algoritham
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Aug 10, 2026 9:29 AM
algoritham
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CloseupCaptionReaction
2017? This image is 9 years too late. Even though consumption went down, prices for energy somehow went up up up
weewaawoowoo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
br0da
While energy consumption declines, energy producers raise their prices to maintain their revenue.
OperatorWay
I came here to say this too. We're paying more now for using less energy than before.
TheEvenPrez
Had to be silent. Every time someone proposes an environmental response conservatives make it their weekly 2 minutes of hate.
swedeonamoose
First gen flat screens were fun, power hungry but not as bad as a massive fat tv, and did extra work as a heater.
SnarfyMcSnarferson
And if your TV doesn't, your gaming console will work as a space heater. Seriously cant use my PS5 during the AC months
marthafarquar
I still have my 2010 42" Panasonic Viera in the guest room. It reaches 40°C to 50°C / 104°F to 122°F and I had to put it by the window as it heats up the room too much.
skunkworkz
God those things were beautiful. Our Viera was only 720, so I gave it to one of our kids a few years ago.
They were heavy, and hot, but the picture!
nobodyspecial995
Wish electrical codes could keep up. Ran a new circuit, had to keep it under "12 devices", even though devices are radically lower usage per device.
ByThePowerOfSCIENCE
there are devices like hair blowers that still pull a lot of power and the wiring has to be able to carry it
rmx256
Someone telling you that it has something to do with the number of devices was fucking with you. It has to deal with the maximum amount of electrons that can flow through a conductor, expressed in amps, versus the capacity of that conductor. You can have 1800 one watt loads on the average household branch circuit, 18 one hundred watt loads or any combination that doesn't exceed the ampacity of the conductor.
nobodyspecial995
"Under the Canadian Electrical Code (enforced in Saskatchewan via Technical Safety Authority of Saskatchewan), standard 2-wire general-purpose branch circuits are limited to a maximum of 12 outlets/devices on a 15-amp circuit."
trigonman3
What's the reason you didn't specify your location in your first post, while posting locale-specific information on a website used by the entire world?
TacoPoweredHelicopter
Pretty sure everyone could deduce that they were talking about their own local code... Only an idiot would have assumed they were talking about the entire world's electrical codes lumped together.
rmx256
Interesting. I have always interpreted NEC as not having a maximum number of general purpose receptacles on a single branch circuit so long as the ocpd was sized for the conductors correctly.
Mistruths
That 28 watt fan ain't moving near as much air as that 150 watt fan, though.
poppster
Fan manufacturers are moving toward DC motors in fans that create the same airflow with less energy. It's not that fans were de-powered.
Mistruths
I mean, fans were absolutely de-powered. Once air conditioning was cheap enough, ceiling fans were more relegated to an ornament rather than used as actual cooling in several ways, and a smaller, fewer-blade, lower-speed ceiling fan (which did not move nearly as much air) was a great way to run a decorative fan cheaply but still get the "authentic" ceiling fan look. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KWdCqpXB7A
Thorketil
VerySunBurned
Individual consumption is not the problem.
Munchman347
When you use less of something provided by a monopoly, they raise the price to keep their profits up. Is it any wonder that the fat pedo grifter is paying our tax dollars to stop cheaper solar and wind from competing with his fossil fuel 'donors'?...
Elvenbane
Now do video cards
zonedymo24
yeah, technically they are also more efficient but at the same time they keep consuming more power, I would love it if a company would just take a stand and say, max the top of the line gpu will use is 300 watt, work within those confines.
possumEnjoyer
I saw BTU/W and had a stroke. It’s:
Energy divided by (energy per second). And don’t get me started on units/year whatever the hell that even means. I also do not care if it’s an industry standard, it’s breathtaking bad and overcomplicated
cousteau
BTU means "BTU per hour", but we're somehow supposed to figure out that the "per hour" part is implicitly there. And yeah it's absolute bullshit. And don't get me started on calories vs Calories.
possumEnjoyer
I’m dead, *unread, unread, unread*
SixSixxtySix
The single-family American tract home in 1950 was at or just under 1,000 ft total and it tended to be for inhabited by families of 2 adults and 2-3 kids. By 1980, the footprint had grown to 1,700 sq ft, by 1993 2,000 sq ft, by 2017 it peaked at 2,400 sq ft for a family of 2 adult and 1-2 children. Appliances and homes are massively more efficient than they used to be but we're now often living in 3x the interior space looking at the internet which on its own consumes enormous amounts of energy.
stonqledisponible2000
Now compare the energy use of datacenters in the 90s and now.
faithydiesalot
you'd have to compare the number of connected devices too, and the amount of work that they require from the servers
btw, stop saying "datacenters" if you mean AI-dedicated ones; everything you do on the Internet uses one or several data centers
stonqledisponible2000
I know what a datacenter is, that's my job as a computer engineer (or "devops" like young people say) for 25+ years.
faithydiesalot
then you know you're proposing a comparison between things so different that it's moot - like a bicycle with a basket and a 100-car train
and for that matter, since 1992 global energy usage has increased by about 70% and the world population has grown by about 50% - so we _are_ consuming a bit more energy per capita, but it's hardly attributable to data centers and we're getting a LOT more out of those
GrandmasterSpank
In the EU, almost nobody flew to distance vacations. Now people go on vacation or take a weekend almost every 2 weeks. Colleagues of mine work in Germany and fly to Spain every weekend because they work 4 days a week. So the 4 days the have a very small apprtement in Germany, but then for the weekend they fly to their house in Spain because it's cheaper over there and the ticket pays for itself. And many colleagues under 30 just fly to London for a day and then fly back.
Grandolddrummer
Cool. When do you get to the data center part?
GrandmasterSpank
It's mostly coorporations who use datacenters. The picture shows how consumers are using less and less energy. Which is great. But consumers immediately offset the gains by flying around every month or having 3 cars. I't great that a lightbulb now uses 6 watts instead of 60, so consumption went down 90%, but consumers anno 2026 use around 3x as much energy as we did 40 years ago.
fierofool
Well maybe if not every person in a household didn't have to have a job in order to afford to live we wouldn't need three cars per household..
GrandmasterSpank
I agree. But to me, it's as if we're all patting ourselves on our backs about how good we are, how much we're doing to save the environment, how much progress we have made.... but objectively speaking we're consuming more than ever and polluting more than ever. I dont like the "look how far we have come" vibe of OP because we have not come far. We're doing worse than ever.
Grandolddrummer
Ah, I see the connection now.
GrandmasterSpank
Really?
ThinkingAG
It would be comical how much cheaper and energy efficient computers have gotten. It is just that modern data centers do so much more work.
dohcohv
I remember those early dual core CPUs eating power, I had a 1000w power supply, for that, the disk drives, and the powerful video cards to run like F.E.A.R. Now I have a much more powerful 4 core that uses a third of the power, and a video card that takes less power. The computer runs much cooler, and the power supply is much more efficient.
Evenmoreuselessname
I replaced my old FX series quad (2013?) with a TDP of 95w and a Geforce GT260 (tdp 185w) with a Ryzen 2400g (tdp 65w) with integrated graphics in 2018(?) and doubled cpu performance and nearly tripled GPU performance for 23% of the electricity usage.
Detoc
When I started working in a datacenter in the late 80s, replacing a disk drive was a 2-man job because they were so bulky/hefty.
wabitgirl
And yet, somehow, we're carbon positive every single year. Consumer products are exponentially better than they were, and our environmental catastrophe keeps getting worse. We recycle, we use low energy, we reduce our waste, we turn off our lights when we're not using them, we walk/bike/bus over driving when possible; none of it matters, in the fucking slightest.
Between planned obsolescence and rampant corporate pollution, our efforts are irrelevant, and will be till the oligarchs are dead.
zonedymo24
We also use more and more devices that all need power and its not available for way more people.
fierofool
Yeah well the problem is US consumers keep using less and less and less energy and corporations use more and more and more and they keep raising the prices on normal people anyway.
Sageypie
This. My energy bulls have been steady at about $120 a month for the last few years. My most recent bill has jumped to $200 following the announcement of a new data center in my region, that needs an upgrade to our power grid to be able to facilitate it. Only change at all. And we're paying for it all.
katzohki
Yeah show us the graph for data centers
nik282000
Using less is propaganda by big little to sell more less.
HandoB4Javert
theskepticinme
fierofool
Until energy production in the United States stops being for profit the problem will never get solved. Electricity which is an essential necessity in today's society should not be for profit.
countbassy
COMMUNISM!/s
fierofool
https://media2.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPWE1NzM3M2U1ZjluZzBudGx1YTVjcnR4NGtmbmhzdnFodXNtZGpzaDBncm1tNjFuNCZlcD12MV9naWZzX3NlYXJjaCZjdD1n/thUM5CWFPNoLS/200w.webp
WatcherNotCreeper
My favorite was when they introduced the "delivery" fee so they retro-charge us for installing the wiring in the town.
NaughtButOne
On an individual level, people use less, but as populations grow and sprawl gets worse and worse, 'people' end up using more and more energy. Energy corporations are just selling a product and it's the consumers who are using it. Induced demand. The same reason "just one more lane bro" never works, because if it's available, people will use it until it's saturated.
gablestout
Consumers are actually using more. 38% of electricity is consumed in residential serttings. They problem is that despite increased efficiency in lights, refrigeration, heating, insulation, etc etc, the number of devices in the avg U.S. household has skyrocketed. In the mid 1980s, the average U.S. household used ~27kWh/day. Today, the average is 29kWh/day.
FinancialRavioli
Cool. Pretty good, if you ask me, that it's only increased that much in 40 years. Meanwhile: https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/kevin-o-learys-9-gw-utah-data-center-campus-approved
Wasnbo
Considering how many things we have plugged in compared to back then, yeah, it's kinda great. Computers and adjacent tech plugged in and always on, mobile devices charging on and off all day and night, home HVAC systems battling climate change...
FiftyShadesOfMascarpone
Ackchyually, residential energy use has yet to decline too. It steadily increased until the '90s and remained more or less the same since then, because all savings by more efficient devices were offset by ever more devices and gadgets, Alexas and home security cameras, and "smart" appliances with built-in computers and touchscreens and a 24/7 internet connection. Also, more homes have AC nowadays, which is needed earlier every year and has to work harder as global temperatures rise.
AeonexAshaxei
Remember, this is the smaller figure we're talking about here folks. Corporations are still the grand majority polluter and energy user.
To put this context into worse light. Corporate greed is keeping outdated and energy consumption heavy equipment in use because it is "too expensive" to repair or replace.
And since these same corporations are also gutting u.s. infrastructure and shipping manufacturing overseas to other less energy efficient countries... WHILE suppressing renewables... Yeah.
VaginaPedant
Yeah. I remember talk about "energy vampires" like wall-wart AC adapters wasting electricity when you though everything was off. Now a dark room is a constellation of LED status lights.
Z0op
On bright side, most of those adapters are now smart enough to not draw (significant) power when not in use.
Exact same pattern as above, power saved one side and then overly wasted on the other
gablestout
Bear in mind, the population is also increased over 50% since 1980.
BarryTheCyborg
Is that total residential use or per person?
FiftyShadesOfMascarpone
Total residential use. So yeah, the population increase also factors into this.
BarryTheCyborg
So residential use has stayed steady, yet population has gone up, so per person use would go down, yet people's bills are at all time highs. None of that has anything to do with ACs or smart devices.
FiftyShadesOfMascarpone
Energy use of common household items has been reduced by ~85%. Yet the population has only increased by 38% since 1990. That still leaves a lot to account for. One factor is definitely AC coverage, which has grown from less than 70% in the early '90s to over 90% nationally. AC usage per household has also increased (from 1,980 kWh for cooling in 2009 to 2,318 kWh in 2020). And the average household has 15-18 more electronic devices compared to 1990, many of which have a 24/7 internet connection.
Higure
For all the others I can imagine real efficiency gains. LED instead of incandescent, LED instead of CRT, better insulation and coolant for the fridge and the AC. But for the ceiling fan, after watching Technology Connections https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KWdCqpXB7A, I just have to ask: does the new fan actually move enough air? We had good electric engines in the 80's as well, have they really improved THAT much? Also, this graphic seems to be 9 years old.
Rhythmaster
I tried to replace my incandescent ceiling lights with LED ones. It's awful, I can't stand it. Way too harsh, the dimmer doesn't work properly, it made my room actively unpleasant to be in. Switched back to incandescent. I don't know how other people can handle that shit, I sure can't.
Higure
LED lights need dedicated dimmers. And you know they have a color temperature rating on the box, right? For indoor lighting the most common seems to be 2700 K, but if you found something closer to broad daylight and its 5000 K, then I can understand why it felt wrong.
katzohki
Electric motors didn't change much since the 80s (even earlier maybe?) until recently. Brushless DC motors, neodymium magnets, variable frequency drive and being able to run slower for less demand instead of start/stop are pretty big efficiency improvements. Even more recently we are getting some actual new motor design technology.
jamiedBreaker
2017 wasn't nine years ag-.... oh.
dohcohv
For home use, electric motors have gotten a little more efficient. For battery powered uses, electric motors have gotten way better because of brushless DC motors which are possible with computers creating the waveform.
Noahbalboa82
I googled the fan, and it says the modern DC fans only consume 15-30 watts, ac fans 60-90. I'm not sure if the DC fans apply to house fans, but still, more efficient overall. Does that contribute to the question at all?
cousteau
I'm currently under a "modern" ceiling fan set to max and can tell you this doesn't blow shit.
Columbus43219
Do you have it moving the right direction?
cousteau
Yes but I had to check at first because I could barely tell.
peterchen
Better bearings should carry the bulk, lighter materials, and some efficiency increases inelectric motors.
rmx256
The "coolant" in the fridges isn't any better. The condenser and evaporator coils are better designed and this lets the compressor - the part that actually uses electricity - be smaller and more efficient. Insulation and door gaskets are better too.
Electric motor technology has always had the capacity to be this efficient but there wasn't the need for it to be back in the day. Government standards and whatnot have done wonders to increase efficiency, and tbh, reliability.
InablueMule
Heat pump techonology and Frequency Drive motors have helped efficiency.
cousteau
Well, it's better in that it doesn't use CFC, but that's a different story.
ByThePowerOfSCIENCE
> Electric motor technology has always had the capacity to be this efficient
Not _always_. These higher efficiencies are for brushless DC motors which need a bit of electronics to sync the field to the rotor so it leads by a constant angle. Traditional designs use AC induction motors (slipping field) where the field always rotates at a multiple of 60Hz.
rmx256
I am including things like VFDs and ECM motors in this. These technologies have existed for some time and especially VFDs can be used on extremely high horsepower motors. In my personal experience with exhaust fans: two running at 60hz, one through a vfd and the other a contactor, the VFD driven fan actually uses less current wile delivering similar airflow, all other things being equal. There have been other methods, but brushless DC is very efficient. It cold have been done earlier imo however
wabitgirl
But even within the realm of LEDs, we're still being sold a lie. LEDs can last for a century. Why do our TVs burn out, warp, or simply stop working after 5 years? Why do our lightbulbs only last for 10, not 30? We could make INCANDESCENTS that lasted 40 years nearly a century ago, and chose not to. They're stringing us on, and absolutely manufacturing in intentional, generally irreparable failure points.
Columbus43219
The makers of led lights are using a 10w bulb and running it at 15w to make it brighter. They are also not handling the heat very well. I have a garage light that is about 20 years old at this point. I think I paid 10 bucks for it back in the day.
dohcohv
Efficiency is why incandescents don't last 40 years. Make the filament thick and it will last a long time. However, it will be dim and still eat the same amount of power, or if you need it to stay as bright you need 3-5x the power.
Turns out it's cheaper to have a more efficient light bulb that lasts a few years.
Cheap LEDs don't last, mostly because the board overheats, more expensive fixtures with heat sinks last much, much longer.
cousteau
FWIW, the incandescent thing is a matter of color efficiency, basically. A thicker and longer filament may output the same power but won't heat up as much, resulting in a red-ish hue (plus lots of infrared) rather than a yellow/white one. So the radiated energy is the same, but the fraction of it that is visible light is much less, and the color of that visible light is less efficient in terms of lumens per watt.
PedroBenecol
Yeah, but the new ones don't last shit and all of this "saving electricity" -stuff has suddenly given in to data centers.
RenaissanceFaireMan
The less electricity you use, the more they charge.
Rijacki
How else are they supposed to get their shareholder profits? /s
weidermeijer
My 6 cylinder Honda gets 23 mpg. In this day and age, that should be in the 30s.
gablestout
I mean, a 2026 Honda Accord gets a combined city/hwy mileage of 32mpg, which is actually below the average for a gasoline powered sedan/wagon in the U.S. (Source: EPA 2025 https://www.epa.gov/automotive-trends/explore-automotive-trends-data)
Syko73
Then why hasnt my electric bill gone down?
dohcohv
Mine did, until I bought an EV. I'll take $30 in electricity over $200 in gas each month though.
Nafira
Because you keep adding devices AND these numbers are completely wrong
gablestout
Because homes have more electronic devices today than in the 1980s. The average U.S. home uses slightly more electricity per day than in the 80s because of the number of devices found in today's homes.
pikopikopikopikopiko
Agree with the message, hate the medium (look at the right fan)
marsilies
We basically hit a plateau in electricity usage for a few years, as increased usage was offset by efficiency improvements. AI datacenters are now blowing this all up.
TacoPoweredHelicopter
Right wing (oil influenced) politicians were telling us that grid could not handle electric cars.... But they seem to think the grid can handle massive data centers.
marsilies
Well, they're allowing for data centers to build their own super-polluting generators on-site, so no grid upgrades needed!
marsilies
I guess I forgot the /s tag? Didn't think people would take "super-polluting" as me endorsing it.
TacoPoweredHelicopter
Except all the ones there are on the grid.
marsilies
Well, sure, those, but if you don't count those, then there isn't a problem! /s
autotelic
Now do how long they work for.
ChrisTravel
The problem is that if it consumes less energy, we use more of it, sadly. Similar to the introduction of coal to replace wood during the industrial revolution, which is called Jevons paradox…
rmx256
100%. I remember being yelled at all the time back in the day to turn off lights and other things in rooms that I wasn't in, don't let the sink run etc. This attitude works great for me since I live off grid now. But I visit friends and their whole homes are totally lit up all the time it seems with TVs on in rooms that they aren't in. They run water in their sinks for like ten minutes while cleaning up after dinner, and 99% of that water just goes down the drain. SMH.
Skevoid
Yet consumer vehicles aren't as fuel efficient as they were in the 80s because the average car is approximately 50% heavier.
Turkleturts
*American vehicles.
The civilised world is producing far more efficient vehicles. A standard 2L engine now produces more power and is ~25% more efficient than one from about 20 years ago. Manufacturers are also doing wonderful things with turbos to make smaller, more efficient engines. That's not including all the hybrids.
thebonesofmyancestors
No to mention that massive number of truck sales, when trucks have been increased 80-100% in size and weight from back in the day.
dav1deser
24W for a modern TV seems too little. Might be true for a small panel, around the 20". But a 55" or more consume easily more than 100W. Per inch the power consumption of a TV has surely improved though.
Nafira
No way it's 24W, most recent TV whatever the size are 100W+ and when using HDR, it's 200W+
TripleDane
Size difference
WickedSludge
I just checked my 55" LG. The rating on the TV says 124w. It pulls 110w from the wall while streaming content with the panel at full brightness and only 24w with the panel at minimum (where it usually lives). Science!
TripleDane
kill-a-watt's (or the off brands) are fun little thing to play with.
WickedSludge
That is indeed the meter I used! It's so handy...
9z2nf02h
Depends on the context, right? If this post reads to you like "hey, we can make progress against our climate goals by making things more efficient" then what actually matters is the average household watt consumption of TVs. TVs are all a lot bigger now. Since we use them more now, and we have more of them, might be additionally more challenging to compare. But individually, massively more efficient. Watts per inch is only a technical curiosity.
TheDildoOfConsequences
BULLSHIT ALERT. Even if the diagram's true in parts, its creator was an incompetent who had no idea what they were talking about, so you can't trust any of it. What the f*** is a "BTU/W" anyway? (To answer my own question, it's about 1055 seconds. You see? It's nonsense. Bullshit.) The only thing you can take away from this is "modern devices are more efficient", which we already knew.
cousteau
For some reason, AC units seem to be universally rated in "BTUs" or "frigories" (they leave out the "per hour" part; you're somehow supposed to assume that it's there). This seems to be standard, meaning that it's not just the OOP who is an idiot, but every single AC manufacturer too.
TheDildoOfConsequences
Ooof. I suppose that's no weirder than using seconds as a unit for specific impulse. Thank you for leaving me with a hair-thin line of psychological self-defence in which I can semi-plausibly claim not to be an idiot.
cousteau
Tbf the idiots were the ones who randomly decided to drop the "per hour" part, not you for not guessing that and being right by physics standards.
Contraserrene
BTU/W means British Thermal Units per Watt, and is a measure of efficiency. It's a real term. It means that the newer air conditioner uses power seven times as efficiently as the older one.
cousteau
But watts measure power and BTUs are units of energy, not power. It should be BTU/h/W, but they always leave the "per hour" part out for some reason.
TheDildoOfConsequences
Yes. And a BTU is a unit of energy, whereas a watt is an unit of power i.e. energy over time, so a BTU/W is a unit of time. Specifically, about 1055 seconds. But @cousteau (thanks!) has explained that that's just how it's done, even though it makes no sense, so... meh, I can probably get off my little purist soapbox now. :)
cousteau
Ngl, it angers me too. Like saying "you're going 10 miles above the speed limit".
Contraserrene
I'm right there with you; it doesn't make perfect sense grammatically, but it's ingrained in the lexicon now and we cannot stop it.
zufallszahlen
If only they would make the new stuff efficient AND durable so you don't have to keep replacing it, but that's just crazy talk.
Aranon1183
Also, it's a neat feature for fridges to suggest what you can cook with what food you have, and to let you see inside without opening the door, but fridges DO NOT need fucking Wifi!
KingKrabvoldIV
lol survivorship bias is taking hold. Stuff like lightbulbs last far longer as do cars. You never hear about the old stuff that broke early because it never survived.
TripleDane
led light bulbs last a lot longer than the old fashioned light bulbs.
Old fridges died to but you see the surviving ones. it called survivor bias.
We also used stuff light washing machines and dries more often now than 50 years ago.
TripleDane
Norway has an interesting study on it
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jiec.13608
somebackup
lots of stuff lasts an eternity. the problem is people keep buying smasung.
Kludgeo
Trooth! They should've kept to phones, monitors, and memory.
AbsolutelyNotBacon
The average washing machine in the 60s cost over (inflation adjusted) $2000 and wasn't even all that more durable than modern stuff. It's just survivorship bias.
WeaponizedJerk
Majority of the old stuff wasn't durable either, don't get fooled by survivorship bias.
TacoPoweredHelicopter
They do you just refuse to pay for it.
HearMeFart
I've had some led strips from IKEA in a cupboard lit 24/7 for over ten years now. I've also had 6 regular, no-name brand bulbs lit 24/7 for the same amount of time and had to replace one last year. I'd say that's pretty good.
AyatollahBahloni
somebackup
can probs repair that for 100-150 yourself.
ByThePowerOfSCIENCE
as an EE, my biggest gripe is custom electronic boards; each part # is common to very few models, you even have to look at minor differences, and cost way more than they should
some level of standardization is needed
FaecalJacksonPollock
I'm sure it exists; it's just that us "mere mortals" can't afford it. Efficient, durable, affordable. Choose at most 2.
wabitgirl
Even if you get efficient and durable, so many modern devices simply aren't designed to be repaired. I'm sure there are designer companies who control the manufacture standards and process from start to end and avoid this, but the vast majority of all consumer products, even at the high end, aren't made to last anymore. Think about it: Why would they make stuff that is hyper durable when the buyers are very, very rich? Rich people don't give a shit about replacing stuff. They might even flex it.
mikeatike
You guys are getting 2?
rmx256
Modern LED light bulbs last WAY longer than old incandescents. For every old commodore 64 that still works there's sixty quadrillion functional thinkpads. As a child/teen I went through probably a dozen CRT televisions, but I have had the same couple three flat screen LED tv's for over a decade. Even my first solar panels - four of them cost $1600 and each were a third as powerful as one of the ten that I bought for $1200 shipped a few years ago, and they're rated for 20+ years.
neithermenoryou
A lot of cheap LED lamps still don't reach their full lifespan because they are driven too hard and will burn out rather quickly. That's done for the simple reason that it's cheaper to have fewer LED chips running at max output which will lead to them degrading faster. A lot of them also put the big electrolytic cap nice and close to the chips so it gets toasty warm and fails earlier than needed, especially if the bulb is in an enclosed space with no ventilation.
WoeToHice
It's almost as if the comment you replied to wasn't talking about the examples you chose.
SergeyPrkl
I had all of my house lightning replaced to IKEA Leds in 2006. I have replaced ONE out of 52. the old bulbs were 60W and it says on the IKEA units that those are 7W. yes the electricity bill fell dramatically. Today, I have reached the same consumption that i used before. I have two EV:s. No fuel cost though, so car energy cost me now about 10x less than fuel with equal level of car.
wabitgirl
Oh, lightbulbs are one of the worst offenders, by far. Literally 50 years ago, we had the ability to make bulbs that lasted 20-40 years. No, that is not a typo, nor a conspiracy. We were making lightbulbs in the 80's that would still be working fine today. The problem? Bulb manufacturers realized that that degree of longevity made quarterly revenue increase almost impossible. Their solution? A lightbulb cartel with an agreement that bulbs can't last over 10 years, 5 preferably.
harthram
Yes, but what often gets omitted in that story is that those long-life incandescent bulbs were extremely dim and more energy inefficient
eventide215
Exactly. You can do similar with dimmer switches.. if you run it very dim yes its more efficient but good luck seeing what you want to see.
Einbrecher
This whole story is so misunderstood. Yes, the cartels engaged in price fixing, but the "planned obsolescence" here was physics, not business. At a given energy draw, incandescent bulbs trade life for brightness (the brighter filament evaporates faster). The only way to increase both is to *significantly* increase energy draw. Modern incandescent bulbs are only marginally better than comparable cartel day bulbs, and they all sit at the same point on the brightness/life curve.
Einbrecher
The cartel "picked" the same optimal point on the life/brightness curve that modern bulbs use. So, in that sense, the life of the bulb was "planned," but not for nefarious reasons. Cheaper or longer lasting bulbs did exist - and still do. But then, as now, they cost significantly more electricity to run, which is why nobody used/uses them except in applications where the cost makes sense.
Einbrecher
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb7Bs98KmnY
wabitgirl
https://www.fortnightly.com/fortnightly/2015/12-0/light-bulb-cartel
Yes, modern LEDs are harder to do this with, but consider this: the LEDs in your microwaves, stove, etc, last for decades. Do you really think our LED lightbulbs can't be made to last longer than they do? They executed planned obsolescence for the first time in 1925. Maybe they've finally relaxed it on lightbulbs, but it has infiltrated and strangled every other consumer industry in the meantime.
comeonjointhejoyride
Stuff is bearly staying togeather.
eventide215
The lights in microwaves, stoves, etc are used for how long compared to lighting a room? Stupid comparison.. I'm not leaving my microwave light on for hours.
wabitgirl
Sir I'm... I'm talking about the display lights. Like the clock, ya know? The lights that turn on when you plug the device in and stay on for the entirety of you owning it? In general, if you wanna call someone or something stupid, make sure you actually identify what they're talking about or referencing correctly, yeah?
eventide215
Ok even those. This comparison is even dumber. They're very dim lights not being used to light a room.. I called you're comparison stupid not you. You're proving that yourself. Also those lights are known to blow out occasionally. Also if you want to talk about being rude, don't use "sir" where you're not even sure if that's appropriate not to mention it's extremely condescending.
rmx256
IDK. I built my house in 2012 and I'm still rocking almost all of the same light bulbs. CFL bulbs were also significantly more long lasting, albeit 20+ years ago. I seldom get more than a year or two of intermittent use out of incandescent bulbs that I use to keep my batteries or pipes from freezing.
hogeyegrex
I put a half dozen Hue bulbs in 9 years ago. I’ve had one go bad. I gather new led bulbs have shorter lives, which annoys me, but they’re still bound to outlive incandescents. Much as I prefer the light from old school bulbs, they just don’t make sense.
CJAW
The reason the old incandescents only lasted about 1000 hours is because the Phoebus cartel got all the lightbulb manufacturers to collude to make their products worse.
https://radianthistory.com/the-phoebus-cartel-a-dark-chapter-in-lighting-history/
Z0op
(Funny btw, how they downvote you and upvote me, while im just providing an example of what you said, sure there are limits to lifetimes of lightbulbs as other posters so helpfully point out, but those limits are still way higher than as what consumer lightbulbs sold)
CJAW
Yeah, not sure why I got so much hate on mine. It's an actual thing that happened. They had testing rooms to make sure no one in the cartel was manufacturing a bulb that lasted over 1000 hours.
Z0op
Yeah i remember my uncle talking, working in Phillips factory, that they would overload the lightbulb shortly with high voltage, just to damage them a little bit or otherwise theyd last too damn long.
Planned obsolescence was a thing back then too.
ByThePowerOfSCIENCE
to make a bulb last 2,500 hours you need to run it colder and get a yellow light (and actually waste more energy as heat), like the famous "centennial bulb"; you can't just dial a filament's lifetime
those 1,000 hours are a compromise between durability and light output
CJAW
Did William Meinhardt pay you to say that?
ByThePowerOfSCIENCE
no, some long dead blokes told everyone for free over a century ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck's_law
echonite
Fun fact, the longest running bulb has been running for 124 years continually.
dohcohv
Yes, and it's wildly inefficient, providing only a few lumens while eating 60 watts.
ByThePowerOfSCIENCE
and gives a dim orange light because it's being run at a very low temperature
echonite
Username checks out.
dohcohv
It's not that. If you make the filament thicker so it lasts longer, then you get less light while taking the same power.
If you ever had to buy sealed beam headlights you would see this. Dimmer lights had like 300 hours of use, while brighter lights had 150-200 hours. Halogen helps them last longer, but in the end unless you want a uselessly dim light, they won't last forever.
Trunkmonkay
The big secret is that old stuff was even less reliable than the modern equivalent, AND you couldn't just go on Amazon and get a generic part for $2, you had to call the Maytag guy and pay him $200.
For some reason the world has collectively memory holed just how shitty things were until like 1997.
neithermenoryou
Shit products have always existed, the capacitor plague in 2008 was another great example of a lot of tech being bad because the corporations tried to save a few cent and bulk ordered cheap knock off capacitors instead of the proper ones. But plenty of old devices have stood the test of time if they were engineered properly. Gameboys for example are so reliable because all the parts in them were already in production for a decade prior and thus had a proven track record of working well.
MonkeMun
Refrigerators lasted much longer. Power tools lasted much longer. Still, I think the major reason that people think that older is better is that now, you can buy insanely cheap crap. You can still get well made things, but people tend to buy the cheap shit. That shit breaks. On average, people payed more in the past, but on higher quality products.
Trunkmonkay
No they didn't and no they didn't. If they lasted longer then people wouldn't have replaced them and they wouldn't be filling junk yards across the world. Old shit was less reliable, more expensive, and used more electricity so it cost more to run.
Tell me you weren't there without telling me you weren't there. But thank you for proving me right on how people have memory holed the unreliability of the past.
MonkeMun
I'm 58. Fuck off. You don't know what you are talking about.
Trunkmonkay
Me when I lie for no reason