Efficient Lighting, Anyone?

What kind of lighting do you use at home?

While a lot of talking had been into LED (light emitting diode) lighting, most of us are still using fluorescent, either tube or compact type.

There are a lot of LED lights already available in the market, flashlight, garden light, emergency light, even replacement tube for fluorescent. With its long life (100,000hours), LED seems to be the next big thing in lighting.

But, till date, LED lighting is still not mature, its efficiency are still below what fluorescent can produce. While waiting for the next breakthrough, and with the large numbers of installed base of fluorescent, more focus should be enhancing the existing installation.

One straightforward, cost effective and green way is to replace the existing fluorescent to a more efficient one.

Let's talk about fluorescent tube for example. Many of us are using T8 tube now, however, some of the countries are still using T10 or even T12 tube.

Now, what exactly is the difference of these tubes?
Simple, the numbers represent the diameters of the tube, ie T10 = 10/8 inch, T8 = 8/8 inch, and T5 = 5/8 inch tube.

But, what does it means in terms of green?

For a 5000 lumens tube, T12 consumes 65W, T8 consumes 58W, while T5 consumes only 50W.
And that is why we should start to change to T5 fluorescent tube.

At the same time, with its smaller diameter, T5 uses less glass, and less mercury too.

But, there is a concern of converting from T10 or T8 to T5 as these comes in different length.
So, in the past, when converting, we will need to change the ballast and the fittings. And, it is troublesome.

But, now, with the converting kit, this is no a concern anymore.
Have a look at this:


All we need to do is to remove the original starter, and replace the existing tube with this new all in one converting kit, and we are done.

Have a Green day ahead.

Mark
Way2Green