Sustainable?

Why is it that we need the Federal government to outlaw a lamp (via EISA) in order to get the lighting world to move to that technology?

Pulse-start has been common for at least a decade. Venture has produced a 320W lamp for about that long. This lamp has the same maintained lumens as a 400W probe-start and it is 368 ballast Watts and not the 458W of the probe-start ballast. That is 20% less energy and 20% less power bill.These things do operate for 12 hours per day on average over the year.

Shouldn't it be clear that pulse-start should be used de facto? Shouldn't we as an industry have driven the probe-start lamp out of existence? Yes on two counts. The $64 question is why did this not happen with logic instead of legislation?

Answer? The incorrect assumption that lowest installed cost is the most important. Sure it is important, but only if "sustainable" is something you say and not that you do. Do you buy anything that is recyclable or recycled? What is your payback on that? Before you spend a lot of time thinking about it, it is exactly zero. In fact, you probably pay more for recycled content anything.

If you go with the 320W lamp, you save 400 kWh a year. Sure that is $20-30, but there is a payback.

Now, what if you weren't blessed with $0.07/kWh in Western NC? ... I'll get to that in the next blog.