A Mission At 2015 International Builders Show

I assisted in the Fakro booth at 2015 International Builders Show in Las Vegas, with a complementary message for their presentation of attic ladders. That message is: Do provide safe and efficient access to your attic. Then, please consider enabled improvements of your attic.

The Fakro display included their excellent skylights, one working ladder, and a large screen showing attic ladder and skylight installation videos. The ladder is steel scissors type, Model LST 22x31 .

To some visitors, I admitted my preference for wood ladders.
















I had a collection of photos to share, upon business cards, and on iPhone and tablet displays. No one cared to see my photos. Yet, I did engage with very many people, hoping they would remember me and my message, via taken business cards.















Here is a sampling of the shared photos and captions

Lighted safe access leads to remarkable results like these:

Very large savings are achievable in complex but inexpensive attic floor sealing. You can't do this without an in-attic vacuum and chop saw.

I have much to contribute toward better HVAC ducts , enabled by good attic and crawl space access.

Leading-edge adoption of residential LED lighting  is enabled with good access. These beautiful and bright Nicor DLS LEDs necessarily replaced a half-dead T12 fluorescent fixture/ bug collector. More commonly, the large savings and better satisfaction are in elimination of awful can lights.




The "starry sky " in this closet was carried throughout the house, replacing all can lights with Nicor DLS LEDs.

In the above photo and in numerous demonstrations, see application of my flexible grout to dress the edges of the ceiling cut-through, air tight about the frame. The trimless installation minimizes visibility of the closed door.

I practice innovation with attic ladders , for service not achievable with out-of-the-box construction. Would you buy a bicycle without any options to better serve your needs? The challenges and opportunities are similar.

The drawing shows a ladder easily deploying between 48" confining walls.

 A 2015 IBS visitor asked whether a drop-down ladder could serve with 14 ft floor to ceiling distance, and I responded that I have served FC of eleven ft (130.5"), despite manufacturer-claimed limits. I have imagined ladders that reach easily, more than twelve ft , comfortably in reach even for a short person. 14 ft might be difficult. 

Some possibilities involve manufacturer offerings to, and requirements of, professional installers, that may not be offered to a casual consumer. Such offerings do not yet exist.




All of these achievements, in Portland, Oregon, should be possible anywhere, with professional networking that I seek to establish through means including IBS presence.

Distributed Power Generation As Disaster Preparedness

Please consider the vision I share via Google Community, Residential LED Lighting :

About this community

We progressively surrender most of our point-source bulbs. Those that remain are for decor, not for illumination. Big LED plate lights occupy recessed-light locations. In time lights get smaller, distributed and remote-controlled with DC wiring. Light elements are with standard-everywhere low-voltage connectors like audio jacks. New luminaires are forward-compatible with OLED elements. 


And - - seeing that PV arrays fail to serve in a disaster if grid-tied, let most lighting and crucial electronics be off-grid. Silly us, to want to generate income with a PV array, in the grid. In this, lights wired as low-voltage DC, auto and marine as the active example, will prevail over now-competitive chip-on-board AC LEDs. Why might we need AC LEDs? Strip boards down to only diodes and wires: that's what lasts forever. All fragile electronics clustered, serviceable, elsewhere.

I find no help yet in the participation at this community.

Searching the internet for vision and progress, try this as a Google search:
"distributed power generation for lighting and crucial electronics ."

Find commercial buildings progress in this Carnegie Mellon report , in LEDs Magazine. From this, discover the Emerge Alliance , "an open industry association leading the rapid adoption of safe DC power distribution in commercial buildings through the development of EMerge Alliance standards."

At the Emerge Alliance home page, find this link to Mother Nature Network:

The home of tomorrow will run on direct current 

See that advanced thought is coming from Lloyd Alter, blogging from Toronto:
http://www.treehugger.com/


The vision of collection on each home may sound extreme, and in fact is not absolute. Many means of local cooperation can evolve. Here is one vision of rather large collectives for distributed generation, in India:
http://electronicsb2b.com/?p=18586# 

In the USA, a campaign open to every individual home might be necessary. Any urban divorce from the grid would be disruptive. A little alienation, voluntarily in every home, can not be stopped. Each participant finds the best-yet way to cooperate in guarding life on Earth against consumptive waste.With that beginning, find other means of expression. A typical path will be separation from the grid in the overhead lights chosen (eventually all). Where ceiling junction boxes are stupidly packed with power distribution to outlets, much rewiring will be afforded by the sure savings. Homes will become safer. With all other prep as in closure of attic floor pits, now add overhead insulation. And, never, never add insulation that gets in the way of needed repairs and largest savings opportunities. Repairs shall include fixing ventilation problems at bad noise-maker fans, badly ducted, and promotion of good attic ventilation by correcting deficient soffit vents. 

I am committed that I will do a trial installation in my own home. I invite development of other projects through inspiration at community Build It Solar:

• 
  BuildItSolar: Solar energy projects for Do It Yourselfers to save money and reduce pollution
• Let's see who gets a project done first. My first room will employ Nicor DLS lights minus the AC to DC converter assembly in each luminaire. The AC is separable with twist connectors. I want to build little lights with minimal additions to inexpensive light engine boards, where the biggest challenge is in cobbling up connector jacks, using audio components to start. In time, push-pluck connectors will be universal and will cost almost nothing, enabling very wonderful light as art, always low voltage and outside costly regulation.

Defending Basic Best-Savings Weatherization In Oregon

I will attend a meeting this morning, in a first-ever visit at Portland, Oregon's Energy Trust . The meeting topic, broadly, is weatherization policy in Oregon and nationally. The specific meeting objective has been declared by the Oregon Public Utilities Commission , in the person of staff member Juliet Johnson. In advance, I create this full public record of preliminaries. After the meeting, I will add my observations and any posted minutes.

Here are email notices from Juliet Johnson, and attachments as saved in my Google Drive. 

Sent 1/5/2015:

Subject: UM 1622 ENERGY TRUST OF OREGON EXCEPTIONS

Hello – There will be a workshop at 9:30 AM on January 14, 2015 at Energy Trust (421 Southwest Oak Street #300 Portland, OR 97204) to discuss the idea of an incentive cap for energy efficiency measures, as described in Commission Order No. 14-332 in Docket UM 1622.  A link to the order is attached. 

http://apps.puc.state.or.us/orders/2014ords/14-332.pdf

As indicated in the order, the Commission is open to considering the idea of an incentive cap proposal for energy efficiency measures – especially for moderate income and multi-family customers – that includes the following elements:

1. Meaningful reduction in incentives;
2. Strong protocols to minimize free riders; and
3. A design that favors lowest cost, highest savings measures.

The purpose of the January 14^th workshop is to hear and discuss proposal concepts.  You can call into the meeting at:  1-888-354-0094; Passcode 7765580#.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks,

Juliet

------

Juliet Johnson

Oregon Public Utility Commission

This is a second stage in my contribution of public input to hearing UM1622 of 9/30/2014 . That decision hearing was a sham, with absolutely no respect for the public comments. Participants were allowed to post remarks and then might ask to speak if present. My written remarks were email submission of PDF hard copy of several policy blog posts here . And here is all that has been understood from my submission:

In response to this docket Phillip Norman provided excerpts from a blog that he writes.

In the blog excerpts he asserts gas prices will go up due to future unforeseen fracking

regulations.

I immediately responded to the 1/5/2015 notice, with this:

OK, let us cap all payouts from Energy Trust, to NONE. There should never have been payout of public purpose funds, to anyone. The only decent output is as a to-be-repaid loan, offered regardless of a person's wealth. There can be really-good reasons any home owner would join this hugely-expanded Energy Trust program, tracking ALL measures that benefit a home owner, but never with a payout to a home owner. This is among comments I offered upon UM1622 hearings. Weatherization sponsorship by Energy Trust then clearly could not fail a profitability test except for the real ruin, the absurd $25,000 per home overhead for each of the mere 2000 homes per year served.

OPUC shall be ashamed that they end all productive relationship of Energy Trust to home owners, while not testing merit of anything else Energy Trust does, including spending more than $500,000 per year to promote useless Energy Performance Score, illegally not subjected to payback analysis.

Why should I bother to show up for the death notices? I might.

No one has responded to this message.

The 1/5/2015 notice included these attachments .
I responded with these attachments .

The final meeting notice is this, of 1/13/2015:

Attached are items we will review and discuss at UM 1622 Incentive Cap workshop at at Energy Trust.  Please let me know if you have any questions or additional items for discussion.

Thanks,

Juliet Johnson

OPUC

503-378-8714

I responded to the 1/13/2015 notice, thus:
Why can't we talk about something that serves all of the best savings opportunities in all homes, the same? How can income or wealth weigh upon energy savings opportunities? Let's confess that renters, both in decrepit homes and in decrepit workplaces, and there are ever more of them, need weatherization most, and are ROBBED of their contributions to the Public Purpose Fund, for shame, for shame! 

Why can't we talk of keeping the most important savings of all, in air sealing? The small cost of air sealing is always repaid in less than two years. Anyone who says otherwise is really, really causing harm . No insulation should be added in an attic floor, ever, without full prep of the floor, including conversion to LED lighting with elimination of all bad can lights, certainly all that are non-IC. Before adding insulation too, we must fix insufficient soffit ventilation, usually only one third of needed soffit vent area, and setting stapled-cardboard baffles that will fail in five years where sixty-year survival is mandatory. Let us not talk then of any allowance that blow and go criminals may secure rebates for their stupid actions doing more harm than good, not even adding much insulation value as they cheat with voids and underfills, defying inspection by barring access. Part of our cure is to eliminate ALL of the mismanaged and failing promotion of weatherization in get-greedy, take back your share from the Public Purpose Fund, rebate handouts. The real human nature is cooperation, to preserve good life for all of Earth's creatures.

How many of the high-volume pushy, lying contractors are there in the blow and go, rewarded by $10,000 per year handouts from the Public Purpose Fund? Surely this amounts to $200,000 per year. All cooperative marketing money as bribes to love Energy Trust, might add up to $500,000 per year.Then there is the illegal expenditure of $500,00 per year, trying to get worthless EPS to fly. Compare $1 million of this dirty money, to the 2014 payout in all existing home insulation rebates, of less than $500,000, and stupid niggling that drags busy people downtown tomorrow, to hack off $200,000. How mean! And how dangerously confusing to the general public! How else does Energy Trust spend $8 million per year, that was intended to promote residential weatherization, and does not? How can we be quibbling over $200,000 as the ONLY responsible management by OPUC?

80% of large-return investment in residential weatherization has never begun. It will be very evil, if this is all about the libertarian wish to get rid of another damned tax, that Public Purpose Fund. Make Energy Trust hated for its years of known wastefulness and non-performance. Make them hated more for no longer managing residential weatherization, but only handing dollars upward to corporations and the more-affluent. Get rid of Energy Trust then. Maybe even a Democratic legislature then, might eliminate the Public Purpose Fund.

I have described a better future where at least $1 billion is used immediately in loans, to greatly increase the production of Energy Trust, knocking down the present $25,000 per home served. There is a lot to be debated, in making good happen. Could an honest, intelligent and hard-working person, a critic, be banished from this important conversation?

We must not waste the day tomorrow, with the surrender agenda that has been offered. We must not imagine that Energy Trust may  go on ever more-wastefully, in a failed rebates regime.

The 1/13/2015 notice included these attachments .

I responded with these attachments .

I have no heart for the throttled weatherization proposals. I can hardly bear to read them. My push for a different conversation has excessive zeal, I know. I expect dismissal by some, for numbers naivete. My numbers are gleaned from much reading however, and they contradict the glowing self-reports Energy Trust submits to OPUC. I am certain OPUC has been complicit in hiding Energy Trust's failed performance.

At 1/16/2015, begin a report upon the meeting. It appears that no minutes will be forthcoming.

"Free Riders" in a weatherization dictionary?
The participants spoke of "free riders" as negative, until the meeting end, where it was agreed that free riders are good. Free riders sounded good to me all along, never defined, understood by context. I think this may be a definition in weatherization: If someone does something good without some payout from the Public Purpose Fund, that is a free rider. As I see it, people want and need to do good. They resent thought they might need a bribe. Energy Trust employs bribes in rebate payouts as their only tool, and they don't like demonstration bribes are unnecessary, or worse. One participant reported that home owners in his experience, need only lists of the measures valued by society as most-productive, and they will have them done regardless of incentives. We agree on this! So, why did the meeting end with only commitment to shuffle and rethink incentive amounts within UM1622 constraints, and still without air sealing?

Renters:
My insult of the funds theft from renters drew discussion, and some hope new programs might emphasize renter opportunities, but no action was promised, and I expect there will be no diminishment of our shame.

OPUC Docket Invitation, Honest Work With Up-Front Financing, Equally For All:
Perhaps from respect of my comments, the only written comments received, OPUC promised that they are obliged to act upon any proposal that appears in their docket process. I must be committed then to cause action by a new docket submittal separate from that hijacked in continuation of home performance madness, In this new docket action, I must challenge the failed rebates regimes, by formally proposing a very large up-front financing plan, for honest lowest-cost work, rid of home performance scams. The new and very honestly-managed financing through a new Oregon State Bank, will dwarf the tiny delivery of such through Oregon State Representative Jules Bailey's hijacked HB 2626 of 2009 . In its honesty it will draw support from the public to employ state and municipal reserved funds, and it will be capitalized even by individual investors seeking safest returns and noble purpose. Where Energy Trust serves only 2000 homes per year, and 1200 are with up-front financing despite extremely high cost, we see that rebates don't work. An honest up-front financing program will inspire the nation. Oregon will be the leader we imagine we are, not the greenness laughingstock.

More, Seriously Funny

I occasionally spend a day removing can lights, patching in wonderful LED lighting on junction boxes. It takes me a half hour to replace a can light with a RACO 175 junction box, texture matched, ceiling paint-ready. The patch will be hidden by currently-available LED plate lights , but still I try hard to match surrounding texture in the patch. I am committed that I shall do the right thing vs. an idiot applying a Tenmat cover, saving money even in installation cost. I deliver real energy conservation larger by an order of magnitude, and real protection against fire propagation vs. the sham where a Tenmat cover is ruined by tears to accommodate wires and the flimsy can supports, the hat not bonded to the ceiling by foam and lifting away in real fire conditions. 

Energy savings with the LED light and eliminated can light will repay installation costs in as little as three years , thereafter with perpetual payback of 33% on a pleasant investment. Energy conservation is a less important goal I achieve, than better illumination and more-productive living.

So, is this Seriously Funny ? The humor is that while I do this, 10,000 foolish installers are putting up ever more awful can lights. Probably they are installing 65 watt incandescent downlights, for reputed ambiance. Up twenty feet, defying the soon-needed replacement bulb. They aren't thinking about fire propagation, or much of anything. I don't know if anyone else seeks to eliminate can lights.

On average, the ant on the right path does matter.

Here is a plaster-patch method, very quick.

This is real, cheerful, light, 750 lumens 6" Glimpse LED, not too bright way up there over a shower, NEVER needing new installation on a can light.

My usual patch is with a ring of drywall, ideally the divot from can cutout, stashed above the ceiling, or from a section of the involved ceiling remnant of a new attic ladder installation .

Please see more of the photos of this post, with captions, at this Picasa Web Album .  

An Open Letter To State Of Oregon Treasurer, Ted Wheeler

Oregonians are proud of our  State Treasurer, Ted Wheeler .  We regret that he is term-limited, and will leave office after only six years of service. I hoped to meet him, where he generously will address retirement security of small business owners, at a breakfast meeting of The Main Street Alliance Of Oregon , on Monday, 12/1/2014. And, I did have that one-minute meeting, being told that State reserves are too huge for local investment.

I see that many things, including retirement security, are addressed in the creation of an Oregon State Bank. There is urgency throughout the USA, to pull state investment funds away from sure destruction by Wall Street gamblers. A proper grasp of problems and opportunities is expressed by attorney, author, It's Our Money radio show  host and blogger, Ellen Brown.

How many of us have already known of the perceptive writing of Ellen Brown? I found her, top of list just now, in Google search of terms "secure state investment funds against wall street gambling with derivatives ."

Building an Ark: How to Protect Public 

Revenues from the Next Meltdown

Posted on October 12, 2014 by Ellen Brown

Concerns are growing that we are heading for another banking crisis, one that could be far worse than in 2008.  But this time, there will be no government bailouts. Instead, per the Dodd-Frank Act, bankrupt banks will be confiscating (or “bailing in”) their customers’ deposits.

I hope that state officials everywhere will be aware of the advice of Ms. Brown, that this can be done quickly.

How to Start a Bank Overnight

Forming a state or municipal public bank need not be slow or expensive. An online bank could be run out of the Treasurer’s office and operational in a few months. And the bank could be turning a profit immediately – without spending the local government’s own revenues.

Perhaps we have time then to save state funds from imminent collapse of stock markets. I find the S&P 500 chart instructive, here taken from Yahoo!

The thieves running our government, and extracting ever more wealth for the most-wealthy through criminal derivatives, must be astonished how big they have gotten the Third Bubble. Newscasters speaking confidently of present conditions, and better, for an indefinite future, increasingly know they are part of the fraud. Black Friday shoppers today know they may be on a last fling.

Every person, daring to think, will know the Big Fall is not more than two years away. Maybe by 75% this time, and with no recovery in sight.

Ted Wheeler! You have only a few months to take action for the people of Oregon. There is a similar charge for officials in all states. You are obliged to act in the public interest, to disbelieve evident lies.

I now further address Ted Wheeler with my insight as an inventive and perceptive weatherization contractor. I am a sole-proprietor, not daring or able  to have employees, able to persist in increasingly frightening times, only because of Social Security retirement income, no debt beyond a mortgage, and an extremely frugal lifestyle. I think I am the model of the rescuers of home owners, of the 80% never yet served in public leadership of weatherization. The ideal worker will be an intelligent and caring individual, self-employed, fully accountable and competing, through customer appraisal. The work must become more decently rewarded, for these successful individuals. 

The weatherization of homes will become very difficult for those who have not been able to act in better times. Such home owners and renters will depend upon some generosity of those able to do the difficult and dirty work, now regulated as utterly honest . Many will achieve only what they can, with their own now-capable hands. Materials will be much more expensive. Energy costs will quickly double. Many will suffer. Many will die. Human character all over the Earth will be challenged in the face of desperation. "Bailing in " that is in banker plans, Ellen Brown warns, could not be achieved without great violence.

Dire conditions following the collapse may be softened where individual states acted, safe-guarding public funds in state banks detached from Wall Street. Those funds might pay the willing weatherization workers. Many will be available for work they would not before have considered, if that serves survival. Much of the work can be achieved through believable promise.

I now arrive at the heart of my message to Ted Wheeler. On Monday, we will be talking about retirement security for proprietors of small business. Let us talk of details in the vision of our State Bank. I would happily work often for deferred income, promised through the State Bank. Needful home owners would get work done, with deferred pay-in to the Bank.  Know that a State Bank, maybe City Banks too,  will be background handlers of funds. They will not challenge existing local banks and credit unions, then stepping in to replace now-gone big banks that did fail.

Please read on in the hopeful writings of Ellen Brown:

WSJ Reports: Bank of North Dakota Outperforms Wall Street

Posted on November 19, 2014 by Ellen Brown

While 49 state treasuries were submerged in red ink after the 2008 financial crash, one state’s bank outperformed all others and actually launched an economy-shifting new industry.  So reports the Wall Street Journal this week, discussing the Bank of North Dakota (BND) and its striking success in the midst of a national financial collapse led by the major banks. Chester Dawson begins his November 16th article:

It is more profitable than Goldman Sachs Group Inc., has a better credit rating than J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and hasn’t seen profit growth drop since 2003. Meet Bank of North Dakota, the U.S.’s lone state-owned bank, which has one branch, no automated teller machines and not a single investment banker.

Continue reading →

At 9/11/2015, add to this post for further communication with officials in Oregon who are paid to protect the interests of all citizens. This reach-out will include our State Treasurer, Ted Wheeler, again challenged. This post up to current amendment was brought to Mr. Wheeler's attention, face-to-face at that meeting 12/1/2014. There was an opportune time to act. Mr. Wheeler declined interest, claiming the large billions of dollars of state funds in his care had no place to go but Wall Street. I think he should have acted as Ellen Brown advises, that a State Treasurer, independent of criminal lobbyist intervention in his Legislature, may organize and employ a State Bank.

I write in follow-up of a Sierra Club meeting in Portland, yesterday, where more Beyond-Coal appeals were presented to my State Representative , who is Chair of the Energy and Environment Committee. I spoke for one minute in this group of about twelve people who were sacrificing mid-afternoon time of one of the most-beautiful remaining days of Summer 2015. I mentioned my stand-in for all who see energy conservation in our homes as superior to clean energy generation with sun and wind. Durable conservation is forever, day and night, under stormy skies. Inspired in the pre-meeting, I asked for a pilot program in Oregon, of solar for all, not just the further gift through public resources, of energy independence to a privileged few. Let every housetop with some sun have a low-power photovoltaic/ battery system integrated with LED lights and communications circuits, naturally direct current, off-grid. Each home is then somewhat disaster-ready . We will all have kick-started personal achievement in protecting life on Earth. OK, I did say less than all that, but I made the point.

Please see me as a cheerful, proactive person. I am cheerful because I do good things and feel that I will be part of the solution to coming problems. No one tells me this; quite the opposite. I have acquired a hard shell against rejection.

On then to dire predictions. I think the Oregon Legislature, or perhaps an independent State Treasurer, no longer has time to act. Next action in our Legislature would be in a token one-month session February, 2016 . 

Refresh this chart up-to-date .

We must expect that the world will fall into chaos in the coming Winter. This is the game of evil wizards of Wall Street, emboldened by our failure to lock them up, driving drunk. See the symmetry in the cycles they create. See that printing thirteen trillion dollars  from vapor saved them, once. That saving of the gamblers should not have happened, and it can not happen again. Few but Ellen Brown are imagining what the gamblers are up to, with full collusion of our real US Government forces.

At 2/25/2016, react to finding someone in Portland read this yesterday. I hope it was Ted Wheeler , not feeling secure in his wish to remain publicly employed come November, running for Mayor Of Portland. I don't want to vote for you, instead seeing you as Governor, next cycle, deep in Hard Times, proven as caring by acting yet, for a State Bank. Out of office and loved, you will find your way to our better future. I am unhappy too, with competitor Jules Bailey, who is wrongly liked as author of HB 2626 of 2008 , a promising but flawed and failed effort to generate residential weatherization through up-front financing. Who will I vote for?

I attended a first Portland mayoral candidates debate 2/29/2016, and was quite pleased to find public banking (of City funds only), on the agenda. Jules Bailey impressed me for public banking interest, and for a purely grass-roots campaign. Surely he will get my active support, and my vote.

Update at 2/7/2020
Here is the S&P 500 chart at 2/7/2020, two days past Thief Trump declaring  to the nation the wondrous state of their 401K's. The levels goosed at 2008 by derivatives activity to bubble instability, are now at that insanity, times-two.

Fantasy prosperity via the global stock markets is caused by trillions of dollars handed over secretly by the New York Fed to monsters chiefly Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase. A few of us share in the scam, but mostly the activity is raising the obscene wealth of a few hundred people. 

A DEEP DIVE INTO MONEY AND BANKING WITH ELLEN BROWN | 2019 SOIL AND;NUTRITION CONFERENCE      

I protest that Yahoo Finance, or someone, makes it hard to capture the S&P 500 chart today. The chart is only momentarily in the condition I present

At 3/1/2020 it seems even harder to record the S&P 500 chart. Here it is:

Surely the tumble is underway. I'm surprised at delayed response to coronavirus turn to the worse. It is about time to extract the market following to a new post. Does anyone find this? I don't think so. My purpose in a new post will be to address learning in this blog about respirators.

For whatever value there is in my disbelief of honesty in goosed-up USA stock markets, look at this chart up to March 2023.

Look again at S&P 500, 1/16/2024:

The longer tail from history is important to seeing the madness. The look is prompted by this update from Ellen Brown:
https://scheerpost.com/2024/01/15/ellen-brown-casino-capitalism-and-the-derivatives-market-time-for-another-lehman-moment/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

The scheerpost sidebar honors Stanley Sheinbaum. Don't fail to study the offered video:

Citizen Stan. 

If you don't then love Stanley Sheinbaum, wonder about your core goodness.

Love, too Robert Scheer. And, realize that political polarization "left" and "right" is an evil diversion from want of justice for all.

Where this post is Oregon-centric upon Ted Wheeler, now Portland Mayor and likely future Oregon Governor, hope that Mr. Wheeler might yet do right to secure an Oregon State Bank for preservation of public assets against Wall Street madness and greed. Present Oregon Governor Tina Kotek, Democrat, vetoed even the study of an Oregon State Bank. Might she be voted out even in 2026, for that?

Review, Utilitech #0557095 LED Bulb

This is review of a newly-offered inexpensive LED light bulb filling an A19 socket, $5.95 at Lowe's. It is a lot of mass for the money, claimed 18,000 hours life. (Take care to not drop it, although it might land like a parachute, socket down.) Choose it absolutely, as better than a 60 watt incandescent in the lamp you aren't ready to dispose. It is about twice as bright as the package claims, in illuminating something beneath. With necessarily-subjective judgement of practical illumination, call it brightness number B4.5, better than a (defined  B4) 100 watt incandescent. Here is a collage of the Utilitech #0557095 packaging.

Here is my payback math where one would happily use it pointing down, in place of a 100-watt bare bulb in a porcelain fixture. As prescribed on the package, consider operation 3 hours per day and electricity at 11 cents per KWH, for 18,000 hours, 16.4 years. Know though, that electricity cost will more than double over that period. All comparisons using present cost of energy, for something durable, badly misguide a purchase decision.

Over 18,000 hours, the LED bulb will draw 178 KWH, at cost $19.60. Add $6 bulb cost, for a total of $25.60. 

Over 18,000 hours with 750 hours life, twenty four 100 watt light bulbs in sequence will draw 1800 KWH, at cost $198. Say your prohibited box of bulbs now expended cost you $24. Your total cost was $222.

You will have had better light, a better life, climbs on a ladder only to paint the ceiling perhaps, and don't drop the bulb. You will have saved $222 - 25.60 = $196. This is about double the Utilitech package claim, because you were smart enough to employ natural LED directionality.

Now, presume you only want to fill that antique bulb fixture, three 60-watt incandescent bulbs pointing to the side and quite obscured by something warm and orangey. You get the same practical illumination as with the single LED bulb unobstructed and pointing down, and you pay three times as much. Over 18,000 hours your cost in the LED adventure will be 3*$25.60 = $76.80, expending 535 KWH.

For the three-bulb fixture comparison, you will have needed a hoard of six dozen bulbs. Hopefully you never had an accident on the ladder. You drew 3240 KWH. Electricity cost somehow frozen in time, you spent $356 on electricity while helping to melt the poles, and you spent about $72 for the bulbs. You will have saved $356 + 72 - 76.80 = $352, at just one of your luminaires. $352 vs. $196, or vs. the box number of $99.20? Don't be silly. That isn't how to make money with LED lighting . Doing something inefficient more efficiently, is still inefficient. Choose directional LED plate lighting, spots of sunshine from your ceiling or beautiful pendant. Let one of your lights be that model airplane landing light beamed at your book. Have some fun. Don't take pride in so-wastefully using period fixtures. Yes, I know some of this is wishful thinking. We will find the future faster if we stop wanting to keep using antique always-inefficient side-directed point-source lamps.

The Utilitech #0557095 seems very directional. The globe glows from the side but with little illumination. Is it this AC LED light engine, from Seoul Semiconductor? A cheap, non-dimmable light engine, would be of an earlier achievement, perhaps this . 





One should prefer this directionality. Don't use it then, for side lighting. Beware, this is not warned on the package.

Here is my lighting brightness, comparative task illumination setup at full power. At stage left, Nicor DLS . 

At stage right, a 60 watt incandescent (unscrewed), over Utilitech #0557095.

There is a dimmer in the circuit and the Utilitech is loudly buzzing. Dimmed the slightest amount, the Utilitech blinks maddeningly.

The 3000°K Nicor DLS correctly illuminates a white wall. The Utilitech seems to have lower color temperature, perhaps 2800°K, by the uncertain professional discrimination of my Canon Digital Rebel camera, as sensor. Where a 100 watt incandescent bulb is defined B4, the Utilitech is about B4.5.

Learn more about Utilitech LED vs. 60 watt incandescent, by firing the incandescent too. 

I think the bulb combination adds up to the same brightness as Nicor DLS, another badly-labeled light, absurdly called 60-watt equivalent

Here again is comparison of Nicor DLS to an old 60 watt incandescent. Anyone must agree the LED plate light is almost three times brighter, and of prettier color.