Question about home CFL use

No.

 

All I know is that my electricity consumption really dropped after I swapped out my incandescents with CFLs. So, CFLs do use a lot less electricity than incandescents.

 

Nope. If I remember correctly, there was a whole Mythbusters episode on CFLs vs florescent vs LED lights.

 

That doesn't make sense. Let's say you put a 60W equivalent CFL in a 60W light fixture. In order for it to use more power, it would have to surge past 60W which would burn out the fixture. A CFL should stay at or below 60W when it gets turned on, so it's always the same power or less than the incandescent it replaces. I would think your electrician should know better.

 

depends on ballast design but it only takes less then 1sec to ignite CFL, and the consumption is still less then "indecent" bulb. BTW incandescent also consumes alot more then stated, until the filament heats up to operating temperature.

Case of 1sec vs minutes/hours of operation.. so basically yes you loose efficiency on FL but it is a small percentage unless you flipping switch on/off non-stop.

 

As an electrical engineer, this is an area where I have some competence. Your electrician should stay with his long suit and twist wires together. Lighting isn't his forte.

The point he should really make is that florescent lights wear out faster when frequently turned on and off. With intermittent use, you won't get the full advertised life of a CFL, but you will still save on electricity.

Tom

 

Have you run across any data on just how much life is sacrificed by frequent on-off cycles? I don't doubt the claim of shorter life but have seen long enough life from CFLs in short duty cycle applications that I suspect they still pay off in a fairly short duty cycle application.

 

CFL is only a temporary step.

LED is the true solution... cleaner, more efficient, and much more robust... not cheap though.

My entire house has been LED since late last year, including exterior lights exposed to the extreme cold. They work absolutely fantastic, both visually and consumption-wise (confirmed using a Kill-A-Watt meter).
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Not recently, and the current crop of CFLs are much better.

When you buy ballasts for conventional florescent lamps, you have many options for how they will be used. Some ballasts are optimized for frequent on/off cycles, while others perform well with continuous operation. Obviously with CFLs you don't have this option, since the ballast is part of the lamp.

With the new ones, I will use a CFL for anything short of a strobe lamp. LEDs would be better for closet lamps and other short cycle applications, but their current high cost tends to limit use.

Tom

 

I have. I can't find it at the moment, but if my recollection is correct, if you include the reduction in useful life of the bulb into the equations above, you will get something like 2 minutes for the amount of time to not turn the bulb off, when you will be turning back on again. [I abused that sentence, sorry.] Note that this article was written back in the early part of the century, technology has improved since, but it will serve as a worst case.

The thing I have found which really shortens the life of CFL is physical abuse. If you bump them (not hard enough to break obviously), they will fail much sooner. For this reason, I might consider a rough service incandescent bulb in some applications.

 

Life is also only temporary. I'll wait a few years for LED lights to become reasonably priced before I buy them for mainstream lighting.

Our community association (6,800 homes) is replacing all of our street lights with LED lights. They are projecting a 6.5 year payback, so LEDs are getting there.

 

I would find a new electrician. qbee42 Tom pretty much nailed it.

John1701a, how much did you spend on the home LEDS, and what is the brightest one you have? How many Lumins? Are they dimmable? I want to pursue this LED lighting route also. I have been looking and all the LEDs I have found so far I cannot dim. That is a problem for me!

 

Ballast is a catch-all term for the electronics that start a CFL and make it run on your household electrical power.

 

The ballast is essentially a transformer which produces the high voltage necessary to run a florescent lamp. Modern ballast designs often use a high frequency inverter and sophisticated electronics to provide better performance, higher efficiency, and power factor correction.

Tom

 

The higher power for turning on a CFL is worth only a few seconds of light. As noted by qbee42, it's the shortening of the CFL by turning it on that's an issue. Here's two links that state not turning off the CFL if leaving the room for 15 min. or less, (though this may drop down to as little as 5 min. where electricity is the most expensive). Turning them on/off more frequently will mean spending more in CFL replacement costs than the cost of electricity saved.

Energy Savers: When to Turn Off Your Lights
FAQs: Compact Fluorescent: GE Commercial Lighting Products

 

I have been using CFLs of all shapes sizes and configurations for better than a decade. Some come on for a Minute or two to get something out of the room, others on all evening. I have replaced (for failure) exactly 2 in ten years. This after buying cheap ones, expensive ones and everything in between!

Anybody who espouses non sense about the negatives of CFL is ignorant. On our off grid house, use less energy in one day with CFLs than we would with one single 60 watt bulb! That is running a couple of 15s and a number of 7 and 8 watters.

Icarus

 

Finding dimmable LEDs can be hit or miss. I've got some of each in my house. I haven't gone full-out LED, only because most of my CFLs are lasting me 6+ years because they rarely get turned on anyway (I walk around mostly without lights on, makes it like a game). Home Cheapo & Lowe's both sell (at least) flood light LEDs and I know I've seen some regular ones, too. I don't have lumens off hand, but wattage equivalent go up to about 60/65 watt for a 11 watt LED, I believe (it's been 6 months since I bought some). The lights for the 6" recessed cans were around $50 each and the ones for the 4" cans were $20ish. The 6" ones look very nice, and are packaged with a trim ring and cover all as part of the unit. Both of these are dimmable.

The issue I've run into with dimmers, is too many on a circuit resulted in lots of buzzing from some of the lights.

Quick Note - The larger flood light ones: GU24 10.5-Watt (65W) LED Down light Light Bulb (E)*-ECO-575L-GU24 at The Home Depot

These are the smaller ones I used: PAR20 8-Watt (40W) LED Flood Light Bulb-ECS 20 WW FL 120 at The Home Depot

Hope that helps some

 

It's simple arithmetic to figure out how CFLs can save money. If a modern 23 watt CFL bulb outputs the same light as a 100 watt incandescent light, then it saves over 75% in electricity.

Newer CFLs are constructed much better than in the past. I haven't had to change one out in a long time. The first generation screw-in types were more prone to break and leak mercury.

I also have 20 year old CFLs that still are going strong. These are the old plug-in type, not the screw in type. I think they have a separate ballast but the bulbs work. These older bulbs take a minute or two to get to full brightness.

To debunk another myth about modern CFLs -- flickering. New CFLs use an electronic ballast that improves efficiency and increases the frequency to something like 20,000 Hz, eliminating flicker. Your eyes can not detect frequencies that high as opposed to regular flourescent tube lamps that operate at 2x line frequency (120 Hz).

In other words, until LED lights become more economical, there are not many reasons other than aesthetics and dimming to use incandescent lights over CFLs... unless you want the extra heat it outputs.