Standard Incandescent Bulbs
Quick Guide
Price Guide $1.00-2.00 per bulb
Where to Buy Supermarkets, DIY Outlets, Variety Stores and Specialty Lighting Stores
Energy savings No savings – traditional incandescent light bulbs waste 95% of electricity as heat.
Lifespan 1,000 hours.
Features Cheap to purchase but far more expensive to run.
Use them If there's no energy efficient alternative (e.g. fridge, oven lighting).
Don't use them Anywhere the bulb is left on for more than a few minutes.
Brief description
The incandescent light bulb we’re all familiar with was patented by Thomas Edison in 1880. Light is produced by forcing electricity to flow through a very thin wire element, which glows white hot as a result. Apart from some changes to the element wire and the gas inside, the bulb you buy today is exactly the same in principle as Edison's invention over 100 years ago.
Advantages
There are few advantages of these bulbs other than the cheap upfront cost and that it is technology that most people are used to. This means that when it fails after about 1,000 hours, buying a replacement is easy – simply choose between a clear or pearl bulb, and the wattage you want. But due to their poor efficiency, the standard incandescent bulb costs you a lot more in the long run and the wide range of efficient alternatives now available means there is choice of more efficient bulbs for almost every common application.
Disadvantages
The standard incandescent bulb has some drawbacks – the major one being it is very poor at converting electricity into light. In fact only about 5% of the electricity it uses is converted into light – the remaining 95% is converted into heat. That's a huge waste of energy, costing a lot of money. Another big negative is the short lifespan – typically around 1000 hours. This means having to replace blown light bulbs more often and also means the low upfront cost soon grows when you need to buy two standard bulbs for every new generation halogen bulb or six standard bulbs for every one CFL.
Ongoing development
There are development programmes in place to produce a new type of high-efficiency incandescent bulb. The new generation halogen bulb that is currently on the market and 30% more efficient than the standard bulb is the latest enhancement to the traditional incandescent. Set for release in 2010, even higher efficiency incandescent bulbs are reported to use only half the energy of traditional bulbs.