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Originally Posted by jambutty
Some time back, being a pensioner, I received two free 60 watts low energy bulbs from some organisation or other with a coupon to send for two more.
I don’t know about anyone else but I have a small lamp on top of my telly to soften the glare from the screen when I’m watching so I put one of these low energy bulbs in the lamp when the normal 60 watts bulb gave up the ghost. Even if I’m not watching telly I still have it on from dusk onwards.
These new fangled bulbs are supposed to give off the same amount of light that a normal bulb does but it uses less electricity. I did say supposed to but they don’t.
How do I know?
Well it’s like this. I have a solar powered calculator that works quite well with the only light source being my telly lamp. Ignore the computer screen because that is always behind the calculator when I use it. Yet with the new bulb in place it wouldn’t work because there wasn’t enough light. I had to move the calculator a couple of feet closer to the light to get it to work. Ergo the new bulbs do not give off the same amount of light as a normal bulb of the same wattage. It may use less electricity but part of the reason has to be that it doesn’t give off the same amount of light. Are we being conned – again?
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No we're not being conned.
Normal lightbulbs give off all the visable light possible from the electromagnetic spectrum (the one where you shine a light through a prism and get the spectrum like this one the other side):
Energy saving ones give off parts of the visable spectrum, which makes no difference to the majority of people because they use lights to light up the house and we see no difference.
Obviously 'energy saving' lightbulbs do what they say, and hence use less energy, so no, your calculator isn't going to get the same energy going to it, because as the name says, theres less energy being used, so less energy being given out.