By Andrew Liszewski
I’ve never had reason to complain, but apparently there is a subset of consumers who feel that energy efficient compact fluorescent bulbs don’t get bright enough, fast enough, for their needs. And that has prompted GE to create this new hybrid bulb which features a small halogen capsule surrounded by a CFL tube. When first turned on the halogen bulb illuminates along with the CFL to provide “noticeably brighter” illumination in less than half a second, but automatically shuts off when the CFL reaches its full brightness for maximum energy efficiency. The new hybrid bulbs will be available in Canada and the US starting next year with 15 and 20-watt versions designed to replace 60 and 75-watt incandescent bulbs, and pricing to be announced at a later date.
[ PR – GE Unveils Unique Hybrid Halogen-CFL Light Bulb Coming in 2011 ] VIA [ Inhabitat ]
Unfortunately all the highly environmentally unfriendly materials used, complicated manufacturing, disposal and total environmental impact of such a complex bulb completely defeats the energy savings…
There are already cheap CFL's with electronic ballast that are instant on and dont need a warm up period to reach full brightness. This product is superfluous
I suspect current manufacturers of CFL bulb have had to design the ballast and tubes specially for them to reach full brightness quickly. The result may be higher mercury levels and more complicated balast designs.
In other words, this hybrid design may use a simpler ballast and it certainly contains less mercury, 1mg for the hybrid vs. 1.5 to 3.5 mg in regular CFL bulbs.
Too bad they don't mention anything about dimming…