LinkedIn offers a new group called Illuminating Engineering Society of North America. Howard Brandston and Jim Benya have a respectful difference of opinion.
The following is a conversation thread on Linked in between several people. Because so many people were in the thread, it is too hard to follow, therefore, we have only included the comments by Howard Brandston and Jim Benya. While the thread is not complete for the sake of brefity, we feel that these comments capture the important aspects of the conversation.
Howard Brandston • Thank you Andra – The IES is a technical and educational society. Research has become a fundamental part of education in recent times. It is time for the IES to step up to the plate – how we deal with this new act of 2007 will determine the future of lighting design.
Who is expert in this field if not some of our members. And many of these may not be traditional IES researchers.
Howard
James Benya • I side with Francis with one caveat: if we generated electricity renewably and with low carbon and no atmospheric mercury, then the incandescent lamp could re-emerge as a contender. Too bad that we refuse to wean ourselves from the oil/coal mother.
Howard Brandston • The real debate is wether or not we should limit the uses of CFL and LED technology until all the questions of the potential hazards they carry with them are sorted out.
Howard
Howard Brandston • the free market is not involved here – the essential banning the
incandescent lamp is the best marketing strategy conceivable to boost sales
of a product many people would rather not use.
Howard
James Benya • I guess you missed my point so let me be clear. Environmental mercury from coal burning power plants, which produce 50% of US electricity and over 80% of Chinese, is my biggest environmental concern. It goes into the water you drink-especially in upstate New York where the output of Detroit and Cleveland and Chicago and Pittsburgh makes eating the fish from the waters unsafe and drinking the water at least a bit of a risk. Go to Architecture 2030 and look at our options – by 2050, either 50% more power plants or major conservation. Up to us, now, immediately. I hate CFL’s and I seek lighting designs with LEDs and low power halogens to achieve a quality result. PS if you can actually see the difference between a Xicato LED and an MR16 in a double blind test, reliably, you’ve got the color vision of Superman. In fact, if you can tell the operational difference when dimming, you’re detecting the lack of color temperature shift, not quality.
In summary, this debate is political and environmental – your position is appreciated but I don’t agree under the circumstances.
Sorry Jim,
The ban of the Incandescent lamp will do nothing to improve our pollution
or save energy. Household use of tungsten lamps constitutes 3.6 % of our
energy use. There are millions of people out there with Lupus and other
auto-immune diseases that may be negatively impacted by the CFLs. Aside
from that they don’t dim well – as they dim their SPDs deteriorate.
Goodbye decent dinner lighting. And there is a potential for fires with
misapplication of these lamps in some fixtures.
There are too many unknowns that have not been thought out – lift the
ban. We are not going to save enough.
Remember, I have always said, “There are no bad products – just bad
applications. This law presents the greatest potential for bad
applications in many households across this country.
Howard