This week I was invited to a Christmas dinner at fine country restaurant. Lovely old building, great company, delicious food, but the lighting put a bit of a damper on the otherwise enjoyable event. It consisted of CFL downlights only, exept for a few halogen wallwashers to illuminate the beautiful brick walls. The effect was dim and gloomy as the dimmed CFL light was too weak to reach the tables and floors - unlike halogen light which does this very effectively - and made the room look dull and grey instead of sparkling and lively. If it hadn't been for the halogen wall-washers, it would have been even more gloomy. Dimming the CFLs also changed their colour to dim blue and dim rose, and made some of them flicker perceptibly!
New LED traffic lights can't melt snow
Just as some of us have been warning about. How hard can it be to just use the right lamp in the right place? Incandescent (halogen) lamps for regions with cold and snowy winters, LEDs for warmer regions.
Energy Efficiency: How NOT To Do It
Utilities billing their customers for 'free' CFLs, and with a profit margin on top of it, much to the surprise and dismay of their customers when they found out. LOL! Do people think their utilities are Santa Claus or Mother Teresa? As I pointed out in my earlier post Who pays for 'free' handouts? if you get something for free, you usually end up paying for it one way or another.
New Lamps for Old – Light Changing and Burglary
CFL light exchange programs may also attract thieves and scammers seeing an opportunity to get into your home, as well as companies handing out free low-quality CFLs in order to lure you into buying something else. Beware!
Compact Fluorescent Lamps Could Nearly Halve Global Lighting Demand for Electricity
"Aggressively replacing the world's incandescent lightbulbs with compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) could reduce lighting energy demand by nearly 40 percent and cut greenhouse gas emissions from day one, according to the latest Vital Signs Update released by the Worldwatch Institute."Obviously, World Watch Institute haven't done their math right. As I clarified in the latter half of my Global Ban Craze post, incandescent lamps are used mainly in the Residential sector, which in turn uses only 15% of world energy (whereas the Industrial and Commercial sectors use 62.5%, the majority of which is already FL or HID). Of those 15% only a small part is used for lighting, and only some of the lamps in the Residential sector are still incandescent.
Stepping out, stepping lively
980 incandescent lamps to light up a slipper?! Ouch! What will happen to Las Vegas when incandescent lamps are phased out? The almost obscene overflow of high quality dazzling light is a huge part of Vegas' special appeal, I wonder how casinos and hotels will manage without it? (Not that I'd be overly sorry if casino owners get one tool less to manipulate gullible people's senses with, but I'm sure they will be.)
Ingo Maurer's Euro Condom
For those EU residents who miss the now banned frosted incandescent bulb and forgot to stock up.
Posts
nice collection
ReplyDeleteI was recently on a tour of some civic meeting places here, with big chandeliers and sparkling incandescent clear candle lights,
so asked the stewards if they were going to replace them.
They said no way, and that most politicians they talked to agreed with them - secretly of course, it's not politically correct to say so openly....
Re Dimming the CFLs
ReplyDelete-- this is something many forget, in the urge to keep saying "CFLs can be dimmed too"
Dimmable type CFLs don't just cost more,
dimming them gives an eerie light,
wheras dimming incandescents gives a warmer tone with the decrease in light
Comment 1. How typical... I wonder what lights are used in the various EU buildings? I bet it's not FL/CLF, at least not in the conference rooms and public spaces.
ReplyDeleteComment 2. Right, eerie is a good description of the effect, while incandescent/halogen light is beautiful and looks more candle-like and romantic the more you turn it down.
Just got a dimmable halogen desklight and it's great to be able to adjust light level to match task and mood precisely. I'm not fond of bright light unless I'm reding, writing or cleaning and need to se what I'm doing. I find it both unnecessarily wasteful and positively unpleasant to flood the room in light when it's not needed. I find it easier to concentrate on a task if the rest of the room is dark-ish.