Efficiency of energy saving lamps and harmonic distortion in distribution systems

The aim of this paper is the investigation of the electric and photometric characteristics of energy efficient lamps. These lamps consume less active power and produce higher luminous power as compared with the traditional incandescent ones. However, a lot of those lamps operate at relatively low power factor, demanding additional reactive power factor from the utility power system. On the other hand those lamps introduce significant harmonic distortion to the distribution system. In this paper, measurements of the above characteristics on many types of energy saving lamps are presented