
Originally Posted by
jocular
In the average home, lighting power expenditure is likely less than half of the overall, I'm guessing here, of course. Heating water, cooking, air conditioning and heating, surely overshadow the lighting load. So, power consideration is moot for homes, but not for, say, a huge retail store like Wal-Mart, Sears, or the like. I have not seen personally, any of those retrofitting any lighting schemes other than moving to T-8 skinny lamps from T-12. Special consideration is given by these users to "pleasurable" lighting; they pay a lot of extra dough to get fluorescent lamps emitting "sales promoting" hues, as the "Ultralume" lamps I installed while working for Sears. Those looked "pink", to my eye, but their "experts" maintained that made the public "buy". I have my doubts, needless to say!
I personally have no problem whatsoever with the mercury in fluorescents. Outdoor lighting, nonetheless, has been often supplanted with the "sodium vapor lamps", yellowish-orange light, which drives me "bananas"; I hate it!
A good primary example of insanely extravagant waste of resource is the outside lighting shone upon buildings in the "gambling meccas", such as Vegas or Laughlin (Nevada). For example, the River Palms Hotel & Casino in Laughlin has about 50 fixtures outdoors, aiming their light output upwards against their 24 story tower, on both sides, each containing what I perceive to be 400 watt mercury-vapor lamps. The effect shone against the white and blue tower's sides are undeniably beautiful, inestimably valuable as calling cards to new visitors, and totally flagrant, to me, as wasteful of resources. I estimate their electric power tab at ~ $500,000 a month, maybe more, maybe I'm way off! But in this age of encouragement to not waste vital resources, where/when will the extravagant waste be addressed? jocular