Sure, I could add backup batteries. Sure, I could add automatic diesel power generators. But, the phone company already has those! Do I need a secondary and/or tertiary ISP as backup as well, and somehow join them together? (Some will say, "yes, of course".)
Curious, why not advocate for the power company to provide battery backup at the substations? Why should the only part of our infrastructure that's battery backed be the phone system?
What are they going to do next, ban standard incandescent light bulbs? Oh, wait, they already did that! Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison must be spinning in their graves!
I get the idea is to cut costs or something, but I think this is a safety issue, no?
If we can't have real light bulbs, and we can't have real telephones lines, is there a name for that?
I'm really curious to why you view incandescent light-bulbs as being superior to LEDs. Is it solely because they are simpler? They certainly don't last as long and cost more to operate. LED bulbs have the same warm glow and are indistinguishable from incandescent. Perhaps you are using them to heat your room? If so, a resistive heater could accomplish the same job (without lighting up the area).
If you use one or more copper lines: what is your plan for the post-telephone-line world, if it comes to it?
Batteries everywhere. Ideally every utility would have a mandate to use battery backups covering common outage times.
why you view incandescent light-bulbs as being superior to LEDs. Is it solely because they are simpler? They certainly don't last as long and cost more to operate.
I've gotten in the habit of writing down the in-service date on all of my LED bulbs, because I don't think I've gotten more than two years out of any of them. Granted, still longer than incandescent bulbs, but I feel like the 10+ year lifespan I've been sold is a lie. Supposedly LED bulbs are a lot more sensitive to fluctuations in power quality (and it's not like I've been buying AliExpress bulbs, either).
In either case, why a federal ban on incandescent bulbs? If LED bulbs are superior, the market will sort itself out. If it's really a market failure (which I don't think it is in this case), put an excise tax on incandescent bulbs to tip the scale in LED's favor. To ban it outright is just rude.
An incandescent ban is the only thing that is going to keep people like my parents from using them.
My father does not understand efficiency at this point in his life.
"Why would I pay two dollars for a new LED light bulb, when I can get four of the regular ones for a dollar?"
He does not understand that the inexpensive incandescent bulb is going cost him more a lot more than two dollars by the time it burns out. I've tried explaining it to him, and he seems to understand it very well each and every time, but he's old and he forgets.
At least he has someone like me who will try (over and over again) to give him straight advice that will save him some money.
But most people aren't like me, and they are not like you. They don't hang out here on HN. They may have no understanding of how these things work, or how efficiently works. They may even be misinformed and making decisions with bad information.
So, no: The invisible hand of the free market will not and can not sort it out by itself, because the free market does not have good technical literacy.
Meanwhile, the downsides to the ban are what? Rudeness? Sorry, but I'm not Canadian enough for that to matter to me.
I find that LED bulbs have a much higher failure rate than advertised, even though I am buying a selection of what I think are quality brands. (Strangely, the only kind I have not had die are some weird Chinese brand I can only find on Amazon.) I haven’t done the math but given I’m replacing at least one bulb a month I’m skeptical the efficiency makes up for the price, especially since I prefer 100w equivalent bulbs.
Maybe my power sucks but I don’t have this problem with incandescent and that’s what consumers care about. I have power filtering for my desktop though and the reporting doesn’t show any issues. CFLs were much worse, I’m glad those are done with. It feels like I’m paying more for inferior quality.
I’m skeptical the efficiency makes up for the price
This might feel intuitively plausible but it really isn't. In the lifetime of a 60W incandescent bulb here (1000 hours) it would use £15 of electricity whereas an LED which produces significantly more light would cost about £2.25 over the same 1000 hours. So even if incandescent bulbs were literally free and the LED lamp costs £10, the LED lamp is a significant saving even if it didn't last longer.
If your LED lamps die much sooner than you expected, consider overheating. Unlike the incandescent which is designed to run hot because it's literally incandescent lighting, it is so incredibly hot that it glows white, LEDs don't like heat. If you have a fixture where the hot air is trapped next to the lamp it will reduce lifespan, consider different fixtures when they're next replaced, or placing lamps where heat would naturally be drawn away. Flaky power can be a problem but (presumably) there isn't much you can do about that, whereas overheating is very much an interior design choice that you can influence.
The LEDs don't just not last as long as advertised, they don't even last as long for me as the approximate incandescent average. There does seem to be sort of bathub curve factor, though: if they make it past a certain point they seem to last longer. Lower power ones also seem to last longer. Sometimes they just go out, sometimes they begin rapidly flickering.
Maybe then it is heat related as you suggested; I'd lend more credence to that too because the bulb-population I have not had a single one go bad in despite years of use now is SANSI, which have weird-looking ceramic heatsinks. It does also seem to be worse in some fixtures than others (worst: bathroom vanities.) But even that is pretty damning: LEDs should have been designed for the fixtures people actually have. (I find the habit of creating LED fixtures also pernicious - there's a lot more waste when they go bad.)
The invisible hand of the free market will not and can not sort it out by itself
You are but one small part of the invisible hand! Other people have other preferences. Efficiency per dollar isn't the end-all, be-all of the market function. Is it so critical to stop people like your parents from using incandescent bulbs, on the basis that they are less efficient?
They may even be misinformed and making decisions with bad information
We are all operating under imperfect information, as myself and other commenters have pointed out, because LED bulbs don't last as long as advertised. And worse, by banning incandescent bulbs outright, the government is preventing any further information from even being gathered.
the free market does not have good technical literacy
"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." Add technical literacy to "benevolence".
the downsides to the ban are what? Rudeness?
Well, rudeness is a euphemism for the ever-encroaching regulatory suffocation of the federal government, where people can't even freely choose what kind of lightbulb to buy. It's not like we're talking about trading fissile material.
Is it so critical to stop people like your parents from using incandescent bulbs, on the basis that they are less efficient?
When these people complain that energy is expensive and want solutions (but can't math out their value themselves), then yes.
We are all operating under imperfect information, as myself and other commenters have pointed out, because LED bulbs don't last as long as advertised.
Anecdotes are anecdotes. Here's my own anecdote: My LED bulbs last a long time. I still have the heavy, silicone-coated, heatsinked, glass-enveloped OG Cree LED bulbs that I got from Home Depot in ~2012, and they still work (the CRI sucks and always has, but they work). I've been using LEDs exclusively at home for close to a decade, and the only failure I recall on my own watch was of a fairly early wifi-connected TP-Link RGB bulb.
I use them in all kinds of applications, in enclosed fixtures and open fixtures with good airflow, indoors and out.
Furthermore, with incandescents I always felt it was important to keep spares in stock at home, and buying another package of light bulbs was a semi-regular occurrence. But with LEDs being as reliable as they are for me, I no longer feel compelled to have a stash of spare light bulbs at home.
And worse, by banning incandescent bulbs outright, the government is preventing any further information from even being gathered.
They aren't outright banned. Many types of incandescent light bulbs remain available, and you're free to burn as many dollars on them as you wish. Is there the possibility that your own misinformation may be clouding your ability to form thoughts and make decisions that are based in reality?
In either case, why a federal ban on incandescent bulbs? If LED bulbs are superior, the market will sort itself out.
Because part of the cost of the use of the incandescent bulb is externalized and therefore not subject to market pressure. Specifically, it uses (way) more energy, and the harnessing of that energy involves emission of greenhouse gases and depletion of non-renewable fuels.
I was at my parent's house and turned on a bathroom light which popped and startled me. I was very worried about some electrical fault that might be dangerous. It turns out it was a quite old incandescent light (probably the last one in their house) that had simply died. I forgot that they did that because I haven't replaced a bulb in literal years.
My understanding is that they need more air flow for good operation, and lots of ways you can socket them won't provide that, especially recessed lights. The 10 year lifespan is in more ideal circumstances, I guess.
While we should absolutely invest in grid level batteries, right now we use so much power that very large battery installations can only really hope to cover a few hours of usage for a portion of supply. It's great for helping peak solar and peak wind power production to be stored and then re released in times of demand. And definitely can help with grid resiliency.
But I'm not sure we have the battery technology to be able to distribute batteries everywhere with enough capacity to stop most power outages. That's quite a different deployment than centralized batteries on the grid. I hope we get there but the energy densities & costs probably are not be good enough - yet.
And if we do manage that, the outages that do happen will only be more severe. Are we going to have power outage drills? If not tons of people will be caught unprepared.
I wonder if there could be system where power grid tells customers when power is limited and they voluntarily reduce power based on their need. This is similar to system for limiting off-peak usage.
It does require customers to install a smart panel to control what gets power, and controller to drive it. There might be enough savings in off-peak power to get people to install it. They would also be a good idea for local batteries since those don't usually do full power.
I use mostly LED bulbs, but isn’t it true that LED bulbs all have a lot more blue in their spectrum than incandescent, even the warm ones?[1] I understand why people prefer incandescents but I really prefer my lights to be as white and bright as possible and so I’ve always bought LED bulbs.
I couldn’t find the post, but there was a more recent post (I think it reached the hacker news front page) about how just about every LED bulb has significant blue emissions.
Every "white" light has blue emissions (blue is, after all, part of white). Blue is visible, the LED blue emissions for a 2700K bulb are no more or less than the emissions from an incandescent.
Curious, why not advocate for the power company to provide battery backup at the substations? Why should the only part of our infrastructure that's battery backed be the phone system?
There is a difference of several orders of magnitude between a backup power system that is able to keep a telco central office online (one singular building) and a backup power system that is able to keep an entire substation's connected subscribers online (thousands of buildings).
Landline phones provide power to customer phones, and would need to include the power for thousands of buildings in that.
Also, no one is requiring ISPs to power customer equipment. In most cases, that is impossible to do with fiber. But the provided equipment could include a battery backup. It is now possible to make small LiFePO4 battery that could survive for hours. It is acceptable to make backup power the customer's responsibility.
The important thing is that network equipment keeps working. Which in my experience it does.
There's still several orders of magnitude of difference between powering thousands of landline phones (which, by design, use very close to zero energy while on-hook), and powering thousands of homes and businesses.
No amount of handwaving or goalpost moving is going to ever change that. It is simply fact.
Comments
Curious, why not advocate for the power company to provide battery backup at the substations? Why should the only part of our infrastructure that's battery backed be the phone system?
I'm really curious to why you view incandescent light-bulbs as being superior to LEDs. Is it solely because they are simpler? They certainly don't last as long and cost more to operate. LED bulbs have the same warm glow and are indistinguishable from incandescent. Perhaps you are using them to heat your room? If so, a resistive heater could accomplish the same job (without lighting up the area).
Batteries everywhere. Ideally every utility would have a mandate to use battery backups covering common outage times.
I've gotten in the habit of writing down the in-service date on all of my LED bulbs, because I don't think I've gotten more than two years out of any of them. Granted, still longer than incandescent bulbs, but I feel like the 10+ year lifespan I've been sold is a lie. Supposedly LED bulbs are a lot more sensitive to fluctuations in power quality (and it's not like I've been buying AliExpress bulbs, either).
In either case, why a federal ban on incandescent bulbs? If LED bulbs are superior, the market will sort itself out. If it's really a market failure (which I don't think it is in this case), put an excise tax on incandescent bulbs to tip the scale in LED's favor. To ban it outright is just rude.
Because it won't sort itself out.
An incandescent ban is the only thing that is going to keep people like my parents from using them.
My father does not understand efficiency at this point in his life.
"Why would I pay two dollars for a new LED light bulb, when I can get four of the regular ones for a dollar?"
He does not understand that the inexpensive incandescent bulb is going cost him more a lot more than two dollars by the time it burns out. I've tried explaining it to him, and he seems to understand it very well each and every time, but he's old and he forgets.
At least he has someone like me who will try (over and over again) to give him straight advice that will save him some money.
But most people aren't like me, and they are not like you. They don't hang out here on HN. They may have no understanding of how these things work, or how efficiently works. They may even be misinformed and making decisions with bad information.
So, no: The invisible hand of the free market will not and can not sort it out by itself, because the free market does not have good technical literacy.
Meanwhile, the downsides to the ban are what? Rudeness? Sorry, but I'm not Canadian enough for that to matter to me.
I find that LED bulbs have a much higher failure rate than advertised, even though I am buying a selection of what I think are quality brands. (Strangely, the only kind I have not had die are some weird Chinese brand I can only find on Amazon.) I haven’t done the math but given I’m replacing at least one bulb a month I’m skeptical the efficiency makes up for the price, especially since I prefer 100w equivalent bulbs.
Maybe my power sucks but I don’t have this problem with incandescent and that’s what consumers care about. I have power filtering for my desktop though and the reporting doesn’t show any issues. CFLs were much worse, I’m glad those are done with. It feels like I’m paying more for inferior quality.
This might feel intuitively plausible but it really isn't. In the lifetime of a 60W incandescent bulb here (1000 hours) it would use £15 of electricity whereas an LED which produces significantly more light would cost about £2.25 over the same 1000 hours. So even if incandescent bulbs were literally free and the LED lamp costs £10, the LED lamp is a significant saving even if it didn't last longer.
If your LED lamps die much sooner than you expected, consider overheating. Unlike the incandescent which is designed to run hot because it's literally incandescent lighting, it is so incredibly hot that it glows white, LEDs don't like heat. If you have a fixture where the hot air is trapped next to the lamp it will reduce lifespan, consider different fixtures when they're next replaced, or placing lamps where heat would naturally be drawn away. Flaky power can be a problem but (presumably) there isn't much you can do about that, whereas overheating is very much an interior design choice that you can influence.
The LEDs don't just not last as long as advertised, they don't even last as long for me as the approximate incandescent average. There does seem to be sort of bathub curve factor, though: if they make it past a certain point they seem to last longer. Lower power ones also seem to last longer. Sometimes they just go out, sometimes they begin rapidly flickering.
Maybe then it is heat related as you suggested; I'd lend more credence to that too because the bulb-population I have not had a single one go bad in despite years of use now is SANSI, which have weird-looking ceramic heatsinks. It does also seem to be worse in some fixtures than others (worst: bathroom vanities.) But even that is pretty damning: LEDs should have been designed for the fixtures people actually have. (I find the habit of creating LED fixtures also pernicious - there's a lot more waste when they go bad.)
You are but one small part of the invisible hand! Other people have other preferences. Efficiency per dollar isn't the end-all, be-all of the market function. Is it so critical to stop people like your parents from using incandescent bulbs, on the basis that they are less efficient?
We are all operating under imperfect information, as myself and other commenters have pointed out, because LED bulbs don't last as long as advertised. And worse, by banning incandescent bulbs outright, the government is preventing any further information from even being gathered.
"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." Add technical literacy to "benevolence".
Well, rudeness is a euphemism for the ever-encroaching regulatory suffocation of the federal government, where people can't even freely choose what kind of lightbulb to buy. It's not like we're talking about trading fissile material.
When these people complain that energy is expensive and want solutions (but can't math out their value themselves), then yes.
Anecdotes are anecdotes. Here's my own anecdote: My LED bulbs last a long time. I still have the heavy, silicone-coated, heatsinked, glass-enveloped OG Cree LED bulbs that I got from Home Depot in ~2012, and they still work (the CRI sucks and always has, but they work). I've been using LEDs exclusively at home for close to a decade, and the only failure I recall on my own watch was of a fairly early wifi-connected TP-Link RGB bulb.
I use them in all kinds of applications, in enclosed fixtures and open fixtures with good airflow, indoors and out.
Furthermore, with incandescents I always felt it was important to keep spares in stock at home, and buying another package of light bulbs was a semi-regular occurrence. But with LEDs being as reliable as they are for me, I no longer feel compelled to have a stash of spare light bulbs at home.
They aren't outright banned. Many types of incandescent light bulbs remain available, and you're free to burn as many dollars on them as you wish. Is there the possibility that your own misinformation may be clouding your ability to form thoughts and make decisions that are based in reality?
Because part of the cost of the use of the incandescent bulb is externalized and therefore not subject to market pressure. Specifically, it uses (way) more energy, and the harnessing of that energy involves emission of greenhouse gases and depletion of non-renewable fuels.
I was at my parent's house and turned on a bathroom light which popped and startled me. I was very worried about some electrical fault that might be dangerous. It turns out it was a quite old incandescent light (probably the last one in their house) that had simply died. I forgot that they did that because I haven't replaced a bulb in literal years.
My understanding is that they need more air flow for good operation, and lots of ways you can socket them won't provide that, especially recessed lights. The 10 year lifespan is in more ideal circumstances, I guess.
While we should absolutely invest in grid level batteries, right now we use so much power that very large battery installations can only really hope to cover a few hours of usage for a portion of supply. It's great for helping peak solar and peak wind power production to be stored and then re released in times of demand. And definitely can help with grid resiliency.
But I'm not sure we have the battery technology to be able to distribute batteries everywhere with enough capacity to stop most power outages. That's quite a different deployment than centralized batteries on the grid. I hope we get there but the energy densities & costs probably are not be good enough - yet.
And if we do manage that, the outages that do happen will only be more severe. Are we going to have power outage drills? If not tons of people will be caught unprepared.
I wonder if there could be system where power grid tells customers when power is limited and they voluntarily reduce power based on their need. This is similar to system for limiting off-peak usage.
It does require customers to install a smart panel to control what gets power, and controller to drive it. There might be enough savings in off-peak power to get people to install it. They would also be a good idea for local batteries since those don't usually do full power.
Kinda already exists and some implementations suck
https://www.vox.com/recode/22543678/smart-thermostat-air-con...
I use mostly LED bulbs, but isn’t it true that LED bulbs all have a lot more blue in their spectrum than incandescent, even the warm ones?[1] I understand why people prefer incandescents but I really prefer my lights to be as white and bright as possible and so I’ve always bought LED bulbs.
[1]: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/20757/led-li...
Note the date there, that's 12 years old.
The first answer
Better is here, better doesn't cost more money (anymore).
It's pretty trivial to find a warm LED [1], just look for something with a temperature of 2700K or lower and you are set.
In fact, I have a bulb with that color from about that time still operating today.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/s?k=2700k+led+light+bulbs&crid=IYEGTJ...
I couldn’t find the post, but there was a more recent post (I think it reached the hacker news front page) about how just about every LED bulb has significant blue emissions.
Every "white" light has blue emissions (blue is, after all, part of white). Blue is visible, the LED blue emissions for a 2700K bulb are no more or less than the emissions from an incandescent.
There is a difference of several orders of magnitude between a backup power system that is able to keep a telco central office online (one singular building) and a backup power system that is able to keep an entire substation's connected subscribers online (thousands of buildings).
Landline phones provide power to customer phones, and would need to include the power for thousands of buildings in that.
Also, no one is requiring ISPs to power customer equipment. In most cases, that is impossible to do with fiber. But the provided equipment could include a battery backup. It is now possible to make small LiFePO4 battery that could survive for hours. It is acceptable to make backup power the customer's responsibility.
The important thing is that network equipment keeps working. Which in my experience it does.
There's still several orders of magnitude of difference between powering thousands of landline phones (which, by design, use very close to zero energy while on-hook), and powering thousands of homes and businesses.
No amount of handwaving or goalpost moving is going to ever change that. It is simply fact.