UK to attempt to ban the sale of halogen bulbs.

[paulca]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57407233

Now, correct me if I am wrong, a halogen bulb is only inefficient if the heat output is waste.  In many applications you do indeed want the heat from the bulb.

I'm going to hope that this will mean that supermarkets will not stock halogen alternatives in their light bulb shelf, but products designed to use halogen or incandescent bulbs for specific reasons .... you should still be able to buy new bulbs?

Also they want to ban fluorescents too.  I don't see that happening.

[Zero999]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57407233

Now, correct me if I am wrong, a halogen bulb is only inefficient if the heat output is waste.  In many applications you do indeed want the heat from the bulb.

I'm going to hope that this will mean that supermarkets will not stock halogen alternatives in their light bulb shelf, but products designed to use halogen or incandescent bulbs for specific reasons .... you should still be able to buy new bulbs?

Also they want to ban fluorescents too.  I don't see that happening.

In what applications do you want the heat from the bulb? A lava lamp?

When it's cold, it's better to use a heat pump to warm your house, rather than resistive heating in light bulbs.

I hope they clamp down on some of the crappy LED lamps which don't last as long, as they should.

[paulca]

There are many use cases for where you need light and mild heat or just mild, sub 100W of heat.

Pet enclosures for reptiles.
Some aquatics / aquariums.
Some hydroponics.
Some horticulture.
Chemistry such as brewing/fermenting things.
Halogen cookers.
Preheating circuit boards for soldering.

Sure some of those could be replaced with a £4000 HVAC system!

Also.  HVAC systems are not the be all and end all of home heating systems.  They only really work in modern homes built in the last few decades and in places where summer is hot enough for the air con function to be needed.

On environmental terms, while an HVAC unit might claim a GOP of 4 or 5, they very often don't run anywhere near that, especially in colder climes in winter.  They have to hit a GOP of 3 to be as efficient as a direct heat from burning the fossil fuel in the home instead of the power plant.

[Alti]

There are many applications where the heat is what you need but this ban targets the lighting applications I think. So, this won't affect the niche, special purpose applications directly. Indirectly, incandescent/halogen/IR bulbs are going to be less popular so expect their retail price to raise.

It is also true that incandescent type bulbs are 100% efficient when you consider that no energy is wasted but instead emitted by radiation, convection and transmission. In residential applications when you heat a house anyway then this works just like a 98% efficient heater with 2% efficient light source in one package. Leds go closer to 90%/10% proportions. So at any given light flux required, you can use 2%/10% = 20% of energy and emit 20% of 90%/98% = 18.4% of heat of incandescent. Of course if this is illuminating solar freakin roadways application in the middle of the winter and you melt snow with resistive heater anyway then this saving does not make any sense.

[Gyro]

I'm sure they just mean ordinary Halogen lamps , the lower energy replacements ordinary filament lamps. You can still legally buy special purpose filament lamps (eg.Oven ones).

Halogen cookers don't count as lamps, they're heating elements - as much IR as possible. Likewise industrial IR heaters.

It's about time they got rid of Halogen downlighters anyway, they consume vast amounts of power for very little overall room brightness and older, non intumescent sealed ones are a fire risk in ceiling cavities.

[paulca]

It's about time they got rid of Halogen downlighters anyway, they consume vast amounts of power for very little overall room brightness and older, non intumescent sealed ones are a fire risk in ceiling cavities.

I had an uplighter in my last place which had a double height ceiling for one half of the apartment.  It was only when I came to change the bulb in it that I discovered it was a 400W 3 inch floodlight bulb!  Thankfully I only ever turned it on at about 5% brightness.

[25 CPS]

I guess we're rapidly approaching the point in time where incandescents have been gone long enough and halogens are on their way out that anybody wanting to build a dim bulb tester for their workbench is going to have to search around for NOS lightbulbs.

[NiHaoMike]

There are many use cases for where you need light and mild heat or just mild, sub 100W of heat.

Pet enclosures for reptiles.
Some aquatics / aquariums.
Some hydroponics.
Some horticulture.
Chemistry such as brewing/fermenting things.

For those relatively low temperature use cases below 100W, a Peltier makes a pretty good heater, getting especially good COP if the temperature needed is not that much above room temperature.

Halogen is not really what you want for heating since the point is to get more light for the same power consumption. A heat lamp would use a thicker filament running at a lower than usual temperature in an argon or vacuum bulb.

[SilverSolder]

I'm sure incandescent bulbs will be available for a long time still...   then they'll start to become valuable, and "harvested" older ones will start to appear on eBay...

[coppice]

In what applications do you want the heat from the bulb? A lava lamp?

There are several common uses of halogen lamps, that are ONLY trying to produce heat. If they simply ban halogen lamps, will they crush those applications. e.g. halogen ovens and hobs, infra red therapy lamps, and food warmers at self service counters.

[tszaboo]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57407233

Now, correct me if I am wrong, a halogen bulb is only inefficient if the heat output is waste.  In many applications you do indeed want the heat from the bulb.

I'm going to hope that this will mean that supermarkets will not stock halogen alternatives in their light bulb shelf, but products designed to use halogen or incandescent bulbs for specific reasons .... you should still be able to buy new bulbs?

Also they want to ban fluorescents too.  I don't see that happening.

Because it's 1% of the applications?
Yes, probably halogen will disappear from the supermarket, and you can still buy it in pet shop. Or you might need to buy a second IR lamp.

[madires]

Also 12V bulbs? That would create a lot of e-junk because all "halogen transformers" (actually crude SMPSUs) would need to be replaced too. They aren't suited for 12V LED bulbs.

[themadhippy]

I'm sure incandescent bulbs will be available for a long time still...

Theirs a nice little loop hole in the legislation so good ole incandescent lamps can still be found by using the magic phrases "rough service"
One thing they have also mumbled about,but doesn't seem to be widely reported is the banning of light fittings with non replaceable lamps,that's going to be interesting considering the uk building regs  for meeting energy efficiency either require non replaceable lamps or  use of a lamp base that's incompatible with non energy efficient lamps,are we going to see a sudden increase of incompatibility between manufacturers?

[Zero999]

There are many use cases for where you need light and mild heat or just mild, sub 100W of heat.

Pet enclosures for reptiles.
Some aquatics / aquariums.
Some hydroponics.
Some horticulture.
Chemistry such as brewing/fermenting things.
Halogen cookers.
Preheating circuit boards for soldering.

Sure some of those could be replaced with a £4000 HVAC system!

Also.  HVAC systems are not the be all and end all of home heating systems.  They only really work in modern homes built in the last few decades and in places where summer is hot enough for the air con function to be needed.

On environmental terms, while an HVAC unit might claim a GOP of 4 or 5, they very often don't run anywhere near that, especially in colder climes in winter.  They have to hit a GOP of 3 to be as efficient as a direct heat from burning the fossil fuel in the home instead of the power plant.

Read the article again. It talks about halogen light bulbs, not heat lamps, which won't be banned.

Also 12V bulbs? That would create a lot of e-junk because all "halogen transformers" (actually crude SMPSUs) would need to be replaced too. They aren't suited for 12V LED bulbs.

There are plenty of 12V LED retrofit lamps, specifically designed to work with electronic transformers. I've installed them in my parents' bathroom and they work perfectly.

Here's an application note by Maxim about it.
https://www.maximintegrated.com/en/app-notes/index.mvp/id/5372/

[Neilm]

Very annoying - I have a fan with in built lights and the controller for it does not work with LEDs in, even if they claim they are dimmable

[TheBay]

Every year they "Attempt to Ban" halogen and also incandescent bulbs but yet I can always find them for sale.
I've got a Lutron lighting system that will only play nicely with certain dimmable LED bulbs and I have no idea if they will work or not without buying them and trying them. I really do not want to rip that system out as it works so well.

Why is it 90% of LED bulbs are "Warm" colour temperature, they are a lot warmer than a halogen or traditional incandescent bulbs and look disgusting IMHO. Not to mention the CRI on the box being complete nonsense.

I bought some Philips 4000K LED bulbs a while back and have been really impressed but they seem to be discontinued sadly. They have a really high CRI and are a decent replacement.

[james_s]

I'm sure incandescent bulbs will be available for a long time still...

Theirs a nice little loop hole in the legislation so good ole incandescent lamps can still be found by using the magic phrases "rough service"
One thing they have also mumbled about,but doesn't seem to be widely reported is the banning of light fittings with non replaceable lamps,that's going to be interesting considering the uk building regs  for meeting energy efficiency either require non replaceable lamps or  use of a lamp base that's incompatible with non energy efficient lamps,are we going to see a sudden increase of incompatibility between manufacturers?

The ironic thing about that is "rough service" applications like the work light I use while working on cars are one of the first things I switched to LED. Even incandescent lamps marketed as rough service are nowhere near as tough as an LED bulb.

Personally I dislike bans, I would rather see a tax on less efficient sources used to fund development of more efficient sources. Just gently nudge people toward higher efficiency while greasing the path.

[james_s]

Why is it 90% of LED bulbs are "Warm" colour temperature, they are a lot warmer than a halogen or traditional incandescent bulbs and look disgusting IMHO. Not to mention the CRI on the box being complete nonsense.

Because standard incandescent lamps are 2700k and that is what most people are used to so most LED bulbs are also 2700k. A major goal in developing the bulbs in the first place was to make them look as much like what they were trying to replace as possible so ordinary people would buy them.

Personally I've started using quite a few tuneable CCT smart bulbs. I don't really care about the overall "smart" features but I love being able to dial in the color temperature. The Philips Hue white ambiance series are less than half the price of the full RGB bulbs and offer a very nice range from about 2200k to 6500k.

[coppice]

Why is it 90% of LED bulbs are "Warm" colour temperature, they are a lot warmer than a halogen or traditional incandescent bulbs and look disgusting IMHO.

Where we live most shops have bigger stocks of daylight bulbs than warm white ones. Whether that is because they sell more daylight ones, or because the warm ones sell out fastest I don't know.

[rdl]

I agree that the so-called "warm white" looks horrible. The last time I looked best I could find was 3000k but that's only a minimal improvement. Today I looked on Amazon and there are plenty of 4000k available. You can even get CRI 90+ (so they say). I'm probably going to order some tonight.

[TheBay]

The "Warm" Led bulbs seem to be nowhere near the kelvin of the incandescent bulbs, they are a lot warmer, certainly in the UK and for the past few years most of our bulbs switched to halogen which were around 3000K or more. These "Warm" bulbs just make everything look dull and tobacco stained, not to mention poor CRI.

Why is it 90% of LED bulbs are "Warm" colour temperature, they are a lot warmer than a halogen or traditional incandescent bulbs and look disgusting IMHO. Not to mention the CRI on the box being complete nonsense.

Because standard incandescent lamps are 2700k and that is what most people are used to so most LED bulbs are also 2700k. A major goal in developing the bulbs in the first place was to make them look as much like what they were trying to replace as possible so ordinary people would buy them.

Personally I've started using quite a few tuneable CCT smart bulbs. I don't really care about the overall "smart" features but I love being able to dial in the color temperature. The Philips Hue white ambiance series are less than half the price of the full RGB bulbs and offer a very nice range from about 2200k to 6500k.

[SilverSolder]

I like dimmed lights in the evening, kind of glowing campfire kind of effect.  Hard to do well with LEDs...

[rdl]

Yeah, I do prefer the warm white for general living area use and at night. When I said they looked horrible I mostly was thinking for use in work areas. On the other hand, the so called "daylight" (5000k+) to me, is far too blue to use anywhere. Maybe it has something to do with CRI.

[james_s]

The "Warm" Led bulbs seem to be nowhere near the kelvin of the incandescent bulbs, they are a lot warmer, certainly in the UK and for the past few years most of our bulbs switched to halogen which were around 3000K or more. These "Warm" bulbs just make everything look dull and tobacco stained, not to mention poor CRI.

Most of the ones I have look pretty close to incandescent. Halogen replacements for standard bulbs have been available but they've always been relatively expensive so they never really caught on here. The better LED bulbs typically have better color, the cheap ones often look a bit crappy. In a lot of cases I think the CRI has more to do with how good it looks than the CCT.

[james_s]

I like dimmed lights in the evening, kind of glowing campfire kind of effect.  Hard to do well with LEDs...

The Philips Hue white ambiance lamps do a pretty good job of it, going all the way down to 2200k. Philips also offers their "Warm Glow" series which are non-adjustable but get warmer as they dim. Not quite as nice as incandescent but passable for most of my applications.