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by marcosdumay
731 days ago
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> Undoubtedly there are some alternate materials you could make a light bulb out of that present a trade off between longevity and efficiency. You seem to be out of your depth here, while accusing people of propaganda. Anyway, no there aren't. The efficiency x longevity trade-off is inherent to the incandescent bulbs, you can't just wave all of Quantum Mechanics away. Material changes will increase or decrease the entire pair, and bulbs were already made with the best material that could possibly be used. And leds, of course are different. Anyway, nobody on the entire thread is denying that the cartel wanted to increase profits. What people are trying to say is that reality is more complex than looking at a single organization goals and deciding what happens. |
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What you're ignoring is that although a different material would still have the trade off, the optimal point on the curve for that material could be in a different place. Material A lasts for 1000 hours at a given amount of light/watt, Material B only lasts for 500 hours at that amount of light/watt, but lasts for 3000 hours at only 15% less light/watt, which some people might want. As an example, there are some applications where the bulb is repeatedly being turned on for only short periods of time, which would tend to shorten lifespan from thermal stress but also implies that power efficiency is less important because the bulb isn't continuously on.
The optimal trade off would also be different for different people. If your light bulb is hard to reach, saving two bucks worth of electricity over its lifetime may not be worth having to drag out a ladder or disassemble a piece of equipment to change it more often. If you have electric heat in a cold climate, a bulb that generates a higher ratio of heat to light isn't costing you anything because you were only going to use a different kind of electric heater regardless. But the cartel took those peoples' options away, claiming that the trade off could only be made one way.
And even for a given material, the failure mode is that enough of the material evaporates for it to lose structural strength and snap. Implying that you could use more of the same material with the same efficiency but improve structural strength.
> And leds, of course are different.
They don't operate in a universe with different physical laws, proving that incumbent incandescent bulbs are nowhere near the limits physics imposes on efficiency.
You don't have to ban longer lifetimes unless you're afraid someone will find a way to do better.