Finding your way with energy saving light bulbs
On store shelves there is already a wide range of lights with low consumption, but risks confusing the customer. So, how to find the bulb that best suits your needs?
80% of all the electricity we consume in the house used to illuminate. Reduce this consumption is possible, using energy saving light bulbs and better distribution of lights in the house. The European Union has already banned incandescent light bulbs of 100 watts and by 2012 will send retired all the others, including halogen. The reason is the high energy consumption than the actual yield.
On store shelves there is already a wide range of lights with low consumption, but risks confusing the customer. So, how to find the bulb that best suits your needs? First you need to consider the environment to be lit and how many hours, on average, the lamp will remain lit.
Halogen bulbs with low consumption, for example, are recommended localized illumination where it is needed, the immediate availability of light and intermittent use with frequent starts and stops.
Compact fluorescent bulbs, however, are suitable for indoor and outdoor lighting where it is needed prolonged use of light. So be careful not to turn on and off too often the switch!
Compact fluorescent bulbs, unlike all the other lights, contain small amounts of mercury, which is why not be thrown in the garbage, but disposed of separately giving them to the municipal collection points or to authorized companies.
To choose the right bulb, you have to read carefully the energy label on the packaging. It contains valuable information such as the energy efficiency class, coupled with a letter ranging from A for a lamp is extremely efficient, to G for an underperforming.
The energy label also indicates the luminous flux in lumens, the power measured in watts and the duration in hours of the bulb. Attention then the color of the light! It's called color temperature and is expressed in degrees Kelvin! A low value corresponds to warm tones, while a higher value in cool tones.
Date: 15/01/2010
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Translated via software
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Source:
Italian version of ReteArchitetti.it