Improved efficiency halogen lamps – continued

Following on from my post last year about Philips’ new higher efficiency halogen lamps I see that Osram have launched a whole new “energy saving” range too (see their website). This covers a wide range of filament lamps, curiously including a regular old-fashioned bayonet cap bulb!

 

Improved efficiency halogen lamps

OK, I confess… I’ve got several low voltage halogen lights in the kitchen ceiling!

In my defence, I do have some of those “puck” 7W compact fluorescent lights under the cupboards – see http://www.heralighting.com/hera/fluoro.html – and a low energy pendant light over the table. I did do a trial of a 7W cold cathode (fluorescent) GU10/240V lamp but the light output was pretty poor, even after warming up. I reckon the problem is that, as the light is diffuse, having it in a recessed fitting just means a lot is lost or doesn’t reach the worktops. I see Screwfix do a bigger 11W version (it’s taken them a while to stock many low energy lamps) now but I’m still skeptical as to how effective it would be compared to a 20W halogen. Of course the most efficient means of kitchen lighting (apart from natural light!) would be a couple of double 6ft fittings with bare fluorescent tubes (e.g. 4 tubes at 36W)… rather like the ones we removed from the old kitchen! Not exactly the most elegant design though.

Incidentally, I struggled to find much information on the pros and cons of 240V vs 12V halogens. The general consensus seemed to be that low voltage was slightly more efficient, especially when coupled with electronic transformers (I used Osram), however I couldn’t find any proper like-for-like comparisons.