advice on problem low energy bulbs please

[Ian Stirling]

To put some numbers on this.

Let's take a 100W light bulb as an example.

This puts out some 1300lumens and uses 100W, for an efficiency of around

13lm/W.

For a compact fluorescant, these numbers change to 22W, and 60lm/W, and cost maybe 3 pounds (unsubsidised)

For a large linear flourescant tube, 13W, and 100lm/W, costing a poundish.

LEDs now.

for example.

These cost $3.30 (in 100s), and put out 70lm/W in neutral white when run at 1W.

This is 19 LEDs to equal the above 100W light, which take 19W, call it 22W when the ballast losses are counted.

Costing maybe (in the shops) 60 quid per bulb.

If you drive the LEDs harder, you can drop it to 10 LEDs, and maybe 30 quid, but the efficiency drops my 40% or so.

However.

With the appropriate driver circuitry, this can reasonably be expected to be producing light fairly efficiently in ten years constantly on.

In short - they are probably barely competitive with CFL at the moment, for applications where otherwise you'd need someone to come out and replace the bulb. Say in awkward locations in stairwells.

However again, it's only in the past couple of years that LEDs have approached this efficiency, and while the physics won't let you double the brightness/power easily (they are already some 20% efficienct, getting to

40% would require major technological changes), getting another factor of 10 down in price should be quite feasible in the next 5 years.

At that point, they do become competitive.

[Andy Hall]

To me, they are dim and the colour effect is somewhat bilious

[Tournifreak]

Ah, you're all heart aren't you Andy?

[Andy Hall]

Because corrective action was taken and time is required to do that

Incrementalism is not the correct way to view a loss. Each should be taken in isolation and properly taken into account.

Seeking redress for the failed product is the primary purpose of the shopping trip, the rest being incidental.

Unfortunately he isn't and there is.

[Andy Hall]

I am. I wish it weren't true. Think about the stream of mining and factory accidents as just one example.

[Kostas Kavoussanakis]

Thanks. Does that mean that the quoted figures for equivalence with incandescents (both in terms of output and in terms of colour-temp.) are "optimistic"?

Kostas

[Huge]

Very much so.

Essentially, the lifetime figures are lies and the output figures are lies, hence the savings figures are doubly lies. When they've failed here I've been swapping back to incandescents.

[Man at B&Q]

Err, no. The item above is about the trip for the initial purchase. If you want to make individual trips for every item you purchase then that's up to you but it's a very expensive and wasteful way to live your life. Personally, I make a list and shop when it suits me, combining multiple purchases in one trip. The cost of purchasing any particular item is some fraction of the cost the trip, based on individual values, quantities, weights or some other metric. If you buy 10 items via the internet and pay =A35 P&P, they didn't each cost you =A35 P&P.

If he's saved money over a particular period compared to the alternative then he is. He can just take the profit and shop elsewhere. There's no additional cost in not complaining.

MBQ

[Derek Geldard]

They are dim if you measure them. They are dim when newly installed (about 33% less than they claim) and then they tail off, IME at about

48% per year.

The spectrum of the light output is very spiky, natural daylight is more continuous, tungsten lamps also have a continuous spectrum, although a bit different to daylight.

The effect is with CFL's what you see depends very significantly on the how much light energy happens to be reflected from the scene in the region of the spikes. This means that humans take on a strange unnatural skin colour.

The human eye is very sensitive to this, it has been bred into us, since time immemorial being the first indicator of serious illness. One day my neighbour's wife said to him "Geoff You don't look right, you'd better go to the Doctor's", he said "I feel fine there's nothing wrong with me" but went anyway. He died 5 weeks later of stomach cancer ...

For the same reason CFL's are also totally useless for colour matching any paints, dyes, fabrics etc.

The mills making the best high class woollen suit materials used to have their final inspection department on the top floor of the mill in a room light by natural daylight.

DG

[Andy Hall]

Err yes.

You're missing the point completely.

The issue behind all of this is that the manufacturers of these things are being downright dishonest about the light output, the colour rendition, the lifetime and energy saving aspects of their products.

In terms of consumer legislation, redress for that is with the retailer, not the manufacturer.

In addition to the cost of the product, the consumer is entitled to reasonable damages.

So I have a faulty product that hasn't met its specifications as presented top the consumer.

I am sure that the retailer would love me to say "Don't worry about the cost of my time and petrol, I had to come and buy cornflakes anyway".

I'm not going to do that. I am returning the product because it is not fit for purpose and has been misrepesented. That equates to refund plus the cost of doing so.

I'm not going to accept anything less than compensation for the whole exercise, ignoring what other purchases I might be making.

After all, he didn't sell me the product on the basis of whether or not I was buying cornflakes at teh same time. Why would he expect to have a different arrangement for the return and refund of the product?

This is irrelevant.

Wrong.

On the contrary. Unless it hits the retailer in the pocket, there is no push back on the manufacturer.

[Andy Champ]

You don't want to be there when it happens. The correction will be caused by massive mortality, whether through plague, famine, or war.

Imagine our lifestyle without any fossil fuel use - even for farming.

Andy

[Kostas Kavoussanakis]

This is all very useful to me (I hope to others too). Can I confrim if this applies to halogen energy-savers only, or all types. I have installed Softone energy savers that are remarkably worse (and certainly not soft) than the GE, twisting tube type Scottish Gas (I think it was) sent me for free. Is this all a lost cause?

Kostas

[Andy Hall]

Of course.

That is how it is always corrected, always has been and always will be.

Sad I know, but attempts at achieving otherwise, given time, will be as successful as the efforts of King Knut.

We may like to think that by doing various things to affect consumption, that it will be different, that somehow we operate on a higher moral plan than the rest of the animal kingdom. This is easy to accept and to implement all the time that it is only causing slight pain in much the same way as beds of nails and so on.

However, when it comes to the most basic instinct of all, self preservation, what will happen?

I have a hard time believing that there will be any substantial self-sacrifice. There is no historical precedence for that.

[Derek Geldard]

Got him a service station on the M6.

Better than a chip shop in Congleton.

DG

[meow2222]

Sort of. If the LEDs claim the same colour temp (CCT) as incandescents, then thats what they'll have. But the CRI is very different, resulting in a much poorer quality of light. Also there may be uneven distribution of colour components, giving variation in CCT and the output level may only be measured at peak output position, whereas incandescents are more or less omnidirectional.

So where figures casually appear to match those of incandescents, the result won't match. That doesnt mean the figured are wrong, its just more complex than first appears.

NT

[meow2222]

How optimistic. The whole point of advertising is to mislead. It applies to all products. It is down to the consumer to read the small print to see what it really means.

Lightbulbs have more or less always been rated as mean life, not median.

NT

[Andy Hall]

I try to be.

That's jaundiced. It should at least be honest and truthful as far as it goes, even if it doesn't tell the whole truth and leaves it for the purchaser to make assumptions that might or might not be correct.

However, this steps over the line of truthfulness since it is not qualified in the material that is provided to the prospective purchaser.

Absolutely. In that case, the small print should be there.

Either one is misleading unless explicitly stated. Even then it is not reasonable to expect the purchaser to know what these actually are. Based on the statement of "lifetime 15000hrs" it's much more reasonable that people would expect the lifetime to be that as a minimum and that if the product doesn't achieve it, then refund/replacement.

It hasn't been a big issue before because lightbulbs have not been sold on the basis of lifetime.

Now that this is one of the main planks of the selling proposition, this aspect needs to be clarified.

I'm going to contact the ASA about it and possibly Trading Standards because this is not acceptable advertising or product representation.

[Man at B&Q]

Not just mills, and not just on the top floor. Lots of places had "northlight" windows to get diffuse natural light.

MBQ

[David Hansen]

On Wed, 7 Nov 2007 23:39:43 +0000 someone who may be Andy Hall wrote this:-

Only in the mind of a few people, many/most of whom would probably not notice anything if they walked into a room which was already illuminated by compact fluorescent lights.

[David Hansen]

On Thu, 8 Nov 2007 18:17:29 +0000 someone who may be Andy Hall wrote this:-

Yawn. In your opinion perhaps. While you are entitled to that opinion you should not try and browbeat others who have a different opinion. I have lit nearly every room in my various houses with at least some compact fluorescent bulbs for a very long time. I don't fall over things because of the "poor light output", the lifetime figures quoted have been an underestimate and the energy saving is something I have measured.

People should be very careful about believing your assertions on this and other matters, without testing them for themselves. I have tested your assertions and found them to be incorrect.