New "low energy" bulbs ARE a con

[RichardCranium]

More or Less on Radio 4.

There is only a 3:1 ratio in brightness: you need a 33W new bulb to replace a 100W old bulb. That's not what the boxes say.

The life of 10 years assumes the bulb is off for over 85% of the time, and is an average: 50% will have failed after 10,000 hours (416 days if always on) of use.

The 80% energy saving is a falsehood: it includes heat generation that is compensated for by heating reductions.

[original PM]

No Really

well who would have thought that?

[AtW]

They claim they are low energy and they do that...

[Mich the Tester]

The 80% energy saving is a falsehood: it includes heat generation that is compensated for by heating reductions.

The first law of thermodynamics really is pretty ruthless at times.

[swamp]

Britain jumped the gun on this one. The government implemented the new EU regulations early, so we all have to buy these crappy low energy bulbs instead of waiting until LED lights become cheap enough. Which is what the rest of the EU will do. The UK may even end up using more energy as a result of this, not to mention all the mercury which we will dump in landfill.

[AtW]

not to mention all the mercury which we will dump in landfill.

Maybe it should be legislated that mercury can only be dumped on Mercury - this may give incentive to develop spaceships...

[Platypus]

Timely. I recently bought some "old style" bulbs from a local DIY store, because I'm getting p*ssed off with the pale yellow dim light that now pervades my "energy efficient" house.

I don't miss having to change the old bulbs every month when they pop, but I do miss the quality of their light. And their "instant on" functionality.

[hyperD]

I'm surprised they haven't wheeled out a government mong to say "to compensate for the lower luminescence, you should eat a carrot and add it to you 5 a day" or other such carp.

[Platypus]

you should eat a carrot

Wasn't that just WW2 propaganda to cover up the invention of RADAR ?

[TimberWolf]

You can buy 5 florescents for £1 down my local supermarket. Also, don't forget to give up meat and breed like crazy as you know this makes perfect sense.

I was trying to read the resistances on some minute resistors the other day (using the colour bars, without a colour chart to compare them with) and had trouble telling brown from black and red from orange, etc, under my underpowered florescent light. So I tried again under the table lamp, which has one of the old illegal light bulbs in. That was an improvement and the colours changed and became more distinct and differentiable, but even so neither were as good as decent sunlight, as I discovered the next morning. I'd also tried it under a small white LED, and that wasn't much cop either.