so this lamp here costs 36 pounds more to run
than this lamp well you join us here today in the eFIXX kitchen you may not have seen it before or
you might not have seen our newly refurbished version where we've given it a bit of an
industrial look but today we're going to be cooking up some fantastic energy savings
as we return to one of our favorite topics and that's lighting and today specifically light bulbs
as they're now called not lamps anymore um what's the question we've had in from the community Gary
well it's the changing in those letters so we're so used to getting out an LED lamp i'm still going
to call it a lamp and seeing say a plus plus or a plus or a on it but all of a sudden now that
system's completely changed doesn't it it is so if you've brought a product in the past that had
you thought had fantastic energy saving potential it was an A you could now find when you got that
website it's an e or an f and uh yeah it's the same product but something's changed but today
we're going to put that difference into cost terms and the numbers here are quite staggering
so stick around to find out what they are so let's use this Philips master LED bulb as our baseline
for our energy consumption and talking of energy if i look on the side here the new packaging
system from A to G this one's rated as an a-rated lamp as well yeah there's not many lamps on the
market that can achieve that level of performance at the moment so let's have a closer look at the
data behind it so the Philips lamp there 50,000 hours rated life it's a 60 watt lamp uh equivalent
uh so that now bounced down to just four watts of power giving us 840 lumens which do the math is
210 lumens per watch would qualify for that A rating now the good thing about the new energy
labeling system is it says on the packaging it tells you how many kilowatt hours of energy it
uses per thousand hours of use and that's on there so it makes the maths dead easy it's four
kilowatt hours at 32 pence a kilowatt hour which gives us uh one pound 28. now just as a little
warning there we've just negotiated our price price down from what the energy company offered
us on renewal of this unit at 60 pence a kilowatt hour so i think we did pretty well to get down to
32. it is an eye-watering number so every ounce of energy is being measured obviously because
we're paying for all of those kilowatts as well isn't it yeah and obviously thousand hours that's
a sort of typical home use so it again depends on depends on what your application is obviously some
some lamps are on the 24 7 yeah and obviously that energy cost oscillate now that's that's good
but we need something to compare it to as well so i went on a uh a well-known online retailer
and bought a few alternatives so our first one uh looks uh pretty similar to the to the Philips one
um and it's uh yeah it's interesting in terms of its performance now it doesn't say it's equivalent
to a sixty-one uh A60 that's what it is it's A60. it says clearly on the packaging A60 so we're
suggesting they've used that that clever term to suggest it's probably the 60 watt it's rated at
6 watts and yeah it looks very similar to the one we just did yeah however it only has uh it's lost
a few lumens a few hundred actually so it's not in fact equivalent at all so i'll just move the uh do
the big reveal here so this is our brand A lamp here so it's questionable it does take a six watt
600 lumens and it's only easy maths 110 lumens per watt now under the old system that would have been
an A plus um but now if we look at it it's six kilowatt hours um per thousand hours of energy
use that comes in at one pound 92 and that would be an F under the new system okay well there's
some questions there for me so obviously it's it's wattage is six watt so obviously that's going to
be more expensive obviously that's pretty obvious but it doesn't give out as much light doesn't it
no that's it so you've been light robbery i think we'd call it there but obviously it doesn't say on
the box it's equivalent it just suggests that it might be equivalent and it looks pretty similar to
the glass boards in the past now you can actually tell when you look closer um there's actually
less LEDs in there you know so this this uh the Philips Master LED version here is packed full of
of those chip on board strips you run them at less power um so yeah you run you're actually you need
more LEDs to achieve the light and if you want to sweat the assets should we say yeah you can
obviously put less in and drive them harder and still get less light and use more power okay so
that's not a good one so we've got a third so we always like another one to compare it to and again
this uh came from an online retailer that offers next day delivery and looks like it might be in
that budget bracket yeah i'd say that's kind of basic okay basically very basic in terms of its uh
in terms of its look as well so probably not a very good light output from it
i must point out this but all the lamps here are 4,000 kelvin in terms of the coulor temperature
so that they're all at all uh equivalent um so brand b so that one there that equivalent for
60 watts takes an amazing 8.5 watts that's more than twice isn't it through isn't it from our
Phillips one that's it so it's and then that's 850 lumens which again is 100 lumens per watt
uh and again so a thousand hours 8.5 kilowatts of energy 2 pounds 72 which would still be an F
in the new system it used to be an A okay so a lot more to impact again so we've dropped from
from something with an a whether it be an a or an a plus or plug plus we drop down to that F
grade and it's going to cost me twice as much to run it yeah wow and so you know you're choosing
a lamp you're looking at the at the um at the price obviously the price point there may be
yeah tens of pence or you know even even even a pound difference between them or two pounds
wherever it depends where you're buying it from yeah but over the life of that product you know
every edge choosing between between the uh the Philips one and this should we say this basic
version here um yeah there's a this is double every year it's costing you double to run and
that's what the tendency is you may be collecting things into a basket you're looking down you're
initially price driven aren't you so first of all it's all about price all about price but actually
the price over the longevity and the life of it and the light output makes a very compelling story
for this master one LED from Phillips doesn't it yeah it certainly does and that's why this rule
changes uh basically being originated kicked in at in the middle of last year so of August last year
2021 yeah it kicked in and i think you can still sell under the old system to August 2023 is it
march March 2023 so the packaging will change how many people are going to advertise there an
F in a system that goes up to G which is only one more grade below it so i would suggest so that's
just part of it as well look at some of the other specification things when you're choosing a lamp
the Philips one there is rated a 50 000 hours life that's a long time yeah and um yeah the other ones
we've just looked at 25 000 hours so over the life of that product obviously at a thousand hours a
year that is that is a long time yeah children could even inherit those lamps Gary when you've
long departed on a fifty thousand dollar lamp and it comes back to the uh who's buying the
lamp i would suggest if you're buying a brand new property and the lamps are already in there when
you get there maybe the initial cost is the one that uh maybe the builder is worrying about but
of course when you're installing them in your own property you're thinking about that energy saving
then aren't you and then there are some other things obviously when it comes to energy saving
the most efficient lamps are ones that aren't on um so we look at energy controls and things like
that and there's some other interesting points when you look at packaging for lamps you'll notice
it's rated for the number of switching cycles so this one here 50,000 switching cycles okay um so
if you think if you've got PIR control things like that opportunity it soon can mount up depending
on on traffic but these uh lower cost lamps that's only fifteen thousand switching cycles
wow that's a huge difference so a lot of the time that you think twenty five thousand hours a long
time but actually over that twenty five thousand now the switching cycles can be the thing that
uh that causes the problem so hopefully that's some useful tips for you in terms of choosing
our lamps it's to be interesting to see moving forward who gets A rated in their performance
and who falls to the bottom of the class in the in the old in the F and below category a little
bit of lamp trivia here so this series used to be known as the Dubai lamp only available in
Dubai but it's now known as the ultra efficiency range which will extend to include things like
this b-rated GU10 lamp and also lamps and tubes as well as the range expands interestingly the energy
efficiency labeling does affect lots of other appliances as well it has been adjusted to reflect
energy efficiency standards everything from TV's to regular light fittings as well so
this A rated Philips master LED bulb it runs for twice as long as this one it costs half as much
to run and can be turned on and off what three times as many times comments and thoughts below