> Hey, I've been doing this too at my place. But the flicker was real
> irritating. Long back I had thought that converting 240volts A.C to D.C
and
> Chopping it at a high frequency (how about 10 Khz ?  )with a controlled
set
> of pulses with about 3 out of 8 pulses off. But I never really did it. It
> seemed to be too expensive to just increase the life of the light bulb and
> to save power.

You can greatly extend the life of an incandescent bulb by reducing its
voltage, but this is a bad way to "save power".  True, the bulb will draw
less power at a lower voltage, but it will also produce disproportionately
less light, and the perceived light color will be more red.  If you are
willing to tolerate the lower light level, then a lower wattage bulb at its
intended voltage will require less power for the same light output.

Incandescent bulbs are actually very efficient in converting electrical
power into radiation.  Unfortunately, the filament materials avaialable to
us limit the filament temperature, which causes most of the radiation to be
below the visible spectrum.  We are left with a tradeoff between filament
life and efficiency.  At higher temperatures, a greater portion of the black
body radiation is visible, but the filament also gets destroyed more
quickly.


*****************************************************************
Olin Lathrop, embedded systems consultant in Devens Massachusetts
(978) 772-3129, olin@embedinc.com, http://www.embedinc.com

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