mart360

EU to ban high-energy lightbulbs - | MSN News UK - news & weather

Will this effect the 240V 50W halogens many of us have?

and what happens to conventional dimmer switches, they dont work with low energy bulbs afaik

(well they do if you have some pretty sophisticated electronics behind them )

so now were all going to have big clumsy fluro bulbs, (there bigger than halo )



dont fluro's use mercury as well?


mart

BuRR

If the ban goes worldwide, then these guys will be knackered

Centennial Light - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

boomer

...and would you feel comfortable fitting a Mercury Death Tube in your fridge or cooker (not that you can in the first place).

...and just what will happen to our water supplies when billions of broken Mercury Death Tubes leak their poison on rubbish tips.

...and do you really think that China and India and Africa etc. will all start to use Mercury Death Tubes as well???

This is the same EU that wants to ban mercury barometers because they contain, er, mercury!!!



mb

sparkykev

50W downlighters are poor though, when you think the average kitchen needs possibly six of them, and even then you'll have dark spots.
Bring flo fittings back into fashion, a 4ft at only 36w, gives much better light spread.
Downlighters are a sparkies worst nightmare.

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

Great, more expensive ill thought out legislation to contribute 0.0000001% to saving the planet while the likes of China and India carry on ignoring just about every anti-pollution directive there is.

Off to buy lots of high energy lamps!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

stevebt

iTrader: (8)

I have just fitted the low energy bulbs thru-out the house, £6 for a pack of 4 from costco and they light as bright as the 150wat bulbs that were in before. I only changed them as my electricity bills are pretty expensive and my lass doesn't know how to switch a light off I should see my money back in a few years time

Coupe-Se

There are 10watt single LED lamps on their way which give out more light than a 50watt Halogen GU10. I've been given a 5watt sample and it is bloody bright!!
The probelm with the existing LED GU10's is the pitifull light output and the fact they do not last anywhere near the manufacturers figures. The heat build up from the existing LED lamps makes them fail prematurely.
The new type that is coming out has a vented aluminium reflector and a small fan to cool them.
I've been told that the Robus 10watt LED GU10 lamps are going to carry a 10year garauntee.

Anyone noticed that 8ft flo fittings are not available any more? It seems that 125watt gls lamps have also been scrapped now.

boomer

You will be telling us next that you can't find any carrier bags in supermarkets, or barbed-wire and creosote for your garden or getting a full two hundred and forty volts coming out of your electrickery sockets or mercury in your barometers or being able to install a socket in your own kitchen or buying a pound of bananas etc.

Bleeding EU-*****!!

mb

stevebt

iTrader: (8)

As it happens its like pulling teeth now trying to get a carrier bag from most checkout staff, well sainsburys and asda that is as that all I shop at

HankScorpio

I think these guys are using them all...

Tam the bam

or Man Charges Through Fluorescent Bulbs - CollegeHumor video

mad555

iTrader: (1)

They are you just got to know where to look.

Leslie

It has been poited out that it takes more energy to make and dispose of these bulbs than they are supposed to save by using them.

Has anyone pointed that out to these pratts?

Les

Coffin Dodger

Are you sure

Got anything to back this up, links, etc. ?

I use them where I don't need dimmable or halogen bulbs. Worth it for the money they save me off my electricity bill as far as I'm concerned.

Leslie

Sorry dont have a link but it was a published statement when the business of compulsory use first came up.

Les

rabbos

How much has been saved?

What happens to the wasted energy from filament bulbs? It goes into your room and reduces demand on your heating system...

53

iTrader: (41)

To be fair with energy saving bulbs I light my whole house with what it takes to just light my dads kitchen !

They do make the room nice and warm though

Coffin Dodger

That's the best one yet. The heat generated by a filament bulb is minuscule compared to the heat needed to warm up a house. It's also not a very efficient way of generating heat, your boiler is much better at doing this.

Coffin Dodger

Once again Les makes a statement without anything to back it up other than what he allegedly read in the Daily Mail a while back.

J4CKO

iTrader: (1)

The energy saving bulb in our downstairs loo is ace, switch it on and generally if you are quick you can be done and dusted before it comes on.

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

I wish more people were aware of this... quantitative analysis seems to go right out of the window whenever 'green' issues are being discussed

It's a perfectly efficient way of converting electricity into heat - very close to 100%, in fact. Allowing for the efficiency of turning fossil fuels into electricity in the first place, you're probably getting about 30 - 35% efficiency overall. And, of course, the heat is being generated right where it's needed, ie. the room you're actually in.

Your boiler may be 80-90% efficient, but if you're heating the whole house rather than just the bit that's occupied, then much of that otherwise useful heat is wasted.

(Funnily enough, the guy who came round to service our gas fire at the weekend reckoned that particular model was only around 25% efficient, with the rest of the heat going straight out the flue... maybe we'd actually be better off using the central heating all the time instead?)

mart360

Neither is your boiler

it burns gas, to generate heat which it then transfers to water , which runs through cold pipes! and looses heat by thermal loss

it then has to rely on a set loss, before it breaks even


Mart

HankScorpio

Exactly, the stupidest I've seen is parking meters running from solar panels.
They are in busy streets with abundant electricity and must run about 10w at absolute best - a clock, a tiny lcd display and a crappy printer.

How much energy went in to the production and shipping of these photovoltaic cells? How much extra did the council pay for the "green" version? How long before they have recouped the cost for themselves in terms of both energy and money?

Leslie

Do you know, you have just done exactly what you accuse me of. You have no idea what papers I read.

You would do well to wind your neck in when you don't know the facts.

I was relating what I had seen in print, it might even have been on this forum.

Les

Leslie

Have you got a link for this?

Les

Klaatu

And that is why the likes of Enron, Shell and BP lobbied EU govn'ts for the current, corrupt, carbon trading scheme.

Save the planet? LMAO Make lots and lots of hard cash, because the "carbon" ecconomy has just begun!

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

A typical filament bulb draws somewhere between 40W and 100W.

A one-bar electric fire is typically around 1,000W, and in winter I'm sure you'd agree that you'd probably want a couple of these going all the time to keep a decent sized room warm.

Note that any electrical appliance - be it a light bulb, a TV or a fan heater - converts all the electrical energy it uses into heat with almost 100% efficiency; the only thing that's 'special' about an electric fire is that it only generates heat, rather than doing anything more interesting or useful. Also it draws enough electricity from the supply that the heating effect is readily noticeable - the fact that you don't really notice the room getting warmer when you turn the lights on is simply a result of the fact that they don't draw that much power to begin with. They still convert all 60W (or whatever) into heat.

As for your boiler doing a better job, it does. The Laws of Thermodynamics place an upper limit on how much energy released from burning fuel in a power station can be turned into useful electricity. In a modern power station that figure is, IIRC, around 40%, with the remaining 60% being lost as heat. If, however, heat is actually what you want, then you're better off burning the fuel locally and using the heat directly, which is what your boiler does.

dsmith

Strange how when its electric cars its the opposite argument

i.e. better to create the electricity centrally than burn fossil fuel locally.

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

That's actually true as well - but there's a very important distinction.

In a domestic boiler, what you're trying to produce is heat. When you burn the gas, that's exactly what you get.

In a power station, what you get when you burn the fuel is still heat, but that's not actually what you want. What you want is useful mechanical work to drive the generator, so you have to convert as much of the energy from the heat into mechanical work as you can.

This conversion is done using a steam turbine, and it's this which is the main source of inefficiency. What comes out is useful work plus a lot of 'low grade' heat (ie. lots of heat, but at a low temperature) which cannot be used to do anything useful. (Exception: combined heat & power plant - which is a good idea in principle, were it not for the fact that nobody wants to live near a power station).

In your car, what you want is mechanical work too - the heat just has to be dissipated in the radiator.

However, a power station can extract more useful work from burning fuel than a car engine. The two are governed by exactly the same thermodynamic processes, but a power station boiler and steam turbine can be designed for maximum efficiency without compromises made in the name of portability, cheapness of manufacture, torque characteristics, acoustics and so on. The fact that it's much, much bigger also helps because the ratio of volume to surface area is that much greater - so it loses less heat to its environment. Finally, it's also possible to clean the exhaust gases from a power station with much greater consistency and effectiveness than thousands of cheap little catalytic converters.

That's the argument why it's 'better' to generate energy for cars centrally, but there are still the issues of range, battery manufacture and disposal, infrastructure and so on - there's no definitive 'right' answer. Yet.

boomer

Andy,

I am sure that modern electrickery power stations (coal or gas) are up in the 80% to 90% energy conversion ballpark, but then there are transmission losses to take into account. But probably quite a high proportion actually gets to your house. Then, as you say, beyond the meter (which is what you are paying for) - ONE HUNDRED PERCENT gets converted into heating for your house (whether via oil storage radiator; fan heater; or safe, non-poisonous, proven for years, standard, incandescent light bulb ).

Thanks for talking sense

But for the "gas disciples" - there are also transmission losses in getting that invisible explosive vapour to your house. It needs pumping (by electrickery ) and there is also something called "shrinkage", which is a koala-bear friendly way of explaining leaks in the distribution systems (not unlike that found in our foreign-owned water-wasting, er, supplying companies) so what hits your house is less that what was extracted from the Seaus Northus!

And even if your "condensing, consolidating, combination, hyper-efficient gas boiler does convert 90% of what is left into usable heat, you have to fork out £300 quid a year for a man to replace all the (eco-expensive) parts that will continue to break.

Just like with the eco-expensive, 2.8 hours a day but last for six years (so long as you don't turn them off), unsafe to throw away, mercury-death-tubes (have i got back on track, or am i rambling???).

mb