Are energy-saving light bulbs now a thing of the past already?

Several years ago, when bulbs exactly like this one

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were introduced, various shops, Sainsbury's in particular, ran promotions to buy them for 50 pence each. I bought about a dozen.

Now I've used my last one, so I started looking around for replacement bulbs. To my utter astonishment, not a single shop in Spalding sold them! They had plenty of LED bulbs and they also had plenty of the so-called "old-fashioned" filament bulbs, which I thought had been banned. But the low wattage (11W = 60W) energy-saver bayonet bulbs were unobtainable anywhere.

Even when I look on Amazon they are few and far between and cost over £2 each.

So is everyone now converting to LED bulbs? What the heck are people putting in their lamp sockets?!!

MM

Reply to
MM
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In theory, you should not need to replace low energy bulbs for many years. Unfortunately, the more recent products have a very short lifespan IME. I still have 30yr old low energy lamps running, a bit dim I suppose, but not failing catastrophically. The 5p lamps were a taxpayer funded giveaway which has expired. you might get a better price in Poundland. I recently have been looking for new lamp fittings and I have found that most of them are now apparently made for halogen lamps. Bayonet,ES and SES light fittings seem to be in short supply.

Reply to
Capitol

Yep, it's weird the way the government and retailers pushed them onto consumers with really low prices and now they've disappeared. I'll try Poundstretcher in Spalding next week. Not an urgent problem as I can get filament bulbs easily and still have at least a dozen Status brand

60W ones.

One advantage of the energy-saver ones is that they don't trigger the circuit breakers when the bulb goes like nearly always happens with filament bulbs. Most irritating on a winter's night when you enter a room, switch on the light and bingo! Bulb "pops", lighting circuit on that floor goes dead and you have to scrabble around in the garage to get to the consumer unit to flick the switch back up.

MM

Reply to
MM

In which case you may not have the correct breakers ... I vaguely recall you can get "slow blow" breakers ...giyf

Reply to
Jethro_uk

I find I seem to be replacing CFLs about every eighteen months or so - which is much shorter than the expected life but long enough to pay for themselves against filament bulbs many times over.

The pound shops sometimes stock them - Phillips brand in one of ours - but they don't always have the bases I require. I bought a load of E14 ones when they had them but now I want E14s all they have are standard bayonet.

Wilco's own brand CFLs seem to be okay but the pricing structure seems weird. If you are not in a hurry then they sometimes have pretty good promotions on things like that and it makes it worth stocking up at those times.

Nick

Reply to
Nick Odell

Well I am.

LED (General purpose) bulbs, I get mine on-line from CPC-Farnell usually when I'm already buying something else.

Just put some standard bulbs to replace RO80 in the kitchen. ES fitting. Much nicer. The silly "fluorescent" type bulb in the lounge now has a 10w white LED and I can read again - instant startup, similarly in the bathroom. Maybe a bit too bluish white but you can get warmer white which I have elsewhere.

Puzzled at puzzled look.

Reply to
AnthonyL

At that price were they the ones subsidised by the energy companies?

I am certainly either buying halogen or LED but toolstation still do a range of CFL

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Reply to
Malcolm G

CFLs have been out evolved by high efficiency white LEDs with instant start, higher efficiency, much brighter output and closer to decent CRI.

LED lamps out perform the old CFLs so why not use them?

The only thing you have to watch out for is that their claimed brightness is real and so a nominal 60W LED will be dazzling in a position where an end of life "60W" CFL bulb has expired.

Reply to
Martin Brown

Because no one has explained WHY these bulbs, once all the rage, are no longer available anywhere! Least, not around here.

MM

Reply to
MM

Type C rather than Type B - but the requirements on low circuit impedance are more onerous which means it's not a suitable swap unless you test your circuits (R1+R2 aka L-E loop test) first and also factor in your primary earthing system.

Reply to
Tim Watts

Probably. And everyone who walked passed the cardboard container at the Sainsbury's entrance fished out a few and paid their 50p each. So all these people, like me, will be coming to the end of their stock of bulbs and will be looking for replacements.

PS: This bulb promotion must have happened several years ago, because I have no record of any purchased in my online accounts which I started in 2010.

MM

Reply to
MM

Because they cost a fortune!

MM

Reply to
MM

On 25/03/2015 10:55, MM wrote: ...

Where possible, yes, although I do have some luminaires, particularly outdoors, that have CFL specific fittings.

Reply to
Nightjar

My experience is the same. LEDs are the one to go for now. I have them in the rooms most used. Better than CFL by far. I use the remaining CFLs in rooms not much used. I bought apile of the 5p lamps & still have some. I don't have any incandescent.

Reply to
harryagain

The arc is in series with the filiment.

It's the same reason you need ballasts for discharge lighting, I believe.

The ballast provides the high voltage "bump" to initiate the tube. And thence limits the current as the ionised gas has very low resistance.

Reply to
harryagain

Tx - I just remember the first time we had a bulb blow after I upgraded our fusebox to MCBs. I reset the thing, and then wondered why it had blown. Of course for the briefest of seconds there's an arc across the filament, which has a resistance close to zero - I=V/R becomes close to infinite ...

It's the same reason you need ballasts for discharge lighting, I believe.

Reply to
Jethro_uk

probably because they are now outdated technolgy. Everyone is making LED ones instead.

Reply to
charles

Many seem to be still using filament bulbs, but I'm sure I've still come across the CFL types in places like DIY stores, but they seem to have gone up to about a fiver each, which makes leds look more attractive I suppose. I wonder if cfls were in fact heavily discounted before but now its the turn of led?

Brian

Reply to
Brian Gaff

They were fairly open subsidised by the energy companies (I think the rules changed so they didn't count towards one of the energy saving targets and hence the discounts stopped)

Reply to
Malcolm G

Because the makers make much more out of selling new technology. It's new therefore must be better. And therefore more expensive. Think drugs.

CFL were poorer in every respect to tungsten. Except energy consumption for a given light level. And sometimes life.

LED have overcome some of the most disastrous flaws of CFL, but introduced some more of their own.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

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