LED light bulbs go mainstream

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Whilst LED lamps and torches have dominated outdoor and camping sales for a few years, LED light bulbs seem to have only come into their own in the UK during the past 12 months or so.

I had left the UK at the end of 2012 and kept a keen eye open to what had changed when I came back. At the time of my leaving, lighting was all about compact fluorescent bulbs in the UK.

Now less than two years later LED light bulbs have been carving out a niche. They are on sale alongside compact fluorescent bulbs at a not too dissimilar price in both the large ASDA and Tesco stores that I visited.

Their power consumption is seen as a key attribute by my parents when they bought bulbs. Fliament light bulbs had a lifespan of 1,000 hours if you were lucky and substantial power consumption. I remember from the time I was a small child, pretty much all the ceiling lights in our house were fluorescent tubes that lasted ten times as long and consumed only between one sixth to one quarter of the electricity needed for the equivalent filament bulb.

Thats one of the reasons why people were obsessed with making sure lights were turned off when no one was in the room even for a minute.

Compact versions of fluorescent lights seemed to become popular in the early 1990s and really took off when the helical compact bulbs came on the market, a light source with all the benefits of the filament bulb, but cheaper to run and lasting ten times longer.

LED lightbulbs last 10 times longer than the fluorescent light bulb and consume even less power.

The main barrier to my parents talking them up was if they would be colder looking than their fluorescent counterparts. That need not be the case. More technology related content here.


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