Posted on 03/14/2007 5:08:22 PM PDT by fanfan
They have to be left on all the time, they're made from banned toxins and they won't work in half your household fittings. Yet Europe (and Gordon Brown) says 'green' lightbulbs must replace all our old ones.
Every day now we are being deluged with news of the latest proposals from our politicians about how to save the planet from global warming. We must have 'a new world order' to combat climate change, Gordon Brown proclaimed yesterday. We must have strict 'green' limits on air travel, proposes David Cameron, so that no one can afford to take more than one flight a year.
A fifth of all our energy must be 'green' by 2020, says the EU, even though there is no chance of such an absurd target being met. We must have 'green' homes, 'green' cars, 'green' fuel, even microchips in our rubbish bins to enforce 'green' waste disposal.
Have these politicians any longer got the faintest idea what they are talking about? Do they actually look at the hard, practical facts before they rush to compete with each other in this mad musical-chairs of gesture politics?
Take just one instance of this hysteria now sweeping our political class off its feet: that which was bannered across the Daily Mail's front page on Saturday in the headline 'EU switches off our old lightbulbs'.
This was the news that, as part of its latest package of planet-saving measures, the EU plans, within two years, to ban the sale of those traditional incandescent lightbulbs we all take for granted in our homes. Gordon Brown followed suit yesterday, saying he wanted them phased out in Britain by 2011.
No doubt the heads of government who took this decision (following the lead of Fidel Castro's dictatorship in Cuba) purred with selfcongratulation at striking such a daring blow against global warming.
After all, these 'compact fluorescent bulbs' (or CFLs), to which they want us all to switch, use supposedly only a fifth of the energy needed by the familiar tungsten-filament bulbs now to be made illegal.
Among the first to congratulate the EU's leaders was UK Green MEP Caroline Lucas, who claimed that 'banning old-fashioned lightbulbs across the EU would cut carbon emissions by around 20 million tonnes per year and save between e5 million and e8million per year in domestic fuel bills'.
Who could argue? Certainly one lot of people far from impressed by the EU's decision are all those electrical engineers who have been clutching their heads in disbelief. Did those politicians, they wondered, actually take any expert advice before indulging in this latest planet- saving gesture?
In fact, the virtues of these 'low-energy' bulbs are nothing like so wonderful as naive enthusiasts like Ms Lucas imagine them to be. Indeed in many ways, the experts warn, by banning incandescent bulbs altogether, the EU may have committed itself to an appallingly costly blunder.
It is a decision that will have a far greater impact on all our lives than most people are yet aware, presenting the UK alone with a bill which, on our Government's own figures, could be £3 billion or more.
The result will provide a quality of lighting which in many ways will be markedly less efficient. Even Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor who put forward the proposal, admitted that, because the energy-saving bulbs she uses in her flat take some time to warm up, she often has 'a bit of a problem' when she is looking for something she has 'dropped on the carpet'.
But even more significantly, because they must be kept on so much longer to run efficiently, the actual amount of energy saved by these bulbs has been vastly exaggerated.
So what are the disadvantages of CFLs over the traditional bulbs we will no longer be allowed to buy? Quite apart from the fact that the CFLs are larger, much heavier and mostly much uglier than familiar bulbs - and up to 20 times more expensive - the vast majority of them give off a harsher, less pleasant light.
Because they do not produce light in a steady stream, like an incandescent bulb, but flicker 50 times a second, some who use them for reading eventually find their eyes beginning to swim - and they can make fast-moving machine parts look stationary, posing a serious safety problem.
Fluorescent CFLs cannot be used with dimmer switches or electronically-triggered security lights, so these will become a thing of the past. They cannot be used in microwaves, ovens or freezers, because these are either too hot or too cold for them to function (at any temperature above 60C degrees or lower than -20C they don't work),
More seriously, because CFLs need much more ventilation than a standard bulb, they cannot be used in any enclosed light fitting which is not open at both bottom and top - the implications of which for homeowners are horrendous.
Astonishingly, according to a report on 'energy scenarios in the domestic lighting sector', carried out last year for Defra by its Market Transformation Programme, 'less than 50 per cent of the fittings installed in UK homes can currently take CFLs'. In other words, on the Government's own figures, the owners of Britain's 24 million homes will have to replace hundreds of millions of light fittings, at a cost upwards of £3billion.
In addition to this, lowenergy bulbs are much more complex to make than standard bulbs, requiring up to ten times as much energy to manufacture. Unlike standard bulbs, they use toxic materials, including mercury vapour, which the EU itself last year banned from landfill sites - which means that recycling the bulbs will itself create an enormously expensive problem.
Perhaps most significantly of all, however, to run CFLs economically they must be kept on more or less continuously. The more they are turned on and off, the shorter becomes their life, creating a fundamental paradox, as is explained by an Australian electrical expert Rod Elliott (whose Elliott Sound Products website provides as good a technical analysis of the disadvantages of CFLs as any on the internet).
If people continue switching their lights on and off when needed, as Mr Elliott puts it, they will find that their 'green' bulbs have a much shorter life than promised, thus triggering a consumer backlash from those who think they have been fooled.
But if they keep their lights on all the time to maximise their life, CFLs can end up using almost as much electricity from power stations (creating CO2 emissions) as incandescent bulbs - thus cancelling out their one supposed advantage.
In other words, in every possible way this looks like a classic example of kneejerk politics, imposed on us not by our elected Parliament after full consultation and debate, but simply on the whim of 27 politicians sitting around that table in Brussels, not one of whom could have made an informed speech about the pluses and minuses of what they were proposing.
Even if it does have the effect of reducing CO2 emissions, those reductions will be utterly insignificant when compared with emissions from China, for example, which is growing so fast it is using half the world's cement, 30 per cent of the world's coal, one quarter of copper production and 35 per cent of steel.
There was not a hint of democracy in this crackpot decision, which will have a major impact on all our lives, costing many of us thousands of pounds and our economy billions - all to achieve little useful purpose, while making our homes considerably less pleasant to live in.
Such is the price we are now beginning to pay for the ' ecomadness' which is sweeping through our political class like a psychic epidemic. The great 'Euro-bulb blunder' is arguably the starkest symbol to date of the crazy new world into which this is leading us.
They have to be left on all the time, they're made from banned toxins and they won't work in half your household fittings.He has an idealogical ax to grind and therefore has nothing kind to say about CFLs. If he were actually interested in the truth about energy consumption, he'd mention, for example, that CFLs last many times longer than incandescent, a double savings because of the additional transport savings.
That is my experience and it isn't "anecdotal testimony" because I've installed quite a few now. The very first, an experiment, I put at the top of a flight of stairs several years ago. I was replacing the bulbs there every few months, risking a tumble down the stairs, but I haven't had to replace that one since. It's an old model CFL that casts a blue tinted light and takes a bit to brighten but the newer versions brighten very quickly and the light seems normal to me (grain of salt, I'm RG colorblind). I haven't had to replace a single one except for an out-of-doors experiment.
He might also have mentioned that the bulbs are much cooler. In warm climes you will save heating. In the summer my reading lamp would boil me, now it doesn't.
yeah, but not that many years ago the little LED keychain flashlights were $15 and now they're a popular give-away.
Obviously I meant, in warm climes you save cooling. The point being that CFLs have pros too, not just cons ala Booker.
That's because they fit in that application and production ramped up to meet demand for a good bulb that was long lasting and durable. Cheapness followed.
If you haven't yet, check out the link I posted for edison base LED lights. There's nothing there that can meet the need as a standard bulb replacement for most homes. The closest they come to achieving a standard bulb throw is a 30w standard bulb equivalent. It's not going to meet the demand for most applications. And that one is $30. Not a lot of incentive to switch, and a lack of early adopters will keep the price from dropping quickly.
There might be areas where they can fit in - say low light situations where the light is on all the time and the extra cost of the LED can be made up over time. Or an outdoor floodlight application that is on often enough or is in a place that is hard to change bulbs.
However for standard bulb replacement, the flaw is in the physical makeup of current LED technology. It doesn't fit the application well enough right now. Maybe someone will come up with an interim design before quantum dots become feasible, but at this moment they're not a great choice for regular bulb replacement.
There's one bulb from that site I found intriguing:
Model E27-W50
50-LED Medium Base PAR 30 bulb- 120 VAC
Light output comparable to 25~30 watt incandescent
Consumes just 5 Watts of power
10,000 Life Time - 50 lumen output
Available with Cool White (9600K) LEDs only
With Narrow 15 Degree Spot or Wide 100 Degree Flood Beam
It is my understanding that the higher the K rating, the fuller the spectrum and brighter the light. The typical "full-spectrum" standard is 5,000-6,000K, so the 9,600K stands out as something quite exceptional. What's that all about?
Low quality fluorescents run in the range of 2,000-3,000K.
Because they do not produce light in a steady stream, like an incandescent bulb, but flicker 50 times a second, some who use them for reading eventually find their eyes beginning to swim - and they can make fast-moving machine parts look stationary, posing a serious safety problem.
More seriously, because CFLs need much more ventilation than a standard bulb, they cannot be used in any enclosed light fitting which is not open at both bottom and top - the implications of which for homeowners are horrendous.
Absolute bunk! There is no "50 times a second flicker" - there was in the old fluorescent bulbs, but not in these. Also these new bulbs give off light that is much closer to natural sunlight than do incandescents or old fashioned fluorescents.
As far as "enclosed spaces" - the author couldn't be more wrong.
I have a globe fixture in my kitchen that holds 3 bulbs. I used to have to replace the incandescent bulbs at leat every 60 days. I finally read an article that said that bulbs in an enclosed globe would burn out faster because of the heat build up.
I bought some of the new CFLs (on sale at ACO - not "20 times" more expensive than incandescents, as the author claims - but twice as expensive)Those CFLs have been in that globe fixture for nearly 2 years and are still burning!
So not only have they saved me money by not buying the 30 old fashioned bulbs I would have bought over the past 2 years - but they use less than 1/4 the wattage that the old bulbs used. A win-win for me.
I am apparently green this morning. I bought a sketchpad at the supermarket without looking at anything but the paper, which seemed like the thing to do if you buy a sketchpad. It wasn't until I got it home that I noticed the windmill on the cover is there because they are advertising they made this 100% with windpower thereby saving 94,000 trees and 8000 barrels of oil as well as 14 million miles not driven. I feel so green.
LOL! That's not a good color. Have you called your doctor yet?
No, but I find I can blend two watercolors to get close to the right shade.
The issue is that while compact fluorescents generate much less heat than incandescents, many of them are less tolerant of heat. On a hot day (40C), heating a fixture to 70C will only require a fifth as much power as heating it to 190C (374F). Although a well-designed compact fluorescent fixture shouldn't dissipate that much heat, some inferior units might.
They just go down a couple hundred feet--like a well. They pump cold water in and warmer water comes up. The reverse in the winter. Put a heat pump on the top and you have home heating and cooling. It works almost anywhere.
They don't tap super hot rocks--just the normal heat of the Earth. It's why basements stay cool in the summer and warm in the winter.
As I said in an earlier post, I have a dome lamp where I'm tempted to try them. The bulb would be completely enclosed. Any idea how badly the life expectancy is degraded?
If it's just a durability issue and not a safety issue, I suppose I can take a flyer on three bulbs and see how they work out.
I believe it is a durability and not a safety issue, although at http://sound.westhost.com/articles/incandescent.htm the author speculated about a small risk of "explosive" failure, especially if they get wet.
Low quality fluorescents run in the range of 2,000-3,000K.
The color temperature as shown in degrees K (kelvin) relates to the color of the output light. The scale ranges from infrared to ultraviolet and perhaps beyond. The light of a match is around 1600K (deep yellow), an incandescent light bulb - 2800K (yellowish-white), moonlight - 3500K, daylight - 5500K, and a xenon arc lamp - 6420K (blue-ish white). The higher the number, the bluer the light. Conversely, the lower the number the yellower the light, finally gaining a red color as the color temperature gets very low.
"Testimonials of 'I installed CFLs and it saved me over $1000'cannot be trusted because they are anecdotal and subject to placebo effect."
My saving of over $1000 in the first ten years of use may be anecdotal, but since I rent out a few rooms I have all my utility bills for the past 20 years if anyone would like me to prove it. My bills had been running about $27 or $28 per month for several years. When I installed the CFLs, the bills dropped to $17 or $18 per month. This is not placebo and I have the proof.
So is the issue damage to to the light or to the fixture and surrounds? I saw this warning on a package of CF bulbs that I wanted to use in my bathroom IC rated light-vent fans but it's enclosed and according to the package that's a no-no. Yet I use an outdoor CF type which is the CF bulb in a weatherproof plastic housing in my outside coach lamp with no problems. I said screw it and bought a 60 watt incandescent.
I follow you up to the 6420K xenon arc lamp --
but my question is, what does a 9600K bulb look like? Does it mean it's a blue LED? The description says super white LED -- but I haven't seen anything beyond the 6000K to have any idea what that might look like -- if it is at all possible.
All the others are in the 5-6000K range -- that they're selling on that site for LEDs -- with that one very notable exception. It seems like that one's out of the ball park.
That's what piques my curiosity.
The issue is premature failure of the fluorescent units themselves. Incandescent bulbs don't particularly mind high temperatures, but fluorescent ones do. Generally enclosing fluorescents by themselves won't be a problem, but with some inefficient ones it might be. On the other hand, putting e.g. one incandescent and one compact fluorescent into a two-bulb enclosure would likely result in extremely premature failure of the fluorescent.
All the others are in the 5-6000K range -- that they're selling on that site for LEDs -- with that one very notable exception. It seems like that one's out of the ball park.
That's what piques my curiosity.
The higher the color temperature, the more blue the color. BUT, the human eye has a remarkable capability to equalize color temperature to a great extent. While an ordinary incandescent light's output is rather yellowish compared to the sun, our eyes tend to see them much closer than they really are. The difference isn't seen to be as great as it really is.
A good way to observe the differences is with a digital camera. Set the White balance to tungsten and take a picture indoors with ordinary lighting. The resulting picture will have normal coloration. Keeping the camera set for tungsten (incandescent) lighting, take a picture outdoors in the sun, and it will appear very blue in comparison.
Likewise, setting the camera white balance for sunlight and then shooting indoors with incandescent lights will result in a very yellow/brown tint to the resulting image. In auto white balance setting, the camera is closer to mimicing the results of the eye because it uses some degree of logic to correct for the color temperature of the light source. Not perfect, but most cameras do fairly well.
Back in the film days, we'd have used filters to shoot (without flash) pictures under incandescent lights. BTW, most camera flash units produce a light color close to that of sunlight.
All this dancing around, and I don't think I've answered your question. Yes, the light will be a little bit blue, but due to the eye/brain's capabilities, it will still appear as a very white light source at 9000+K, unless it is viewed side-by-side with a 5000-6000K light source. Then it will be decidedly bluer.
CAUTION: Although they are only 23 watts, they do overheat and fail in some fixtures that were designed for incandescent bulbs (as the article said - poorly ventilated fixtures). Sometimes the failures are nasty as in my kitchen fixture where one of them actually started burning. The electronics in the base are not as resistant to high temperatures as an ordinary incandescent bulb.
Plus the life is nowhere near the 10x claimed but rather about the same to 3x longer is what I've experienced. SO they aren't all that great. Oh and BTW I think global warming is the biggest fraud in the last 10 years. I bought them because if they worked as advertised (they didn't) they would have saved me some money on my power bill.
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