 Compact
fluorescent light bulbs
(CFL's)
Use compact
fluorescent light bulbs
(CFL's).
If you know only a little about
CFL's, you've probably heard that they
save a little energy but they contain a
lot of toxic mercury. But the truth
is, they save a whopping amount of
energy, and the mercury scare is way
overblown. On this page I'll give you the
lowdown on CFL's in great detail.
I first recommended CFL's on this
site way back in the 1990's, when they
were rare. It was kind of neat back
then to let people in on a big secret.
It's not such a secret any more, but I'm
glad people are saving energy with
CFL's.
To understand why CFL's are a big
deal, we first need to see why regular
lightbulbs are so lame. Environmental
Defense has the best explanation of
what's wrong with regular light bulbs:
"Though
we call them light bulbs, traditional
incandescent bulbs are actually
small heaters that give off a little
bit of light--something you know if
you've ever touched a bulb that's been
on for a while. These bulbs were
technological wonders when they were
patented in 1880, but today they are
inefficient dinosaurs. They waste
energy and money, and they are
responsible for millions of tons of
global warming pollution."
Compact fluorescent light bulbs
(CFL's) are the solution -- they use
70-75% less electricity and give off only
a little bit of heat.
Here's are the benefits of
CFL's:
- Use 70-75% less energy than regular
light bulbs.
- Last about 10 times as long as
regular light bulbs.
- Produce similar quality light as
regular light bulbs (nothing like
old-style fluorescents).
- Cost as little as $1.50.
- Don't generate ridiculous amounts
of heat (which you would have to pay to
remove with AC).
And here are the downsides:
- Most of them can't be used with
dimmer switches. (Some can; check the
package.)
- Cheap ones burn out really quickly.
Buy name brands and/or bulbs with a
warranty.
- They start dim and take a minute or
two to reach full brightness.
- They contain a tiny amount of
mercury, which would be an issue
if you break a bulb and
you're careless about how you
cleaned up a broken bulb. (more on this
in a minute)
Old-style bulbs are such big
energy-wasters that many governments are
banning them. That includes the U.S.
and Australia. They're doing this to save
energy, because saving energy reduces
pollution.
Let's start out by looking at the
savings you get with CFL's. Right off
the bat, you save 70% on energy as soon as
you screw them in. Here's a calculator to
demonstrate:
And that's just the electricity
savings. Since a good CFL lasts 10
times longer than an old-style bulb,
that's a lot fewer bulbs to buy. This is
especially important for large commercial
applications, where the cost of labor to
constantly replace old-style bulbs can be
significant.
But there's yet more savings.
Since CFL's run cooler than old-style
bulbs, you'll spend less money to cool
your home or office.
To figure your electricity savings
manually use this formula:
|
Watts
x
Hours Used
|
|
|
x
Cost per kilowatt-hour
=
Total Cost
|
|
1000
|
|
For example, let's say you replace ten
60-watt bulbs with ten 15-watt CFL bulbs.
That saves you 45 watts per bulb, or 450
watts for all ten. Let's say all your
lights were on for six hours a day, five
days a week. That's thirty hours a week,
or about 1500 hours a year. So your 450
watts savings times 1500 hours a year =
675,00 watt-hours. Divide by 1000 and you
have 675 kilowatt-hours (kWh). If you're
paying 15¢ per kilowatt-hour, then
you'll save $101.25 a year.
If you don't like my calculator there's
also a
calculator at EnergyStar.gov.
Modern CFL's produce great
light. If you saw the old ones and
didn't like the kind of light they put
out, you're in for a surprise. Here's what
Popular
Mechanics said:
The
results surprised us.... [H]ere
was the real shocker: When it came to
the overall quality of the light, all
the CFLs scored higher than our
incandescent control bulb. In other
words, the new fluorescent bulbs aren't
just better for both your wallet and
the environment, they produce better
light.
How to buy
CFL's
When you buy CFL bulbs the package
will be labeled to show you how many watts
it's equivalent to. For example, a
15-watt CFL bulb package will say
something like "60 watt equivalent". They
have to say that otherwise people would
look at the package and think, "15 watts?
That's not nearly enough light!" But it
is, because a 15-watt CFL bulb puts out as
much light as a standard 60-watt bulb.
Although CFL's generally last for years
longer than regular bulbs, the cheap
kind can burn out quickly. I therefore
recommend buying either name-brand
CFL's, or at least ones that come with
a 5+ year warranty. If the
package says "lasts five years" that's not
good enough, you want a 5+ year
guarantee.
Make sure to get a color temperature
you'll be happy with. The light bulbs
you're replacing are probably "warm",
around 2800k. Anything above around 3500k
will have a bluish tint to it, and the
higher the blue, the "colder" (more blue)
it gets. If you want similar light to what
you probably have now, go for "warm"
CFL's, less than 3500k, the lower the
better.
If you're in a super-cold environment,
note that most CFL's run dim in very cold
temperatures, and most won't run at all
below 20°F. (Paralite
makes some they claim will work down to
minus 20°F.) If you're using
them outside as floodlights, then make
sure you get the kind that are labeled for
cold-weather use. One reader notes that he
put a $10 bug light sleeve around the
light which acted like insulation, and
kept the light just warm enough that it
would work.
The great
mercury scare
Before we get to the details, it's
really important to understand one
thing: The scare warnings about
mercury in CFL's have been coming from
Republicans who want to fight
conservation. This isn't partisan
bickering, it's a matter of public record,
as we'll see presently. What's especially
ridiculous about this is that the GOP has
fought tooth and nail against pollution
controls for decades, and now they have
the gall to claim to be concerned about
toxic mercury. Please. Their real goal is
to keep us from saving energy.
Think I'm exaggerating? Here's the
proof. Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX) took
the floor of the House to blast CFL
lightbulbs and opened up with this
flabbergasting statement:
"Congress
passed an energy bill which should have
been called the 'Anti-America
NON-Energy' Bill because it
punishes Americans for using energy,
rather than finding new sources of
affordable energy."
There you have it. Any attempt
to reduce our energy use isn't just
unnecessary, it's supposedly
anti-American! And reducing energy
use (and therefore pollution) is
tantamount to punishment.
Punishment! Since Poe is an unabashed
enemy of conservation, is it any
freaking wonder that he opposes
energy-saving light bulbs?! Is it any
surprise that he will bring up any
possible defect he can find in CFL's in
order to further his anti-conservation
agenda?
It gets richer. In Poe's mind, all we
need to do is magically find some new
sources of affordable energy. And what do
you think he has in mind? Why, drilling
the Artic National Wildlife Refuge and
America's beaches for oil, for starters,
something the GOP has been eager to do for
years.
Anyway, when Poe has made his
anti-environmental agenda so clear and
plain, are we really supposed to take him
seriously when he starts frothing about
the environmental calamity posed by
mercury in CFL bulbs? Not. As soon as
Rep. Poe and his cohorts vote for any
other measure to reduce Americans'
exposure to toxins, that's when I'll start
taking them seriously.
On the 2007 House energy bill, which
CFL's were a part of, 221 Democrats and
only 14 Republicans voted for it. Of the
No votes, over 96% were cast by
Republicans.
(USA
Today)
And congresspersons who voted against
clean energy took four times as much money
from oil companies than those who voted in
the public interest.
(Oil
Change
International)
 With
that necessary context out of the way,
let's look at the actual risk. First of
all, there is no risk as long as the
bulb doesn't break. You'd think that
would be obvious, but some of the hysteria
surrounding CFL's is coming from pages
that say that just having CFL's installed
in your home is "killing you slowly" --
which is absolutely nonsense.
Next, a simple solution is to just
use a bulb with a plastic cover. Check
out the picture at right of a bulb I
bought recently. It's really unlikely that
one of these bulbs will break in the first
place, but if it does, it's sealed.
Problem solved.
Another idea being bandied about is
that the use of CFL's is resulting in a
lot more mercury getting into the
environment, in general. Not true,
because power plants put out tons of
mercury. They put out more to power
the bulb, than is contained in the bulb.
(Ohio
EPA)
In fact, for each bulb
you don't replace with a CFL,
you're putting ten mg. of mercury straight
into the air.
(Popular
Mechanics)
Using CFL's dramatically reduces
mercury emissions at the power plant.
And mercury at the power plant is
worse than mercury in lightbulbs, because
power plant mercury goes straight into the
air where it's impossible to recycle.
By contrast, every single Home
Depot and Ikea take unbroken CFL's for
recycling.
Next, let's put the amount of mercury
in perspective:
Popular
Mechanics doesn't seem to think that
the mercury in CFL's is a
deal-breaker:
Each
bulb contains an average of 5
milligrams of mercury, "which is just
enough to cover a ballpoint pen tip,"
says Leslie, associate director of the
Lighting Research Center at Rensselaer
[Polytechnic Institute].
"Though it's nothing to laugh at,
unless you wipe up mercury [without
gloves] and then lick your hand,
you're probably going to be
okay.
If a bulb does break, you just take
some
simple steps to minimize your exposure
when cleaning it up. You certainly
don't have to call in a hazmat team.
One woman got bad advice that she needed
to do just that, and the anti-CFL folks
have been having a field day with that
one, not admitting that the advice this
person received about employing a hazmat
team was wrong.
Let's also remember that tubular
fluorescents have been used in commercial
and office buildings for
decades. This is not a new
technology at all. Why have the
Republicans been silent about the millions
of fluorescent tubes that have been in use
over the last century? Good question.
By the way, if you're a Republican
and you're offended by my pointing out
that Republicans having been fighting
conservation on spurious grounds --
then please get your fellow Republicans to
stop fighting conservation on spurious
grounds. Don't get mad at me for simply
pointing out what's actually happening.
Because if the GOP wasn't being completely
ridiculous about this issue, then I
wouldn't be pointing out that they're
being completely ridiculous about this
issue.
All that said, there really should
be a warning on the package about the
mercury. Really, anything that's a
potential mercury hazard should be
labeled. I believe it's nothing to worry
about as long as you take the easy
recommended steps to clean up any broken
bulb, but those steps should be included
in the product. And I don't think the
mercury in the bulbs is a good reason not
to use them -- it's just not that big a
deal.
More on mercury in CFL's:
Does bad power
factor negate the environmental
savings?
No, it doesn't. CFL's do have a
bad power
factor (50-60%, compared to 100% for
regular bulbs), and so some have suggested
that the utility company has to generate
more electric to power the CFL's, even if
the home user isn't charged for it, and so
we don't really succeed in burning less
fuel at the power plant. However, people
who appear to know what they're talking
about say this is not the case. Dennis
Towne, an electrical engineer, says
this is not the case:
"[Bad
power factor] causes higher current
flow than would be expected for a given
power output, but it does NOT increase
the power consumed.... [We can
now] peacefully ignore the power
factor issues of CFL's."
Josey Paul, in a letter
to Home Power magazine, agrees:
"[I]t
is not true that utilities must
therefore burn twice as much coal or
cook twice as many atoms in order to
supply twice as much energy to run
Carol's CFLs. Power factor does not
affect the energy consumption of homes
either on or off the grid.... To prove
this point, I set up an experiment with
CFLs vs. incandescent lights (resistive
loads with a power factor of 1.0), and
measured watts and volt-amperes
delivered by my inverter. Then I
measured the amps from my power source,
a bank of L-16 batteries, which are DC
sources wise to the tricks of reactive
power....The low power factor did not
require the batteries (or the utility)
to produce any extra energy."
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