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"  UPDATE: An extensive, year-end spending bill passed in December 2011 includes a rider that effectively puts new energy requirements for light bulbs on hold. While the original language of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 remains on the books and intact, this rider prevents any money from being spent to enforce the so-called &amp;quot;ban.&amp;quot; Some\u2014and possibly most\u2014distributors and retailers may choose to follow the laws anyway. Anyone who would like to ignore them, however, will be free to do so without impunity until at least September 30, 2012.  Paul Brewer&amp;#039;s perspective on light bulbs is well-illuminated. As the electrical department manager at Solenberger&amp;#039;s Hardware in Winchester, Va., Brewer has overseen 34 years of light-bulb buying and selling for the store, witnessing firsthand every modern trend in lighting\u2014and not just through his inventory. Solenberger&amp;#039;s Hardware is 6 miles from the site of GE&amp;#039;s Winchester Lamp Plant, which the company shuttered in September 2010 after 35 years of operation, citing a &amp;quot;profound transformation&amp;quot; in the lighting business. It was GE&amp;#039;s last American plant producing traditional A19 incandescent bulbs.  If the dark plant at 125 Apple Valley Road is a looming icon of the technological and economic changes occurring in the world of household lighting, some subtler cultural side effects are manifesting themselves in the lighting aisle at Solenberger&amp;#039;s. &amp;quot;There was a gentleman in here recently,&amp;quot; Brewer says. &amp;quot;He bought two cases of incandescent bulbs\u2014240 lights.&amp;quot; If this sounds like hoarding, that&amp;#039;s because it is. &amp;quot;He&amp;#039;s just used to them,&amp;quot; Brewer says. &amp;quot;He knows what he likes.&amp;quot; Solenberger&amp;#039;s stockpiler isn&amp;#039;t paranoid; he&amp;#039;s just been reading the news. On Jan. 1, 2012, key provisions of the Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) of 2007\u2014a sweeping, 300-plus-page energy bill passed by the 110th Congress\u2014will effectively ban the 100-watt incandescent bulb. And this date is only the beginning of a two-year phaseout that will impose new efficiency standards on household lighting. The wording of the EISA technically legislates a bulb&amp;#039;s energy usage as it relates to its illumination (i.e., a 1490-lumen, 100-watt-equivalent bulb cannot \u00ADconsume more than 72 watts), but by 2014, that language will ring a death knell for traditional 75-, 60- and 40-watt incandescent bulbs (barring exemptions for specialty lamps). What was initially perceived as a mildly controversial step forward for energy efficiency has since faced growing criticism, morphing into a potent symbol of nanny-state interventionism. Politicians are starting to notice, introducing legislative countermeasures at both the state and federal levels. While those antiban bills swirl around in committee, another technology that has been hailed as the next step in lighting for well over two decades is on track for an abrupt coming-of-age. Compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs), enthusiastically touted by industry advocates and environmentalists, are accused by critics of being aesthetically inferior, impractical\u2014and even dangerous. As usual, when technology intersects with political debate, the ratio of rhetoric to science is woefully out of whack.  So Popular Mechanics launched an investigation into the policy and technology of modern lighting. We \u00ADtalked to the experts and advocates on both sides, and tested the various types of bulbs in our labs, all with an eye on the question: What does it take to change a light bulb?  The Brewing Battle &amp;quot;Why should a select few legislators in 2007 be able to tell hundreds of millions of Americans what light bulbs are best for them?&amp;quot; That&amp;#039;s the question posed by Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., one of the politicians who introduced the Better Use of Light Bulbs (BULB) Act in late 2010. If passed, the bill would repeal the lighting-\u00ADefficiency standards outlined in EISA. He&amp;#039;s far from alone. The EISA lighting rules were controversial from day one. A Rasmussen poll conducted in 2009 found that 72 percent of Americans were leery of the government&amp;#039;s new lighting standards. This is the same percentage of people who support efficiency standards in appliances in a separate Consumer Federation of America study\u2014an odd dichotomy explained, at least in part, by the checkered past of compact fluorescent lighting. &amp;amp;gt;  The first commercially available single-\u00ADpiece CFL was the Philips/\u00ADNorelco SL-18, released to moderate fanfare in the early 1980s. Intended as a screw-in substitute for 100-watt incandescents, the SL-18 promised comparable brightness at just 18 watts, with a life span of 5000 hours. A Popular Mechanics 1986 article on CFLs reads as though it was written yesterday: &amp;quot;Despite its spendthrift performance, incandescence remains the illumination of choice for most households... This may be about to change.&amp;quot; It would be a stretch to call the first CFL a runaway success. The lamp took about 3 minutes to reach full brightness and cast a sterile blue light that flickered noticeably. Priced at $12 (about $30 adjusted for inflation) and weighing over a pound, the bulb was a tough sell. These downsides were profound enough to blunt sales of the SL-18, along with other early CFL products. Worse, they left a lasting impression.  Building a Better Bulb Modern CFLs bear only a passing resemblance to their early forebears. For one, they&amp;#039;re significantly more compact, having shed the outer cases and bulky bases common in early models. Overwhelmingly, they&amp;#039;ve adopted a spiral bulb shape. The replacement of magnetic ballasts with electric ones has stopped the flickering and reduced overall weight considerably, while advancements in phosphors and glass treatments have given manufacturers finer control over light color. Confront an industry expert about the light \u00ADquality of CFLs and he will likely issue the Lampshade Dare: Behind two identical screens, it&amp;#039;s difficult\u2014even impossible\u2014to tell a CFL from an incandescent. Most importantly, prices have plummeted. Quality CFLs can be purchased at nearly any hardware store for $2 or less, a premium over incandescent that can easily be paid back in saved energy costs. Over its 10,000-hour life, a $2, 14-watt CFL will burn about $15.40 worth of electricity. Over the same period, a $0.50, 60-watt incandescent would require $66 worth of power\u2014and be replaced 10 times.  Yet the reputation persists. It can&amp;#039;t have helped that reaching these price and performance levels took three decades, during which time perceived\u2014and actual\u2014shortcomings of CFLs became an inextricable part of their identity. Dave Geraci, CFL product manager for bulb manufacturer TCP, explains, &amp;quot;Once this stuff is ingrained in people&amp;#039;s minds, it&amp;#039;s not going to change.&amp;quot; The perception of the CFL as a flawed technology has allowed some pernicious ideas to take hold: that mercury contained in CFLs offsets their environmental advantage (generated by coal, the power required by a less-efficient incandescent bulb would result in a greater release of mercury into the environment than an improperly disposed-of CFL); that the bulbs are dangerous when broken (if government or manufacturer disposal guidelines are followed, they are not likely to cause harm); and that they produce poor-quality light compared with incandescent bulbs (while our lab testing confirmed objective differences in the bulbs&amp;#039; light, surveyed testers&amp;#039; preferences were divided among bulb types). These beliefs have proved resilient, which is unfortunate not just because they&amp;#039;re misguided, but because they draw attention away from better-\u00ADfounded concerns. That is to say: CFLs aren&amp;#039;t as bad as you may have heard. But they&amp;#039;re not perfect, either.  &amp;amp;gt; Behind the Curve &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt;   Behind the Curve Michael Siminovitch, director of the California Lighting Technology Center at the University of California, Davis, and a supporter of CFL adoption, says that the technology earned its reputation: &amp;quot;Incandescent lights have well-defined performance and expectations. CFLs are a departure.&amp;quot; Years of focus on reducing cost and maximizing efficiency, he says, relegated concerns such as light color, reliability and startup time to secondary importance. The product suffered, and by extension, so did its users. Today, the gap between expectation and experience still exists in the world of CFLs. Studies by the Program for the Evaluation and Analysis of Residential Lighting (PEARL) trade group have shown that CFLs don&amp;#039;t always live up to manufacturers&amp;#039; claims, particularly in life span. TCP&amp;#039;s Dave Geraci agrees: &amp;quot;There are still a few out there\u2014quite popular brands, actually\u2014that will fail early.&amp;quot; Other issues persist, none of which are fatal, but all of which are notable. CFLs achieve full brightness faster than ever before, but this can still take up to 60 seconds. Dimming functionality usually requires specific bulbs and entirely new lighting fixtures and, in the end, produces a less appealing cool light at low brightness. (When an incandescent bulb is dimmed, its light gets warmer and redder; when a CFL dims, its color stays the same.) Popular Mechanics&amp;#039; testing also revealed deep differences in the spectral power distribution of CFLs and incandescents. Rather than following a smooth curve, fluorescent light shows severe peaks and troughs of power throughout the spectrum. The light of CFLs is a result of engineering, calculation and compromise. It&amp;#039;s different both objectively and subjectively: Some testers noted that CFLs produce a sickly skin tone, cast greenish hues or simply feel fluorescent. The end result, which CFL supporters are hesitant to acknowledge, is that to use CFLs is to accept a real, material change in your relationship with lighting. Bulbs won&amp;#039;t flick on like you&amp;#039;re used to; the initial cost of bulbs is slightly higher; and the performance from brand to brand is nowhere near as consistent as it is with incandescents. Switching to CFLs requires effort; sticking with incandescents does not. Topping it all off is anxiety about safety. Crushing a bulb won&amp;#039;t create a mercury-contaminated Superfund site\u2014Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Lighting Research Center senior research scientist John Bullough famously said, &amp;quot;You [just] don&amp;#039;t want to run over and sniff it up&amp;quot;\u2014but cleaning up a broken CFL is undeniably more involved than sweeping up a shattered incandescent. The mere existence of a new protocol can seem strange: Since when is a broken light bulb something to worry about? And CFLs require special disposal techniques. Nothing crazy\u2014just recycling at approved waste facilities or chain stores like Home Depot and Ikea. But municipal and state authorities have done a poor job of publicizing options where they exist and creating them where they don&amp;#039;t. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s important that the infrastructure is in place,&amp;quot; says Jeffrey Harris of the Alliance to Save Energy. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re going to need to step up our game.&amp;quot; It&amp;#039;s not that these problems are catastrophic for the CFL. It&amp;#039;s that consumers are put off by any level of inconvenience, uncertainty and disappointment in a product they&amp;#039;re accustomed to taking for granted. These are still just light bulbs, after all.  A Temporary Solution Assuming EISA&amp;#039;s lighting rules have their intended effect, compact fluorescent bulbs will account for a majority of light bulbs sold in the United States, serving alongside the select halogen incandescent bulbs that meet the updated efficiency requirements. This hard-earned era of dominance, how\u00ADever, may be short-lived.  The LED sector is white-hot, attracting attention from the lighting industry&amp;#039;s traditional leaders as well as nimble startups, backed by venture capital firms with a history of high-tech investment. One such startup is San Jose, Calif.\u2013based Switch Lighting. The company&amp;#039;s lamp has a conspicuous aluminum substructure, which draws heat away from a circular cluster of 10 tiny diodes with metallic protrusions, giving it a weapon-like quality. As an object, it&amp;#039;s muscular and industrial. Above all, it&amp;#039;s strange.  &amp;amp;gt;  LEDs are at least as efficient as CFLs, are mercury-free, have no startup delay and are easier to tune for color. They can function with existing dimmers. Their life spans are measured in decades, and they have already proved successful for applications in flashlights, desk lamps and household accent lighting. When Switch&amp;#039;s 60-, 75- and 100-watt-equivalent lamps hit stores, they&amp;#039;ll be competing against LEDs from the likes of GE and Philips for what industry insiders agree, often begrudgingly, is the future of lighting.  That&amp;#039;s not to say LEDs are ready competitors to CFLs. There are few lamps on the market, and almost none are 100-plus-watt equivalents. Then there is the price: In the world of LEDs, $20 is a bargain. Fifty dollars is the norm. Everyone agrees: The price will come down. The question is, when? Brett Sharenow of Switch is predictably optimistic: &amp;quot;I actually think we&amp;#039;ll be able to buy a 40-watt-equivalent LED for under $10 in less than two years.&amp;quot; Gary Trott of Cree LED Lighting Solutions believes his company&amp;#039;s LEDs have already reached a turning point with consumers. &amp;quot;I can&amp;#039;t predict where the price is going to be, but I can say that a year from now, it&amp;#039;s going to be a lot lower,&amp;quot; he says. Nobody is sure how long it will take LEDs to truly dominate the market\u2014the most bullish estimates see widespread adoption before 2015, while more sober evaluations have it creeping well past 2020\u2014but few doubt it will happen. Why Wait? In the Energy Independence and Security Act, Nicolas Loris of the Heritage Foundation sees a parallel to the government&amp;#039;s subsidization of ethanol-based fuel tech, which he argues redirects investment toward stopgap solutions. &amp;quot;When the government gets involved in these decisions, they crowd out other ideas.&amp;quot; Besides, he says, &amp;quot;we think consumers will make the right decisions themselves, because they want to save money.&amp;quot; Brett Sharenow doesn&amp;#039;t see a problem: &amp;quot;We don&amp;#039;t care what the government does. [As LED manufacturers], it&amp;#039;s completely moot to us.&amp;quot; Whether the EISA rules achieve their goals remains to be seen. In one way, however, they have already been a failure. The perception of the ban as a regula\u00ADtory overreach has merit: It does more than encourage lower energy use; it limits choice in situations where incandescent bulbs might be preferable. Worse, the passionate political backlash inspired by the rules continues to do lasting damage to the reputation of a genuinely good technology, amplifying the shortcomings of CFLs to the point of distortion. In the end, consumers are best served by ignoring the rhetoric and trying new bulbs for themselves. And while an open mind will find a lot to like in the alien lighting aisle of 2011, don&amp;#039;t worry if you feel the lingering urge to stockpile a box or two of those old-style bulbs\u2014just in case.  &amp;amp;gt; PM&amp;#039;s Ultimate Light Bulb Test &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt;  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/a7210/is-the-light-bulb-ban-a-bright-idea-6459591/>