Goodbye, shining light...

Shining light
fades away
I'm losing now
show the way
I can hear your sigh
though I'm away
Shining light

-Neo



By September, Germany will ban the sale of incandescent light bulbs with a power consumption of 100 Watts, and all matt light bulbs. Following a directive of the European Union, and the example of some other countries such as Australia, we all feel very green and smug about this. Okay, nobody does, except politicians, the people are pretty pissed that their choices are being legislated away.

It is undoubtedly true that classic light bulbs waste more power than energy saving lamps. However, they are dirt cheap compared to those, don't contain any harmful substances, and most importantly, everyone considers their light to be warm and welcoming, while that of energy saving lamps is considered as cold and sterile. Even though there now are lamps that also feature warm light like the one of a classic bulb (at an even higher price tag), the public still dislikes what could save them lots of money.








My thoughts: It's just like with cars. The general public doesn't buy efficient cars, just like it doesn't buy efficient lamps. While really efficient cars that don't have any disadvantages over their conventional counterpads are still not available, with car makers apparently not giving a shit, efficient lightbulbs are available, but nobody wants those, just like nobody wants an odd looking electromobile. So, the government thinks it's necessary to legislate our choices away, because we all know that politicians always know everything better and never screw up (yeah, right!).

The only incadescent bulbs in my room are the three reflector lamps on the ceiling, my four other lamps are either flurescent or LED lights. Still, I don't want my choices to be taken away. I don't want to pay the hefty price tag of an energy saver when I just want a lamp for my cellar, or other rooms where I only come in for a few times for a few minutes per year.

I also feel kinda bummed by this due to having experienced all the disadvantages of energy saving lamps firsthand, when my grandmother replaced all our classic lightbulbs with them back in Hungary. She is an extremely rational person, and quickly saw that the high price isn't a problem if one considers how much energy these will save us. Now consider this: Our apartment in Budapest is in an old pre-WW2 building, with high ceilings. There were very nice light enclosures with two 100W bulbs and beautifully crafted crystal glass covers. The new lamps didn't fit, due to their long shape, so the glass covers had to go. We're now looking at two long, naked fluorescent lamps, with this weak and sterile blue-ish light, taking several minutes to warm up to reach their full brighness. As these were the earliest models available, they didn't really like it if you switched them on and off too frequently, so one tried to avoid having to switch them on, stumbling through the dark, or adding extra lamps to rooms if you just go in there for a moment. As you can probably guess, we were not impressed. Your apartment has three candeliers, and if you switch them on, everything looks quite beautifully lit. But those were the old incadescent bulbs in them, so we rarely ever switched them on... When we rented our apartment to someone once, with him paying for electricity etc., he kept the candeliers on whenever he was home. It was so alien to me to see our apartment being lit so well, we must've been sitting in the dark all this time, saving money. But at what price?

As for LED lights, I bought one once, was quite expensive compared to the regular reflector bulbs I have hanging from the ceiling. It cast a small, tired circle of blue-ish light onto one spot, hardly illuminating anything around it. While LEDs may be nice for flashlighs or cars, where you want a focussed beam, they suck at illuminating your room.


So despite all rationality, knowing that the new generation of energy saving lamps doesn't look butt ugly any more and doesn't have that shitty light and warm up time, they still can't hand it to the oldschool incadescent lightbulbs. Those are simply full of win. I just bought a new energy saver for our kitchen, it's supposed to be as bright as a classic 100W model, with just 18W of energy consumption. I installed it, and it was quite okay, nice and bright. But then, I replaced it with a 100W bulb I just bought, and my mom immediately said "Wow, that's nice and bright, why don't you just leave that one in?". Kinda hard to say "Sorry mom, but if you want to save energy, you have to have these new bulbs that still can't manage to achieve the old one's awesomeness.".