Compact fluorescents not the brightest bulbs
posted at 11:28 am on January 19, 2011 by Fausta Wertz
[ Enviro-nitwits ]
The Wall Street Journal sheds a jaundiced light at the compact fluorescent bulb:
The New Light Bulbs Lose a Little Shine
Compact Fluorescent Lamps Burn Out Faster Than Expected, Limiting Energy Savings in California’s Efficiency Program (emphasis added)
California’s utilities are spending $548 million over seven years to subsidize consumer purchases of compact fluorescent lamps. But the benefits are turning out to be less than expected.One reason is that bulbs have gotten so cheap that Californians buy more than they need and sock them away for future use. Another reason is that the bulbs are burning out faster than expected.
Here’s what the compact fluorescents are supposed to do in theory,
Here’s what happened at casa de Fausta: I went to Lowe’s, purchased a box of three CFs, replaced a burned-out incandescent that had been working well for four years with one of the CFs, and turned on the light.
The CF turned on, flickered, and died.
Until some good LEDs are readily available, I’ll keep using incandescents, thank you.
Cross-posted at Fausta’s blog.
Blowback
Note from Hot Air management: This section is for comments from Hot Air's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that Hot Air management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose their posting privilege.
Trackbacks/Pings
Trackback URL
Comments
I think a high percentage of CFLs are defective from the manufacturer.
zmdavid on January 19, 2011 at 11:48 AM
Not to mention they are more costly. Clean up is a nightmare if you break one. Have you noticed the glare given out if you wear glasses? I have to remove my glasses when shopping at WalMart since they have gone green with the cfls.
Kissmygrits on January 19, 2011 at 11:57 AM
I think a high percentage of CFL Proponents are defective from the manufacturer.
Colbyjack on January 19, 2011 at 12:01 PM
I am a strong defender of the right of Americans to buy any kind of light they want, be it it coal oil lamp, incandescent, mercury vapor, CFL — whatever.
However, I have quite a few CFLs in my house, and, when used in the right places, they have been a resounding success. Here are my rules for deciding:
o If someone will be reading or doing close work by the light, use incandescent.
o If the light is in a location where it is prone to being hit in any way, use incandescent.
o Otherwise, if the light is used to see well enough to get around, maybe find things in a drawer, or eat a meal — places where I want to be able to see okay, but not doing lengthy close work — I use CFLs. Thus I have CFLs in halls, laundry room, garage door opener, closets, bathrooms**, dining room**, and living room**. (areas marked with ** include a mixture of cfls to generally light up the room, and incandescents in key locations where better light is needed.
My CFLs have had a very low failure rate. I know for sure the total number of DOAs I’v had: 2. I couldn’t say yow many CFLs I’ve used, total; but in my current house, into which we moved in 2007, we have about 30. I’ve needed to replace maybe 3 or 4 in those 3+ years — not nearly as good s .
CFLs get a bad rap from conservatives. I fully understand, and join, the outrage of people being denied the right to buy what they want; but in my experience, they last longer than incandescents and are a worthwhile way to save a little energy.
RegularJoe on January 19, 2011 at 12:07 PM
Oops. In my next-to-last paragraph, I was trying to say ‘the incandescents don’t last nearly as long as the CFLs’.
RegularJoe on January 19, 2011 at 12:10 PM
Brace yourself for the import tariffs. They’re not going to be cheap.
…at the cost of having to turn your home into a hazmat abatement site when one of them breaks.
gryphon202 on January 19, 2011 at 12:42 PM
I have stopped using these dim bulbs for a number of reasons. First, in my experience they don’t even last as long as regular incandescants. I purchased a number of them and they are all now dead and gone. Fortunately that was before I heard the latest edicts from the EPA about the procedures to be used for disposal and especially if, god forbid, one happens to break.
According to the latest info, if you break one of these libtard nightmares you only have about five minutes to clean up the mess (which has to be done according to five pages of 8 point font instructions) before you have been totally blasted with mecurey poisening.
I’d heard about the fact that they contain mercurey and were for that reason bad for landfills but the new info and procedures about clean up and disposal are a nightmare.
The resultant mecurey exposure if one breaks that almost certainly will occur even under the most stringent cleanup efforts lead me to the decision to never allow these environmental time bombs in my house again.
My kids are all grown and gone but what if you have small kids in the house? Do you want to expose them to mecurey poisoning if one of these things breaks? No way.
I’m headed to out to see how many incandescent bulbs I can buy up cheap before they’re all gone. Even if I don’t/can’t use them all myself I should be able to sell them for at least twice what I paid for them. Since they are no longer made in this country, once the truth gets out these old standbys will be in big demand. It’s called capitalism and that big light bulb over my head just went on.
shmendrick on January 19, 2011 at 1:05 PM
I wonder if the bigger question is what California utilities MIGHT have done with the 548 million that they spent on subsidizing consumer purchases of mercury bulbs?
And what happens when they stop subsidizing them?
journeyintothewhirlwind on January 19, 2011 at 1:24 PM
I wonder how big a mercury cleanup super-fund will be needed?
tarpon on January 19, 2011 at 1:25 PM
And what if the Enviro-NAZIs can later show that you purchased CFLs but failed to call a Haz-Mat team when you broke one? Will you then be charged with violating Federal laws over the mercury containment?
oldleprechaun on January 19, 2011 at 1:31 PM
Have the packages been relabeled to say 6.3 years?
bathrooms, recessed lighting, turning them off and on…. along with the mercury mess
How the heck did they get to market? oh, yeah, subsidies and politicians.
journeyintothewhirlwind on January 19, 2011 at 1:32 PM
This is also part of the false panic about CFLs. They have the same stuff inside as flourescent tubes (which are MUCH more likely to break), and probably 2/3 of the people who fret about the hazards of CFLs probably have flourescent tubes somewhere in their house, garage or shop, and certainly in their workplaces. I’ve broken a couple of CFLs (I used to use them in more vulnerable locations, including my trouble-lights; I don’t recall any in lamps or ceiling fixtures ever breaking) and am still in robust good health.
Just as I support your right to never use a CFL, I also support your right to loathe me for my personal decision to use them; I just don’t think it’s very liberty-minded to demonize someone for simply choosing differently than you have. It would be nice if those of us who are on the same side of the IMPORTANT debate — whether we’ll be free to make our own choices — could be civil to one another. Oh well.
RegularJoe on January 19, 2011 at 1:52 PM
You can turn them OFF?!? Someone should tell my children!! (one of the reasons I started using these for general lighting is that they tend to not get turned off. I have a lamp that has burned continuously, other than power failures, for over three years)
And to be crystal clear, I’m not remotely in favor of political or economic favor being shown to CFLs. They should compete on the open market, alongside all other types of lights.
RegularJoe on January 19, 2011 at 2:04 PM
Finally took the bag of burned out CFLs to Lowe’s last week to recycle. (They have a special bin near returns desk.) Probably had 8 bulbs that have burned out over 2 year time. Not impressed. Poor light quality. Life expectancy less than advertised. One hint: If your power fluctuates at all, the CFLs burn out quickly.
publiuspen on January 19, 2011 at 2:06 PM
BTW — a mercury-bulb thermostat has as much mercury (3000mg) as 600 CFLs. The amount of mercury, if one DOES break, is minute. Sure, handle it carefully; but the glass poses a greater risk than the mercury.
And, again, it should be MY choice whether to take that chance or not.
RegularJoe on January 19, 2011 at 2:07 PM
California (CARB, especially)has a history of forcing citizens to buy inferior products that turn out to be poisonous to the environment and are sold as being “energy efficient” and “environmentally friendly.”
The MTBE debacle opened my eyes to the lack of science in the EPA’s mandates and turned me into a conservative.
I wonder who, in the CA legislature, has family or stock in CFL manufacturing companies? Will the CFL law result in problems similar to the MTBE scandal? If so, it’s a boon to trial lawyers…
NTWR on January 19, 2011 at 2:38 PM
If they’re in a place where they get turned on and off a lot, they won’t last as long as advertised. If your power is dirty (voltage fluctuates a lot), like wise their will be shortened.
And some people can see that they flicker, which adversely affects the user.
One size does not fit all!
LarryD on January 19, 2011 at 3:31 PM
I agree about CFLs, but LEDs are not the only alternative being worked on. High efficiency incandescent (HEI™) lamp is one example.
BDU-33 on January 19, 2011 at 4:46 PM
Uhh…GE suspended development of their HEI bulbs.
Dominion on January 19, 2011 at 5:14 PM
We have received warnings that anyone who has any epilectic tendencies should not have any CFL bulbs around. Additionally, the brightness and color tend to be a problem and make them difficult to use. Actually, we got some before the EPA started pushing them and they were a lot better in quality than the ones that are currently being sold.
sabbahillel on January 19, 2011 at 6:11 PM
I have found that when WalGreens puts CFLs on sale for 50 cents, those are the best ones to get. Cheap and they work well.
JohnTheBuilder on January 19, 2011 at 8:42 PM
You keep saying this in this thread but yet, I can’t find anyone telling you you can’t or shouldn’t use whatever bulb you want. What conservatives are mad about are the massive subsidies for what appears to be an inferior product, and the outlawing of the old product rather than letting consumers decide. So you keep saying it should be YOUR choice, as if someone is trying to pass a law to keep you from using cfls when it is actually the other way around. I’m glad you like them, since the government is about to take the choice out of your hands.
Cheesestick on January 20, 2011 at 4:12 AM
My experience is you need to buy about three CFL’s to get one good one, to get one that lasts more than a few months, if that long.
They say what stresses them is turning them off and on. I’ve noticed the ones I leave on 24/7 last much longer.
I’ve sampled the LED’s, but their blue light is not suitable for indoors.
Let the market decide about light bulbs. Gubmint needs to stay the hell away from it.
petefrt on January 20, 2011 at 8:11 AM
Is this crony capitalism, or what:
When do we start with the Immelt-GE investigations?
petefrt on January 20, 2011 at 8:20 AM
Perhaps I haven’t made my point clearly enough.
My point is this: people keep arguing the issue of “light bulb liberty” on the basis that the CFL bulbs are inferior. This argument has two flaws:
1. It is purely subjective; and
2. It ignores the greater principle of free choice.
We wouldn’t argue whether, say, cigarettes should be legal by trying to persuade people that their use is a good thing; we argue that it is a matter of individual liberty. I’m just saying that the argument should be about liberty and choice, rather than the relative superiority or inferiority of our personal choices.
FWIW, as a practical matter I’m not the least bit worried I’ll lose my ability to get CFLs; but I am worried about being unable to buy the incandescent bulbs I use for reading and close work. I disagree about CFLs, and I think your argument that they are of the devil is a losing argument; but I’m absolutely, positively, unequivocally on the side of personal choice.
RegularJoe on January 20, 2011 at 11:37 AM
Found this gem in the comments section of Ed Lasky’s article at AT:
journeyintothewhirlwind on January 20, 2011 at 12:29 PM
Also- in their study of California energy usage/savings from CFL bulbs did they take into account the # of people who have left California? the number of businesses that have left California?
Think I read an SFgate article that said that since 2005 1/2 million more people have left Ca then have moved there.
Also, this continues a trend since the 1990′s but 193 businesses left Ca in 2010- from a business relocation expert who has kept track.
Less people, less business= less energy usage
journeyintothewhirlwind on January 20, 2011 at 12:33 PM
I got one of those in the mail years ago from the good ole state of California. At that time I had NO IDEA that I needed to call a hazmat team if one broke. I knocked over the lamp within two days of putting that thing in and it broke. It wasn’t until long after I left that place that I found out about calling a hazmat team.
My guess is that most people won’t call a hazmat team even if they are aware of it, so we’ll have mercury contaminated houses that no one will know about.
Joy on January 22, 2011 at 2:15 AM
I only use CFLs in the summer (incandescent bulbs emit heat) & in places where there’s no constant on-and-off.
itsnotaboutme on January 22, 2011 at 7:06 AM
I’ve seen some support for CFLs in the posts. That’s cool. What isn’t cool is when someone represents something as being one thing when, in truth, it is some fraction of what they are representing. That I won’t tolerate. Just say what it is, what it does and if that’s good enough then it should sell. Instead here is a sample of the BS we get:
* Claim: CFLs last 7 times longer than incandescent bulbs.
* Fact: This is true only under laboratory situations that don’t exist in the real world. As such the ballasts in the CFLs rapidly break down causing the buyer to have to replace the bulbs with high regularity in most cases.
* Claim: CFLs will help the environment.
* Fact: This is true only if people that use them dispose of them at a recycling facility that is authorized and set up for CFL recycling. If you throw them away in your trash and they end up at the dump the mercury used in the bulbs will end up in the ground. Not a problem with a bulb here or there. 100,000,000 bulbs starts to be an ecological nightmare.
Here is the government’s web site with instructions on what to do if you break a CFL in your home:
Before Cleanup: Air Out the Room
* Have people and pets leave the room, and don’t let anyone walk through the breakage area on their way out.
* Open a window and leave the room for 15 minutes or more.
* Shut off the central forced-air heating/air conditioning system, if you have one.
Cleanup Steps for Hard Surfaces
* Carefully scoop up glass pieces and powder using stiff paper or cardboard and place them in a glass jar with metal lid (such as a canning jar) or in a sealed plastic bag.
* Use sticky tape, such as duct tape, to pick up any remaining small glass fragments and powder.
* Wipe the area clean with damp paper towels or disposable wet wipes. Place towels in the glass jar or plastic bag.
* Do not use a vacuum or broom to clean up the broken bulb on hard surfaces.
Cleanup Steps for Carpeting or Rug
* Carefully pick up glass fragments and place them in a glass jar with metal lid (such as a canning jar) or in a sealed plastic bag.
* Use sticky tape, such as duct tape, to pick up any remaining small glass fragments and powder.
* If vacuuming is needed after all visible materials are removed, vacuum the area where the bulb was broken.
* Remove the vacuum bag (or empty and wipe the canister), and put the bag or vacuum debris in a sealed plastic bag.
Cleanup Steps for Clothing, Bedding and Other Soft Materials
* If clothing or bedding materials come in direct contact with broken glass or mercury-containing powder from inside the bulb that may stick to the fabric, the clothing or bedding should be thrown away. Do not wash such clothing or bedding because mercury fragments in the clothing may contaminate the machine and/or pollute sewage.
* You can, however, wash clothing or other materials that have been exposed to the mercury vapor from a broken CFL, such as the clothing you are wearing when you cleaned up the broken CFL, as long as that clothing has not come into direct con tact with the materials from the broken bulb.
* If shoes come into direct contact with broken glass or mercury-containing powder from the bulb, wipe them off with damp paper towels or disposable wet wipes. Place the towels or wipes in a glass jar or plastic bag for disposal.
Disposal of Cleanup Materials
* Immediately place all clean-up materials outdoors in a trash container or protected area for the next normal trash pickup.
* Wash your hands after disposing of the jars or plastic bags containing clean-up materials.
* Check with your local or state government about disposal requirements in your specific area. Some states do not allow such trash disposal. Instead, they require that broken and unbroken mercury-containing bulbs be taken to a local recycling center.
Future Cleaning of Carpeting or Rug: Air Out the Room During and After Vacuuming
* The next several times you vacuum, shut off the central forced-air heating/air conditioning system and open a window before vacuuming.
* Keep the central heating/air conditioning system shut off and the window open for at least 15 minutes after vacuuming is completed
I’ll take an incandescent. Thanks.
watson007 on January 22, 2011 at 11:54 AM