Philips and Test Rite to Stop Selling Incandescent Bulbs in Taiwan from May

Recently, Philips Taiwan and Test Rite jointly announced that starting May 20, they will completely stop selling incandescent bulbs, taking the lead in responding to Taiwan's plan to ban the sale of incandescent bulbs beginning January 2012.

Starting May 20, the incandescent bulb shelves of these two companies will be entirely replaced with LED bulbs. In May, Test Rite will bring together 4 brands to sell hundreds of LED bulb models, ranging from general spherical bulbs, candle bulbs and other household bulbs, to special LED bulbs that can replace halogen bulbs and jewelry display bulbs—everything is available. In terms of service life, LED bulbs last 4 times longer than energy-saving bulbs.

According to Taiwan Philips General Manager Bai Jiansheng, regarding brightness, there is a gap between the brightness perceived by the naked eye and the actual brightness of the bulb. LED bulbs produce a directional output, while incandescent bulbs produce a diffused output, causing a visual difference that leads people to mistakenly believe that incandescent bulbs are brighter. At the same brightness level, taking 600–800 lm as an example, an incandescent bulb consumes 60 watts, an energy-saving bulb is greatly reduced to 12 watts, while an LED requires only 9 watts.

　　Regarding the current situation that LED light bulbs are relatively expensive, he said that ordinary household incandescent bulbs consume 60 watts of electricity with a service life of 1,000 hours; switching to energy-saving bulbs reduces consumption to 12 watts with a service life of 6,000 hours. If switching to LED light bulbs, the power consumption is only 9 watts, which means saving 98% of electricity compared to incandescent bulbs, with a service life as long as 25,000 hours. Calculated, it is actually not expensive.