EAsy, Cheap, and Sure Way To Save Energy on a National Basis

[YuccaFlatsRanch]

LED light bulbs for every bulb in your house. Available from

www.ccrane.com/lights/led-light-bulbs/index.aspx

"If every U.S. household replaced just one standard 60 watt bulb with a CC Vivid LED bulb, we could save 24,184,400,000 watts or 24,184.4 mega (million) watts per day."

"One of the largest power plants in the U.S. could be eliminated as a result of each U.S. household replacing just one standard 60 watt bulb with a CC Vivid LED bulb."

We should as a group write our National and State Reps and get them to fund these light bulbs for all US homes. Cost would be minimal (in government standards) and for once it would go to something that would work without beaurucratic interference. Think of the amount of energy that would /could be saved and the savings are not a one time savings. Provide the bulbs to electric companies for distribution to their customers for free. GE and Phillips will be PO'd, but it would have to be in the national interest.

My Reps will be written today.

[HermitJohn]

I love LED flashlights, but have to actually try an LED lightbulb to knowif it did the job. Kinda pricey to experiment with right now.

[YuccaFlatsRanch]

Thats why we should let Uncle pay for them, or at least subsidize them to the point where they are cost effective, i.e. about 60 cents apiece.

Why shouldn't all of us get something from the government for a change and save a heck of a lot of energy at the same time. Might do wonders for "global Warming" (myth that it is) too. Even the greenies and Libs could be happy.

[MELOC]

i just want to caution anyone who uses these to keep an eye on them. i bought two 18 lamp LED bulbs and used one on a circuit that may have been overloaded. do to a lack of adequate current, or due to a fault in the design or materials, the one i use on my computer desk started to overheat. i sincerely feel that it would have caught fire if i had not been right next to it and smelled the plastic heating up.

i bought mine on ebay and they resemble the 18 lamp bulbs shown in the link. i may have caused the bulbs power inverter to fail with the overloaded circuit i had it on or it could just be cheap junk, i don't know which is true. i just advise that anyone who uses them should be very aware of the condition of the bulbs and use them in a place where they are not forgotten.

i am a supporter of the use of LED but i feel it would be safer to to use DC LED lamps on a DC circuit.

[arabian knight]

[QUOTE=YuccaFlatsRanch]Thats why we should let Uncle pay for them, Why shouldn't all of us get something from the government for a change QUOTE]

up let Uncle Sam pay for~! When the Heck is the United States Government OUR Baby Sitter!!!! Let the Government Pay me so I won't have to spent any monies~!! Ya Right~!
MY Taxes are HIGH enough without MORE FREE HANDOUTS from the feds~!!!!! Shame

And I have already Chanced Every Bulb in the house and outside in the work shop to those Energy Saving ones the fluorescent curly ones~!! And I PAID for them Not the Darn Feds~!!!@

[Dun Coille]

Well shoot - if we are going to pay farmers to not grow crops, why not subsidize folks who are actually PRODUCING something! There's all sorts of ways to use tax breaks and incentives at fed, state, and local levels. Too bad we can't convince DC that being dependent on foreign imports for electricity generation is a matter of national security!!

[YuccaFlatsRanch]

Is saving energy a national priority or not?? If it is, then maybe the Gov't should put "our" money where its mouth is.

I don't advocate for more gov't spending anywhere, but there must be a few bucks of waste that can be re-prioritized somewhere Doncha think??

Heck -the increased taxes paid by the businesses that sell the bulbs to the gov't offsets some of the cost.

The idea will never fly though - it makes too much sense.

[YuccaFlatsRanch]

This is what Iwrote to Senator John Cornyn:

Dear Senator Cornyn,

How would you like to be the HERO who proposes the easy way to SAVE
89,000,000 Megawatt hours of electricity each and every year??

I have been researching the purchase of LED lightbulbs for home use. I came across the following website http://www.ccrane.com/lights/led-light-bulbs/index.aspx which talks about and sells LED lightbulbs. They have some interesting statistics cited such as:

"If every U.S. household replaced just one standard 60 watt bulb with a CC Vivid LED bulb, we could save 24,184,400,000 watts or 24,184.4 mega (million) watts per day.
National savings information based on 103,000,000 households with an average use of 4 hrs per day per house. Based on gross watts."

AND

"One of the largest power plants in the U.S. could be eliminated as a result of each U.S. household replacing just one standard 60 watt bulb with a CC Vivid LED bulb."

Doing the math and assuming each household needs 10 of these bulbs the cost would be $350.00 per household times 103 million households for a grand total of approx 36 billion dollars. To achieve this the government could buy enough lightbulbs to save approx 89,000,000 Megawatt hours of electricty each year. IMAGINE how much energy we would save on the generation costs of this electricity.

I suggest your staff do an in depth analysis of this and see if it isn't a significant and cost effective way to help solve the energy crisis. The results would be immediate and the benefits significant.

[patarini]

I have several LED lights in home since I live off grid and without a lot of solar panels! They are not worth buying again to me. Cheep, yes. But way too directional -- they are after all lasers, they light doesnt go all over. For some applications that will be ok, but for a general purpose light it is a major pain! Also my lights are not the latest, but i would think real long before spending that kind of money!

[Kenneth in NC]

Not to be a party pooper as I too love LED lighting but
[b]Uncle Sam = taxes to pay for bulbs = higher taxes = US (Probably be cheaoer to just buy them direct from CC)

Kenneth

[sullen]

Darn, I thought this thread was going to be something cool like ride your bike to work day or something........

[patarini]

What?? Ride bike to work day?? Americans to sacrifice??? Sheesh u sure you aint a commie type??? Real americans drive a gas guzzlin assualt vehicle to work -- where else we gonna stow our guns and bug out packs for the end of the world???

[Windy in Kansas]

How about just shutting the lights off in Vegas and Times Square every few days?

[Jim-mi]

You guys are all wet. Our gubmint has far more important things to do than hand out light bulbs.
We gotta spend our billions of bucks on our grand and glourious oil war.

There just ain't no good reason to spend piddly bucks to save a couple megawatts

SPEND..............SPEND

[WisJim]

LED bulbs are too directional to make the average person happy with them. But compact flourescents are widely available, inexpensive, long lasting, and can easily be used to replace many of the incandescent bulbs in the average house, with a tremendous savings in electricity used. They are worth using from a practical dollars and cents point of view at their current prices.

[YuccaFlatsRanch]

I would figure that LED lights are only directional if you build them that way. Since a "bigger" bulb is a combination of smaller bulbs, the mfgr can design them to send light wherever they want. Nothing says they have to point the same direction. Take a look at ccrane's website and see the varied number of bulbs they have available.

I have a headlight I wear that has both directional bulbs and wide angle bulbs.

As for the Gov't paying for them, I suggested they just use some of the money being wasted somewhere else to pay for them. No increase in taxes, but a significant decrease in energy used. Makes too much sense though for the gov't to be interested.