GREEN BUILDINGS LIGHTING | HALOGENS

Halogens are Incandescent Lamps where the filament envelope is filled with a gas from the Halogen Family ( Chlorine, Bromine, Fluorine, Iodine) thus enabling it to produce a larger amount of light and have a significantly longer life, since the halogen enables the tungsten vapour to recondense back on the filament. As a result, halogens are twice as efficient and have twice the lifetime of Incandescent Bulbs.

ADVANTAGES-

1. Availability and Cost: They are easily available and do not cost much – Rs50 to Rs 300, depending on the optics, colour and filters.
2. Variety: In the dichroic version, they are available in different colour temperatures and beam angles which make them an ideal choice  for lighting ART and residential Interiors.
3. Color rendering: They have perfect colour rendering (Ra-100) that causes object colours to appear almost the same as in natural daylight.
4. Control: They can be dimmed easily, by simply varying the input voltage.

DISADVANTAGES-

1. Luminous Efficacy: The Luminous Efficacy is quite low- at best around 30 lumens per watt.
2. Life: The Lifetime is also quite low compared to other lamps – 2000 to 4000 hours.

Because of the poor efficiency they cannot be considered energy efficient light sources. Hence there is the fear that they may become a casualty soon. I hope lighting companies continue their efforts to make these halogens more efficient, so that they can be used for their unique advantages.

Related Topics:

• INCANDESCENT LAMPS
• CFL- COMPACT FLUORESCENT LAMPS
• FTL- FLUORESCENT TUBE LIGHT
• METAL HALIDES
• SODIUM VAPOUR LAMP
• LED- LIGHT EMITTING DIODE