Energy-saving bulbs

[Dave B]

Warning: rant ahead....

I'm all for a bit of energy saving, and pretty much every bulb in the house is an energy-saving jobby. But yesterday I wanted to buy a replacement for a reading light which doesn't take a standard fitting.

Energy saving bulb: £2.40 each.
Normal filament bulb: £0.44 for a pack of 2.

So guess which one I bought? Yup, my replacement bulb may use 60w instead of 11w, but even if I left it on for months at a time I reckon I'd still be better off.

I appreciate it's a non-standard bulb, but why such a price difference? Bearing in mind I paid less than a quid each for some really good quality low-energy bulbs for my ceiling lights?

The government announced recently that they're phasing out inefficient bulbs, beginning with 150w ones, but there's no massive incentive on the consumer to switch.

</rant>

[Mark]

Of course all they will do is put £2.18 tax on each normal bulb.

[BDunnell]

I save energy with regard to light bulbs through not buying any and living in complete darkness, save the light produced by my burning effigies of Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Littlejohn.

[Flat.tyres]

I bought an energy saving bulb and a shade a couple of months ago. Had to take the bulb back because it didn't fit in the shade and buy a normal one.

They look ugly too.

What's with the little halogen ones. Are they OK?

[Daniel]

I bought an energy saving bulb and a shade a couple of months ago. Had to take the bulb back because it didn't fit in the shade and buy a normal one.

They look ugly too.

What's with the little halogen ones. Are they OK?

Halogen lights aren't really that much more efficient. The light is just more "white" and more like daylight. What you really want is an LED bulb for your halogen light fitting. Much much more efficient and that's very much the way lighting is going to go in a few years.

[tinchote]

I bought an energy saving bulb and a shade a couple of months ago. Had to take the bulb back because it didn't fit in the shade and buy a normal one.

Same here. The new bulbs seem to come only in the standard fitting (E26). Then, at home, with very few exceptions all bulbs are smaller than that. Net result: we'll only switch to energy saving bulbs when it becomes mandatory, and it will makes us lose money

And even without that, they are so much expensive than the standard bulbs that it is hard to believe that it will save us any money.

The problem here is that people waste so much energy that any change like that (mandatory energy saving bulbs) will reduce energy; which is good, but it is annoying that if you are already an energy conscious person, you end up losing. For example, the government here subsidizes programmable thermostats as a way to reduce gas consumption. When we finally bought one (with the promise of about 30% savings), the default programming of the thing increased our consumption by 50% It's not that the thing was badly programmed, it's only that people here waste so much heating, that the default setting will reduce the waste of the average home.

[Daniel]

Tinchote I don't know what it's like in Canada but in the US some or all of the energy saving bulbs have MERCURY in them. Yeah lets put a dangerous substance in something that's likely to be dropped and possibly broken

[rah]

Changed all ours that can be changed to CF lights. After we moved into the house we replaced all the light fittings with newer ones that would take CF lights.
As for the cost of the CF bulbs, we got them free from our energy company. In fact the missus developed an addiction and kept on going back for more. Now we have enough to last a fair few years.

[BDunnell]

Changed all ours that can be changed to CF lights. After we moved into the house we replaced all the light fittings with newer ones that would take CF lights.
As for the cost of the CF bulbs, we got them free from our energy company. In fact the missus developed an addiction and kept on going back for more. Now we have enough to last a fair few years.

The image of a cupboard full of nothing but light bulbs is quite a nice one!

[Daniel]

The image of a cupboard full of nothing but light bulbs is quite a nice one!

Yes it certainly gets me going :