Upcoming Changes To Home Lighting

With his incandescent light bulb, Thomas Edison made it possible for countless households worldwide to have electric home light. His innovation significantly improved the options for lighting home interiors and exteriors. In fact, his incandescent light bulb design has been used for over one hundred years. It was quite the invention in its day. However, move forward to current times, when the current emphasis by the Untied States and other countries is not just to provide electric home lighting, but to provide electric home lighting that is energy efficient. With current technologies, efficient light bulbs are available and continue to be improved. For example, common in the market place in the United States are high energy efficient compact fluorescent light bulbs, as well as light emitting diodes. Thus, given the emphasis on energy efficiency, the United States Congress has mandated new energy standards that will phase out low efficiency incandescent light bulbs during the next few years.

While the term watts, which is a measure of energy consumption, is familiar to many consumers in the United States, the term lumens may be less familiar. Lumens is a measure of the bulb's brightness. Thus, as a consumer shopping for light bulbs, knowing the lumens provided by the light bulb may be more informative than knowing the watts the light bulb uses, given that lumens informs consumers about the brightness of the light. Clearly, both may be important to consumers, but for many years, the emphasis on light bulb labeling sold in the United States has tended to be the watts consumed by the bulb. This labeling practice is changing. The Federal Trade Commission in the United States announced that in 2011, the labeling on light bulbs will emphasize the lumens the bulb provides, by providing the information on the front of the light bulb labeling.

The difference in energy consumption between high energy efficient light bulbs and low efficiency incandescent light bulbs is quite significant. For example, a common 60 watt light bulb provides about 840 lumens and is estimated to provide about 1,000 hours of illumination. By comparison, a high energy efficient compact fluorescent light bulb consumes about 14 watts and provides about 900 lumens , while providing an estimated 10,000 hours of illumination. Indeed, the difference in both energy consumption and hours of illumination is very significant. Moreover, in terms of the natural environment, using high energy efficient light bulbs is helpful not just due to the fact that they use less energy, but also due to the fact that they last longer. If fewer light bulbs are used by consumers because the ones they use last longer, fewer light bulbs need to be disposed, which also tends to be good for the natural environment.