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Generally it is possible to find energy saving bulbs that perform as well as standard, or 'old fashoned' bulbs, with the exception of 'dimming' bulbs. unfortunatly these are going to cost you; like so many things you get what you pay for; last year we kitted our flat out with tescos standard energy saving bulbs and were shocked to find that whilst they give of a steady bright noisless light, they took 3.5seconds to turn on in every light fitting unless you had turned them off within the last couple of minutes.
we eventually tired of waiting in every doorway until it was safe to poceed and decided the bulbs had to go. EDF energy had sent us a couple of energy saving phillips bulbs along the way and this provided a bright instant light that did what you expected a light bulb to do, so decided to replace our bulbs with the same model. these came in at £13 per bulb but have done the job perfectly for well over a year and a half with no bulbs blowing or loosing any noticable quality.
There a couple of points about energy saving bulbs to consider, much of this already raised, altho it can do little harm to condence the information!
If you live in a flat or house that has timer light switches (the kind where you push a button, the light comes on then automatically goes off after 30s~1min) these bulbs will not be suitable, either their reaction time will be to slow or the constant on and off nature of their use will unacceptably shorten their life making them a false economy. the building i work in has chosen to replace timed lighting with LED lighting, though at present this is not sensably viable for home use.
As mentioned these bulbs do not like being dimmed and even though many say they can be, realistically this is to a point; for example between traditional bulb values; for example an equivilant 100w ESB may be dimmed to equivilent 60W or 60w to 40W, but an equivilent 100W will struggle to be dimmed to 40W. it may be worth considering how often you use your dimmer switch? my parents house has one in their living room (the kind where you preset the level of dimming before turning the bulb on) and i would hazzard a gues that mayb twice in the last two years have they used any setting other that that provided by a 60w bulb. if this is your situation then you may not notice the change as much as you think.
The question of false ecconomy rages on; do these bulbs really save you money compared to standard bulbs considering that the good ones cost 40x the price in some instances? does longer life justify the price? this will change from house hold to household and usage levels. it is worth remembering that insentives like australias banning of traditional bulbs and energy suppliers providing free bulbs has little to do with real energy consumption and more to do with meating international green insentives - it is far easier to get everyone using a new type of bulb than a new type of car.
another often missunderstood fact is that cutting down your home eletricity usage will in no way directly impact the carbon footprint of the country for years - they may tell you that energy saving bulbs allow the same ammount of power to light 3 times as many homes, but the reality is that our powerstations will continue to produce the power, whether we use it or not; we use nearly all of our household electricity in the morning and evening (because we go to work and school) yet the national grid must supply this level of electricity 24hrs a day. the power stations will only start producing less electricity once there has been a long sustatined decline in power usage. the government would like us to use less power so they have to build less new power stations.
that said less power stations do mean less pollution, and energy saving bulbs will save your electricty bill, as well as reducing landfill waste, if we took an average from the bulb manufacurers of the ESBs providing 3x life, then it would be logical to assume that a total switchover would reduce the number of bulbs going into landfill by 60%.
whilst the chemicalls involved may do slightly more damage, on the whole these bulbs are better for the environment than standard bulbs, and it just makes sense for us to consider the impact we have upon the planet, however do not feel overly pressurised into switching, this one comes down to personal choice; they pail in significance to the effect you would have by taking part in a car share once a week, or turning your boiler down 30% (upto a 50% gas bill saving in the winter) or simply sorting out your recycling! we all have to do our little bit, but theres no harm in waiting for this technology to progress as long as we look to what we can do. |
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Author: Chrisoldinho
26-11-2019 04:24:36