The 60 watt incandescent bulb will have more competition once new LED lights make it to store shelves this fall. (Photo courtesy of Darren Hester)
Buying a light bulb used to be a simple job. But in recent years with the explosion of choices of types, wattages and colors, it’s gotten confusing. Lester Graham reports it’s about to get more complicated.
Transcript
Buying a light bulb used to be a simple job. But in recent years with the explosion of choices of types, wattages and colors, it’s gotten confusing. Lester Graham reports it’s about to get more complicated.
Philips, is introducing an energy-efficient replacement for the 60 watt incandescent bulb, but it’s not a compact flourescent. The industry has been whispering about an LED bulb that would light up a room like a warm incadescent, use less energy like a compact flourescent and last much longer.
Philips says it’ll start selling that bulb in retail stores early next year. The price? Somewhere around 60-dollars a bulb.
Ed Crawford is the CEO of Philips Lighting, North America. He says yeah, that’s a lot for a bulb, but –
“It’s going to last in your home or business for 25 years –certainly 20-25 years depending on how often you use it. That’s a real break through, but it’s a different kind of product.”
And unlike a compact flourescent, the LED does not contain mercury and will work with dimmer switches.
According to the EPA, sixty-percent of lighting actually goes to lighting unoccupied rooms. (Photo Courtesy of Vincent Ma CC-2.0)
Saving energy can be as simple as turning off the light switch when you leave a room. But in most homes… that doesn’t happen all the time. Lester Graham reports… motion sensing light switches are becoming more popular because they’ll switch on and off automatically.
Transcript
Saving energy can be as simple as turning off the light switch when you leave a room. But in most homes… that doesn’t happen all the time. Lester Graham reports… motion sensing light switches are become more popular because they’ll switch on and off automatically.
In some families, Dad stomping around the house, turning off lights and yelling to no one in particular is legendary.
“How many times do I have to tell you, turn off those lights.”
Don’t burst a blood vessel there, pal.
Well, Dad might have had a point. Matt Grocoff with Greenovation.TV says he’s been poking around the Environmental Protection Agency’s website and found this:
“Sixty-percent of lighting actually goes to lighting an unoccupied room, hallways, bathrooms, your bedroom. Drive by any neighborhood house and you’ll see eight rooms lit. How many of those houses have eight people in them.”
Matt says there’s a solution. Motion-sensing light switches. They can be set to turn on when you walk into a room and turn themselves off when you leave… staying on for a minute or two… or five… or a half-hour. Whatever you set it to.
There are a lot of different types. Laurie Gross is President of Gross Electric in Ohio and Michigan. They’ve been selling lamps and lights and switches for one-hundred years.
She says there are light switches that turn on when you enter and off when you leave, others that you have to turn on and they turn off when the room is empty. Different technology works –well– differently. Gross says passive infrared works well for pantries or kitchens because they detect motion.
“Then there’s ultrasonic which doesn’t need a line-of-sight. So, those are good in public bathrooms so when it senses heat, when go in there, it knows you’re there and turns off if you take a little longer than expected to take.”
And there are switches that use both infrared and ultrasonic… good for places like big office spaces.
You can expect to spend 50 – 60 bucks or more for a good one, depending on what you want. There are cheaper sensor light switches out there… but in this case, you really do get what you pay for.
Now… these switches use a tiny bit of power themselves… so the best place for them is in a room where leaving the light bulb on is not likely to be noticed for a while. Matt tells the story of forgetting to turn off a light in the garage during vacation. That bulb burned for two weeks. A sensor switch makes a lot of sense in a place like that… or in a closet… or a room you don’t use a lot.
Matt Grocoff and his wife Kelly are working to make their 110 year old house the oldest net-zero energy home in America. And he says he loves having motion sensing switches in key areas for the convenience as well as the energy savings.
“We open the door in the kitchen and come through the door with loads of groceries and the light comes on automatically. You don’t have to do the elbow dance.”
His wife Kelly says for her… it’s avoiding a little childhood terror.
“I have a little PTSD from when I was younger and my Dad was constantly harassing us to turn the lights off. Now, I know if I leave the room and I don’t turn the light off, it’s going to go off eventually instead of having my Dad chase me down and giving me some lecture about turning the lights off, saving energy, saving money, blah, blah, blah.”
Funny story about that. Kelly’s Mom, Jane Casselman was visiting when I was at the couple’s house… and she started laughing about Dad lecturing about the lights.
“’Cause in the evening, yours truly would turn all the lights off before going to bed.”
More than half of the mercury switches still on the road are in GM’s cars. But, since filing for bankruptcy, GM stopped paying into the program. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)
The new General Motors, which recently emerged from bankruptcy, wants to create a clean, green image with its Chevy Volt electric car. But GM might have a bit of an environmental PR problem on its hands. Tamara Keith explains:
Transcript
The new General Motors, which recently emerged from bankruptcy, wants to create a clean, green image with its Chevy Volt electric car. But GM might have a bit of an environmental PR problem on its hands. Tamara Keith explains:
Automakers used to use mercury switches for lights and anti-lock brakes. But when old cars are scrapped and melted down, those parts turn into toxic air pollution.
So automakers and environmental groups created a program to recycle the mercury.
More than half of the mercury switches still on the road are in GM’s cars. But, since filing for bankruptcy, GM stopped paying into the program.
Rich Bell is president of the program, and he also works at Ford.
“None of our members are interested in paying for GM’s environmental legacy issues, and so we’re looking for a path forward, and we’re kind of in the midst of that now.”
In a statement, the new GM said those cars with mercury switches were made by the old GM.
The new GM that emerged from bankruptcy is not responsible for those old switches.
The 60 watt incandescent bulb will have more competition once new LED lights make it to store shelves this fall. (Photo courtesy of Darren Hester)
