Venice is famous for many things, gondoliers, glass, its canals and architecture, but included in that list are its street lamps.

Take a look at the photo to the right, and you will see a photo of one of those famous lamps, in the area of St Mark’s square, and the bulbs inside each of those pink lamps are compact fluorescents. The same was true for most of the street lighting we saw around the city. I haven’t seen any other city with so many CFL bulbs in use for its street lighting.

So, you’ve heard the buzz about switching to CFL to reduce your energy consumption, and in doing so help the environment and save you some money on your electricity bill. You might even have seen some of the funny coiled bulbs in stores.

But how do you know which ones to get to replace your existing incandescent bulbs?

(more…)

Lighting company Vu1 (formerly Telegen) announced a new technology for low power lighting this week: Electron Stimulated Luminescence™. The new technology is remarkably similar in principle to the old cathode ray tube TVs. The bulb generates a stream of electrons that excite a phosphor coating on the inside of the bulb’s glass. That has the effect of making the entire surface of the bulb glow.

Incandescent bulbs run current through a filament, heating it to produce. CFLs send current through mercury vapour to generate UV light which excites the phosphor coating on the inside of the glass. LEDs use special semiconductors which emit light when excited electrically. Vu1’s technology does away with the filament (which is the achilles heel of the incandescent bulb, resulting in the eventual failure of the bulb when all the heating and cooling causes the filament to break), which should improve the lifetime.

(more…)

A simple change that everybody can make around their house is to change some of those old incandescent light bulbs into new, energy efficient ones. That not only helps the planet, but it will reduce the household electricity bill too. But how much difference does it make, and which option should I choose?

(more…)