Eco-St : Light Bulb Library : Review

Ban The Bulb has borrowed a low energy "light bulb library" from Matt Lane of Eco-St and been trying out some of the 40 different designs of high-quality energy saving light bulb that have been gathered together for this loanable library.



Visually impaired

The most suitable energy saving light bulb, for those that are visually impaired, has proven to be the 25W Pro-Lite Daylite.

This lamp quickly produces a very bright light which covers a full "daylight" spectrum and is equivalent to a 125W incandescent light bulb.

It costs about £9 to buy, lasts for 8000 hours (approx. 8 years) and uses 6 times less electricity to produce the same amount of light as the traditional alternative.

It has been calculated that this energy saving lamp uses £12 less electricity each year or £96 over its lifetime.





100W equivalent : 20W Soft tone

Many people find the light produced by the stick and spiral designs of energy saving light bulb too harsh.

As a result, several of the manufacturers have started to encapsulate the familiar energy saving spirals or sticks inside glass globes which are tinted to produce a warmer or softer tone of light.

Ban The Bulb would recommend that you used these encapsulated designs in living space and the stick designs for areas such as stairs and hallways where the tone of light matters less.

The Philips 20W Softone energy saving light bulb produces a good brightness within 1-2 seconds and full brightness within about a minute.

It costs £4.99 to buy one of these lamps and saves roughly £10 per year on electricity bills. With an 8000 hour (approx 8 year) lifetime this amounts to an £80 saving on bills.

75W equivalent : 16W Softone

The Philips 16W Softone is an encapsulated design of energy saving light bulb, which produces a mellow light and reaches a good brightness within 3 seconds and full brightness within 30 seconds - 1 minute.

It costs £4.99 and saves roughly £9 per year (£72 over life time) on electricity bills when compared to a 75W incandescent equivalent.


General Advice

Use the higher wattages of energy saving bulb

In general, BTB recommends that you avoid the lower wattages of energy saving light bulb as there do seem to be issues with the conversion of watts (the unit of electricity) and lumens (the unit of light) and it seems best to err on the side of caution; by buying a slightly higher wattage of energy saver that you might expect.

You can also check the lumen levels on the box and this is a good idea if you have time.

You get what you pay for

Millions of energy saving light bulbs have been given away free but these tend to be relatively poorly made and to be produced by little known brands or obscure Chinese companies.

BTB therefore recommends that you buy energy savers that have been produced by well-known brands. Even if the cost a bit more to purchase, they will almost certainly do a better job and help you to avoid disappointment.

As with other household goods, you tend to get what you pay for, and both the quality of light and lifetimes seem to be more satisfactory from the bigger brands.

All energy saving light bulbs are not equal

Although I haven't had time to undertake a thorough review of all of the light bulbs in the library, you might like to know that:

Osram / GE seem to make some of the best compact "stick" designs,

Pro-Lite seen to make the brightest energy savers with the widest light spectrum,

Philips seem to make the best soft tone and "encapsulated" globe designs and,

Pro-Lite and Megaman seem to make the best candle shaped compacts.

BTB hasn't found any dimmable CFLs that it is happy to endorse and would recommend that you waited for LEDs, such as those made by Sharp / EcoLED to get cheaper and more widely available.

Visit a specialist lighting shop + try before you buy

Please have a look at the numerous light bulb suppliers in the links on the left if you want to compare prices and look at a wider range of light bulbs.

It is also a good idea to visit specialist lighting shops such as Ryness and Eco-St, so that you can ask them to demonstrate different light bulbs before you buy.

Thanks to Matt Lane for allowing me borrow his excellent light bulb library.

Labels: light bulb library, Philips, pro-lite, visually impaired

A video comparison on LEDs, CFLs + incandescents

Hank Green, The Editor of EcoGeek, has produced a useful video which shows off some of the latest domestic LEDs and compares them with traditional incandescents.

In Ban The Bulb's opinion LEDs are definitely an important part of the future and should provide the new minimum energy performance standard for 100W and 60W light bulbs within 3-5 years.



Last week, Ban The Bulb demonstrated the comparable performance of the 4W EcoLED to a 40W domestic incandescent on BBC Breakfast TV.

Thanks to Greenpeace UK for finding Hank's demonstration.

Useful links:

4W EcoLED

8W EcoLED : with cooling metal plates

7W Earth LED : ZetaLux : with cooling metal plates

13 W Earth LED : EvoLux : with cooling fan!

Last week's media interest in light bulbs, triggered by the Daily Mail (see: a, b, c, d, e, f, g) has generated some interesting correspondence from a lighting company that uses ceramics (excited by radio frequencies) to produce light, which should be able to beat the energy performance and illumination of domestic LEDs within 2 years!

I'll let you know more once I've visited their factory at the end of the month.

Labels: Ceramic lights, EcoGeek, Hank Green, LEDs

Phase out of 100W light bulbs begins in the UK

Yesterday, 1 Jan 2009, a voluntary agreement between the UK government and the country's retailers came into force, which will see 100W (<60W) domestic incandescent light bulbs being phased out by many of the UK's biggest shops, as suppliers cease to replace their stock of inefficient light bulbs.

Once the existing stock has been used up incandescent light bulbs will be replaced by halogen lamps (which use 25% less electricity) and compact fluorescent lamps (which use 65-80% less electricity to produce an equivalent amount of light).

Although the making of this agreement was little noticed it has already resulted in 150W (<100W) light bulbs being phased out and will be extended to include 60W (<40W) light bulbs next year...

In addition, a legally binding EU-wide ban on 100W light bulbs will also come into force in September 2009 and a similar ban is due to come into force in Australia in Nov 2009 (although BTB has been unable to find any of the relevant legislation from Australia online yet).

In a recent review of the performance of compact fluorescent lamps, which the Ban The Bulb campaign conducted for The Guardian newspaper, Tesco (81p), GE (£4 each) and Philips (£4 each) were found to offer the best energy saving alternatives to 100W incandescents.

Following recent improvements in LEDs, Ban The Bulb campaign believes that before long incandescents, halogen lamps and CFLs will all be replaced by domestic LEDs, which offer 90% energy savings and 25x -50x longer lifetimes are the future.

This campaign is certainly very pleased with the performance of the domestic table lamp 4W LED substitute for 40W incandescents made by ECOLED.

Apart from offering massive energy savings and much longer lifetimes, LEDs offer instant full brightness, dimmability and zero mercury content.

LEDs are still rather expensive to buy, so Ban The Bulb would like to see governments taking rapid and firm measures to ensure that this functional and available technology is brought to the mass market as quickly as possible, so that it can benefit from the economies of scale.

Making full use of LEDs would help consumers to save money on their energy bills, help energy companies to build fewer power stations and enable the environment to benefit from significantly fewer lighting associated carbon emissions than is currently the case (if the whole of the EU used CFLs instead of incandescents this would save 23 - 53 Million tonnes of CO2 per annum across Europe or put another way 10 power station's worth of electricity).

Anyway, the Ban The Bulb campaign is glad with the progress that has been made since it was set up in Feb 2005, and invited to write an article for BBC News Online in Feb 2006, so let's see whether LEDs can be made the new target within 2009!

Labels: Australia, EU, LEDs, UK, voluntary agreement