Hitachi and Seiyu develop light bulb with replaceable arc tube

While the rest of the world goes off to win the hearts of environmentalists (and laypeople, too) with LED light bulbs, Hitachi Lighting and Seiyu are taking the road (way) less traveled. Reportedly, the duo has collaborated in order to pop out a "bulb-shaped fluorescent lamp that can be separated into a lighting circuit unit and an arc tube unit." What this means is that the lighting circuit can be used repeatedly (up to 30,000 hours) while the arc tube simply gets replaced every 10,000 hours. The pair is hoping that the bulbs will take the place of traditional 60-watt incandescents, and considering that these only draw around 13-watts each, it's fairly easy to see how Mother Earth would just love you for making the switch. As for pricing, we're hearing that these will sell for around ¥1,500 ($14) apiece when they launch this October in Japan, so don't plan on recouping your investment in energy savings right away or anything.

[DefPo3t @ Jul 3rd 2008 7:11PM]

how long till someone little kid or pet knocks this over.

[Tom @ Jul 4th 2008 6:18AM]

You can't live your life in fear, my friend.

[i961vw @ Jul 3rd 2008 7:16PM]

Yippie?

[Shinigami @ Jul 4th 2008 7:00AM]

Really? My 60-watts already eat 13-watts (energy-efficient bulbs) and cost me 1/5th of the $17.
So. Whats new?

[aaron @ Jul 3rd 2008 7:22PM]

Looks kinda cool.

[aidan @ Jul 3rd 2008 8:59PM]

yeah cool like your ugly face.

[arkweld @ Jul 3rd 2008 7:31PM]

yeah that will take off.

Let's take a simple light bulb and make it more complicated and more effort to change.

Or just buy a regular compact fluorescent and replace it every 6 years.

[tchapp @ Jul 3rd 2008 7:49PM]

i might be crazy, but im prettttty sure that those leak mercury.

[arkweld @ Jul 3rd 2008 7:58PM]

and the general public care about that how?

I've seen people dump car batteries in a garbage can. The tiny amount of mercury in fluorescents doesn't even register.

Assuming that people know there's mercury in there to begin with and that it happens to be extremely toxic.

[Wwhat @ Jul 4th 2008 2:50AM]

Those inflated 6 years figures always assume you don't use the damn thing more than 2 hours a day, read the package, and even then it's an optimistic estimate.

[thedesolate1 @ Jul 3rd 2008 7:49PM]

If Japan were a woman I would marry her. I

[John Laur @ Jul 3rd 2008 8:18PM]

There are already compact fluorescent bulbs with separate ballasts that have normal screw bases. They do save a little bit in the long run and are marketed at commercial customers for retrofit. You can also get ballasts to power a whole bunch of sockets at the same time for new installations that are where the real savings can kick in.

Why Hitachi is marketing it as a revolution or their own invention is anyone's guess. I guess they think nobody will notice. I hope they use a standard fitting and voltage or else you'll just lock yourself into (or out of) a single bulb forever.

[DTemp @ Jul 3rd 2008 10:29PM]

Ok, so a regular light bulb costs $1 and uses 60W. This bulb costs $14 and uses 13W. So you pay $13 extra to save 47W.

At $0.15 per kWh, $13 is 87kWh. It takes 1850h or 77days to use up 87kWh at a 47W load.

So, this bulb will pay for itself in 77 days of usage. If its on 8 hours a day, it will pay for itself in 7-8 months. I'd say thats a good investment. It starts paying for itself before its one-fifth through its life. It'll save you like $65 before it goes out.

[Wwhat @ Jul 4th 2008 3:01AM]

One bulb and base unit are $14, you can use 3 bulb lifetimes before a baseunit gives out and the bulbs themselves sell for $4.70, so that's $23.32 for one 'lightbulb' (base+3bulbs) that lasts 3 times as long as a regular fluorescent.
You forgot to add tose details in your calculation.

Incidentally, it has more tricks up its sleeve:
The company reportedly improved the composition of filler gas in the arc tube so that the lamp becomes bright immediately after it is turned on. But, because the new composition has poor resistance to heat, the company adopted proprietary heat dissipation measures.

[Shinigami @ Jul 4th 2008 7:04AM]

Uh... guess what? My "energy efficient" light bulb is said to eat 13w instead of 60w already and I paid 1/5th price from the price expected for this new "greatness".
I don't know how long will it last, but I'm certain it will be worth the effort if everyone on Earth (at least those that have the money) will go and change light bulbs to energy-efficient ones.
We'll just use up less Oil every year, and the world will live for a year or two longer before WW3 emerges xD

[Wwhat @ Jul 5th 2008 12:20PM]

Well if you open op one of those lightbulbs you'll see a whole PCB with lots of components, components that are as this shows fine for another 3 tubes' lifetimes, so it does seem wasteful to thrown that in the thrash since it contains all kinds of metals and chemicals.
What I think is the problem though is that to make the bulb detachable you need to make the already large base even larger, and I think that's not practical and even almost impossible in 80% of the cases.

[BigD145 @ Jul 3rd 2008 10:39PM]

That price is a bit lower than LED bulbs, but those things won't last as long.

[andres @ Jul 3rd 2008 10:49PM]

i just need an arc reactor to go along with this

[Steve @ Jul 4th 2008 5:00AM]

Do CF's ever fail? I still have the original bulky ones I bought about 8 years ago, all working fine.

[Michael Lush @ Jul 4th 2008 5:47AM]

they do... eventually, we had some 10 year old ones go shortly after we moved house.

[Michael Lush @ Jul 4th 2008 5:47AM]

In principal it looks like a good idea... I'd worry about them not being available in 3-6 years when the first bulb starts to wear out.

I can buy 2-3 normal fluorescent bulbs for $14 so the replacements
had better be cheap!

[BloodyGerman @ Jul 4th 2008 8:20AM]

Hmmm ... how the hell is that new? Did i miss something?

Sounds like a ballast and a seperate CFL? I used these kind of lamps with seperate ballast at least 15 years ago. Because it was cheaper at this time. I stopped doing this when it was cheaper to buy CFL bulbs with integrated ballast.

Maybe there is something else new about this?

[giyad @ Jul 4th 2008 11:32AM]

are these arc tubes easy to dispose of?

[stalkythefish @ Jul 4th 2008 1:09PM]

Cool, but every CF I've tried (going on 5 now) has either died prematurely (within one month of installation) because the cheapass power supply has failed, or makes an annoying buzzing sound which makes it useless as a reading lamp. I have no special affection for incandescents, but CF is a kludge. I'd love to find one that I like, but for right now LED can't come soon enough!