Re: "Bulb In, Bulb Out" Good NY Times Magazine article about the light bulb phase out
If you've read the article you would note that the author of the quote leans toward a particular political persuasion that often revels in that sort of thing, as do a number of talk radio hosts who have made careers out of the technique.
What got me about Howard Brandston's piece in the article was this:
[...]Brandston contends that his root objection to the law, which he calls "immoral," is connected to his professional appreciation of incandescence, which mimics the natural spectrum. "It's what we grew up with — it's sunlight," Brandston told me earlier on the phone.
This is clearly wrong on two counts.
Sunlight is not a smooth blackbody radiator, unlike an incandescent. It has spikes in its spectrum like the CFL that Brandston derides (albeit somewhat smooth). I gather this has something to do with the nuclear fusion powering the sun and the forced release of photons at discrete energy levels as opposed to the effects of heating tungsten to near-melting temperatures, which releases photons across the spectrum.
Sunlight's color temperature is a great deal "cooler" than incandescents, centered around 5500K as opposed to the 2700K or so more common with incandescent bulbs. 2700K is much closer to candle light or a wood fire.
In
another piece, Brandston speaks at length about the "efficiencies" introduced by dimmers. This further hurts his credibility as a "technical expert" because dimmers - in addition to dropping efficiency into low single-digit lumens-per-watt - further drive down the color temperature and CRI towards the sodium-vapor lamps he derides in the same piece. My experience with dimmers has been that they drastically shorten incandescent lifespans, but I was using cheap incandescents back then ... I strongly suspect that Brandston would be using something a wee bit pricier.
If Brandston wants to make aesthetic arguments or cite consumer preference, he'd have a lengthy client portfolio and a mountain of data behind him, respectively. He so eagerly undercuts his credibility by making claims about incandescent spectrum.
His pseudo-technical arguments about measuring efficiency in the same piece are also bunk. For a device like a light bulb, you measure
at the device under design parameters (ie, 120V line voltage) to establish a baseline. Trying to account for extraneous factors like dimmers that change the standard operating conditions is an exercise in futility due to the unpredictable variety. Same for the "additional energy needed to build alternatives;" the additional energy is reflected in the sale price. Such arguments are obfuscation at best.
