Lighten Up in '09: Shoppers Guide to Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs

[OneBlueSky]

http://www.ewg.org/node/27220

Resolving to save money? And the planet? Compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs promise a win-win: according to the industry and U.S. government's Energy Star program, which promotes CFL bulbs and other substitutes for energy-hogging incandescents, a CFL uses 75 percent less energy than its incandescent counterpart, lasts up to 10 times longer and prevents more than 450 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions from entering the atmosphere.

Over its lifetime, a single CFL can save the consumer $80 or more, depending on local electric rates.

But all CFL bulbs aren't equal. Some have lower mercury content than others, and some last much longer. Unfortunately, you can't tell the best of the best by their labels - or the U.S. government Energy Star logo. Some Energy Star labelled bulbs could not be legally sold in Europe due to excessive mercury content.

An Environmental Working Group investigation has identified 7 bulb lines made by Earthmate, Litetronics, Sylvania, Feit, MaxLite and Philips that trump the rest. These bulbs, listed in our Green Lighting Guide contain a fraction of the toxic mercury allowed by Energy Star, reducing the mercury contamination from a broken bulb. All last 8-15,000 hours, dramatically longer than the Energy Star standard of 6,000 hours, and also offer high efficiency.

- more . . .

http://www.ewg.org/node/27220

Printable Guide to Light Bulbs

http://www.ewg.org/files/EWGguide_lightbulb.pdf

[taught_me_patience]

1. CFL bulbs are a no-brainer

and are used almost exclusively in my household. The only problem is the inability to dim them.

[Fresh_Start]

2. they make dimmable CFLs now

as well as three way CFLs.

[taught_me_patience]

6. Sweet. I'll have to check it out.. thanks n/t

[conscious evolution]

12. Do they work with standard dimmers?

I know they make a special dimmer for standard CFLs but I have not seen any CFLs that work with a standard dimmer.
BTW,the dimmer for CFLs is pretty expensive.

Another energy saving bulb is LED bulbs.They use even less power than CFLs and last longer.The makers are saying they will last fifteen to twenty years.
Unfortunately,one drawback is there is no dimming of LED bulbs.You can get a special swicth,though,and change the color of the light in some LED bulbs.
They also cost a LOT more.Anywhere from $15.00 up to $50.00 a bulb.

[Tesha]

16. Yes -- that's exactly the point.

Unlike traditional "dimmable fluorescent lamp ballasts" that
absolutely did require special dimmers, the integrated electronics
in modern dimmable CFLs is actually aware of the funny power
waveform that comes out of ordinary (cheap) lamp dimmers.
We use ours with both ordinary wall-mounted Leviton dimmers
and remote-controlled "X-10" dimmers; they both work fine.

LED lamps are like CFLs in that some will be dimmable and
some will not; it depends on how sophisticated the internal
electronics is. And if you like color-changeable "LED mood
lighting", be sure to see:

o http://www.colorkinetics.com/

Tesha

[conscious evolution]

18. Thats good to know.

You would not believe how often I get service calls to see why CFLs are going bad so fast.99% of the time it is because it is on a standard dimmer.
Crap! I'm gonna loose a small income stream because of this.

[Tesha]

21. It's funny -- almost all CFLs actually work on dimmers as long as you never try to dim them. ;-)

Pretend the dimmer is an "ON-OFF" switch and only ever run the dimmer
"full on" or "full off" and even non-dimmable CFLs usually work fine. But
for your average consumer, you can't guarantee they'll do this so you simply
can't trust putting a non-dimmable CFL on a circuit with a dimmer.

Tesha

[SoCalNative]

3. And I have the opposite problem

they are not bright enough in most situations for me.

[Fresh_Start]

8. they have high wattage CFLs

you might have to buy them online but they make high wattage CFLs

[Tesha]

9. We've been starting to buy and use dimmable CFLs.

They're pretty good, although:

1. They won't dim nearly as far down as an
incandescent lamp will; turn them down
that one little bit "too much" and they go
directly from dimmed to extinction.

2. When you first turn them on, they won't
dim down as far as they will after they
warm up and stabilize.

3. They don't change color temperature towards
"warmer" in that black-body way that humans
have been familiar with ever since the discovery
of fire.


But we're using four different dimmable CFL models
all with pretty good sucess so far.

Tesha

[enlightenment]

4. I use the damned things - but I have to admit

I hate them.

The quality of light is awful and the level of light is abysmal. The 15-20 minute 'warm up' is a joke and they do NOT last as long as they claim they do.

I'm trying to be energy efficient, but I'm not sure going blind straining to see the book I'm reading is worth it . . .

meh.

[dipsydoodle]

5. Agreed

Light is truly awful.

[Tesha]

10. You're obviously using the wrong CFLs.

No modern CFL takes "15-20 minutes" to warm up, at least
at room temperature. The longest we've seen is *MAYBE* two
minutes or so, and most of ours are fully-bright within about
30 seconds.

And we've had almost no failures except for several 4W units
we operated continuously as "night lights", and these lasted
at least 10K hours (i.e., much more than a year). One thing
you should be aware is that CFLs, like all fluorescent lamps,
don't especially like to be switched on and off; each "start"
consumes a little extra life so if you're going to turn it off
and turn it right back on again in the next two minutes,
maybe you'd do better just to leave it on.

Tesha

[Raine]

14. I quit using the twisty ones

when I went to replace one I found that the ceiling was all scortched I'm just lucky it didn't start a fire. :scared: I've read that some of them have caused fires. :wow:

[Nevernose]

22. The old ones only had one frequency of light

If you peruse Home Depot, for instance, you can find different bulbs with different light qualities. The brights work really well for reading, say on the nightstand. The regular ones work well for hall lights, porch lights, closet lights, garage lights living room tables, that sort of thing. They're usually equally priced now, too (the brights used to be Internet only and cost three times as much).

I think the difference between the two is the amount of blue in the spectrum presented.

Also, I have incredibly bad eyesight. You'll probably need to buy one size larger than normal if your eyes are half as bad as mine. If you'd normally use a 75 watt bulb in a spot, for instance, use a CFL that imitates a 100 watt bulb.

[Old and In the Way]

7. Expect to see LED lightbulbs overtake CFL's soon.

Longer life, less electronics (no ballasts), warmer colors, conventional shapes, no mercury.

[Tesha]

11. No ballasts? Guess again!

The electronics that controls LED lamps is just about exactly
as complicated as the electronics that controls a CFL.

Will they be cost-competitive with CFLs? Eventually, but
probably not in the next several years. And I find most
current LED lamps built using "white" diodes to have
poorer color rendition than modern tri-phosphor CFLs.

Tesha

[conscious evolution]

13. LED electronics are a lot simpler than you think

Todays electronic flourescent ballast is way more complicated.
An LED only needs a couple of resistors and a transformer.

[Tesha]

15. I know *EXACTLY* what's in the power conversion chain from mains power to *EITHER*...

...mercury arc or light-emitting diodes.

And you, obviously don't. For reasons of efficiency, *NOBODY*
uses "a couple of resistors and a transformer" for LEDs used
for illumination; sophisticated off-line switching power supplies
are used. (Resistors *ARE* used for LED indicators.)

Google yourself up some manufacturers' data sheets on the
ICs and discrete semiconductors used to build these converters.
Here's a good start for you, courtesy of Maxim:

o http://www.maxim-ic.com/solutions/hb_led_drivers/

Here's an article on mains-to-LED power conversion topologies
in general:

o http://www.powermanagementdesignline.com/howto/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=NCLKBPOSZ1W0OQSNDLQCKHSCJUNN2JVN?articleID=212900460

(That last URL has a semicolon in it and DU's software can't handle
that; just "splice" the two halves of the URL together in your browser.)

Tesha

[conscious evolution]

17. It looks like some bulbs are more complicated

But not all bulbs are.The ones I have torn apart have all been simple circuits.Mostly headlamp and flash lights but a couple of GU-10s I took apart were the same.Granted,they were the cheapest versions you could get.The more expensive bulbs are a little to pricey to be tearing apart to satisfy my curiosity.

Aha.I took another look at the spec in link one.Dimmable.Thats the differance.None of the ones I dissected had that feature. That will definitely make for a more complicated circuit.

BTW,I couldn't get second link to work.Is there a term or keywords the sites search function could key on?

[Tesha]

20. DU bungs up links that have a semicolon in them.

Take the two pieces of the link and "splice" them together
in your browser's URL entry field.

Yes, running one or two LEDs in a low-efficiency fashion
off a battery is a much simpler proposition than running
many high-powered LEDs off a power line (or even a car
battery). Dimmability isn't the issue, efficiency is. *ALL*
high efficiency LED control circuits are relatively complex
pieces of electronics (using inductors and high-speed
switching circuits for for current control).

Have you ever noticed that most car LED tail-lights and
brake lights flicker (at a very high frequency)? You can see
it only when you sweep your eyes across them, but then
you can often see it. That's the electronic power control
circuitry at work. And dimmability comes into play there
too: the same LEDs are operated at either "taillight"
brightness or "brakelight" brightness.

Tesha

[dkofos]

19. I'm waiting for the price of LED bulbs to come down.