Last year I was staying in a hotel abroad (USA). Shitty hotel. The only redeeming feature was that the (low energy) bedroom lamps "started" instantly. No 2-3 seconds delay! I recall they were very bright with "spiral" tubes.
Can anybody recommend a brand of BNC Low Energy (20 watt-ish....) lamps that start quickly and are readily available?
David
I think a twenty watt version of one of those is quite high energy. They are supposed give an equivalent light output of 100 watts from an ordinary bulb. Apparently they last a lot longer than ordinary bulbs especially if you leave them on rather than switch them off.
You can get them everywhere. You might even get them subsidised from the local council. They are -or were, pretty expensive when I had some. I didn't like them though. Too dull.
If you bought a light in the USA you might have a little more trouble as they use a different fitting.
Most available in this country aren't "quick start" though they aren't as bad as traditional tube florries. They do how ever start at about
50% light output and build up over a few minutes, this can be advantage in the dead of night as you don't get blinded...They have improved a great deal over the last few years. We have 6 x
9W SES in the lounge instead of 40W filament. They actually produce more light than the filament jobbies, the quality is very similar to tungsten and of course consume vastly less power. Even costing =A39 each= I reckon that pay back would be inside 2 quarters. These are on for a long time though, 18+ hrs day.
Assume light equivalent of 4 times and ignore claims on the packaging which exceed this. It seems this this over-selling of their light output is a factor which puts some people off them the first time they use them.
It's near enough the lamps are normally interchangable in it. However, I'll leave you to guess what happens when you try running a 120V lamp from a 240V supply...
Philips from ASDA or Tesco at 2 pounds each.
(I've been disappointed in the past with CFL bulbs, and whilst these
18w or 20w ones aren't really equivalent to 100w incandescent, they are definitely brighter than 60w, and the colour is acceptable. At 2 pound each they only have to last 1000 hours to save money)
I think you'll find the quick start ones are dying out as the latest ST Microelectronics chip takes over from the previous most popular implementation. The original was quick start but burnt the bulb more whereas the STM version soft-starts and makes it last longer.
As a possible rule of thumb though, cheaper ones seem to start faster than more expensive ones.
Well, how about making your own, since this is a DIY newsgroup? I have converted a number of luminares to take compact fluorescents. If you do this, you can choose what type of control gear and what type of lamps you want. I had a requirement for instant on, and at a higher initial brightness percentage than is common with the self-ballasted compact fluorescent retrofits. In my experience, the 2D lamps seem to do well in terms of initial light output percentage -- pretty similar to a conventional fluorescent -- and instant start control gear is available (although finding control gear designed for 2D lamps is difficult, so you need a near match).
I dumped some more information and some pictures on a web page:
I've dissected a number of compact fluorescents and never found a single one using ST's chips. Same is true of a number of separate electronic control gear modules I've opened up. They're all
100% discrete components. ST's MOSFETs are often used in control gear though.I think it's more random that that ;-)
I've got and Osram one here. It uses ST L6572E. MOSFET is Fairchild.
The discrete solution is usually the self-oscillating one you find on the IR site though even they have now introduced a control IC as well. It's actually cheaper as you save a winding as well as being able to claim longer life.
Quite possibly :-)
How about someone designs a CFL soft start bulb with a small additional incandescent element that fades out as the CFL comes up to temperature?
Christian.
"vortex2" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@pins.co.uk:
Spiral - yes. Quick start - yes. Daylight - yes (well, the 6400 are a touch towards the blue-white). Expensive - well, yes, they are rather. Delivery - two days (a couple of weeks ago). And I just noticed the 85 watt behemoth - supposedly equivalent to 465 W of incandescent.
Stumble out of bed bleary eyed, stagger to the little room, flick the light switch and sit there in amazement as the curly wurly slowly creeps up to full brightness.
To get a more realistic value, multiply the Compact Fluorescent power rating by 4 to get the incandescent equivalent.
The problem with these higher power Compact Fluorescents (which are more common in the US) is the heat from the tube cooks the electronic control gear resulting in short life of control gear. Full life is normally only when operated base down ±90º. Such large lamps in this orientation are not ideally suited to BC lampholders either unless there's provision for additional support.
They'll be coming with built in fans soon :-)
"vortex2" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@pins.co.uk:
I've just taken delivery of ten of these from TLC:
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