Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs Not Worth Cost and Trouble

The numbers on that chart you linked me to are very optimistic for LEDs. A typical 60 watt incandescent bulb will put off about 850 lumens, a hair over 14 lumens per watt. On that chart they are comparing 6 watts of LED light to 60 watts of incandescent lights and there are no LED lights on the market that could put out 850 lumens using only 6 watts. That would come out to almost 142 lumens per watt. A company called Cree just did a press release recently where they said they had achieved 161 lumens per watt from a white LED in their labs, but the best so far on the market are getting I believe under 80 lumens per watt.

Lumens aren't everything though. Six watts of LED light might be able to replace 60 watts of incandescent light, for instance, if you need light that is directed. With a light bulb light will come out pretty much in all directions and most of the light needs to be reflected and focused to make a narrow beam. This is a “lossy” process where light is lost. LEDs make a pretty narrow beam to begin with so less light is lost.

And they are great in really low watt applications like indicator lights on a computer or something because they put off enough lights and will generally last many thousands of hours (a lot longer than your computer) before they need to be replaced. This makes them great for traffic lights too. Also, those really low power/low watt bulbs like you might find in a traffic light or those in cheap flashlights are a lot less efficient than standard 40 or 60 watt bulbs. They'll only put off a good bit less than 5 lumens per watt. One of those expensive LED flashlights with the latest LEDs will put off a whole lot more light than an incandescent flashlight without using nearly as much power, so you get more a lot more light and the batteries last a lot longer.

LEDs are great for a lot of purposes. The people selling expensive general lighting solutions tend to try to make them sound a lot better than they really are for home lighting though. You have to take what they say with a grain of salt. Personally, I'll be waiting until efficiency improves and prices drop enough to where we start seeing all sorts of LED replacement fixtures and lights being sold at Walmarts and Lowes and other common places where people buy lightbulbs before I start putting a lot of these in my home.

“If you plug in just one 1200 watt space heater you are using as much power as 20 sixty watt bulbs or 10 amps roughly.”

A hair dryer will use that much too for the brief time you use it. I never use space heaters. I also don't ever have 20 sixty watt bulbs burning in my house at any one time. I have replaced most of my bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs and it does save me a few dollars a month, enough that I've more than paid for the new bulbs with what I've saved on my electric bill. I think they are a really good deal if you try to buy them on sale. They pay for themselves in a pretty short time if you replace lights you leave on a lot. I've actually cut my electric bill pretty substantially, but I've done a lot more than just replace light bulbs that have burned out. I found close to three hundred watts of phantom power I was losing with things I left on all the time and things that stay in standby mode and waiting for someone to click a remote control to turn them all the way on. Three hundred watts on 24 hours a day is as much power as you'd burn with a 1200 watt space heater on six hours a day. That's about $20 a month with power going for nine cents a kilowatt hour saved by turning things off and putting other things on power strips that I turn on when I need them. Getting rid of some inefficient light fixtures helped to. The cheesy candelabra in the room I'm in now used to burn 360 watts when it was turned all the way up, and it lit the ceiling a lot better than it lit the room. The fixture we have now burns 69 watts and seems to light the room a lot better. Every little bit helps. It's not that hard for most people to shave $30 or more from their monthly electric bill.

I burn about 900-1000 watts outside. Far more than I do inside as I only have a total of about a dozen light fixtures inside. I took down most fixtures and replaced them with basic good old fashioned single bulb porcelain fixtures to handle the 100 watt bulbs. My inside replacement bulb bill runs about $6 a year tops. I have some flood lights that are several years old outside. I wish I could say the same for the 300 watt quartz bulbs but I get my moneys worth there too. All outside lights are on a timer or light sensor. I use that much light in warm weather so I don't step on a Copperhead. Been there nearly done that and nice bright lights went up real fast. LOL In the winter I scale back on the outside lights somewhat though.

If the power company is running a customer right on the upper limit on voltage the CF lights are not going to last a long time no matter what a person does. Power surge and voltage spikes will take them out as the starter components {ballast} are electronic. Also the closer you live to a substation has a little bit to do with it as well as those houses take the brunt of such. That is where an incandescent has a little bit of advantage. They usually don't blow except in turning them on.

I'm a retired Maintenance Mechanic with Electrical and HVAC background. That's how I caught on to what my power company was doing. I became suspicous when too many things were wearing out too fast. They were the same morons who when I called them and told them their Neutral Primary was laying on the ground said Oh it's OK it won't hurt anything. Yea right. The Neutral loose or broken can kill you as quick if not quicker than the hot especially if you become it's conductor to ground.

“Granted, but when many people start ‘shaving’ $30 or so off their bill, the Power Cos will raise their rates to compensate for the loss of revenue....
BOHICA”

Then it will make even more sense to not be wasteful with your power consumption, and in the mean time those who take steps to reduce their power consumption will be saving money and they'll feel it less when rates go up. Power consumption increases every year nationwide. It's going to be a while before power companies really start losing revenue because households cut down some on their power consumption.

What you were seeing in my posts wasn’t panic, I have no reason to panic, it isn’t happening to me or mine. It was incredulity.

I’ve always thought that Freepers were a cut above the ordinary, but when I started reading about how many Freepers were foolishly using CFLs in food prep areas, I was stunned. My posts reflect that.

I spent more than 20 years in food production as a farmer. Along the way I produced a lot of feedstuffs and foodstuffs, including hundreds of thousands of market hogs. Never once in all those years, and all those hogs, did I ever subject the end purchaser of that pork to the risk that quite a number of Freepers seem so caviler about. It’s kind of like snatching defeat from the jaws of victory at the last second of the game.

All the food that I produced, and all the food that goes through everyone’s kitchen, is then brought into direct contact with the part of the human body that is designed to be the most absorbent, the gut.

Do you really want to sprinkle that food with mercury just minutes before it goes to those tissues? Does the human gut absorb mercury? I don’t know, but I sure as hell won’t be conducting an experiment on my family. All over a couple of bucks?

It may not happen to you, but it already has happened to some Freepers, see post 61.

At least do what the National Electrical Code (I think it’s in there anyway) has required for decades, put a plastic sleeve of some sort over the bulb to prevent the mercury from dropping on the food prep area where it can stay for a very long time.

You have every right to conduct your kitchen in any way you want. But I can tell you, I’m not going to introduce my children’s, grandchildren’s innards to the innards of any of these bulbs.

"If we could relax some of our controls over business (rather than keep pushing new and more outrageous controls on them) - we could become a major producer of things once again. Rather than just a bunch of service providers or guys that push file folders and money around"

Very well said! It's like everyone in the US is aligned in a huge circle, each person scratching the back of the person in front of them. We make very few things of value in this country. Common sense is a rare commodity these days!

I tested them (CFLs) and saw that they saved huge on my electricity bill. I save about $300 annually because of them and I don’t have to change them—well ever so far. I really don’t care about the so called environmental impact of them. I think they are wrongly vilified by conservatives and praised by liberals. Sorry to hear about your exposure to mercury and lead! I’m waiting for when LED lights are bright & cheap. Right now they are super expensive and I haven’t been impressed by the light quality.

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