Now there's been a ban on the import and manufacture of 100W incandescent light bulbs, some people are stockpiling boxfuls of them. Apparently the new CFL bulbs aren't bright enough, and don't look pretty.
Silly, silly people.
Are you the same people who, after getting their crate of incandescent lamps home, will then proceed to install one in a light fitting, proudly proclaim "that EU ain't gonna make me use those new-fangled electrickermajiggies, what with their billionth of a glimmer loss of brightness!" and then hang a hulking great lampshade on it?
I know there's a dimmer problem. The new bulbs don't work with existing dimmer switches. This should change soon, though. Also, I would question why you need a dimmer in the first place. Surely you're either in the room (light on) or not (light off)?
Okay. Did your housebuilder helpfully install light fittings that only have enough room for bulb-shaped bulbs? Fine, stockpile away for now until the fittings get replaced. Do you suffer from a medical condition aggravated by fluorescent lights? Fair enough. Do you have a dozen different incandescent bulbs dotted around the room in out-of-the-way hard-to-see places? No excuse. It's a wonder any light even gets to where it's needed in your house. Get rid of them all. The job can quite easily be done with one decent CFL dangling from the ceiling. Perhaps if you didn't clutter up your rooms with pointless light-precluding junk you wouldn't need hundred-watt bulbs in the first place.
Just maybe people don't want to use the new bulbs because they are actually dimmer and do produce far less lux?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/6110547/Energy-saving-light-bulbs-offer-dim-future.html
I certainly agree they should print the correct figures on the box, but the point still stands.
From the figures given at the end of that article, it looks like if you bought a CFL that's double the wattage of the ones they tested (11W), it'd be brighter than a 60W incandescent bulb despite still using less than half the power.
I'm assuming a linear power-to-brightness relationship. That may not be true; the EC's figures from the same article say that you only need to go up to 15W to get the same brightness as an old 60W bulb.
They should experiment with CFLs and incandescents that produce the same brightness and then compare the wattage, rather than slating the whole technology just because some companies exaggerate about it.
Or maybe ignore CLFs completely and go with LEDs instead which have none of the lux problems and aren't full of Mercury and other nasties.
But that would require governments not to try and pick technologies and just letting customers buy the best, which was never going to happen. Heaven forbid people actually getting choice, they might not pick what the politicians have already decided is best for them!
I think the problem with them at the moment is they aren't bright enough, so you need loads of them in a huge cluster to get any light.
Try telling that to your Great Aunt does not want to change her reading lamp and needs a bright light to see the words of her book.
Perhaps I need a brighter light to see what I'm typing.
Dude, where is the Daily Mail generator?
The Daily Mail Headlineinator got lost in a filesystem catastrophe last May. It might come back some time, depending on whether it can be recovered.