That would be an interesting fad to start: a saving energy fad! (and buy stock in those energy saving bulbs)

"Once in awhile we get shown the light, in the strangest of places, if we look at it right" - Hunter/Garcia

Personally I find the flourescent light a little 'colder' and not so flattering with food, so I'll keep my 3 x 60 watt spots over my 'sushi counter' - but all my other lamps have been replaced over the last two years, as they have died out.

That's because the energy "wasted" by the incandescent bulbs is radiated as heat in the near-infrared.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman

In Barcelona, the family is in the process.

Switching switching!!!

A pleasure


I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude

Here in the US many local electric companies will give rebates for the purchase of compact fluorescents (about $2-3 per bulb). There are several applications where they don't do well.
For spot lights (like track lighting and ceiling "cans"), outdoors and where instant on is needed.

As for color fidelity there are many varieties made including those with good red output. A little investigation will reveal sources for more high quality bulbs. One of the areas that is ignored is the cost of making the bulbs and the added materials for the internal electronics.
When an incandescent bulb is finished all that is discarded is some glass and metal.

To be a real net savings the compacts should have replaceable bulbs and one should not be required to discard the base as well. (There are a few like this but in specially built fixtures).

Another big savings being put into practice is the replacement of traffic signals with LED lights. They are more efficient and, more importantly, last much longer. In regular traffic use bulbs are replaced by schedule instead of waiting for them to burn out which is a waste of materials and labor.

If you really want to start saving energy examine the number of things that are always on in your home. Every wall adaptor consumes between 1-5 watts even when the appliance is "off". The same is true of clocks, TV's, VCR's, computers and the like. Anything was a remote control or "soft" on/off switch. It is estimated that 1% of all electricity used in the US is just to keep these items in a "ready" state so one doesn't have to walk over and press the on button.

You will hear more discussion about LED light bulbs in the near future, but they are not as efficient as fluorescents and require the use of exotic rare earth elements to make. I think the bulb issue is resolving itself as the cost continues to drop and the size and variety grows.


Policies not Politics
---- Daily Landscape

Curly flourescents are in every socket that has an on-off switch.  When they invent a way to dim them they will be in every one.

The cheapies from ikea, etc, are now light-weight enough to use in sprung arm task lights.  They have the added bonus of being cool if you need the light near your face when you work.

Thank you, Sven -- this is an excellent diary and, although we use those new bulbs, I didn't know about the impact.  I feel better now about their cold, greenish glow. ;-)

I'm sorry I avoided this diary all day -- I thought you were going to tell me something terrible about tulips and I was wresting with my desire to stay in blissful ignorance.

Maybe we can eventually make language a complete impediment to understanding. -Hobbes

I have used compact flourescents in most of my overhead sockets for several years, with the one exception of a light operated by a dimmer. I also use a Philips round bulb type one in an uplighter. You can also get far more efficient incandescent lamps that use a tungsten/halide interaction rather than just a simple glowing tungsten element in an inert gas atmosphere. There are most frequently seen in the small strip versions in things like floodlights for security applications but they are available with ES and BC fittings in a small format so you can use them in dimmer applications. The problems with them are that they require careful installation so your hand grease dows not get on them and produce a weak spot in the "glass" and the high temperatures they reach to initiate the tungsten/halogen cycle.

A couple of small snippets of information.

Lamps hat only use sodium have a very narrow yellow spectrum. This makes them ideal for photographic darkrooms using only monochrome paper as this is conventioanlly not sensitive to yellow light. They are however never used on their own as that particular colour is phycho-active, producing depressions and even violent behaviour. Kodak produced a darkroom illumination fitting in the late 1960 that enclosed the lamp in a colour filter that let through all of the yellow from the sodium but also some other colour light from an ordinary "bulb" that was in the same fitting. Modern street lights are usually of a "pressurised sodium" type that have a wider spectrum than sodium only.

To get back to the compact flouresents, if every home in the UK replaced two ordinary bulbs with CFs, the power saved is enough to run all the street lighting in the whole country.

Modern video equipment left on standby can be some of the worst offenders. The best solution is to install switched sockets so the TV can be isolated. This avoids possible dangers from mechanical damage to the plug, socket or wiring when you pull it out. Some video recorders and set top boxes for satellite, cable or digital TV are very high users on standby. Some VCRs use almost the same power on standby as they do in operation. Obviously some of these are awkward to disconnect when not in use as you need to leave them on standby to record but careful selection can help. As an example, a hard disc based personal video recorder (PVR) that you get for easy recording of satellite or digital TV saves a second unit on standby as the decoders are built in. The hard disc motors also need less power than cranking a tape through a VCR.

Another snippet, the amount of power that will be needed for digital set-top boxes when the UK drops analogue TV is estimated as the equivalent to a nuclear power station.

One other point that you should consider. CFs have much longer working lives than ordinary ones. Most give a cash return on this alone, even discounting the power savings.

The other thing this means is that they have to be changed far less often. If you have elderly relatives (or any with movement problems) they can be a safety boon. A lot less climbing or chairs to change the buld or trying to stretch to chnage the awkward one in the cupboard. One in a table or sidelight in a sitting room also means they are not worried about leaving it on so they can see while waiting for help changing overhead ones. (Leaving it illuminated means they do not have to stumble in the dark to turn it on)

I am in the process of changing to as many flourescents as possible.  They are not "dead cheap" in Ohio.  Wish we had an Ikea.  

They really are great for hard to reach places.  That is where I started using them-garage, basement.

I have had a couple which did not last as long as they are supposed to but longer than ordinary bulbs.  

an Energy savings calculator from Osram in Finland. sorry it is in Finnish - I am sure they do the same in other languages wherever they distribute.

Try it! You might be surprised...
Select the wattage of the lamp.
Select the number of lamps you are going to replace
Select the environment Koti = home (the other two choices are for offices)
Select your electricity cost (this is fixed at 0,09 cents per kWt)

HIT 'laske' (calculate)

The six numbers that come up are, left to right, top to bottom

• The cost in Euros of your existing lamps
  
• Annual savings if you switch
  
• The cost as in 1. after switching
  
• Saving over 10 years
  
• Price of the lamp
  
• Number of months to pay back cost of lamp (they come with a 10 year guarantee)

You can't be me, I'm taken