Halogen to be banned

Yes not new news, just the timescale is now known, how is it then that I can still buy tungsten bulbs in the high street? I get the distinct impression that like lots of things, the law is just ignored when it suits people. Brian

Many tungsten were sold on ebay as `heaters`the wording got them around the restrictions.

ss quoted:

If we're to believe they're taking this "Nett Zero" energy policy seriously, I'd much rather hear an announcement that were going to build another half a dozen nukes, than banning some light bulbs that most people have already abandoned ...

Which is probably a more accurate description of them, given most of the energy going into them is converted into heat!

Cheers, T i m

Same applies to LEDs, even the best are still only in the 30% to 40% sort of area if you include the losses in the associated drivers etc. Ulitimately of course *all* the energy ends up as heat.

good

that way they'll be forded to make a LED bulb for PL-S format bulbs, which are currently next to impossible to find

Expecting us to replace 50 light fittings as the alternative here is not a viable (or ecological) alterative

I got some chinesium ones from amazon couple of years ago, when they were hard to finf here, they're still working, but

And I doubt anyone would force anyone to manufacture them if they weren't already, you could just buy new fittings ...

Apart from a few, rarely used, lamps that have yet to be changed, I have long converted everything to LED.

Unfortunately they are the "longer" form and we need the shorter ones

but that's not realistic in a "corporate" environment when you have 50 of them in situ (that's 50 lamp fittings = 100 bulbs)

This is no diy job, the management wouldn't allow it.

and getting a *qualified* man in to do it is going to add thousands to the bill, so that we can save pennies in electricity costs (we already use 7W CFL bulbs)

These are a standard bulkhead light of the type where there must be 100s of thousands already installed

Me too, except for my bedside lamp which is halogen for colour rendition. Any comments on reading under a 230V LED spotlight? Would you go for cool, daylight or warm?

And fluorescent tubes are reasonably efficient in terms of light output vs power in. They give a much better light for situations where you need to see fine detail.

There is also the theatre where halogen lamps are still in use in significant quantities.

Subject to some important details such as:

"HL R7 halogens will remain available on the market, and some fluorescents such as T5s.

Exemptions will be in place for lamps designed and marketed specifically for scene-lighting use in film studios, TV studios, and photographic studios, or for stage-lighting use in theatres or other entertainment events."

And a source does make it easier to check the details. e.g.

Likewise. When we bought our house, the previous people had installed a grid of GU10 fittings to light the kitchen and two of the bedrooms. The kitchen had LED GU10s, although we replaced some of those with Philips Hue bulbs that we already had, and moved the ordinary LED ones into one of the bedrooms because both of those had tungsten GU10 - each bedroom used about

A few fittings were transformer-fed 12 V, so I converted those to normal mains-fed because the mains LED GU10s are/were a lot cheaper than the 12 V equivalents that fit in the same ceiling fitting.

The only rooms that aren't lit by LED now are an en-suite bathroom which still has a grid of 12 V tungstens (I'd need to go into the loft and change the fittings from there, because the lens on the front is glued to the ring of the fitting and can only be changed from above) and the garage which is lit by 5 ft fluorescent tubes. Oh, and a bedside light which is touch-sensitive and can only be used with tungstens: my father-in-law, an electrican, said that LEDs or CFLs would burn out the thyristor.

It seems a shame to throw away the perfectly serviceable tungsten bulbs, but I can't see us ever using them, apart from the 60 W bayonet one for that bedside lamp.

The real problem is light fittings which use various esoteric bulbs. Until about 20 years ago, just about every light, whether pendant, batten, wall or table lamp, used large bayonet. Then we started to get poncy light fittings which used SES, SBC, LES - or LBC if you were lucky.

I know we are unusual in the UK in using LBC as the (former) standard, and that even 220 V Europe uses LES (I'd thought that 240 V implied bayonet and

Hmm.. I have about 25 twin 5' florries in my workshop in 4 switched banks. This may be the moment to do the LED conversion.

We tend to use Philips Hue for bedside lamps, and these can be set to anything from cool shady daylight (probably about 10000 K) to very warm tungsten (about 2000 K). I find that a sunlight temperature (about 4000-5000 K) is a good compromise. Supposedly warmer light than that is better for reading in an evening, so as not to stimulate the body to produce melatonin which can cause problems getting to sleep because the body sees it as daylight rather than "time to feel sleepy".

In the kitchen and in my study, we use MiniSun GU10s which are about 6000K - just slightly cooler than LED bulbs which are sold as "daylight".

I've not encountered any LED bulbs which have bad colour rendition, though I bet if you looked at the spectrum of an LED bulb (whether warm, daylight or cool) you'd find various absorption lines and emission lines, whereas tungsten is a more continuous spectrum. Certain shades of red tend to be the ones than look darker than they should under LED, by comparison with natural sunlight.

I took a series of photos of a standard coloured test picture under a variety of lights (fluorescent tube, daylight CFL bulb, tungsten, warm/day/cool LED, sunlight, shady outdoors) with my camera white-balanced from a sheet of white paper under each light. The results were pretty similar, apart from a pillar-box red which came out a bit dark under LED and much darker under fluorescent.

Note the different rendition of the red panel on the box of screws to the left of the face.

You have plenty of time to find 50 round tuits given they'll be phased out "from Sept 2023 onwards"

Don't think reading is critical colour temperature wise. Unlike, say, matching colours.

I've got a Lidl LED desk light where you can select warm normal or cool.

But how an LED appears, colour temperature wise, does not guarantee continuous spectrum light as you tend to get with halogen.

LEDs should make the TV racks man's life easier. Not the same change in colour temperature when dimmed. And give the AC a better chance of coping.