How about that Halogen?
I have 5 halogen lamps in my life. A torchaire in my bedroom, a torchaire in my office, 2 desk lamps--one at work and one at home--and then a torchaire in the utility room in the basement. Halogen bulbs aren't the standard Edison bulb that's pictured when I see something on CFLs, so these have been a question-mark in my head.
The Energy-star site doesn't talk about halogens.
One Billion Bulbs doesn't have anything on halogens.
Mr. Electricity doesn't talk about halogens on his lighting page.
I did a search early this morning on Halogen bulbs and CFLs, and I got a whole bunch of links to places that sell both. Which was mostly worthless for my question, except for this page. And since that's a page that's dedicated to selling a product, I have to discount the info on it. But which info?
This target on Wikipedia's page on incandescents provided some guidance.
- Halogens are more efficient than incandescents, at 9% of energy converted to light.
I also found this formula on the Mr. Electricity page:
So I can figure that the halogen costs:
Verses the 27 watt CFL in the wall sconce:
Over on the OneBillionBulbs site, I pretended I changed three 100 watt bulbs for three 28 watt bulbs and estimated I was using them for 2 hrs a day. Results:
Okay. So my answer is: whatever the specific numbers, the halogens need to go. Or be used a whole lot less.
1 comment:
Having just found your blog, I'm starting from the beginning.
In my studio apartment, I have a single hanging fixture with six sockets. I used to burn 75W or 60W bulbs in it, but I've started using two desk halogen desk lamps and a halogen floor lamp.
I purchased all of them from Ikea. The desk lamps are 20W and 40W and the floor lamp is 20W. So it costs me about eight cents an hour to burn all of them.
These are tasks lights, really, but the effect of the three of them gives me bright light on what I'm working on and a comfortable level of light in the rest of the apartment.
I also have another 20W halogen desk lamp that I perch on the refrigerator in the kitchen, which gives me enough light to work by.
The kitchen also gets the most natural light, so I've started hanging out there in the evenings to minimize my use of electric lighting.
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