Are Fluorescent lights energy efficient?

Posted by Ross Lammas

Fluorescent tubes have traditionally been a source of efficient and effective lighting in homes, long before compact fluorescent and LED lights came along. They are most commonly found in kitchens, either in a long ‘strip’ form (three or four feet in length) and occasionally circular. Smaller strips are sometimes also used for giving extra light on work-surfaces partially covered by kitchen cupboards. Fluorescent tubes are also to be found in garages, lofts and bathrooms. Because of the non-directional nature of the light, they ensure safe lighting.

Fluorescent tubes last several years. If there are signs of flicker, or a tube has apparently failed, it may not be the tube that has failed. All that might be required is a replacement ‘starter’. These only cost a couple of pounds and it is worth having ‘one in stock’. A starter is a small cylinder with two small T shaped pins protruding from one end. It is mounted in a round socket on the side of the lamp housing – it may not be immediately obvious, as it does not protrude much, and its end surface is about the size of a penny.

An urban myth has continued to circulate about the amount of electricity used by fluorescent tubes when they are first turned on. The extra electricity used is negligible. If it wasn’t, it would blow your fuses and trip switches. The myth occurred because a calculation was made and a factor of one thousand was accidentally introduced into it.

Smart homes, appliances, heating controls – will they reduce your energy bills?

Posted by Ross Lammas

Do you remember watching The Jetsons (Or am I showing my age now?) In The Jetsons’ a futuristic world of robotic maids and flying cars, smart technology is taken for granted.

Perhaps we’re now just a step away from that world. We might not have flying cars yet, but driverless cars are on the horizon and we already have robotic vacuum cleaners and are starting to be able to control our home appliances with just a swipe or tap on our smart phones. The ‘internet of things’ is evolving rapidly, allowing us to control and synchronise our tech and use it much more efficiently.

Smart appliances bring lots of advantages when it comes to making our lives easier. We can now control our heating and many of our appliances remotely. Whether it’s turning the heating while we’re getting dressed – that’s if you can find your phone – or switching the washing machine on when we’re out so the noise doesn’t interrupt our evening TV viewing. We can wirelessly stream music around our homes, dim the lights without getting up and even check up on our pets while we’re at work. Smart kits can also help with safety, from turning a plug switch off remotely when we’ve left the iron on, to controlling the lights when we’re away to deter burglars.

Can smart technology help us to save energy and money?

In some cases, yes. We can set appliances to run when electricity is cheaper, or when the sun is shining if we have solar panels. Smart Home thermostats and heating controls, such as Nest and Hive, can make sure our homes are kept at the perfect temperature. They also enable us to switch the heating on or off remotely, so that it’s warm when we get home, but rooms aren’t being heated when we’re not using them.

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Smart technology can tell you if your boiler isn’t working efficiently and self-diagnose faults. It probably won’t be long before your boiler is booking itself a service and adding a note to your calendar for you!

Electric car owners can now download apps to their phone to monitor their car’s performance and battery power, and let them know where there nearest charge point is. Pre-heat your car on frosty morning and make sure it only charges-up on cheap off-peak electricity.

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And it’s not just good for consumers. Smart grids and data collection are helping energy companies and appliance manufacturers to diagnose faults and develop more efficient products and solutions.

So do you need this tech to reduce your energy bills?

Not necessarily! If you’re a technophobe or have simply better things to do, why bother! Okay, turning your washing machine on when you’re out might be convenient occasionally, but it won’t save you energy. Upgrading old appliances to more energy efficient ones certainly will! See our ‘When should you replace old appliances?’ page. It’s certainly easier to save energy heating your home using a smart thermostat, but just turning the maximum temperature down on your current one, and being a bit more organised, can save you electricity and energy.

Switching to an Electric Car will defiantly reduce your vehicle day-to-day running costs. And if you’re charging it with a renewable green tariff, will reduce your emissions and make city air more breathable too.

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Whether you go for a ‘smart’ appliance or a regular one, the key is to buy the most energy efficient one you can afford, and use it smartly.

Ready to upgrade? Click on the Appliances or Motoring tab to check the running costs of the top rated appliances and cars available in the UK.

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Green Deal failure – what a waste of energy and money!

Posted by Ross Lammas

So Green Deal, the Government’s big attempt to get households to cut their emissions, has ended up costing us £17,000 for each home that signed up. And worse still the reduction in CO2 is negligible. No surprise there. Well-intentioned maybe, but misguided and to me the maths just didn’t add up.

Green_deal

Green Deal ran from 2013 to mid-2015, at a cost of £240 million. The idea was that people could get a loan to pay for energy efficiency improvements to their home, such as ground source heat pumps, double glazing, photovoltaics or improved insulation. These loans would then be paid back through their electricity bill, with the promise that they would never pay back more than they were saving. So, for example, if cavity wall insulation was set to save a householder £200 in a year, that would be the most they’d pay towards the loan that year.

As regular readers will know, I’ve had issues with the Green Deal since the start. It always seemed like an initiative that was doomed to fail. Don’t get me wrong, some of the thinking behind it made sense. Enabling people to spread the cost of energy efficient and renewable solutions over time is a great idea. Early birds were even offered a cashback ‘sweetener’ of up to £1000.

However, Green Deal didn’t cover lighting or appliances. The running costs of electricals, such as fridges, freezers, washing machines etc, accounts for around 20% of a home’s energy bill. There are big CO2 savings to be made by switching to more energy efficient models. When money is tight, however, it can be difficult to justify replacing an old washing machine or fridge freezer with a more efficient one, even if it could save money in the long run. Offering people the chance of a Green Deal loan spread over a few years could really have helped people to upgrade.

Energy-consuption-fridges-1

Lightbulbs could also have been included. Replacing all the old halogen bulbs in someone’s home with LED ones wouldn’t cost that much, and a scheme whereby you could be sent the bulbs and pay for them over a few years out of your electricity bills, could have proved very popular.

And that cashback offer would have made more sense if the government had used the £1000 to offer homeowners additional ways to make their homes more energy efficient. They could have been offered a choice of free loft insulation, double glazing for two windows, or scrappage scheme for old white goods with vouchers to spend on super energy efficient appliances and lightbulbs, for example.

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There was also no real encouragement for people to make any changes to the way they run their homes. There’s little point in installing loft insulation if you then leave the heating on when you go out for the day, or constantly have the thermostat set higher than it needs to be.

One of my main gripes is that Green Deal didn’t do enough to help those in fuel poverty. Instead it focused on people who could afford to borrow the money needed to improve their home.

It just wasn’t sexy enough, I mean, who wants to take out a 25 year loan for something as dull as loft insulation? And the loans were attached to homes, rather than the owners. While that sounds good in principle, imagine telling a potential seller, “Yep the double-glazing is four years old, but you’ll need to pay for it through your electricity bills for the next 21 years.

In all, the scheme wasn’t fully thought out and there was little real incentive for people to bother taking it up. (In the end, only 14,000 homes benefited.) The National Audit Office (NAO) report criticised the Government for failing to test the Green Deal sufficiently with householders, before it launched. Yet they knew that even when loft insulation was installed free uptake was low. Amyas Morse, head of the NAO, said: ‘The Department [of Energy and Climate Change] now needs to be more realistic about consumers’ and suppliers’ motivations when designing schemes in future to ensure it achieves it aims.’

Perhaps that is why they are taking so long to come up with a replacement scheme. Meanwhile – we all Twitter whilst the planet burns! Do you agree, or are you one of the 14,000 homeowners who benefited? Leave a comment below, or Tweet me @Sust-it.

Best replacements for GU10 Halogens, LED review – branded or unbranded?

Posted by Ross Lammas

Replacing your halogen GU10 bulbs for LED equivalents is a great place to start saving on your energy bills. Halogen spotlights became a real trend in the noughties, and they still are judging by kitchen design magazines. The big problem with halogen spotlights is that, whilst being marginally more energy efficient than filament bulbs, they still consume a lot of energy! Especially as they tend to be grouped in larger numbers in kitchens and bathrooms. Having just ten feature lights could cost you £100 per year. Replacing them with modern compact LED bulbs can cut your bills down by 80/90%, plus, because they last so much longer, the lifetime savings should well payoff the upfront cost of the bulbs in the long-term. See our ‘How long do bulbs last?’ calculator.

Are LED replacements as bright as Halogens?

LED lighting technology has moved on rapidly in recent years; Whilst early bulbs did lack brightness and tended to be on the cool side of the colour spectrum, modern-day bulbs certainly are as bright as Halogens and come in a wide range of colours for every situation within your home or office. Studies carried out in Denmark and Sweden in 2014 confirmed that consumers are happy with the light quality when compared with the tungsten filament lamps they have been replacing.

Choosing the correct brightness of bulbs is now more confusing with the switch for interpreting light output from ‘watts’ to the term ‘lumens’ – which is a more accurate way of measuring light. To help with this we’ve created an interactive tool to demonstrate how much brighter LED lighting is when compared to halogens and old filament bulbs. Roughly speaking a 50w Halogen bulb should be replaced with a 5w to 8w equivalent GU10 LED. Saying that there are differences in performance between brands; and, unlike the US, in Europe there is no regime for checking the measurement of lumens claimed made by manufacturers.

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Lumens to Watts – how to choose light bulbs

Should you go for well-known LED lighting brands?

Now this is where the real value judgement has to be made, yes we know LEDs use far less energy (which is better for the environment) but cost miles more than cheap Halogens. So LEDs only makes sense – from a financial standpoint – if they last as long as suggested. Now this is trickier; from our experience – we installed LEDs within our office and they have either lasted nowhere near their claimed life expectancy, or have started to flicker, (this can happen as a result of poor design or manufacture). However, these were first generation LEDs and have been replaced with modern equivalents that have proved to be far more reliable.

A report commissioned by the EU into the LED lighting market, highlighted that brands such as Philips claim to hold 70% of all patents on LED applications. It almost seems impossible for rival brands to manufacture bulbs without paying a licence fee, or infringing on Philips patents.

The influx of cheaper, imported LED bulbs could be an indication of the quality of the designs and how long they may last. Our advice would be to look for long warranties from the retailers or manufacturers. Guarantees of 5 years are not uncommon – bulb being left on for 25,000 hours (5 years 8 months). One thing to consider is that housing the LED bulbs in an enclosed space with less 10 mm gap around the product will affect its longevity and could make your guarantee void. Above all keep your receipts!

Branded V Own Labelled GU10 LED bulbs?

The pictures below illustrate the difference in brightness between three different LED GU10 bulbs compared to an Eco Halogen. Each bulb was photographed at the same exposure and colour balance settings. Surprisingly all the LEDs appear brighter than Eco Halogen, even though the Halogen had a higher quoted lumens level of 380.

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Both the PHILIPS and DIALL (B&Q) have a narrower beam angle (36°) compared to LUMiLIFE which has 60° beam. The beam angle is important to bear in mind when replacing bulbs, a wider beam spreads the light more evenly, especially useful if your light fittings are widely spaced. In terms of brightness all the bulbs produce a clean bright light to the naked eye and seemed very similar in brightness. However, what was really noticeable was the difference between warm coloured bulbs (2770K) when compared to cool white LED’s (5000) The cooler temperature bulbs (bluer) appears much brighter, so would be much more suited to areas such as lighting kitchen worktops. The warmer coloured bulb would be more suited to rooms that need a more relaxed atmosphere.

The build quality of all the bulbs seems very good, the only difference being that the PHILIPS bulb appear to have small cooling vents. This should help dissipate any excess heat that can affect the longevity of bulbs.

Overall the quality of light from each bulb was very impressive, certainly better than the halogen tested.

GU10 Bulbs tested

LUMiLIFE (LEDHut) LED GU10 5W = 45w (320 lumens) Colour temperature 2700K
Expected life 25000 hrs Beam Angle 60° Retailing at £3.49*

PHILIPS LED GU10 5W = 50w (350 lumens) Colour temperature 2700K
Expected life 15000 hrs Beam Angle 36° Retailing at £6.00*

DIALL (B&Q) LED GU10 4.8w = 50w (345 lumens) Colour temperature 3000K
Expected life 15000 hrs Beam Angle 36° Retailing at £4.00* each (twin pack)

DIALL (B&Q) Eco Halogen GU10 40w = 50w (380 lumens) Colour temperature 2700K Expected life 2000 hrs Beam Angle 36°Retailing at £1.00*

•Prices March 2016

Colour temperature comparison

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LUMiLIFE LED GU10 5W = 45w 320 lumens Colour temperature 2700K
LUMiLIFE LED GU10 5W = 45w 330 lumens Colour temperature 4000K
LUMiLIFE LED GU10 5W = 45w 330 lumens Colour temperature 5000K

Camera: Nikon D750 Exposure 1/50 F8 ISO 2500 Colour balance 5000K. No image manipulation or exposure/colour corrections.

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Why switch energy supplier?

Posted by Ross Lammas

The easiest way to reduce your energy bills is to minimise usage in the first place!

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Next is to switch supplier, which is as easy as entering your postcode. So why aren’t consumers doing this? Is it complacency? A lack of time? No access to the internet? The hassle of changing banking details? Or not knowing how big the savings can be? We expect all the above to be contributing to us not switching enough.

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Should you switch?

Yes. Your current supplier is unlikely to disclose if their tariffs are uncompetitive – why should they? You can’t complain about high energy bills if you don’t take action today, both by saving energy and by switching. This is how we can encourage a more competitive energy market. The chances are that if you’ve never switched or haven’t switched in the past 12 months, you’re paying a hefty price! Here’s Sust-it’s guide to switching…

How to switch energy supplier

Before you start to make a comparison, having a previous utility bill to hand will help you provide the following information:

your postcode.
your current gas and electricity supplier;
your tariff, which should be on your bill;
how much you spend or the amount you use in kilowatt-hours

(you can switch without this, however, having the above information will ensure you get the best possible deal)

Enter this information into your chosen switching service and it will show you the cheapest deals based on energy usage. Pick the tariff/supplier you want and enter your bank details to set up a direct debit (this gives you the cheapest deals). The chosen supplier will arrange the changeover process; you’ll be asked to submit meter readings, and then your existing supplier will send a final bill. The entire process takes between two and six weeks – hopefully, Government pressure will expedite this process soon!