Posted on 01/14/2012 8:08:34 PM PST by Robert A Cook PE
By Kirk Myers, Seminole County Environmental News Examiner
This article, the second in a series, focuses on the misleading performance claims surrounding the “more energy efficient” compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs now replacing traditional incandescent bulbs. These potentially harmful mercury-filled lamps (see my previous column describing the dangers) are being forced on consumers by the U.S. congress with support from the Green Lobby and light-bulb manufacturers like GE, Sylvania and Phillips. These and other manufacturers stand to make huge profits selling the more expensive CFLs (more on that issue in my next column).
There is a growing body of evidence undermining claims of the EPA, environmental lobby and light bulb manufacturers touting the performance advantages of mercury-laced CFL bulbs.
Exaggerated lifespan
Real-world reports from the home front show that the claimed extended lifespan of CFLs is often greatly exaggerated. There is ample data indicating that the frequent switching on and off of CFLs greatly shortens their life. A study by H. Sterling Burnett, senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis, and co-author Amanda Berg concludes
“Unfortunately, except under a fairly narrow range of circumstances, CFLs are less efficient than advertised. Manufacturers claim the average life span of a CFL bulb is 10,000 hours. However, in many applications the life and energy savings of a CFL are significantly lower. Applications in which lighting is used only briefly (such as closets, bathrooms, motion detectors and so forth) will cause CFL bulbs to burn out as quickly as regular incandescent bulbs . . . When initially switched on, CFLs may provide as little as 50 percent to 80 percent of their rated light output and can take up to three minutes to reach full brightness.”
According to a story in the Wall Street Journal, Pacific Gas & Electric originally estimated the useful life of CFL bulbs at 9.4 years. But based on real-world results, the company was forced to lower its estimate to 6.3 years, meaning that it had overstated bulb life by 49 percent. “The early burn-out rate, along with several other factors, meant that the actual energy savings were 73 percent less than the 1.7 billion kilowatt hours projected by PG&E,” the Journal reported.
Less bright, more dim with age
As many consumers have noticed, CFL bulbs grow dimmer as they age. In a 2003-2004 study, the U.S. Department of Energy reported that one-fourth of CFLs, after only 40 percent of their rated service life, no longer produced at their rated output.
And according to Wikipedia: “CFLs produce less light later in their lives than when they are new. The light output decay is exponential, with the fastest losses being soon after the lamp is first used. By the end of their lives, CFLs can be expected to produce 70-80% of their original light output.”
After conducting its own tests on bulbs from several manufacturers, The Sunday Telegraph in London “found that under normal conditions, using a single lamp to light a room, an 11W low-energy CFL produced only 58 percent of the illumination of an ‘equivalent’ 60W bulb - even after a 10-minute ‘warm-up.’”
The European Commission, which led the effort to ban incandescent bulbs in Europe, said that claims by manufacturers that CFL’s shine as brightly as old-fashioned bulbs are “not true.”
Posted on its website for consumers was the warning that “exaggerated claims are often made on the packaging about the light output of compact fluorescent lamps.”
Higher heating bills
Go-Green advocates like to complain about the fact that 90 percent of the energy from incandescent lights is given off as heat, with only 10 percent providing illumination. But they ignore one important fact: The extra heat given off during the winter months can actually lower energy bills.
According to a study by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, “The heat of incandescent lights - more than 341 Btu per bulb per hour - can help to warm a room. Therefore, if the cost of electricity is low relative to the cost of home heating fuel, there may be an economic case for changing to incandescent bulbs in colder seasons.”
In other words, on a cold day when you’re running your electric heater, it makes sense to flip on all those incandescent heat sources. Of course, the contribution of incandescent bulbs to lower heating bills is conveniently missing from pro-CFL literature.
Unsuitable for outdoor lighting
What about the use of CFLs for outdoor lighting? Forget it. Most do not operate well in low temperatures, a performance shortfall that makes them virtually useless for home-security lighting, including as lights in motion detectors. By signing the incandescent bulb’s death warrant, congress has effectively rendered useless outdoor lighting systems that keep away intruders and discourage home break-ins.
Myth of mercury reduction
One of the most misleading arguments advanced in defense of CFLs is the assertion that they reduce harmful mercury levels (a dubious proposition given that the bulbs themselves are laced with mercury).
Case in point: In a letter to the Wall Street Journal in December, CFL advocate Nicole Lederer claimed that “coal-fired power plants produce about half of all mercury.”
In his Jan. 5 response, Charles Battig of Scientists and Engineers for Energy and Environment-Virginia called the statement “scientifically vacuous and misleading.”
Battig cited data from an op-ed ("The Myth of Killer Mercury” by Willie Soon and Paul Driessen) that broke down mercury contributions as follows: �U.S. coal-fired plants, about 41-48 tons per year; forest fires, about 44 tons per year; Chinese power plants, 400 tons per year, while recurring geological events such as volcanoes and geysers emit 9,000-10,000 tons per year.�
“With these missing pieces of information, wrote Battig, the U.S. power plant contribution of mercury is closer to a 0.5% value than the “half of all mercury” claim by Ms. Lederer.”
Battig then offered this advice:
“Would that Ms. Lederer and the Environmental Entrepreneurs expend an equal amount of environmental anguish over placing compact fluorescent lamp bulbs indoors in homes, schools and factories. These mercury-containing, stealth-pollution bulbs bring the mercury threat right into your living room and nursery.”
No good reason for switchover
The fact is there is no good reason for consumers - even energy-conscious go-green enthusiasts - to replace their old incandescent bulbs with the much-overhyped and potentially dangerous CFL lamps. The sole beneficiaries of the forced switchover are light bulb manufacturers who stand to make huge profits selling CFL bulbs whose shelf price has been artificially lowered (but still is higher than incandescent bulbs) through hefty subsidies paid to them by taxpayers.
In light of the facts, the switchover to CFL bulbs has become a real consumer turn-off.
“Go-Green advocates like to complain about the fact that 90 percent of the energy from incandescent lights is given off as heat, with only 10 percent providing illumination. But they ignore one important fact: The extra heat given off during the winter months can actually lower energy bills.”
Now this is ridiculous! What about SUMMER, SPRING, & FALL? What about California, the South, Hawaii?
Junk your furnace and plug in a thousand light bulbs instead. Then check your electric bill.
Lower energy bills? This idiotic statement tells you that the whole article is BS, so don't waste your time.
My experience with CFLs has been just the opposite of this articles conclusions. I know that with incandescent light bulbs, I was always replacing them. Now with CFLs I don't ever replace them, but I am colder (sarc).
We replaced all our bulbs with Full Spectrum CFL's back in 2007. That would be about 60 bulbs. Three were out of the package defective and were returned to the store for replacement. Since then two have blown.
My husband works with colors so it is necessary that the light from the bulbs be true and bright. So far, so good.
If they worked so great they wouldn’t have to force them on us. The market would do it naturally and without unConstutional force.
I mean who made you by a microwave, a car or a computer?
I have to wonder if the folks that complain they only last a month or two are cheap-charlies, or if they have bad electicity.
Because of the military jets taking off on 36 or landing on 17, and fly over the house down to 500ft, Edison bulbs get shaken to death around here.
It was worse, back when the B-58 Hustlers were flying over, back in the day. ;)
/johnny
Time to drop this stupid issue. I like ‘em, you don’t. Fine - it’s a free country. Get the gov’t out of the business of telling us which we should use and let the market decide.
Only in Obamanation could we have the problems we have and a gov’t that worries about this kind of BS.
I bought mine by choice. But FedGov has no authority to regulate lighting.
/johnny
I have had CFL on my porch and garage lights. I run them dusk to dawn and get around 3 years. Just put LED bulbs on the porch (on sale at Lowes for $9.98). We’ll see how long they last, but so far I’m impressed by the instant on and the amount of light they produce.
But I'd say restrain the government back into it's Constitutional role.
/johnny
Your stated views are mine as well.
I hate these stupid curley bulbs. I had a lamp with one today in a dark area of the house. I was trying to read an installation manual. The dumb thing got brighter and brighter over about 10 minutes. It really messed with my vision.
I want instant on, instant off. I want my old incandescents. The politicians were bought off by excessively large business (GE, etc.) to jam these stinking, expensive bulbs down our throats.
At some point, some businesses and big government become one and the same and they are really bad for liberty and freedom. GE is one of those now quasi government monstrosities.
I had a CFL that lasted more than three years — then it caught fire when the ballast failed.
Funny thing is that I like CFLs. I’m one of those people who wants light in the whole house when I’m home, so I do use low wattage CFLs around the house. ...but I won’t leave one on when I’m not home after two had ballast failures and burned.
I agree. Both should be available depending on the application. We don’t need big Nanny State and her pimp big fat GE and other excessively large quasi government companies telling us what we can not buy.
At some point, when huge companies and big government combine, you have socialism/communism and a loss of liberty.
"Incandescent bulbs", if you please. Incandescence is the mechanism by which the light is produced, and this is how I've always heard them characterized. Where did "resistance bulb" come from all of a sudden? Any device which converts electric potential to some form of energy, including CFL bulbs, must present an electrical resistance to the flow of current that powers it.
"How does it work?" "I don't know, it's probably atomic." - The Five Thousand Fingers of Doctor T
And my thinking is that even IF using CFLs did cut the mercury production at power plants, we will have traded that pollution reduction to relying on c. 100 million fellow Americans to conscientiously dispose of their used CFLs from now on.
Do you really want to bet the life/health of your children on the people you see navigating through commuter traffic every day?
Yeah, do you remember those ads they were running about their medical data base, where a patient was being examined in an auditorium of doctors, some of whom would pipe up with advice? It was pretty amazing in its implications, and it disappeared soon enough, but I assume GE still has its billion dollar contract to produce and implement this database, and that it will suddenly appear to us as a hawk suddenly appears to a muskrat.
Great. One more thing to look forward to with these confounded things. I bought a 50-100-150 watt CFL ($15.00!!!) a while back for my nightstand lamp for reading. It simply doesn't give off enough light for me to read, even at the 150 watt setting. So I'm now supplementing that light with another lamp using a 60 watt incandescent.
I have no idea with this 150-watt CFL/60-watt incandescent combination whether I'm using more or less energy than when I used just one standard 50-100-150 incandescent, but somehow I doubt this was the idea.
When this CFL goes, I'll look for another 50-100-150 incandescent, if they're still around.
Oh, and did I mention, the 50-100-150 watt CFL cost $15.00?!?!?!
I bought plenty of 60 and 100 watt bulbs to do me my lifetime. If I want florescent lights {which I do have a few} I will use 40 watt 48" tubes with a reliable transformer ballast. I will get far more usage from them in their hours life than any CFL on the market.
GE's largest single retail buyer had more to do with it than anything. That and a Republican who wrote the bill too start with.
A certain Big Box Store was on a shelf reduction store wide space saving kick and wanted too sell less bulbs at a much high price. At the same time that Big Box Store also went on a huge PC "GREEN ENERGY" kick too please a more PC liberal leaning market. As a result that Big Box Store whom other corps jumps through hoops for pushed for these bulbs. That Big BOX Store is majority share owned of course by Liberals.
Ironically soon after the incandescents disappeared from that stores shelves for at least a year or two then suddenly recently after realizing they weren't making the anticipated money and the incandescents could be bought elsewhere the store that pushed for the ban brought them back on their shelves.
Because there's just the two of us at home, we turn our lights on and off frequently. As a result, about half of our CFLs get replaced almost as often as the old bulbs. Not much of a savings.
Now this is ridiculous! What about SUMMER, SPRING, & FALL? What about California, the South, Hawaii?
In California and the South, it certainly gets cold enough that the heat from incandescent bulbs is a bonus.
And since the warmer months also correspond to longer daylight hours, the bulbs simply aren't used as much during late spring/summer/early fall. So the heat isn't as much of a factor.
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