this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
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Incandescent light bulbs are officially banned in the U.S.::America’s ban on incandescent light bulbs, 16 years in the making, is finally a reality. Well, mostly.

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[–] Cubic25@aussie.zone 21 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Tell that to the bar I was at last night in Palermo. They had a string of festoon lights going down the laneway and every one of them was incandescent. I noticed the same in Taormina. In fact, Italy seems pretty far behind the rest of the EU when it comes to environmental concerns.....but that's for another thread.

[–] Dima@lemmy.one 27 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Are you sure they were incandescent bulbs and not just LED bulbs copying the incandescent style? They make a lot of decorative LED bulbs now with straight sections of LEDs to imitate the glowing wire of an incandescent.

[–] TurnItOff_OnAgain@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Are you talking about an Edison bulb?

Picture of an LED Edison bulb

[–] Dima@lemmy.one 9 points 1 year ago

This is one example of the LED bulbs I was describing, but there's plenty of different styles of these being made

[–] Cubic25@aussie.zone 3 points 1 year ago

Definitely. I'm an electrician, so my eyes are usually drawn to these type of things. Light fittings, outlets, switches, etc.

[–] thisNotMyName@lemmy.world 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They are not sold anymore, but whatever is left and working can still be used. Many people also bought a ton of incandescents before the selling stopped (tHe lIgHt is sO mUcH bEtTeR!!!)

[–] heeplr@feddit.de 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

tHe lIgHt is sO mUcH bEtTeR!!!)

narrator voice: "but it was not"

[–] vithigar@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It can be. Cheap LED lights with low quality AC rectifiers are awful. If those are your point of comparison then yes, incandescent light is better (more steady).

Of course that difference goes away if you just get a better LED light.

Some also have terrible CRI. Nothing like giving everything a subtle green or purple tint.

[–] heeplr@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

yeah, i was referring to current tech. First LED or those mercury vapor bulbs were basically useless.

[–] vithigar@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You can definitely get "current" LED bulbs with bad hardware inside still today. See: Everything made by NOMA.

[–] heeplr@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago

You could also get ultra cheap crappy incendescant bulbs in the past.

[–] NewNewAccount@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It generally is though. The look of incandescent and halogen is only rivaled by high end LEDs.

[–] heeplr@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago

nah. in my experience, even cheaper LED bulbs from discounters can nicely replace old bulbs.

It's true that what "el-cheapo product" once was done by simply reducing lifetime is currently done with looks.

[–] M_Reimer@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Maybe they still run on "new old stock" bulbs until they are used up. But even if they do, they clearly didn't do the math. I've upgraded all my lighting to LED and binned all my incandescent stock.

[–] qyron 15 points 1 year ago

I'm sitting inside a house where, presently, all lights turned on at the same time will require 30w. Before we went through all the lights, a single lightbulb would use 45w.

Just by replacing the old light bulbs, we reduced energy consumption and the number of lights required to light a room.

[–] Jacobp100@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think to update the string of lights you’d need to change transformer. Household bulbs have a driver in the bulb that converts the 230V to the ~12V the bulb uses. But for that string of lights, they’d need to get an electrician (or someone who knows what they’re doing)

[–] Khanzarate@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

While you may need to replace the whole strand, and can't just swap in individual bulbs, the strand itself has the resistors needed to let the LEDs function, instead of the individual bulbs.