Lighting Systems

Everywhere on Earth will receive 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness over a one year period. The further to the poles you are, the more extreme its distribution between winter and summer. On the spring and fall/autumn equinoxes, EVERYWHERE on Earth will receive 12 hours. Check out www.timeanddate.com.

Lighting Types

Technology is ever-changing. The efficiency of lights (the amount of light you will receive for a given unit of electricity as measured in Lumens per Watt) improves over time. In the past 25 years we’ve moved from incandescent bulbs (remember how hot they were to take out – that’s the 95%+ of electricity wasted as heat) to compact fluorescents (much better) and now to LED lighting.

LED lighting really is a once-in-a-generation-or-two technological advance. These digital lights can reduce your lighting costs by 90%+ if you jump from an incandescent to an LED. Bring digital they are easier to dim and even change colour, should you wish to change your bedroom into a roller disco! They can come in many forms, either matching standard bulbs or strip lights, or in new stick-on lighting strips.

LED Bulb

These really are strip lights curled up to make a replacement for an incandescent bulb base. Electric current excites ions in the gas held within the glass bulb, emitting light.

Over the years as the technology has improved, narrower and narrower tubes were used - T12 to T8 to T5.

Fluorescent Bulb

Incandescent Bulb

Heat up tungsten so hot that it glows, and that's it. No wonder these are now banned in many places. Careful though - if you heat your home with electricity, you will simply replace heating via lights to heating via your heating system. However you will still cause extra air conditioning loads.

Electricity

Remember! Electricity used for lighting always ends up degrading to heat (that’s physics for you) and so however many Watts of lighting you add (or remove hopefully) means an impact on your heating and cooling systems.

Solar

Renewable Energy