I believe Mr. Townsend may have uncovered the underlying issue here. The relaxation of emission limits was at least partially rationalized by the lower energy consumption associated with fluorescent bulbs. Lower energy consumption means lower green house gases and lower pollution, which is a good thing. Except that in the process, we are polluting the AM band, which is a bad thing. But wait, the AM band (talk radio) is the font of all evil in the world, so polluting it and decreasing its audience would be a good thing.
Rush, are you listening? It is all part of a vast left-wing conspiracy... Just kidding. But the underlying assertion is likely correct. Lower energy consumption trumped higher emissions. It still seems like a monumentally bad idea, and there seems no logic whatsoever in imposing conducted emission controls 30 dB tighter on ITE than on the lighting in the home/office/factory where that ITE is used. I suspect that if this kind of lighting comes into universal use, that there will eventually be a significant relaxation in ITE conducted emission limits, and the AM band will become increasingly unusable. I regret this trend and wish the AM broadcast industry would stand up for their right to reach their audience. Ken Javor From: Fred Townsend <f...@dctolight.net> Organization: DC to Light Consulting Services List-Post: emc-pstc@listserv.ieee.org Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2004 17:36:21 -0800 To: Ken Javor <ken.ja...@emccompliance.com> Cc: appro...@minn.net, emc-p...@ieee.org Subject: Re: fluorescent lamp rfi Ken, I think you raise a valid point which I will state a little differently. There seems to be a double standard. If your cause is green, environmental impact reports are not required with the two most prominent cases being the Kyoto Treaty and the decision to let Yellowstone burn. If your cause is not deemed green your environmental reports, are challenged and then appealed with the most prominent being the building of Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power plant. If analyzed you see that Kyoto will do almost nothing to reduce global warming while there is a great probability it would cause a world-wide depression. Anyone that has visited Yellowstone after it burned will surely question the wisdom of that decision. On the other side Diablo Canyon has saved the equivalent of a billion barrels of oil. You tell me... where is the right or wrong? Where is justice? Fred Townsend Ken Javor wrote: Happy Thanksgiving to one and all, Mr. Schlentz provides an informative analysis, but my reason for posting the question was purely the EMC aspects. How can such noisy devices be marketed while holding ITE to much more stringent limits? And if the FCC/broadcast industry were so concerned about rfi from office equipment in the '70s, why are they not much more concerned about what could be a significantly more widespread usage, lighting? In my particular case, I bought some reflector type bulbs that mount in recessed ceiling lighting fixtures. These are not movable. Therefore the standard FCC warning about moving the offender in the case of rfi is not applicable. Not to mention the much more important point, that the power line feeding the light runs across the ceiling and down the wall to the light switch, making the radiating source too large to get away from. I made some AM band measurements, peak detection: Freq Ampl. MHz dBuV 0.45 98 0.55 94 0.63 92 0.75 90 0.83 86 0.88 83 0.94 82 1 78 1.2 73 1.4 72 1.54 70 1.61 68 1.68 67 1.73 69 These were rectification harmonics. If I turned on video averaging, they went away and left a nice spectrum of some cw switching activity at a much lower level. It is the rectification harmonics, not the switcher, that causes the problem. BTW, the noise was pure differential mode - there was no common mode component, which is to be expected for this two wire topology. Ken Javor From: appro...@minn.net List-Post: emc-pstc@listserv.ieee.org Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2004 10:07:38 -0600 To: Ken Javor <ken.ja...@emccompliance.com> <mailto:ken.ja...@emccompliance.com> Cc: emc-p...@ieee.org Subject: Re: fluorescent lamp rfi Perhaps you should reconsider using screw-in fluorescent lamps. I have compared them with incandescent lamps that they are advertised to replace, for example, a 27 watt fluorescent lamp with a 100 watt incandescent lamp. The price was $7 versus $0.45. The observed screw-in fluorescent lamp lifetimes were consistently less than 400 hours (the claimed lifetime is about 9000 hours) and the measured incandescent lamp lifetime is about 400 hours. I have also measured the light output from screw-in fluorescent lamps and found the output after the first 40 hours to be about 40 % of that of the incandescent lamp (screw-in fluorescent lamp light output usually drops after a few hours of use). It also may cost $0.50 to dispose of each fluorescent lamp in your community.. Using $0.12 per kilowatt hour as the cost of electricity, the cost of using a 27 watt fluorescent lamp is $7 + $0.12 * 27 * 400 = $8.30 and the cost of using a 100 watt incandescent lamp is $0.45 +$0.12 * 100 * 400 = $5.25 . To reduce the rf emissions may require a metal luminare, metal conduit, and a filter. An incandescent lamp has a lower cost of ownership without considering the reduced light output, the disposal cost, and the mitigation of rf emissions. I think using incandescent lamps cost less than screw-in fluorescent lamps. Best regards Bob Schlentz appro...@minn.net Ken Javor wrote: General question for the group. I have recently purchased several different types of fluorescent replacements for incandescent bulbs. These would all appear to have electronic ballasts, because of size. They claim to meet FCC part 18, but there are disclaimers about moving the things if they cause rfi in the AM band. Well, they cause terrible rfi in the AM band, and in many cases they cannot be moved, because the radiation arises not just from the bulb itself, but from the power wiring. Just a few bulbs pollute a large home. And by pollution I don't just mean CE, but also RE from the power wires, so it isn't just a matter of plugging into a different branch. What is going on here? What is the point of enforcing conducted emissions on a power supply when lamps are allowed to emit? I understand that the cost of a filter compared to that of a power supply is a small fraction compared to the cost of a filter relative to one of these bulbs ($5- $10) but on the other hand these bulbs dissipate 5-15 Watts - it ought to be easier to filter these than a 200 Watt power supply. Comments? Ken Javor This message is from the IEEE Product Safety Engineering Society emc-pstc discussion list. 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