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James Sweet James Sweet is offline
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Default Light bulb power saver (and now the rest of the story)




Not likely. The only way (I know of) to improve the efficiency of
incandescent lamps is to raise the temperature. Tungsten-halogen lamps
seem
to represent the limit for consumer lighting.


Duro-Test briefly marketed an incandescent lamp with an internal IR
reflective coating which focussed otherwise lost heat back to the filament
and resulted in substantially improved efficiency. Unfortunately problems
with the compact and stiff filament required to keep it in the focus of the
returned heat also lead to problems with breakage due to it being brittle.
If you can keep the heat where you want it, you don't have to supply as much
power to keep the filament hot.

What I meant in my comment though was not dramatic improvements in
incandescent technology, but new lighting technologies will eventually come
around. LED and OLED technology will continue to improve, induction lamps
while technically fluorescent, are promising and see gradually increasing
use. Phosphor mixes with excellent color rendering do exist, but are less
efficient than the 80 CRI stuff that are used for most CFLs. Ceramic metal
halide lamps are available with 90+ CRI and exceed 80 lumens per watt. Who
knows what else might be on the horizon.