Lamps

It has only been around 150 years since we started using electric light bulbs. That is not a long time ago. However, they have become so ingrained into our lives that we cannot imagine a life without using electric lamps.

Technically speaking an electric lamp is just an energy converter. They convert the electrical energy input into the light. But this is the ideal case. In real life, there are some practical limitations, and the bulbs do not convert all the energy into corresponding light energy. Some of this energy also gets turned into heat. The maximum efficiency that we have managed to achieve is eighty per cent. But energy efficiency is not the only thing to consider while shopping for lamps. Read this article to get a better understanding of electric lamps. That way, you can make the right choices when you are shopping for them.

Different types of electric lamps

These days, if you are shopping for electric lamps, you won’t be able to get one without specifying what kind of electric bulb is that you want. Apart from the type of the lamp, you will also need to know what wattage, fixture type, and size you want for the bulb. This is because we use a lot of different types of them. So, if you want to choose the right type of electric lamp for your office or home, you need to know the cost and benefits of different varieties of them. This article will tell you about the four most common types of them.

Incandescent lamp

These are the oldest types of electric lamp that are still in existence. It is easy to tell these lights apart from other ones because of its distinctive hot orange glow. These bulbs work on the principle that metals and liquids emit visible radiation when they are hot. When the electricity passes through the long-winded tungsten filament, it heats up and emits light. But this itself leads to the inefficiency of such lights. The efficiency of these bulbs is so low that only five per cent of the electrical energy gets converted to light. The rest of it becomes heat.

Electrical discharge lamps

Although it might sound unfamiliar, electrical discharge lamps are pretty common in our lives. The main reason for this is the higher efficiency of these bulbs. You can get up to fifty per cent efficiency with one of these bulbs. That is why sodium vapour lamps are ubiquitous in street lights even today. The downside of these lamps is that they take a while to start up. The gas inside the lamp has to heat up first before the lamp turns on. Therefore, electrical discharge bulbs are less desirable for domestic use. Also, the colour of light that comes out from the bulbs is not very pleasing to look at.

Compact fluorescent lamps

These days, compact fluorescent bulbs have replaced the incandescent bulbs in offices and homes. Compact fluorescent bulbs offer so many benefits over the traditional tungsten bulbs. For one thing, they produce a whiter light. That too, while producing only a fraction of heat as the incandescent bulbs. Although they have been much more expensive than incandescent bulbs, the cost is coming down rapidly. You can easily get around 30 per cent energy efficiency using these bulbs. That is six times increase in efficiency compared to that of the incandescent bulbs.

LED lamps

These days, LED bulbs are all the rage. You might feel like everything is getting replaced by LEDs from TV screens to car lights, household lamps, and traffic lights. But there is a reason for this incredible popularity of LED bulbs. You can easily get around 75 per cent energy efficiency using LED bulbs. When you compare that to incandescent bulbs that were common fifty years ago, that is a fifteen-fold increase in efficiency. Basically, this means that it only takes fifteen times less electricity to produce the same amount of light using LED bulbs.