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EDN Europe's Editor Graham Prophet posts a selection of comments and insights prompted by the many items of industry news and rumour that cross the editorial desk or are gathered on his frequent travels to interviews, press conferences and events around Europe - and further afield - and somehow never find their way to the magazine or the web site, recovering some of the information otherwise lost in the noise level...

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Who said that?

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Now that we are into winter in northern latitudes, the energy-efficiency gains from more efficient lighting – at least, in our homes and offices – once again become illusory, until spring has us once again turning down our heating thermostats; but the flow of product aimed at more efficient lighting continues. On the news pages today you’ll find an announcement from NXP of a chip designed to drive compact-fluorescents for a “better user experience”.
Included in its feature set is the capability for true dimming; this might raise a smile among those who have populated their light fittings with CFLs, at least the ones that have been widely available until now. The challenge has of course been to get anything like an adequate level of illumination out of the things, never mind trying to dim them. What seems to happen is that you buy a lamp rated at (electrical) 8W to replace a 40-W incandescent; but (even allowing that in absolute light output terms the specification may be accurate) the spectrum emitted is so distorted, you find yourself stepping up to the 11-W or 14-W lamps (notionally equivalent to 60 or 75-W incandescent) so as not to fumble around in the resulting gloom.
Indeed, NXP’s press release acknowledges that, “only a fraction of CFL bulbs sold today meet consumers’ expectations in terms of quality, functionality and performance.” (I wonder if they cleared that statement with their former parent company and world’s largest lamp maker?)
However, “In Europe,” the release continues, “this has led to stricter requirements for CFL product labelling; in the US, this has led to initiatives such as ‘Super CFL.’ In both regions, new specifications are emerging for high-performance, high-quality compact fluorescents with better colour light, faster start-up times, better dimming and longer life.”
With even enthusiastic proponents of LED lighting admitting that the superior-light-source-that-is-to-come is still many years away in terms of crude price-equivalence, some sort of response from the CFL makers is overdue. Still, I’ll believe in the dimmable CFL when I see a CFL that I actually want to dim.

Related entries in: Power Management |

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