[PLUG-TALK] The Keith Effect - Lightbulb factories closing

Keith Lofstrom keithl at kl-ic.com
Fri Oct 5 23:39:35 UTC 2007


On Fri, Oct 05, 2007 at 11:24:49AM -0700, Michael Rasmussen wrote:
> Keith's too modest to take credit for his "replace your incandescent bulbs with
> CFL" campaign.  GE is closing ten factories that make incandescent bulbs due to
> demand declining 10% a year.

Since my name is on this, I suppose I should weigh in ...

The demand for incandescents is still (sadly) enormous, but crap bulbs
can be made very cheaply almost anywhere, and GE bulbs are no better
than cheaper alternatives.  In my experience, GE also makes poor quality
CFLs.  They don't last very long, while Panasonic made (and Ikea still
makes) good ones.  Americans could make better ones, but don't.

Many American manufacturers are still run by short-sighted managers who
ignore their competition, and assume the customers come back more often
if the products fail faster.  That is only true with monopolies, and GE
doesn't have one.  If they produced long-life bulbs, they would stand
above their foreign competition.  Instead, they sully their brand name,
and sell cheap Mexican and Chinese crap.  

The good news is that some of those laid-off workers and abandoned
factories are available now, and may get snapped up by some bright
:-) entrepreneur to make a new brand of good CFLs, or better yet
high power LED lamps.  Let's hope!


Energy and shipping:

Most international trade for low cost bulk goods occurs via ship and
container.  Water is an incredibly low cost (and low energy) way to
move stuff;  it is cheaper (energy wise) to move a bulk shipping
container across the Pacific than to railroad it across the U.S. 
Far cheaper than cross-country trucks.  (pop quiz:  why are major
American cities located where they are?)  The container, and the
computer, have made the process much less labor intensive as well. 
That is probably the main driver for increased world trade.  If
there was a way to cheaply move ship-sized loads of domestic goods
on sea-level surfaces in the US, then the transportation balance
would shift back.  Of course, if global warming raises the sea 
level 200 feet, then we will have those sea-level surfaces.  :-/

Much of the energy in moving goods may be spent on driving to the
store to get the stuff.  Hopefully,  internet shopping will make that
energy waste go away, too, by consolidating delivery and perhaps
someday closing the packaging re-use loop (another long story).  We
can recycle pop bottles;  why not packaging from Amazon or Freddie's?

A foreign country is a machine for turning wheat into consumer goods. 
Most of the pollution stays there.  I would prefer the manufacturing
(with the pollution designed out) stay here and employ my friends.
For that to happen, my friends need to get better at manufacturing,
and I need to get better at designing.  But then, you would expect
an engineer to say that.

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com         Voice (503)-520-1993
KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon"
Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs



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