What is happening to Lighting Today?

Part 2 - Incandescent Lighting

Contributed by Mel Amundson

Incandescent lighting is the most common, and least efficient, type of lighting used in homes today.

Incandescent lamps, although inefficient, possess a number of key advantages-- they are inexpensive to buy, turn on instantly, are available in a huge array of sizes and shapes and provide a pleasant, warm light with excellent color rendition.  Due to their overall inefficiency and short lifespans, they are more expensive to operate than the newer types of lighting such as compact fluorescent lamps (CFL’s) and light emitting diodes (LED’s). New lighting standards that are now in effect, require lamps to use 25% less energy.  As of January 1, 2014, traditional incandescent lamps, such as the common screw type base lamp are no longer available in most stores.  Traditional 100W, 75W, 60W, and 40W bulbs, have been replaced by newer bulbs producing approximately the same light output (lumens) with an energy savings of 25%.

Types of Incandescent Lamps

There are three common types of incandescent lamps used in residential applications.

        Standard incandescent or pear shaped lamps (A-19 Lamps)

        Energy-saving halogen lamps

        Reflector or parabolic reflector lamps, sometimes called “flood” or “spot” lamps

Standard Incandescent Lamps

Commonly found in the home, the screw-in type lamp using a medium Edison base, is the standard incandescent bulb. These lamps produce visible light when a tiny coil or filament of tungsten wire glows when it is heated by electrical current. “Long-life” lamps have a heavier tungsten filament that can last much longer than a standard lamp, however the off-set is that they consume more energy for the same amount of light produced. These lamps give off a light that is close to sunlight in color and gives human eyes a good color rendition (color recognition). Incandescent lamps are also dimmable.

Halogen Light bulbs

A halogen lamp is a type of incandescent lamp with a capsule holding halogen gas around the filament, providing an increase in the efficiency of the lamp. They are more efficient than standard incandescent bulbs but somewhat more costly. They also have an inner coating that reflects heat back into the capsule to further improve efficiency and uses less energy. The halogen produces a color of light very close to that of the incandescent lamp.  This lamp series is dimmable.

Reflector Lamps

A reflector lamp is designed to spread and direct light over specific areas. They are mainly for floodlighting, spotlighting, and new lighting applications both for indoor and outdoor.

There are two types of reflector lamps

Parabolic aluminized reflector lamps

Ellipsoidal reflector lamps

Are all Types of Incandescent Lamps affected?

The new standards do not affect all incandescent bulbs. Various specialty bulbs are exempt.

There are 22 types of traditional incandescent lamps that are exempt. DOE will monitor sales of these exempted lamp types to see if there needs to be an energy conservation standard for the particular lamp type 

Appliance lamp

Black light lamp

Bug lamp

Colored lamp

Infrared lamp

Left-handed thread lamp

Marine lamp

Mine service lamp

Plant light

Reflector lamp

Rough service lamp

Shatter resistant lamp

Sign service lamp

Silver bowl lamp

Showcase lamp

3-way incandescent lamp

Traffic signal lamp

Vibration service lamp

And the various other specialty lamps

Why switch to CFL’s or LED’s?

Traditional incandescent bulbs use a lot of energy to produce light. About 90% of the energy used by an incandescent is lost as waste heat. Newer energy saving bulbs, can produce the same amount of light (measured in lumens) and use significantly less energy, saving you money. Upgrading 15 incandescent bulbs with more efficient CFL’s could save you about $15 per year.  An ENERGY STAR CFL uses about 25% of the energy and lasts 10 times longer. The replacement of incandescent lighting in commercial and industrial building leads to significant savings in electrical lighting costs, as well as a reduction in Air Conditioning loads from the incandescent bulbs.

Next article (Part 3) covers “Using CFL’s and more efficient fluorescent lighting”.  

For more information check out the ENERGY STARsite.

This is a 5-part series on residential and commercial lighting.

1. Bulbs and Standards
2. Incandescent lighting
3. Fluorescent lighting
4. Light Emitting Diode lighting
5. Lighting Control systems

Mel Amundson, President of Amstar, is a noted presentor, author, and consultant in the electrical industry.  Contact him at: 812.457.1916 or mel@amundson.net