The Society of Light and Lighting (SLL) actively promotes energy efficient lighting solutions and accepts that a withdrawal of inefficient tungsten filament lamps could lead to a reduction in UK energy consumption but is concerned whether the current options will fully meet the lighting requirements for the spaces and tasks to be lit.
SLL's main concern is that in removing existing, albeit energy inefficient, lamps from the market, future lighting installations using the more efficient alternatives will not be able to achieve the lighting effects that current lamps can produce. Issues of concern to domestic users include: amount of light, warm-up time, ability to dim, flicker, colour, appearance and rendition, lamp life, degree of sparkle, availability of suitable luminaires and lamp shades and cost.
Information from manufacturers does indicate that many of the technical issues could be addressed and that lamps are currently under development that will meet most of the characteristics of tungsten filament lamps. While new lamps will use various approaches, such as fluorescent, LED or high efficiency filament technologies, they will be more energy efficient than current tungsten filament lamps.
The Society believes that all these new lamps, must be manufactured to remove all the conditions listed above, together with a wide range of suitable luminaires, should be readily available before existing lamps are withdrawn. It therefore calls on all those in the supply chain, lamp and luminaire manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers to ensure that suitable lighting equipment is readily available to the market to meet the timescales for proposed withdrawal of current lamps.
SLL also calls on the government prior to require lamp manufacturers to produce compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) that have electrical characteristics which minimise harmonics on the electrical supply network and operate at high power factors (e.g. greater than 0.9), prior to the proposed withdrawal timetable for the replacement of tungsten lamps.
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