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Energy Efficient Light

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The modern world is illuminated. Lights adorn every street, home and business and the energy consumed by standard lighting is anything by efficient.

Standard incandescent lights have a tungsten filament that is held in a glass mount in the middle of the bulb. This filament is lit up when energy is applied and this results in light and heat. And it is for this reason that the incandescent is not an energy efficient light. Only five to eight percent of the energy used in an incandescent is used on producing light. The rest is dissipated as heat. Anyone who has burnt their hand changing a bulb will testify to the amount of heat that these lights produce. Depending on the size and type of the blub, temperatures of the filament can reach up to 2200 degrees Celsius.

The modern type of energy efficient light that offers a solution to wasted energy is the Compact Florescent Light (CFL). If every home replaced just one standard bulb with a CFL, emissions would reduce equivalent to one million cars. And that is just one light; most homes have 20 or more light fixtures.

There really are no drawbacks to switching your incandescent to a CFL. Your energy bill will reduce and these lights are designed to out-perform standard incandescent lights. You can expect the CFL energy efficient light to last 15 times longer than your standard bulb. Replacement is easy as well; nearly all CFL lights will fit into your existing fixture.

The CFL gives the best lumen per watt ratio and it is for this reason that the compact florescent light is the most energy efficient light available.

But other energy efficient lights are available with an even longer life span than the CFL. A Light Emitting Diode (LED) can last for up to 100,000 hours compared to the 15,000 hours expected from a CFL. In addition to this, a LED will use a third of the wattage. The Light Emitting Diode is advantageous in conjunction with solar power. The minimal drain on a renewable solar power source and high output, make these lights the standard in solar technology.

All internal light is unnatural and being under its influence for eight hours a day, five days a week can have negative health benefits. These may include eyestrain, headaches and unnatural light has also been linked with Seasonal Acquired Depression (SAD). An energy efficient light solution that uses solar power and has health benefits is starting to become available. Hybrid solar lighting actually uses direct sunlight to illuminate a bulb through optical light cables. This means that on a day with good sunlight, no artificial light is produced and no energy is used. Natural light is reflected into the space. Because natural sunlight is going directly into the optical light cables, a UV filter is provided to filter the harmful UV rays that the sun produces. Using hybrid solar lighting produces a full spectrum of light that is much easier on the human eye and reduces headaches and eyestrain.

This type of energy efficient light is being used mainly in commercial and industrial buildings, but more homes are seeing this as a viable option. This is because of the systems efficiency. A standard solar panel will utilize approximately 15% of the sunlight they capture, where as a hybrid solar energy efficient lighting systems will utilize 50%. With prices dropping dramatically on hybrid solar lighting, never before has it been so possible to install a healthy, inventive and supremely energy efficient lighting system in the home.

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