Light bulbs banned

[Billy Wobble Dagger]

Just found this on the bbc news site.

BBC NEWS | UK | Switch off for traditional bulbs

Basically it says that all high wattage light bulbs (150 watt) will be banned from next January. With all other traditional bulbs, ie 100-40 watt being banned in the next four years.
Good news, but why wait for four years. Why not ban them all from next January? Modern environmentally friendly bulbs are already widely available and as far as I know the wide range will fit nearly all fittings, except, I haven't seen any coloured ones, for outdoor lights although I think they are 25watt anyway.

And while I'm ranting about saving power. We always turn our sky box off at the wall along with the TV, video etc. When sky is switched on it defaults to the help channel. The help channel states that to save the planet remember to switch the sky box to stand by when not in use. Surly they should be saying switch off at the wall. So what is the reason for this, what are sky doing that requires us to keep our boxes on stand by!
As a side line all our electrical equipment is switched off at the wall when not in use, micro wave, cooker (not gas) TV etc lamps. Not only are we saving energy but hopefully cutting the risk of fire as well.

BWD

[lol geoff]

Lets hope these new bulbs are a bit better looking than the current energy saving bulbs.

I used to unplug the phone line to our sky box but started getting threatening letters from them. Apparently they have to check that the box is connected to the same telephone line that it was connected to in the first place. This is to stop people from ordering sky multiroom and then transfering the second box to another address.

[thunder]

Just hope they soon invent a low energy bulb that switches on quickly, otherwise I can see a lot of people being injured by trips or falls

henrya

[pressld2]

Slow start up is just one issue of many with the current low energy bulb technology. While I'm all in favour of saving energy in any way possible, low energy light bulbs are emphatically NOT yet a replacement for traditional bulbs.

They don't work with dimmer switches, they don't work with timer switches (so my external security lights can't use them), they are dangerous to use with power tools because they flicker and can make a moving saw blade or drill bit look stationary and, above all, they are still too big! They come with all the standard fittings, bayonet, ES, SES etc., but the actual bulbs are about 50% bigger than traditional ones. This means that they don't physically fit in many of the light fittings in my house. How green will I be if I have to throw away perfectly good light fittings and replace them with new ones just so that I can get bulbs to fit? And as for LED bulbs to replace halogens, well I tried that (at considerable cost) in my son's bedroom but when I turned them on they actually made the room look darker!

As I said, I'm very much in favour of saving energy and already use low energy bulbs wherever possible. But for at least seventy percent of my household lights it's still not possible with current bulb technology.

Dave P.

[thunder]

Didn't I read recently that school children were getting headaches because of all the flicker from modern equipment including fluorescent lighting in schools? Soon we'll all have headaches and the government won't have to worry about the children because it will be the norm!

henrya

[Tormentil]

Originally Posted by pressld2

They don't work with dimmer switches, they don't work with timer switches (so my external security lights can't use them), they are dangerous to use with power tools because they flicker and can make a moving saw blade or drill bit look stationary and, above all, they are still too big!

They're also no good in ovens, or micro waves. Cold temperatures reduce the bulbs' efficiency and make them dim excessively. They use more energy to produce and they contain mercury and phosphorus and at present there is not much in the way of recycling facilities for these.

[Gaina]

Ah great, now Nanny MacBrown is going to tell me what type if lightbulbs I can use.

I do a lot of Art and Crafts and I need to work with Daylight Bulbs so I don't know how they are going to cater for those people (and the people wth S.A.D - has anyone thought about how light affects them?).

You know what really gets me? They are telling us to recycle, use low energy lightbulbs, taxing our flights etc, then they go and build more houses, don't give aircraft and car manufacturers any incentive to make cleaner vehicles and then on top of that, America buys India's emmissions quota so the can pump even more 'you know what' into the atmosphere than they already do, which is far more detrimental. And lets not start on the annihilation of the rainforests for palm oil....

Methinks a few lightbulbs aren't going to change much in the grand scheme of things

[ron1863]

Does it also include halogen bulbs. We have one (500w) in our motion detector, which is good for deterring intruders.

[svenrufus]

It's a bit disappointing to see some of the negative comments here about the idea of legislating for low energy light bulbs. Surely the fact that moving to this form of lighting will save the UK from producing about 2.3 million tonnes of CO2 a year is a reason significant enough to make the small sacrifices of convenience that people seem to fret so much about. It has been estimated that if every household switched just one light bulb to a low enegy version, it would require the UK to run one less power station. I live in a flat that has 7 light bulbs (all now low energy), many houses must have at least twice this amount. How many power stations would this add up to (or rather, subtract)?

Some of the arguments against them are outdated, some are wrong, some are incomplete. For example, there are low energy light bulbs that are dimmer compatible, they just haven't penetrated the UK market, as there are so few people wanting them that it is not profitable to sell them here. Once the market removes incandescent bulbs, the market demand will peak, and they will become available. Another outdated argument is that they are slow to start - that was true in the early years, but now they are instant, no discernble difference.

Tormentil comments that they contain mercury which is true, but the energy they save is so great that the coal that would have been burnt to power incandescent bulbs over the life of a low energy bulb runs would have released more mercury than the bulb contains, and in an uncontrolled way. It is true that there is no way of recycling them yet, but given the market, solutions will be provided. (Although my council won't accept conventional light bulbs for recycling, so I may be wrong on that - something else to lobby for!) The extra energy required in their manufacture is more than compensated for by the energy saved, and the differential would be greater with economies of scale in manufacture if more were made and bought.

As far as the other specialist requirements of bulbs that have been referred to, I can't answer to the current market, but in most things in human endeavour, when the demand exist, the demand is met. I can only suggest that if there is no 'natural light' equivalent in low energy bulbs, such a thing will probably develop soon. In fact, even more energy efficient bulbs are coming onstream in the form of LED lights, which have whole ranks of LED's using virtually no electricity. As LED's come in a few different colours, they are combined to give a range of different tones to lights, so there may already be natural light options. Again, I say that the market will drive the availability of this sort of option.

LED lights are being produced at the moment as replacements for halogen lights, but they are not quite there yet. Ultimately they may replace the Compact flourescent. They have no flicker, are smaller, and more versatile.

Gaina comes closest in what has been contributed so far to making fair criticism. It is true that there are so many other things that need to be addressed to make sense of the proportionality of this sort of measure, but that does not mean that this is a wrong step to take. We should expect better of our government, but let them know that this is the sort of measure that we demand, and that it needs to be followed up by more radical measures, rather than simply criticising with nothing more constructive to offer.

This has been a bit of a rant, sorry about that, but I for one wholeheartedly welcome this move, it comes not a moment too soon. Having won this battle, we can now move on to the other issues we need to sort out. It may be too little - it may even be too late - but it is a step in the right direction, and no complacent self interested inertia arising from our habits and customary practices should be allowed to take away from that progress.

[Kerry]

[quote=Gaina;173629]You know what really gets me? They are telling us to recycle, use low energy lightbulbs, taxing our flights etc, then they go and build more houses, don't give aircraft and car manufacturers any incentive to make cleaner vehicles and then on top of that, America buys India's emmissions quota so the can pump even more 'you know what' into the atmosphere than they already do, which is far more detrimental. And lets not start on the annihilation of the rainforests for palm oil....

[quote]

I think that they target items that are taxable and don't address the issues that cause most damage to the planet such as food production. They can't tax what goes into your mouth and so little is said about the damage to the planet from what you eat on a daily basis. See this report on the farming industries affect on the planet: http://www.virtualcentre.org/en/libr...d/A0701E00.pdf This is far, far more damaging than cars or lightbulbs but they can't tax you to the hilt on this and little is ever mentioned about it.