc Marc_F_Hult

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Reply to
Marc_F_Hult

Bobby: Let me repeat the factoid that I previously parroted from Lutron:

" 1.5 dimmers per US household"

Pleaser review your statement above and construct even the simplest conceptual model, and then develop even the simplest mathematical relationship of that model, and then use even flat-out guesses of the constants and variables -- but assuming 1.5 dimmers per US household --- and ask yourself if what you assert here is significant or ...or what?

"to clean it up" ???

Do you had any concept of the many many many (conceptual ) orders of magnitude more difficult it is to 'clean up' the atmospherically transported mercury from coal that causes by far the single biggest reason for fish consumption advisories in inland US water than the mercury neatly contained in a CFL in vastly smaller and less environmentally mobile environment that is a modern landfill?

And when was the last time you heard of a _modern_ landfill being "cleaned up" ?

(The last time a mercury advisory from atmospherically transported mercury was in effect near where you live -- almost regardless of where you live in the US -- is right now , and yesterday, and tomorrow, and next year , and last year, and unfortunately, probably next decade and next ...

Two different meters, with different spectral sensitivities, could produce two very different results. This is part of why you might choose to use a supplemental filter such as a IR/UV cutoff filter from Edmund Scientific with your Luna Pro. The Zone VI modification to the Pentax spotmeter I used partly addresses this because the modification largely consists in additional internal filtration to reduce light energy from components of light not visible to the human eye (using modern panchromatic film as a surrogate and target) and re calibration to account for those filters.

...Marc Marc_F_Hult

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Reply to
Marc_F_Hult

Huh huh. Instead of plagiarizing wikipedia, why not cite it?

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While what you quote without attribution is well and good, as you point out, it is not the physics involved.

Please refer to the spectra for the n:vision CFLs at the url I posted in the part of this post you deleted and ask yourself what the difference is between the spectrometer plot of an N:Vision "Bright White" 3500°K CFL. and an N:Vision "Daylight" 5500°K CFL

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That's where the answer lies and not in your description of the force-fit of fluorescent spectrum to a black-body approximation.

This would be a good question to ask in sci.engr.lighting. The general answer you/we would get would deal with how different actual _lamp_ temperatures (in °C) affect the fluorescence, and what different manufacturers do with voltages and mercury pressures/concentrations and fluorescent compounds to create different spectral mixes.

When all is said and done, IIRC, short wavelength spectra require higher physical temperatures, hence my statement "As the physics would suggest, the

5500K takes longer to warm up" to reach maximum output.

But it's been more than a decade since I actually worked with this in any detail so you might consider doing a google search and(or) quizzing the s.e.l. newsgroup and reporting back.

...Marc Marc_F_Hult

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Reply to
Marc_F_Hult

I *think* that's a typo but just in case it's not, then where not am you? (-:

Those are the sorts of programs I've seen here, and mostly aimed at low income families for porchlites and such.

Hush! In twenty five years, I don't recall them ever extending past March

15th.

The 42W bulb, plugged into an appliance module, just turned itself back on with no apparent input from any controller after an hour of on time and about 20 minutes of off time. Could be as simple as not making complete contact since it's got a whopping huge base that barely fits the socket. Could be as complex as something in the lamp base cooling down enough to trigger the local current sensing circuit of the module.

Update: Left it on for fifteen minutes, turned it off remotely and then, about ten minutes later their was a flash almost like a flashbulb and about a second later it turned itself back on. That means these bulbs need modules with local sensectomies and in that respect, they don't perform as well as the signal sucking GE's which at least don't reignite themselves spontaneously. I'll test the 23W spiral bulb next, although I suspect it, too, will reignite spontaneously since the 23W floodlight does.

The bloom is off the rose.

-- Bobby G.

Reply to
Robert Green

Wikipedia's article on Power Factor Correction gives a pretty good explanation.

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If incandescents are banned, this may become more important. I believe Europe already requires power factor correction for switch mode power supplies although I do not know whether this extends to those used with CFLs. I also do not know whether California (which has effectively banned linear power supplies) requires PFC for switch mode supplies.

I think there were some reports on Don Klipstein's page (or maybe to one linked to his) of CFL PFs as low as .35.

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Reply to
Dave Houston

Really? Please explain your physics.

This whole thing is simply unfair. You need either education or medication.

Reply to
Slammer

Anyone who has participated in CHA for more than a few days would fully expect it to have. :^)

Reply to
Robert L Bass

That may change. If incandescents are banned as some propose, most residential loads will be non-linear.

A capacitor does not solve the problem with switch mode power supplies. See the Wikipedia article I referenced in my reply to Bobby G. Also see...

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which lists areas that have already mandated PFC for SMPS.

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Reply to
Dave Houston

Here's another URL that shows why Power Factor may become more important with increased use of CFLs, whether voluntary or mandated.

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Reply to
Dave Houston

??

Non-linear? NON-LINEAR? You've got to be joking. WTF? Spare me. You can't even argue properly.

Please, don't be silly. Go to school. Take Diff-EQs and get back to me.

Reply to
Slammer

"Hystersis" in the effect? Oh. please. Show me the equations.

"Toroidal chokes the size of doughnuts" in dimmers? You mean rheostats.

Or, do YOU know the difference?

Reply to
Slammer

More like, oh please stop being such an ass.

Reply to
Bill Kearney

PDF? I don't support no stinkin' proprietary document formats when you consider all the effort that's gone into the Web to make it free from such lunacy. (-: But I've read about the problem elsewhere. It threatens to become an issue, as you note, only if there's a large scale conversion to CFLs. Australia's wholesale switchover will probably tell us soon enough if it's a serious issue.

The PF of the N:Vision bulbs doesn't matter much to me because the bulbs are

*not* working out as well as I hoped. There still seems to be no way to turn the porchlight bulb OFF after turning it on when equipped with an N:Vision 14W helicoid. I have 23W helicoid attached to an appliance module and shortly after screwing it in, it began to slowly flash at precisely two beats per second.

This one is probably behaving differently than the floodlight that turns itself back on instantly because it was put into the lamp socket cold. It will be interesting to see if it eventually warms itself up through flashing to trigger the local sense current detector. So far it's been flashing for

20 minutes.

I really had high hopes for these bulbs working in my X-10 setup without bizarre issues like the porchlight that won't turn off remotely and the low-level flashing caused by the local sense circuitry. I *really* hate having to snip the local sense detector diodes because the ability to use local control is a nice feature when using table and floor lamps. )-:

The quest for the Holy Grail of low cost, high efficacy/efficiency light bulbs that actually *work* with my setup as fluidly as incandescents continues . . .

-- Bobby G.

Reply to
Robert Green

For commercial users, PDF makes sense because they are not as easily tampered with as other formats. OpenOffice makes creating them easy (and free) while Adobe supplies a free reader.

Here's the pertinent paragraph...

"... a standard 115VAC wall socket should be able to deliver the nominal 15A to a common load. In similar conditions, a "non-corrected power factor" SMPS (typical value of

0.6) drops the available current from 15A to only 9A. For example, from one wall socket, four 280W computers each equipped with P.F.C. can be supplied instead of two with no P.F.C."

It will be a bigger problem for Australia than for the US. Australia uses

240V so typical currents are half what we see and wire sizes are smaller. That's why Europe has already mandated Power Factor Correction for PC power supplies.

The ST paper exagerates. While the PSU may be rated for 280W, actual usage is probably much less but it still illustrates the issue. My most power hungry PC (300W PSU) uses 75-80W depending on activity. Its PF is 0.63. 3-4 CFLs will have the same effect as the PC.

I think the utilities are sandbagging us. Once residences exhibit lower PFs they will petition for rate increases or PF based surcharges.

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Reply to
Dave Houston

My experience, if it is of any help; I had a '100 watt equivalent' mounter base up in a hanging shade that apparently did not allow sufficient cooling. Worked perfectly with its X-10 for hours, then started buzzing and would not turn off. When cooled and re-started still would not turn off and jammed my entire x-10 system.

Put a better shade on and a new identical (from same package) CFL and everything works perfect. But if I use that old "100 watter" anywhere in the house it shuts down my entire system, presumably by noise generation (I have no instruments). It still lights normally, but has a slight buzz. Committees of Correspondence Web page:- tinyurl.com/y7th2c

Reply to
Nick Hull

Yeow! From what I have seen of cooling issues with CFL's, if they are going to appear, they'll show up first in base-up installations because the heat from the bulb is rising through the electronics. I have some 43W Earthlights that failed in a bottom-up fixture with plenty of cooling. The base was noticeably yellowed and the tubes were blackened at the electrodes. Another lamp from the same batch looked much, much "newer" although it had virtually the same run times - except in the bottom-down mode. Have you cracked that sucker open? There may be evidence of which component cooked. I know if you're frugal like me it's hard to put the knife or the Dremel cut-off wheel to a working device, but we both know it's brimming with X-10 demons.

If your memory is as shaky as mine, destroy that bulb now (or at least slice it open in the name of science)! Those things have a way of finding their way back into the rotation. (-:

I'm putting a 40W tungsten bulb back into the porchlight. It's an unusual situation. The front door cam is IR sensitive, but has no IR illuminator. I rely on my porch light for that. The 40W incandescent's "reach" - how far I can see out onto the front yard at night - is much greater than the 14W CFL although it's rated as a 60W equivalent. The difference is the much higher output of IR light from the tungsten bulb. I'm going to try one more bulb - the next jump up - to see if that works, but it won't turn off no matter what I try that will be the end of it! [Nope - same stuff. Goes on and off from the switch pushbutton but no other way]

Since I can turn the porchlight on and off with a motion detector; a mini-timer and a keychain remote with no problems using incandescent bulbs, I'm giving up on running a CFL on the front porch light. Considering how much frequent on/off cycles shorten the life of CFLs, the IR issue, the flashing issue, the wall switch buzzing issue and the fact I would probably have to leave it on 24/7, I think the tungsten bulb will actually be cheaper to operate for this application.

Thanks for the input . . . and neutralize that killer CFL!!!! (-:

-- Bobby G.

Reply to
Robert Green

They're completely over-used, IMHO, by folks too lazy to create an HTML page. PDF's are designed for mythical beings who possess with two, vertically oriented, specially oversized monitors running side by side from a dual head graphics card. I always feel like I am wearing blinders when I read them because if I increase the magnification to the level where I can read the print, then I have to pan and scan like a madman. If I truly NEED the information, I'll lower my security settings and DL one (and usually print it out!).

Programs that run from within the browser are security risks. If you allow Flash to run, or PDF's to open, you're at greater risk than if you hadn't. All of that crap, and especially Active-X and Java are disabled on my machine. It makes some sites hard to use, but it absolutely ends all pop-ups, drive bys, etc. The latest version of FireFox surprised me when it allowed some bozo popup to display without asking as soon as the download had completed. Apparently the DL had reset my security settings downward (what an EXCEPTIONALLY bad idea for a security upgrade!).

If there happen to be extra sunspots in a particular year, they will petition for rate increases! Our local Public Service Commission was gutted of consumer advocates and padded with former industry executives. The fix is in for us little guys. We can't hope to win if the game's that crooked from the get-go.

Given what happened in CA with deregulation, I'm stunned that so many states are looking to it as some sort of salvation. True competition when there's only one product conduit? That's even more laughable than CATV competition. At least there, you have FIOS and satellite options.

-- Bobby G.

Reply to
Robert Green

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