Forum Home
PC World Chat
Thread ID: 77065	2007-02-25 19:00:00	Energy saving lamps not in dimmers - why ?	Digby (677)	PC World Chat

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
528119	2007-02-25 19:00:00	Hi Guys As everyone knows these fluro energy-saving lamps are not suitable to be used in fittings that use dimmers. To me this is a major reason not to make the compulsory as in Aussie (what are they going to do there about them ?) But what happens if you put one in ? Does it explode ? Does it just not dim ? Does it not glow at all ? Does it blow fuses, set fire to the house ? Does anyone know ? PS I have a few of them in areas where I do not need good light eg halls. Regards Digby	Digby (677)
528120	2007-02-25 19:10:00	They have in-built electronics so they don't dim and the electronics don't like it either. Dimming ES lamps will appear one day, I have an idea that they are already around for some applications but I'm not 100% sure on that. Cheers Billy 8-{)	Billy T (70)
528121	2007-02-25 19:42:00	The lightbulbs have built in electronics?? :nerd:	chchinformer (11393)
528122	2007-02-25 21:22:00	I do remember, when I was working, that there were dimmers for fluos. You could not dim them down as far as your ordinary light bulb. In the ends of the fluo tube are heating elements which cause the tube to light, (there is a bit more to it than tho), If you turn the voltage down too low, the heaters don't get hot enough to "Strike " the tube. Incidenalty, there is no filament between the endcaps. The heated elements cause "Electron Flow" thro the argon gas filled tube. The electrons travelling from one end to the other activate the Fluorescent powder coating inside the tube. I don't know how this affects the lamps you are talking about. Not a perfect explanation, but......... PJ	Poppa John (284)
528123	2007-02-25 21:33:00	The lightbulbs have built in electronics?? :nerd:Yes, they have an electronic ballast. On reflection, it will be purely an economic issue that limits the inroduction of dimming eco-bulbs because dimmable fluorescents have been around for yonks. IIRC the dimmer has to be built into the ballast (or in this case the ecobulb because the ballast is an integral part of the lamp, unlike the fluorescent lamp where the ballast is separate) which would not be a very economic concept. I may be wrong on that, but in my opinion it would be quite hard to produce an eco bulb that would dim satisfactorily on reduction of input voltage. An expert in the field might think otherwise. Cheers Billy 8-{) Afterthought: The ballast is required to limit the current through the lamp and used to be an iron-cored inductor for earlier fluorescent lighting (and some other types too before somebody corrects me) but this was inefficient and wasted power, so now electronic "ballasts" are used to control the current and therefore they lend themselves to dimming very nicely. The electronic component of the eco lamp serves the same purpose, but is built into the lamp so there is no easy access for a control signal for dimming, and a suitable signal would have to be inserted on the supply. That might dim every lamp in the house (or the neighbourhood) but coding to individual lamps to prevent this would be very costly. Premium market dimmable eco-lamps will no doubt appear at a premium cost to please the wealthy gotta-have's. Get the picture?	Billy T (70)
528124	2007-02-25 21:51:00	I've seen ES bulbs at Bunnings that says "works with dimmers."	SKT174 (1319)
528125	2007-02-25 21:59:00	In the ends of the fluo tube are heating elements which cause the tube to light, (there is a bit more to it than that though), If you turn the voltage down too low, the heaters don't get hot enough to "Strike " the tube . PJClose PJ, very close, but the heaters were only used for starting and after that were switched off, ironically enough by the "starter" . Dimming a fluorescent will work ok if you control the current through the tube while maintaining the full voltage . This is done by PWM (pulse width modulation) but can create a lot of electrical interference (an ordinary fluorescent is bad enough, just bring an AM radio near one and you'll hear it) . The art is dimming is to maintain the strike voltage on every cycle while controlling the current, but not creating RFI/EMI to annoy the neighbours . Old dimming technology for flourescents probably used a variable inductor . An additional problem is that dimming can produce visual patterns in the lamp, especially if you try to dim it to very low (intimate :xmouth: ) levels, which is probably not as annoying as the noise created by a filament lamp under the same conditions! Anyway, ordinary eco-bulbs will dim to a certain extent though not very well, so all is not lost . Cheers Billy 8-{) :thumbs:	Billy T (70)
528126	2007-02-25 22:01:00	Since we're on the subject on dimmers, I was wondering whether it would uses the same amount of electricity with incandescent lights dimmed or not?	SKT174 (1319)
528127	2007-02-25 23:00:00	Since we're on the subject on dimmers, I was wondering whether it would uses the same amount of electricity with incandescent lights dimmed or not? Dimmed lights use less energy, as less power is going into the light . Simply speaking a dimmer slows down the flow of energy going into the bulb .	robbyp (2751)
528128	2007-02-25 23:24:00	I do remember, when I was working, that there were dimmers for fluos. You could not dim them down as far as your ordinary light bulb. In the ends of the fluo tube are heating elements which cause the tube to light, (there is a bit more to it than tho), If you turn the voltage down too low, the heaters don't get hot enough to "Strike " the tube. Incidenalty, there is no filament between the endcaps. The heated elements cause "Electron Flow" thro the argon gas filled tube. The electrons travelling from one end to the other activate the Fluorescent powder coating inside the tube. I don't know how this affects the lamps you are talking about. Not a perfect explanation, but......... PJ We used to install Variac (http://variac.com/) units to dim surgery lights..and found they work quite well on tubes and sundry other electrical devices... They are not cheap though!!!!!!	SurferJoe46 (51)
1 2