Evaluating Domestic Lighting

The Irish government, UK government and European Commission have recently passed a ban on the sale of all incandescent/GLS lamps above 100W, which commenced in September 2009 with smaller Wattages to be phased out by 2012. This paper sets out to investigate if CFLs are an adequate, suitable and appropriate replacement for GLS lamps in domestic environments. The main areas examined are power factor and total harmonic distortion, but other CFL characteristics are also investigated by means of literature review, to provide a complete overview of CFL performance. The measured power factor of all CFLs averaged 0.57 and ranged between 0.52 and 0.62. The effects of harmonic distortion on the current waveform of a CFL circuit was significant and reached levels up to 80% of the fundamental frequency. However, this large harmonic distortion is returned on the waveform of a smaller current than would be drawn by a GLS lamp and hence, effects on the national grid and risks of an overloaded three phase neutral conductor are less than sometimes claimed by researchers.