As announced by the Australian Government in 2007, the incandescent light bulbs will be banned and start being taken off the shelves by the end of 2009. Better quality halogen lights will continue to be available but the least efficient group of this lighting will be phased out as well.
The move of replacing incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent lamp’s (CFL) will certainly contribute to an increase in energy savings but it will also increase the difficulties caused by the toxic mercury disposal into landfills.
Recent technological breakthroughs in LED lighting have signaled that this lighting technology will eventually replace the currently offered option of energy saving CFL’s. LED’s are 100% disposable and are therefore the most environmentally friendly lighting product on the market.
Due to its huge benefits such as an expected life span of up to 100,000 hours (25 years), the generation of ‘cold’ light and an energy saving of up to 80%, LED lighting is ideal for both space-constrained and conventional solid-state lighting applications.
The Light Emitting Diodes (LED) produce a wide palette of colours from a bright white over red to blue and are used in great variety of LED products, such as barrel lights, button lights, spot lights, down lights, light strips and LED light bulbs. This allows endless possibilities in architectural, landscape and building designs.
Care should be taken in the selection of LED lighting products as more and more bad copies are spreading over the market. These copies provide a very low light output, use low quality materials and are usually badly manufactured. However, there are high quality LED lighting products available, which offer a real alternative to traditional lighting solutions. Using the smallest and brightest surface mountable power LED’s available today, high performance 12 Watt LED lights have an equivalent light output to a 50 Watt Halogen light but save 38 Watt energy.
Acknowledgements: www.lightscapes.com.au