MIT Scientists develop Incandescent Bulb More Efficient than LEDs

MIT Researchers have figured out a way to recycle light energy in an incandescent bulb to make it more efficient than an LED, but maintain the more pleasant and healthier light of an Incandescent Bulb.

Why is this interesting? About a decade ago, governments around the world developed a fetish for banning incandescents (through an efficiency rule) and replacing them with expensive LED technology and florescent bulbs. It happened in Europe first but eventually came to the United States. The last American factory to produce them closed in 2010, and they are ever harder to find in even the big-box hardware stores. (As with all such bans, there are exceptions for elites who desire specialty bulbs.)

The change has been seriously annoying for many consumers. It has even given rise to hoarding and gray markets (in Germany, such bulbs were repackaged as “heat balls”). It has produced something of a political backlash, too.

As the MIT innovation in lighting suggests, there are possibilities yet undiscovered that regulators have not thought of. If you write detailed regulations about existing technologies, you are forestalling the possibilities that scientists and entrepreneurs will discover new ways of doing things in the future.
A vast regulatory apparatus on cell phone technology in 1990 could never have imagined something like a modern cellphone. Regulations on digital commerce in 2000 might have stopped the rise of peer-to-peer services like Uber. Indeed, one of the reasons that the digital world is so innovative is precisely because the regulators haven’t yet caught up with the pace of innovation.

Regulations on technology freeze the status quo in place and make it permanent. How, for example, will regulations respond to the news that a new and improved form of incandescent bulb is possible? Early tests show it to be more efficient than the replacements which the regulations favor. Will there be a new vote, a rewrite of the law, a governing body that evaluates new lightbulbs, the same way we approach prescription drugs? None of this can possibly match the efficiency of a market process of trial and error, of experimentation, rejection, and adoption.

In government, a ban is a ban, something to be enforced, not tweaked according to new discoveries and approaches.

I'm reminded of the FTC undermining the Blockbuster purchase of Hollywood Video over potential Anti-Trust violations.

I'm thinking that maybe the regulations caused the MIT folks to research and develop the new technology.

Steve said:

I'm thinking that maybe the regulations caused the MIT folks to research and develop the new technology.

Wikipedia seems to agree.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-out_of_incandescent_light_bulbs

Sometimes, Governmental intervention in the market results in a superior product.  I.e. safety and fuel efficiency in automobiles.

In the very first link of your quoted portion:

Governments around the world have passed measures to phase out incandescent light bulbsfor general lighting in favor of more energy-efficient lighting alternatives. Phase-out regulations effectively ban the manufacture, importation or sale of incandescent light bulbs for general lighting. The regulations would allow sale of future versions of incandescent bulbs if they are sufficiently energy efficient. (my emphasis)

So yeah, the very sources you are quoting directly refute your point - as the posters before me pointed out.

Now, if you want to argue that, as a general principle, it would have been better to set a regulation that any lightbulbs must meet a certain level of efficiency, rather than specifically calling out incandescents, I'd agree. In this particular case it looks like the end result is the same (more efficient incandescent bulbs - win for for everyone), but generally I think regulations are more effective when they set parameters and let the market figure out how to meet them rather than getting too specific.

Oh, Terp.

Libertarians are funny.

PVW said:

In the very first link of your quoted portion:

Governments around the world have passed measures to phase out incandescent light bulbsfor general lighting in favor of more energy-efficient lighting alternatives. Phase-out regulations effectively ban the manufacture, importation or sale of incandescent light bulbs for general lighting. The regulations would allow sale of future versions of incandescent bulbs if they are sufficiently energy efficient. (my emphasis)

So yeah, the very sources you are quoting directly refute your point - as the posters before me pointed out.

Now, if you want to argue that, as a general principle, it would have been better to set a regulation that any lightbulbs must meet a certain level of efficiency, rather than specifically calling out incandescents, I'd agree. In this particular case it looks like the end result is the same (more efficient incandescent bulbs - win for for everyone), but generally I think regulations are more effective when they set parameters and let the market figure out how to meet them rather than getting too specific.

And it turns out if I'd kept on reading the wikipedia article, in the US the regulations are actually what I said I preferred - based on efficiency, not directly banning incandescents.

Here's the MIT press release:

http://news.mit.edu/2016/nanophotonic-incandescent-light-bulbs-0111

Oh, what's this at the end?

The work was supported by the Army Research Office through the MIT Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies, and the S3TEC Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy.

checkmate.

Once again, government delivers what the private sector could not.

That feeling when you realize that you read terp's sources more thoroughly than he does.

Innovation occurs best with some constraints.  For example, I may be interested in trimming my budget at work, but if I am challenged by my boss to manage my budget down by 20% by end of February, I start thinking harder and more creatively within a narrower period of time.  So this is not surprising, that the legislation accelerated innovation on incandescent bulbs.  Plus, people like them more.  Consumers always win. 

LED bulbs have more headroom to become more efficient as well- every LED bulb has a heatsink to manage the energy wasted in an AC/DC conversion. As more lighting systems go to low-voltage DC (with maybe 1 or 2 'master transformers' in the home), there will be less overall wastage in LED home lighting systems (many commercial installations are moving in this direction already).

Sounds like a win-win-win for everyone. Manufacturers and consumers and researchers.

Good job Big Government!

Yeah, but taxes.

do these new incandescent bulbs also last for 20 years?  because if they don't, I'm going with LEDs in any fixture that requires a ladder to change.

Once LEDs replicate incandescent light, I'll switch.  Until then they look like lab lights--even the ones that purportedly mimic the warm light from incandescents.  Happy to drop a few bucks a year for the privilege.

I can perceive the difference between CF and incandescent (I think almost everyone can).  But I honestly don't see a difference between a warm LED and incandescent. The shade covering a bulb makes a big difference too.

I don't know if it's just the fact that we're dealing with a post-CFL reality, but I don't have any problems with the light from LED bulbs. It's maybe not quite the warmth of incandescent, but incandescent tends to be a tad yellow anyway.

Most of our lighting in our home is LED now, and we're quite happy with it.

That mock-up from MIT doesn't look anything like a regular light bulb, so I don't think it would make the change-resistant folk any happier.

is @terp dead?  Drive bys are not his thing.

How many lightbulbs will it take to replace him? 

Does this spell doom for the Easy Bake Oven?

Oh, I'm sure he'll be back, bye and bye. I imagine that like everyone else, he has an actual life outside of MOL.

So clearly the libertarian critique here is ridiculous, but I think one legitimate critique is to note how much of our national R&D goes through the military. I mean, if you stood in front of Congress and said "we'd like some money to fund research into energy-efficient incandescent bulbs," that'd get shut down faster than a supreme court nominee in an election year. Spend the exact same money doing the exact same thing, but do it through the military budget, and it's a different story. I wonder what the split in funding here was between Department of Energy and Army Research Office.

It makes me kind of sad what that says about our national priorities. I wish we could be down with just basic spending on science and research, without having to justify it by saying that it might be useful in blowing people up.

mrincredible said:

Does this spell doom for the Easy Bake Oven?

Sadly, light bulbs that don't put out enough heat to bake a cake do, indeed, spell doom for that particular toy.  Parents may be forced to go back to the primitive method of spending time with their children, baking cakes in a regular oven.

Fortunately, some company probably has an "Easy Bake Oven" app for the iPhones or iPads that I even see toddlers holding these days, so that virtual cakes can be made (probably with decorations that rival the "Cake Boss").

Steve said:

is @terp dead?  Drive bys are not his thing.

I think it retroactively became a drive-by, once people read the article and realized it was uninformed nonsense.

nohero said:

Steve said:

is @terp dead?  Drive bys are not his thing.

I think it retroactively became a drive-by, once people read the article and realized it was uninformed nonsense.

it was the law of unintended consequences

nohero said:

mrincredible said:

Does this spell doom for the Easy Bake Oven?

Sadly, light bulbs that don't put out enough heat to bake a cake do, indeed, spell doom for that particular toy.  Parents may be forced to go back to the primitive method of spending time with their children, baking cakes in a regular oven.

Fortunately, some company probably has an "Easy Bake Oven" app for the iPhones or iPads that I even see toddlers holding these days, so that virtual cakes can be made (probably with decorations that rival the "Cake Boss").

Whoa.  Some serious hating on the Easy Bake Oven.  Do you want to talk about your feelings about this classic toy?   

mrincredible said:

nohero said:

mrincredible said:

Does this spell doom for the Easy Bake Oven?

Sadly, light bulbs that don't put out enough heat to bake a cake do, indeed, spell doom for that particular toy.  Parents may be forced to go back to the primitive method of spending time with their children, baking cakes in a regular oven.

Fortunately, some company probably has an "Easy Bake Oven" app for the iPhones or iPads that I even see toddlers holding these days, so that virtual cakes can be made (probably with decorations that rival the "Cake Boss").

Whoa.  Some serious hating on the Easy Bake Oven.  Do you want to talk about your feelings about this classic toy?  " src="/res/static/common/plugins/redactor/emoticons/1.0/images/7.gif" unselectable="on"> 

Not hate, sorry if it came out that way.  It was more a comment on what I see some parents doing - putting an iPhone in their little kids' hands instead of talking to them, or letting them see the real world.  Not all parents, mind you, I'm not stereotyping or being a grouchy older guy here.    

We may be in the running for ultimate thread drift here.

mrincredible said:

We may be in the running for ultimate thread drift here.

Nah, I've seen worse.

Besides, there's nothing more to talk about on the light-bulb front, since the original post was self-debunking once everyone else read the article.