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Hawkesbury Sustainable / Renewable Energy Action Group
Did you know – Low Energy Light bulbs
For those who haven’t yet seen the light, if you’ll excuse the pun, low energy light bulbs have been much improved in recent years and now offer lots of advantages to both you and the environment. Low energy bulbs are much more efficient than conventional (tungsten filament bulbs). They manage this by converting more of the electricity into light and less of it into heat. You’ve probably noticed how hot a normal light bulb gets, well low energy bulbs don’t get nearly as hot and whilst this might even be an advantage to those with thermally challenged heating systems, the heat is produced summer or winter whether you like it or not and it all adds up to higher electricity bills! Typically a 8W low energy bulb will give a similar output as a 40W conventional bulb and a 20W low energy bulb will be similar to a 100W conventional bulb. Thus if you normally use 5 of your 100W bulbs for 4 hours a day and replace them with low energy equivalents you could save as much as £60 per year.
A recent Which? report concluded that most low energy bulbs no longer suffer from slow starts, dim output and the high purchase cost that the early bulbs were known for. The bulbs are now available from as little as 50p but the cheapest isn’t necessarily the best. Which? tested a number of factors including start-up, light output and lifetime and reckoned that the Osram DuluxStar at about £2 and the Ikea Sparsum Bulb £2 and Ikea Sparsum Tube £3 were the best buys. They did say that low energy bulbs are not really suitable for use in very cold areas and cannot be used with dimmer switches.
In our house we’ve bought some of the soft tone bulbs that give a warmer, less harsh light but are a bit less efficient so if you’re after a touch of ambience then try some of those.
Since Christmas is rapidly approaching and it’ll soon be time to drag out those Christmas lights spare a little thought for all the electricity they consume. Whilst we wouldn’t advocate throwing away good lights, if you do need a new set why not consider low energy Light Emitting Diode (LED) lights. A brief trip through Woolies the other day revealed some very nice LED lighting sets, and the best thing is that some of them use as little as 10% of the electricity of normal fairy lights. Also LEDs are generally much more robust and longer lasting so you won’t spend hours trying to find the bulb that blew just as you get the tree decorated. The thing to look out for when choosing low energy Christmas lights is the Wattage (W) output. In my highly scientific survey a typical conventional 100 bulb set used 60W whereas a 80 bulb LED set was only about 5W.
If you’d like any more information about the Hawkesbury Sustainable / Renewable Energy Action Group why not come along to our next meeting on 27th November 2007 at the Beaufort Arms.