My hobby is photography and I use a room to print my photos using a high quality ink jet printer and a colour calibrated computer screen. Under these ‘coloured’ lights the prints and the monitor look wrong, so I bought a 65k daylight bulb. It is a two pin fitting and now I cannot use it. We also cannot fit the more attractive ‘traditional’ shaped low energy bulbs. The whole thing is a total mess in my opinion.

It’s trivially easy to do - and the standard 2-pin bayonet fittings can often be had for 99p or so in DIY stores. But - a) make sure the power’s off - really sure! (it doesn’t matter which way round the live and neutral wires are in the fitting, so don’t worry about that) and b) be aware that it _might_ actually be illegal to do this work yourself given the regulations as they are now (http://www.partp.co.uk/consumer/consumer_faq.asp ), depending on what room you do it in. Presumably if your house/flat came with the MEM BC3 sockets, it was to meet the building regs (http://www.constructionbusinessnet.com/electricalexplorer/news/158.html ) so I don’t know what a surveyor would say when you come to sell.

It’s actually quite easy with a pair of pliers to bend the BC3 fittings to allow a standard 2-pin bayonet bulb to fit - at some point I’ll put some photos on the blog of how to do it - but again, if you do this, make damn sure the electricity’s switched off first and there’s no-one around who might switch it on while you’re doing it.

The whole system is ridiculous and it really needs to be shown up as the shambles it is.

Note: In the UK, when the efficiency comparison was made between incandescent lamps and fluorescent lamps, this was comparing the very basic, cheapest incandescent lamps, not the more efficient halogen lamps, the latter being readily available. Therefore, the indication that a 20W fluorsecent light bulb replacement is quivalent to a 100W incandescent lamp is only true when comparing with the very basic incandescent lamp.

The other news is that of a better method of producing white Light Emitting Diodes that are significantly better than existing devices, in addition to offering a significantly longer life, that is 100,000 hours. The process involves better precision in the manufacture of the LED at the semiconductor level, so that about four times more of the available light emitting parts can be used. This, in part, is driven by the desire to have more reliable back lighting for Liquid Crystal Displays as used on computer monitors and television screens, rather than the present life limited Cold Cathode back light, Cold Cathode effectively being another form of fluorescent lighting.

Finally, the other area where LEDs are being introducing is for automotice lighting where, for example, many new cars are using Red LEDs for the rear lights and brake lights, orange for indicators, etc. However, Hella, in Germany, are producing the first white LED headlamps for cars, where the challenge had been to create a light source comparable with a 65W halogen lamp.

Valid point you have about power factor. Just remember that a low PF does not impact on the actual power consumed, but it does reduce the efficiency of power generation and distribution. Power utilities do plenty to make sure that the power grids PF is close to unity to save them money.

The harmonics generated and the interference they can cause may be a bigger issue than the power factor (http://www.iaeel.org/IAEEL/NEWSL/1995/trefyra1995/LiTech_a_3_4_95.html). It is an issue with just about all modern electronic equipment (due to the widespread use of power electronics), although a lot of higher powered items tend to have PF correction built in these days (I think??)