GE develops high efficiency incandescent bulbs
By Ryan Block 
posted February 27th 2007 2:11AM
posted February 27th 2007 2:11AM
Incandescent is getting a pretty bad name in today's going-green society, but GE wants to salvage the tech with innovation before it's scrapped for the ages in laws that ban its use at home and abroad. GE's new high efficiency incandescent (HEI) lamp doubles the efficiency of today's 15 lumens-per-Watt incandescent bulbs achieving something closer to fluorescents -- which GE claims has the potential of saving supposedly hundreds of millions of tons of carbon dioxide annually, if adopted universally, of course. We doubt it's any coincidence that this announcement was made so shortly after the Australia's law and California's bill against incandescent bulbs, but the message is clear: save power, or Croc Dundee and the Governator will hunt you down and bad things will happen.[Via Slashdot]
These GE bulbs are VAPORWARE. Sure, they announced them, but until I see them on store shelves I'll take this with a grain of flourescent salt.
They wont be allowed to be imported/sold here when the law takes effect (Australia)
This would be a good stop gap till the LED takes over, fluorescants are nowhere near as good as they make out, the old tube versions are fine, but these folded models fail too often and you have to replace the whole circuit every time with each bulb.
If they can be produced using no more energy than an ordinary incandescant then a 50% reduction in power will please the treehuggers and knock 0.00001 degrees of the world temp in a hundred years and we can all turn up the central heating to make the difference.
hmm, strange how GE NOW develops them.
Fluorescents blow.
They are awkward, don't last as long as they should, and contain mercury. Know how far the nearest disposal company for fluorescents is from my house? 36 miles. Screw that.
I'm holding out for LED everything...
I want these...because fluorescents have no "3-way" bulbs and we use a lot of 3-ways in our house.
Jim, 3-way compact fluorescents are available, though possibly not in your local grocery. GE, in fact, makes some. I expect other companies do as well.
Actually, fluorescents last a long time, but they are sensitive to how often you turn them on and off.
When I moved into my new house, I put fluorescents into the three lights around the porch and driveway. That was about 5 yrs ago. They are on for about 12 to 14 hours every night and all day and night whenever we are out of town. So far, not one of them has burned out.
So, roughly 1600 days at 12 hrs per day = 20,000 hrs so far. Plus, I have saved about 20,000 x 3 lights x 40 watts * $.07/kwh = $168 in electricity.
While LEDs are the future, I wonder why metal halide or high-pressure sodium lights haven't been developed more and the price brought down? They have their draw backs to be sure, but as any good indoor pot grower can tell you, they deliver much better lumins per watt than incandescent or fluorescent lighting. Also, high-pressure sodium lighting is much closer to the suns color spectrum and thus, it is much healthier for you as well.
I use fluorescents outside, but indoors, incandescent only. The light quality on fluorescent bulbs still sucks. It's just not as comfortable.
GE is, by far, the biggest supplier of turbines to the power generation industry. Power gen accounts for ~10% of their profits. Incandescent lights (aka heat generators that incidentally produce illumination) are a rounding error in their bottom line.
not only do they make flourescent 3-ways they also make dimmable flourescents. You can also get cold cathode bulbs similar to a flourescent that are also dimmable and very compact.
Less IR more visible, sounds like the HIR bulbs GE patented back in 2000:
http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT6087775&id=iP4DAAAAEBAJ&dq=6087775
They have been available in automotive application for some time.
Want to compare the various technologies? Try here:
http://www.newbuildings.org/ALG.htm
LEDs are better now than in 2003, but still no where near discharge lamps.