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New lightbulb legislation

Until now, lamp imports into South Africa have lacked a standard minimum efficacy requirement. This has led to the availability of inefficient lightbulbs that, despite their brightness, consume excessive wattage, posing safety risks and lacking durability. The market is saturated with inferior products that do not meet safety standards, are potentially harmful, and contribute to unnecessary power consumption. Eurolux shares upcoming legislation that will significantly influence how lightbulbs are used in South Africa, aiming to improve safety, efficiency, and energy conservation practices.

New legislation is a game-changer

The new legislation ensures that our standards are aligned with international markets – the higher standards serve us as South Africans by ensuring that all imported lightbulbs are efficient, safer and meet the minimum efficacy requirement to be legally imported.

Part of the new law is that a lightbulb must retain its advertised brightness level – the lumens value indicated on the box – for the full lifetime, whether it is 15000 or 25000 hours, and will not dim with age, which often happens.

The new minimum Rated Efficacy requirement works as follows:

Efficiency refers to energy usage of a lightbulb – so the light it provides relative to the power it consumes.

Light is measured in LUMENS and power in WATTS.

For any given lightbulb, by dividing the lumens output by the watts rating we get the lumen per watt rating.

Example: a 540 lumen, 6W A60 spec lightbulb works out as follows:

540 lumens divided by 6 watts = 90 lumens/watt

What this means for consumers is that a year from now any lightbulb that does not meet the new specification of 90lm/W should not be available in South Africa. This will last for two years, after which the even stricter specification of 105lm/W will apply.

Certain specialised lamps will be exempted from the new efficiency rating, such a colour globes and heat lamps, in which case these packs will need to clearly feature a statement to confirm that the lamp is ‘not intended for general illumination purposes’.

What can homeowners expect?

The switch will be smooth and simple: All the regular-shaped CFL and Halogen lightbulbs that have been available up to now will be easily replaceable with an LED alternative, right through to the vintage look carbon filaments, which are already available in LED filament and beautiful amber shades.

Visit www.eurolux.co.za

THE AUTHOR

SA Home Owner Online

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