It’s the final switch off for incandescent light bulbs

I think you will find that most lamps now have the brightness shown in lumens. That should have been done years ago. It is the only way of making meaningful comparisons between lamps of different efficiencies.

Maybe I’m one of the first to stockpile CFLs. I bought six or eight when they were 10p each in a couple of shops, a couple of years ago.

Nope – I bought them by the dozen when I switched over well over two years ago. Still have dozens/.

At present the market is for CFL & LED lamps as replacements (often poor) for the GLS and candle shapes of incandescent lamps.
Hopefully sometime light fittings of all types actually designed to make full use of the new technologies will start appearing .
This has happened to some extent with lamps designed to make use of the flat shape of “2D” bulbs which are available in a variety of powers up to I believe 42watts and the T4 ultraslim fluorescent tubes often used under kitchen cupboards

I have been using CFLs for more than 20 years and it has saved me a lot of money.

I very rarely have to balance on a stepladder to replace a lamp.

I no longer have to replace lampholders damaged by heat.

lighthouse,

Whilst I agree with you that when it comes to overall energy efficiency and therefore reduction in use of fossil fuel produced energy the “legislators” (our own Government and the EU) arn’t really very good at it. They’re relying on private enterprize and the market (including profit orientated energy suppliers) to sort it out. Talk about asking turkeys to vote for Christmas?

And it’s true that universal use of low energy lighting will only reduce overall energy usage by a small amount, if only because lighting only makes up a small percentage of overall energy consumed. Most domestic energy consumption is of course used for space and water heating and it is in those areas where much more needs to be done to improve things.

However you cannot get away from the fact that replacing a 60w incandacent with a 15w CFL is a 75% saving both in energy and in the cost to produce the same light.
How can you say that’s not worth it? Of course it is.
Yes it is still a small percentage of overall energy usage but to me that only confirms how poorly the “legislators” are doing in other areas. It also highlights how much energy and money savings potential there must be in these other areas.
Personally I’d like to see council tax level reductions for improved energy efficiency. Perhaps also stamp duty reductions too. Some real incentive to offset the costs to become more energy efficient.
Making at least some saving by using cheap low energy lighting, although perhaps not worthy of the high profile it seems to get, is surely worth doing.
Not a phrase I really like to use but “every little helps”.

Replacement bulbs containing a halogen capsule would probably fit and be the best option for bulkhead lights in occasional use.

Using CFLs in a bulkhead fitting (if they will fit) may condemn them to a short life as a result of overheating. For lights in frequent use a fitting with one or two conventional fluorescent tubes would be a more economical alternative.

Patrick’s point is, I don’t doubt, correct, but policing sales of incandescent lamps would be all but impossible and cost so much as to be unrealistic and politically unpalatable.

Possibly more to the point, unless I have completely misunderstood, coloured and special shaped incandescent lamps are exempt from the bans (whatever wattage) for “commercial” reasons, and coloured lamps give far less light than pearl or clear lamps so use far more power for the required light.

Now, I’m only guessing, but I’d say that any savings made by forcing the public to use CFL’s or LEDS at home will be infinitesimal compared to the energy still used by these coloured and shaped lamps in commercial use, which rather tends to support ‘lighthouse’s’ first point above.

CFL’s in bulkheads often won’t fit and in they will, as wavechange says, they often fail early due to a combination of heat and the angle in which they are used.

All of which points back to the same two things that many of us have been saying for years now:

CFL’s have been made to poorer (cheaper) standards to make them acceptable to the public purse – hence difficulties that were not present with the earliest cfl’s (wavechange has frequently, eloquently, explained precisely why and how this is) – and the phase out of incadescents has been and continues to be a shambles which has been and is badly managed. Correct these two issues and the situation would be a world different, for the better.

As we get older many people find it more difficult to read in any form of artificial light. Try using a reading lamp close to the page.

Old-fashioned reflector lamps are still available and are ideal for reading lamps. High brightness LED lamps are still very expensive but smaller versions – which would be suitable for a reading lamp – are much cheaper and you can choose a either a warm white colour or the brighter bluish-white colour.

Good to know you’re still preaching the gospel, wavechange!

But I was sorry to hear of your disappointment regarding those Luddite pub-owners you came across last year. However, your innovative and wholly admirable drive to combine pub-crawls with research into the effects of non-PC lighting systems does raise serious questions.

Did you have time between your examination of the CFLs, low power LEDs, and inefficient halogen reflectors to take any additional notes while you were conducting your investigations? Do you, for example, happen to remember what the beer was like? Any good guest beers? Average S.G. ratings? CAMRA membership and so on? Also, did you notice any interesting differences between the pub-owners’ attitudes towards amateur lighting sleuths and towards their regulars?

Your later revelation that you “very rarely have to balance on a stepladder to replace a lamp” suggests that your weakness for ad hoc pub inspections is not affected by any concern about the destabilising effect of alcohol. There remains, however, some concern about your ability to assess accurately the statistics you seek whilst, at the same time, busily sinking pints (or litres).

Or perhaps you confined your intake to Babycham, dilute tonic wine, and cheese and onion crisps?

We, your loyal readers, have a right to know!

I find I can see everything a lot more clearly after a spell in a good pub, with or without low energy lamps.

Your comments are rather irrelevant, wildberry, but I will answer briefly.

I did not inspect any pub that sold only keg beers. I might not be a CAMRA member and I did not drink enough to fail a breath test (even though I was not driving), but there are limits. No Greene King beer was drunk but I did try a good selection from smaller breweries during my holidays. Most of the pubs were managed or run by tenants, who may have less choice in their lighting than what beer they serve. My local pub is certainly owned but has been spoiled by replacement of Taylor’s Landlord with Bland GK beer. There are often dark corners where the owner has not kept up with replacing his old fashioned bulbs when they fail.

I was on my annual holiday with university friends from the 70s. One was totally opposed to CFLs until two years ago, but now he has seen the light. 🙂

John wrote: I find I can see everything a lot more clearly after a spell in a good pub, with or without low energy lamps.

We might need some more light relief if the tired old arguments resurface. 🙂

I suspect that the issue with pubs might be that the breweries, already finding pubs unprofitable, are unwilling (or possibly even unable) to make the initial cash outlay required to buy the CFL and LED lamps and – in many cases – to change all the light fittings to take the cfls.

I’m no economist but I think this is the “commercial viability” which is referred to in the expemptions to the incandescent ban, presumably because companies, like breweries, have influence over politicians.

The pub companies that own many pubs are big enough to have some influence over government, but they seem to have been fairly unsuccessful in trying to influence governments past and present over other issues. I have no idea of whether they have campaigned over lighting because it is not something that greatly affects most pub users.

If we are to phase out non-rechargeable batteries then perhaps we can learn from how the replacement of old fashioned lightbulbs should have been handled.

For example:

– the government should have pushed manufacturers of light fixtures to start designing suitable products twenty years ago. What is needed is high quality electronics in the fixture and the lamp being the only part that needs to be replaced. This would avoid waste electronics and premature lamp failure.

– encouragement of the public to use low energy lighting to save electricity, maybe starting around ten years ago.

– more honest marking of the brightness of CFLs, so that users are not disappointed with the light output or time taken to reach full brightness.

– perhaps a subsidy on efficient lighting funded by a tax on less efficient lamps. That could still be done to promote sales of CFLs and LED lamps in preference to halogen lamps.

I have been an enthusiast for rechargeable batteries since the 70s. I’ve even got them in my seven smoke detectors, where they are not supposed to be used, but they work fine.

Wavechange

I have several pieces of electronic kit that do not work with re-chargeable batteries at all – the terminal voltage is too low to switch then on.

@Richard.

You are not alone, but this is Wavechange’s point: manufacturers should have been “encouraged” (co-erced or bribed if you prefer!) to produce appliances which work with the slightly lower voltage of rechargeables years ago.

Had this happened then, when members of the public tried rechargeables in them, they would work fine and not put the public off rechargeables.

It’s exactly the same as what Wavechage says about CFL lamps: if manufacturers, government and even the likes of Which? had been upfront and honest about the real equivalent wattages from 20+ years back, people would not have gone out buying 11w cfl’s believing them to be equivalent to 60W incandescents, got them home, plugged in and found that they were not bright enough.

I fail to understand why government, manufacturers and test organisations feel the need to lie or mislead over these issues: by doing so they just create ill-feeling and make the public resistant to change. The only explanation I can conjecture is that the savings are not very impressive when the real equivalencies are used and so incorrect ones are used to make savings look more attractive. Personally I feel that this is counter productive.

It’s the same with Boilers – on recent convo’s someone has posted that British Gas finally told him in words of one syllable that his new “more efficient” boiler would use just as much, if not more, gas than his old one, despite the advertising hype saying that there would be savings.

Now I come to think of it a further example is in Which’s latest magazine, with savings over the 8 year projected life of washers and driers amounting to only a few pounds – if that was expressed in savings per year, week or wash / dry it would be so small that no one would ever be tempted to buy a machine that was supposed to save energy.

AND YET …. the technology exists (and has done for decades) to make appliances that work on rechargeable batteries, CFL lamps that last a long time, work in cold conditions, work in enclosed fittings and give as much light as old tungsten lamps, boilers which really do use much less gas, washers and driers that really do use less power …….. but they cost a bit extra and that public is unwilling to pay.
Perhaps being Green really is a ‘luxury’ if you want to do it right?

[stands back and puts on tin helmet!]

Richard

You are right about the problem of using rechargeable batteries in some battery-operated gadgets. It is down to bad design and if something does not work with rechargeables then you will not be able to use all the power available from a non-rechargeable battery.

There seems to be a lot of luck about whether gadgets will work with rechargeables. For example, I have found that various well known brands of cordless mice (thankfully not mine) that will not work on rechargeables but I have used four generations of Apple cordless mice that work very well indeed. So they should, at the price Apple charges.

I would like to see all battery-operated goods designed to work with rechargeables, except perhaps items where a non-rechargeable battery can be expected to last at least five years (e.g. remote controls and clocks). One of the drawbacks of NiMH rechargeable batteries is that the cell voltage remains constant around 1.2 volts, making it difficult to provide a battery condition indicator.

Children’s toys are frequently marked as unsuitable for use with rechargeable batteries. I assume that this is a safety consideration because of the greater risk of overheating if a rechargeable battery is short-circuited (low quality products that tend to be thrown around). I know several people who have had great success and saved a lot of money by using rechargeables for their kids’ toys.

If we are going to discuss batteries further we really need to do this in the right place as suggested by Patrick. 🙂

Sadly, CFLs suffered from what I regard as poor/dishonest marketing (though the marketing people would probably disagree). Most were promoted as saving 80% of the energy used by an old fashioned bulb. Some of the more recent ones will do this when they are new and when they have reached full brightness. It would have been better to claim a 70 or 60% saving. That is still very worthwhile and if we buy a lamp that is brighter than expected, that should encourage the customer to make further purchases.

Thanks, as always, for your comments, Dave.

Wavechange

It was not bad design of the equipment – but maybe you forget that rechargeable batteries at the time were nowhere as good as they are now – they lost charge quickly and as such not suitable for many electronic devices.

Dave D

The rechargeables of years ago (when the devices I posted about were made) were just not good enough – they lost charge too quickly in the quiescent state- So the manufacturers designed for the most suitable battery at hand – the non -rechargeable type . Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

CFLs are a different thing – they were sold purely to reduce consumption of electricity – and they do – The wattage was a misguided attempt to “inform” the consumer on it’s equivalent to the incandescent lamp.

Richard

I have been using rechargeable batteries since 1970, before they were in shops, and I know quite a lot about self-discharge and other characteristics. However, your comment referred to terminal voltage and so did my response.

If one brand of a product will work on rechargeables and another will not, one of these products is badly designed in my view. Let’s end this discussion, which is off-topic.

Wavecjhange

Interesting I was doing electronic research in the early 1960s – so I know quite a lot too (got a degree in it) we were using or trying to use them in our developmental research portable military equipment. My response was about the reason for not using rechargeables – it was nor bad design of the equipment but lack of suitable rechargeables.

Here is the Conversation if you wish to discuss this further: https://conversation.which.co.uk/energy-home/why-dont-we-phase-out-disposable-batteries/

I didn’t realsie that this new thread had appeared and so I posted the comment that follows in the older area. Had I known I would have posted here a while ago.

I have just installed four dimmable LED bulbs to replace the four halogen bulbs which were a very bad experiment. As I wrote elsewhere, they cost much more than either CFLs or incandescants and are far more expensive to run than the former and only half as expensive as the latter. When the purchase price is factored in they are far more expensive that either. The do have the advantage over CFLs of instant starting and they can be dimmed – but these extras are surely not worth paying so much for.

The LEDs I bought were E27s, which fit into a normal bayonet or ES holder and will accept any shade that a flourescent will. They do look a little strange – but then so did CFLs when we first came across them. They are rated at 8 watt and this light output is said to be equivalent to a 60 watt incandescant. They have a life expectancy in excess of 25,000 hours – so should outlast two to three CFLs and 25 Incandescants.

So how are they? My first impressions a very good. They light up immediately with a very white light and, if anything, are brighter than I expected. They dim quite well down to about half-light but then go very dim. Whether that is the dimmer I am using or just these particular bulbs I can’t say – but 50% dimming is good enough for me.

The obvious disadvantage is purchase cost. At around £15 each they are a significant investment but the savings over only a year will cover that investment and from then on it will be savings all the way. They are rather heavier than I expected as well – certainly more than a 60 watt incandescant – but most fitments have a pretty good safety margin – mine are certainly taking the loading. The instructions also warn against the heat generated – but to me it seems no more than a cfl and far less than an incandescant.

So I will be replacing my CFLs over the years – although with the stock I have and the time they last that might be a tidy while.

I fully agree with you Wavechange. Getting replacement lamps to match the “tone” [colour temperature] of other bulbs in the same room is an expensive game of trial and error even if you can get the light output more or less to match. I am fed up with having to replace all three lamps in a central light fitting in order to stop it drawing attention to itself with a glary bulb or a dull one. This was hardly a problem with incandescents. However, as you say, it is not incorrigible if the output and tone were stated prominently on the packaging and if Which? emphasised the importance of this in its testing. Knowing whether a lamp consumes 8 Watts or 11 Watts is no longer important – anything less than 20 Watts is a massive energy saving in most cases.

I’m going to get accused of Which? -bashing here, and I apologise in advance to Patrick and his colleagues.

Which? don’t often mention factors which seem glaringly (pardon the pun) obvious in reports.

I believe this to be for two reasons – but I’m open to being corrected –

1) Which? members and testers are, I believe, predominantly middle-class and predominantly based in the (relatively) affluent South-East. This means that they tend to shop at comparatively costly places and buy relatively costly brands. This has been especially apparent in CFL and LED lamp tests over the last two years or so when it has been pointed out by many convo participants that most or even all of the brands of lamp tested are unheard of north of Watford and when the shops selling lamps on test were chains not found in many parts of the UK.

2) the factors which are of greatest interest to the majority of review readers don’t lend themselves easily to producing a convincing test report which will come out in favour of the products on test (for example, as John Ward correctly states, colour rendering is important to users, but it has no measurable effect upon efficiency, energy consumption., life span, etc., so it’s not really worth Which? bothering about in tests.

I know that there will be some Which? members (like me) who are not middle class, not well off and not from the South East, and I apologise for the generalisation in point 1. I also know that there will be some (maybe many) Which? staff who push their colleagues to refer to the important factors in reviews an I acknowledge their efforts, but wish that they were more successful.

That’s rather prejudiced, Dave. Just because the Which? team can write English that does not make them middle class. 🙂

I believe that colour temperature is really quite important to consumers and even if this does not affect the amount of electricity used, there is a marked effect on light output.. Whether it is a CFL or an LED lamp, higher colour temperature lamps emit a lot more light. Traditionally, most people have preferred 2700K lamps, which equates to the colour temperature of good old incandescent bulbs. Many are now very happy with the higher colour temperature of halogen bulbs and I have seen an increasing demand for CFLs of around 6000k. You know much more about the availability of CFLs than I do, but I’ve seen the hight colour temperature CFLs mainly in offices and public buildings.

A recent e-mail from the Which? Connect team contained some dreadful howlers but I expect that’s because they’re stuck in a gloomy room somewhere in the basement and starved of light while someone does an experiment there to see how much can be saved by using the lowest level of low-energy lamps.

The team were probably just going through a bad spell. 🙂

It would be interesting to know what lighting levels people are happy with in the home, and whether this is affected by colour temperature.

I have seen, on the Which? website or in the magazine, a photo of CFLs under test without any form of shade. That will provide more cooling than in most typical applications. My hypothesis is that premature failure is linked to overheating of electronic components in the lamp cap. I would be very grateful if this could be looked at. I have mentioned this before but would not expect your experts to read all my rambling comments.

I recall that in the last tests, lamps were switched on and off 30,000 times. That might be appropriate for testing car indicators but it seems a bit over the top for household lighting.

The explanation about not testing cheap lamps makes sense and is obvious when you have pointed it out. It’s something that Dave might have worked out, but I hadn’t and I guess there are many members who have been wondering why Which? has focused on more expensive types.

I look forward to the next report on low energy lighting, whatever that covers.

The heating issue has been discussed many times. The heat is not usually in a place that is of benefit. If you sit under a reflector reading lamp all the time, the heating effect will be useful.

It’s an interesting suggestion about where to site power stations. I had not realised that losses at grid voltage were a major factor. Shall we toss to see whether it is your backyard or mine we build it?

Fair comment if you are comparing exactly the same product. There are some cheap lamps on the market and I’m not sure how safe they are. I would be worried about fire risk.

I bought some Philips CFLs for 10p each from B&Q, albeit more than a year ago. I’ve seen the same ones on sale for more than £2. I will agree that B&Q is not usually the cheapest source.

If there was more demand for CFLs there would be more competition and prices might fall. The trouble is they last so long, at least for some of us. Even if you had to pay £10 per lamp you would recoup this in electricity savings. That is easy to calculate.

I think as far as pricing is concerned, the fact that for the first umpteen years of the aggressive campaigning to get us all to change over the Energy Companies were subsidising the cost of CFL’s so that they were being sold more cheaply in the shops, a fact which seems to have escaped the notice of many of the population until prices started to go up …..oddly at the same time that the first tungstens went off sale, what a strange co-incidence that was?! …. is probably why the larger stores are still selling at over-inflated prices. (I.e. to keep their profit margin where it was when the lamps were being subsidised.)

Of course, the cheap lamps in pound-shops may (or may not) be inferior quality too, I don’t know.

I do know that with every other “green” initiative or technology that I’ve had anything to do with, you have to buy the more (or most) expensive of whatever it is to stand a chance of making any real savings in the long run. I’m stopping short of saying that I believe that to be the case with CFL’s because I simply have not, and won’t for some time be, used enough of them. I have have a good number of bitter disappointments with cheaper CFL’s, especially the less-well-known brands, and I’ve had fantastic experiences with the Old Phillips ones, but bitter disappointments with newer Phillips ones. At present the best I have first-hand experience of are Crompton and Sylvania ones. Since mum’s house was re-wired almost 2 years ago all of her lights have had these brands in and all are still operating, even though she has lights on an awful lot of the time. That said, they still have had to be 30w plus to give the level of light that she used to get, and still requires for reading an needlework, from 150w and 250w tungstens, and getting hold of 30w of higher cfl’s is not as easy as I think it should be.

You are right in saying that dimming an incandescent lamp makes it last very much longer but your guess that it will use much less power is completely wrong. Incandescent bulbs operated below full brightness are extremely uneconomical, though this is not well known. I am surprised they have not been banned for this and other reasons.

The traditional use of table lamps and wall lamps with smaller lamps at full brightness is far more economical. Dimmable CFLs can flicker. Beware that some LED lamps are unsuitable for dimming.

Unfortunately, it is unlikely that CFLs will be made small enough to suit your needs, rocky. The problem is that the designers of light fixtures failed to plan ahead in the last 20 years. LED lamps might prove suitable.

Bell make some excellent LED gold ball lamps – exactly same size as tungsten ones and available in white and many colours. Only one they don’t do is clear. They’re real glass and they don’t have a huge electronics unit at the base. In fact, they are indistinguishable from Tungsten golf ball lamps.

Only down side that I know of is that they are only available in up to 4 watts LED, which are claimed to be equivalent to 25w tungsten but I’d say they are more like 15w tungsten. Might still be worth investigating for multi-light fittings.

Actually, I do also have a couple of CFL gold ball lamps. The actually globe is the same size as a tungsten golf ball, but the electronics unit at the base is quite large so may not be any use for your fittings rocky. These are (so far) the most long-lived cfl’s I’ve ever had and I use them in fully enclosed “brick light” exterior fittings. They’ve done longer in there (two years by the end of this year) than any other CFL’s I’ve had in the same fittings. Can’t remember the brand but they were not a big name brand. Got them in a local independent department store in a sale. If I remember, I’ll have a look inside one of the brick lights at the weekend and post the brand for you.

I think the problem is partly related to using small CFLs rather than larger ones. They have been created to meet the demand for direct replacement of incandescent bulbs but CFL ‘candle bulbs’ are rather pathetic and perhaps appropriately named.

Whereas an incandescent bulb produces a continuous spectrum, a fluorescent lamp emits light at certain frequencies depending on the phosphor coating on the inside of the tube. Looking at a typical CFL through a hand spectroscope I can see a complex spectrum including purple, blue, green, yellow, orange and red.

LED lamps may well be the answer for you, and they seem to be evolving fast. I remember choosing some new-fangled LED panel indicators from the RS catalogue (probably still Radiospares in these days) in the 1970s. I don’t have any mains powered LED lamps but those in torches etc appear to produce a continuous spectrum.

Thanks Malcolm. I have a feeling this is the second time you have told me how white LEDs work. 🙂 One thing I have noticed is the subtle differences in colour available, already greater than we have seen with CFLs.

Having had a look at prices, if I wanted to replace small bulbs I would choose halogens until better LED lamps are available and the price has fallen.

I remember your comments about lamp adaptors in an earlier Conversation, Richard. I would not be surprised if we see these adapters reappear in the UK. It could be some time before we see affordable LED lamps that provide equivalent light output to an old fashioned 100 watt bulb and many of us are keen on bright lighting.

I am surprised that you don’t find CFLs reliable. Using them on dimmers, in enclosed fittings or small lampshades, or in outdoor lighting are good ways of killing them prematurely, but the well known brands used with reasonable ventilation generally last a long time for the people I know.

LEDs supplied in replacement bulbs seem to be in limited powers from the major manufacturers. Philips do a 17W to replace a 75W incandescent for example, with the bulk 11W and below (60W and below incandescent equivalent) and 4W round and candle versions. So the light output is generally restricted. A characteristic of LEDs is that they are temperature sensitive – as you make them more powerful by putting in more current, they get hotter and the light output efficiency falls significantly. So buying a high power LED lamp from a non-mainstream source may not give the results expected. And if the controlling electronics are integral, they will likely have a shortened life if too hot.

These are the factors I am concerned about, Malcolm. Now that you have reminded me about the phosphors in white LEDs, I wonder if they will deteriorate with time, as with fluorescent lamps of all types. That does not seem to be a problem with the low power LED lamps produced in recent years, but I do wonder what will happen when more power is pushed in to achieve the light output of say a humble 100 watt incandescent bulb.

It’s not difficult to see the overall cost benefit of low energy lighting and if this had been publicised better rather than forcing people to switch, the transition could have been a lot less traumatic.

I know people who have hoarded incandescent light bulbs before they disappeared from the shops, yet are now using CFLs by choice. It’s a strange world.

Malcolm – if you know of any decent and up-to-date information about these practical considerations I would be very grateful for references. As with fluorescent lighting, it would be good to separate the control electronics from the source of heat, but most householders are still looking for a direct replacement for a bulb.

Thanks, so I’ve put in a 75w incandescent and the surround glass gets too hot to hold. Didn’t have 60 or 40.