Light bulbs

[watervole]

Australia leads the world (apart from Cuba who got there first

Comments

[kerravonsen]

Heh, I've already been using fluro bulbs because of the power saving.

[jophan]

I just wish they gave off light that was equal to the lightbulb I replace. They're too dim. :-(

[watervole]

Err, you're probably using the wrong wattage. My new bulbs are brighter than those that went before them. They use less than a quarter of the electricity and they look great (circular fluouescants) and are closer to daylight spectrum as well.

[jophan]

I might have used substandard bulbs as well, I gave up on them five years ago. I'm sure there are much better bulbs on the market today.

Regardless, this is a necessary step to take.

[lexin]

I've been using those in every fitting I have that will take them for several years now - I'm close to replacing the fittings which won't, but can't until my brother comes to visit or I persuade some other electrically minded person to do it.

And I replaced one of the bulbs in the shared hallway with one; I'm going to do the others as the old bulbs go - I pay for them personally because the freeholder won't.

[watervole]

You get a gold star! (which gives me an excuse to use my new icon)

[lexin]

Mind you, this is before I consider the bulbs in my sewing machines, which are both incandescents.

Which reminds me...

[hawkeye7]

The ACT government already gave me six bulbs for free. :)

[sallymn]

There's been a lot of giving out free lightbulbs all over the country, it seems... we ended up with enough for half the house :)

[kremmen]

It's an election year and our government, with their popularity in the dunny, is trying desperately to jump on every bandwagon available to try to become more popular, short of pulling out of Iraq. They've even asked the US to speed up its charging of David Hicks. Like their other knee-jerk reactions, there isn't the slightest hint of how they will implement it and what they will do about all the problems

[watervole]

There's always a case for sensible exceptions. Fridge lights are very low in power in any case and only on when the fridge is open. (I don't know if LEDs are viable in these applications, but I'd be interested if anyone can tell me where modern LEDs are at in terms of usefulness/energy consumption)

Heat lamps obviously need to be excluded for farmers - though I suspect there are far more effecient ways of heating bathrooms. (I've never had one in mine)

Making power sources environmentally friendly sounds a lot easier than it actually is. I don't know any power source (including wind) that is perfect - though I'd love to see more exploration of geothermal.

While I must admit that I rather like your suggestion of making power more expensive as a way of persuading people to make voluntary changes, I doubt it would be popular with the electorate...

[davidcook]

but I'd be interested if anyone can tell me where modern LEDs are at in terms of usefulness/energy consumption

I've seen a few discussions in various bits of the internet about this - the conclusion is that LED lighting uses more energy for a given level of lighting than compact fluoro, but they are both more energy efficient than incandescent ...

[julesjones]

A *major* downside on banning halogens is that they have the best approximation to a true daylight spectrum. There are situations where this matters.