Rainbow
Power Company Enewsletter #96 - 3rd May 2006
Index:
1) Price
Rises & Shortages
2) 12V Fluoros
3) Washing
Machine Power Consumption
4) LCD Televisions
5) LED Lights
1) Price
Rises & Shortages
There is
a lot of upward pressure on prices these days. A
month ago our dollar devalued by 10% against the
US $ (although it has now recovered). We all know
what the price of oil is doing. This not only raises
freight costs but a lot of manufacturing uses petro-chemical
type products. All metals like gold, lead and copper
have seen massive price increases. The price of copper
went from about US$5500/ton on 1st April to US$7200/ton
some three weeks later. So stay tuned for more price
rises for cable.
Solar Panel
supply remains tight, however we have good supplies
of Kyocera panels and 64W Uni Solar. We are still
unable to get any Uni Solar amorphous panels less
than 64W in size. We are also unable to get 12V power
points until late June.
So, if we
tell you the price has gone up, it is because of
worldwide issues beyond our control.
2) 12V Fluoros
Our 18/20W
straight fluoro has an Australian made inverter that
has proven to be reliable. We have supplies of these
but are unable to get the luminaire (metal casing)
to make up more for another month. For all our other
12V fluoro requirements, we are shifting to the Sundaya
range as these have proven to be the most reliable.
The range includes 6 & 10W straight fluoros as
well as 3, 6, 9 & 18W compact fluoros (CFL).
The CFL all use the ES17 (mm) base. A variety of
lamp-holders and lamps are available which are attractive,
high quality and economical.
3) Washing
Machine Power Consumption
In the next
newsletter I will take another look at washing machines,
so, I welcome any input you have about their power
usage. I am mainly interested in how much they use
per load of washing so if you can, let me know what
model machine you have and how many amp hours it
uses on 12/24V (if you have a Plasmatronic regulator)
or watt hours (if you have one of our Energy Monitor
3000´s).
4) LCD Televisions
For those
of you in Australia, you may be interested to check
out a 17" TV at Dick Smith Electronics for $399.
It comes with a 240V plug pack but one of our staff
has been running it direct off his 12V battery system
without any problem. It uses 2.5 to 3 Amps (depending
on volume) if you run direct off the battery.
As previously
advised, these TV´s are designed to run off
a 12V power supply (not on the fluctuating voltages
of a solar system). They seem to run ok, however,
we advise you that this is at your own risk unless
the manufacturer advises that it is ok.
5) LED Lights
We get a
lot of requests and inquiries from people about LED
lighting. Unfortunately, there are quite a few misconceptions
and myths about them:
1) Super
Efficient: Many claim that they are superbly efficient.
It is true that they are very bright to look at as
they give a very intense narrow focussed beam coming
from a very small surface area. This is usually referred
to as luminous intensity and is measured in milicandelas
at a certain degree beam. It measures the light that
falls on a surface - say your book. As the surface
area increases, the candelas decrease but the lumens
stay the same. Lumens are sometimes defined to be
the total light output at the source.
Most light
bulbs are rated in lumens and that gives you a measure
of how well they will `light up a room´ (in
simplistic terms).
LED´s,
due to their focussed light beam, are very efficient
at lighting up a small surface like a book or small
table. However, their total lumen output is quite
small and they don´t do much to `light up a
room´.
If you want
to convert candelas to lumens, there is an online
calculator at: http://led.linear1.org/lumen.wiz
Now, getting
back to my initial point - efficiency. The efficiency
of a light is usually given as lumens per watt. Even
good quality 5mm white LED´s only have an efficiency
similar to an incandescent bulb, e.g. 15-20 lumens/watt.
The 12V fluoros which we sell range between 30 and
52 lumens /watt. So, as a general rule, any fluoro
is 2-3 times more efficient than an LED.
Some unusually
high claims to LED efficiency are driving them at
a high current which will quickly shorten their life
or do not take account of the inefficiency of the
electronic circuitry to run them. More are designed
to operate direct off 12 or 240 volts.
So to conclude,
if you are looking for an efficient light for a room,
we´d normally suggest you use a fluoro.
2) Longevity
A frequent claim is that they last for 100,000 hours.
While this may be true with good electronic circuitry
at a low current, the accepted life is usually more
realistically given as 10,000 to 20,000 hours before
the light output reduces to say 70% of their initial
output. Few LED enthusiasts or manufacturers mention
this light output degradation. Googling `LED degradation´ will
bring up several hundred references to the problem.
Other disadvantages
of LED´s are their relatively high cost per
lumen of output and their poor colour rendition.
They generally give a fairly blue or grey coloured
light.
Their main
advantages are that they are very robust (because
they are made of a polycarbonate rather than glass
and they do not have a fragile filament). Their focussed
light beam makes them ideal for torches.
That´s
all for this month folks! Your comments and questions
are most welcome; however, there is no need to send
our newsletter back to us when you reply! If you
would like price or product information, please tell
us which country you are from if it is not evident
from your e-mail address. This allows us to assess
if local GST (tax) is applicable or whether 240 Volt
50HZ products will work in your country etc.
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site: http://www.rpc.com.au/news/subscribe.html
Dave Lambert
and the RPC crew
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