Into the darkness

Sales of halogen lightbulbs are to be banned in the UK from September, with fluorescent lights to follow, under government climate change plans.

Better start getting a stock of candel's

H

Why?

Because you can't smash a Spinning Jenny in total darkness.

Do you have to have special LED dimmer switches for dimmable LED bulbs ? I ask this as I changed the halogen bulbs for LEDs which sort of work OK, but some of the LEDs on the same circuit can dimly glow when all is turned off.

Bob

Yes you do. I have a large central chandelier type light fitting and have replaced the Halogen lamps with LED's. The dimmer I got from an electrical wholesaler cost £70 so they are not cheap.

regards

Mostly hype and propaganda, at least in the short term. All that'll happen is that people's central heating systems will run for that bit longer to replace the few hundreds of watts auxiliary heat generation lost by the change to LED, so that the part-renewable electricity consumption will be replaced by fossil fuel heating.

I'm all in favour of switching to LED where possible, and believe it will be a good thing, but I would like to see LED bulbs properly guaranteed. I object to paying ten times the cost for something that often lasts no longer. I bought three LED bayonet fitting bulbs last summer and all three have since met their demise.

Company called Dazz Led worth looking at.

I suspect halogen sales are in steep decline already. There are certainly questions to be asked about the poor longevity of some LED lamps. Most people do not relate to the claims made for lamp lifetime in hours and the number of times a lamp is cycled is likely to be a factor in reducing life of the lamp. It would be difficult to claim for a lamp that doesn’t meet expectations as no one logs lamp running time or cycles. I think someone brought up the point that some markets demand a higher performance lamp and they do exist. Maybe the government should insist on better performance lamps for the consumer.

Mike

Sometimes, only a smiley will do. 😂

David

Edited By David Noble on 09/06/2021 19:01:04

I have a bucket full of halogen GU10 lamps (got told off by sparks for calling them bulbs, you plant them in the garden he said) a result of replacing with LED. My dimmer switch for LED (you need dimmable lamps as well) was from Screwfix, a Varilight leading edge dimmer if I remember right, about £15.

All my LED, including an outside light fitting are lasting well, couple of years or more so far.

Bill D.

When I did up the spare bedroom above the extension about 12 years ago, I fitted two lamp fittings each with 3 GU10 230v 50W halogens, controlled by a 40-400W rotary on/off tungsten dimmer. In the last few years, dimmable 230V GU10 LED bulbs became available and I just changed the lot. They work like the old ones, but use much less electricity. The LED bulbs are LAP brand dimmable 5W warm white, 346 lumen.

I'm more than a bit narked about the plan to ban fluorescent tubes in the near future. LED tubes have, pretty much, exactly the same lumens/Watt as T8 triphosphor fluorescent tubes. The only ones that even claim a better output only emit over 180° of their circumference.

I don't run my central heating in summer, but I do have the lights on after dark

Not quite the same, but the flourescent tubes in the kitchen used to dimmly glow when switched off and I found that the light switch was on the neutral side instead of the live.

There is a sting in the tail of the proposal to ban flourescent tubes: Because they are fed through a choke/ capacitor network ( in the fitting in a domestic application) they run mostly on reactive power not "true watts". That is why a 4ft flu is sold as "equivalent to a 60 watt lamp" It has a light output equivant to, but does not draw the power of a 60w lamp. Traditional meters with a spinning disc visible only measure the true watts, not the reactive power. Which in practical terms means you can leave a flu' on 24/7 for free! I cannot speak for so-called "smart meters" which cannot do every thing that the ad-men claim, unless there is a current sensor in every light fitting and one for each half of a 13A twin outlet, which would cost far more than they could ever save you.

Still, I am glad that I got that off my chest.

Stay safe and keep turning.

Which in practical terms means you can leave a flu' on 24/7 for free!

Well I rent an Industrial Unit from the local authority, it's lit with twin 8 ft fluorescents, via spinning disc meters.

The lights certainly spin the discs, and cost more to run, than much of my industrial woodworking machinery!

Oh no!!! I've got a rather lovely Mathmos Telstar lava lamp, it uses halogen lamps. Looks like I need to stock up!

IanJ

No: you do not need a different dimmer, unless we happened to have the right type already. I fitted dimmable LED bulbs to replace some filament bulbs and the existing dimmer switch worked perfectly.

James.

Although I did not labour the point, I was referring to domestic installations, which is where most model engineer's hobby rooms are.

Industrial installations (where a significant number of flu's are used) have power factor correction networks added to make you pay for your electricity and to restore the balance of reactive power in the grid. Domestic installations where there is usually just one or two tubes do not. If you get the chance to see inside the Control Room of a power station, you will see that beside the MW output meter there is another the same size labelled MVAR ( Mega Volt Amps Reactive) which tells us how seriously reactive power is taken. The MVAR gauge is centre zero, say 50-0-50 for leading and lagging power. The reactive power taken by a few tubes is no more significant in grid terms than the odd 60 watt lamp, however on an industrial scale it is.

Mark's unit sounds like it is part of a set-up big enough to justify power correction) and the bonus of three phase power, which is totally separate from the power correction issue).