New LED Energy Saving Lamp

The darkness... Tell me about it. Today was even darker than yesterday.

An unbelievably tiny 390Wh generated by my whole solar array in the whole "day". The "sunset" at 4.35pm was eclipsed by "nuclear winter" at about 3.30 today, blacking out the Sun so much that the street lights came on early!

Lucky then that I've got a new LED lamp that consumes only 5W of energy.

It's about as bright as a 8W CFL lamp (or a 40W tungsten lamp) but starts up immediately at full brightness, lasts maybe 4x longer and doesn't hum annoyingly in the plastic Ikea uplighter on my dining table.

It's a Civilight GLS 5W type and has a wide even light, a frosted dome, and pleasant mid-warm-cool colour; not too blue and not too red white light.


A bit dimmer than the 11W CFL it replaced, but I'd wanted a lower light, as it's over the TV.

At just under half the power consumption of the old CFL lamp, it will also extend the PV battery life... A jolly good thing in these dark days.






Best of all, my mate in the trade gave it to me for helping him out at some eco fairs over the last few weeks. He's on a evangelical crusade to get people to use LED lights instead of mercury containing CFLs.