Are you ready for the Halogen Ban?

Did you know that all halogen bulbs will be banned across the EU in September 2018? This is a great step forward for energy saving as it means the end of high lighting bills, inefficient technology and a massive 15.2 million tonne reduction in Europe’s carbon footprint by 2025.

Will this have a big impact on the planet?

There are still an estimated 500 million halogen spotlights being used in homes across Europe and, if they were replaced with good LED alternatives, every household would save an average of £42 a year and save enough energy to power 11 million homes, read our article on how to save energy in our home.

What replaces Halogen bulbs?

New technology has resulted in a dramatic evolution of LED lighting and it is now easy to find lights which give out an attractive warm white light for homes or a brighter white light for the workplace. This includes highly efficient A++ rated lights which produce 120 lumens per watt (a traditional halogen bulb produces only around 12 lumens per watt) with much less wasted heat. LED lights have also become more reliable and consistent and have a longer lamp life.

Different lights – different efficiencies

What does this change mean to the home owner?
Firstly LED lighting offers a longer life with bulbs and diodes offering an outstanding operational life time expectation of up to 100,000 hours. This is 11 years of continuous operation, or 22 years of 50% operation.

Secondly, traditional incandescent light bulbs operate at 20% energy efficiency only, so 80% of the electricity is lost as heat. The long operational life time of LED acts as a multiplicator and help to achieve even more energy efficiency, so you can make significant energy savings.

Combining LED lighting with an integrated smart control system will extend lamp life and save energy. The science behind a typical dimmer is relatively simple. An electronic dimmer component, called a triac, turns the light on and off very rapidly – too fast for the human eye to detect. When the light is off, no energy is being used. The longer the triac is off, i.e. the more the lights are dimmed, the lower the light output and the greater the energy savings.

Principal application engineer at Lutron Dr Ian Rowbottom explains
“Dimming your lights even 20% saves nearly 20% in energy. Dimming them more, saves even more.”

[fts_twitter twitter_name=Intelligentabod tweets_count=2 cover_photo=no stats_bar=no show_retweets=no show_replies=no]