We may be seeing another example of where enthusiasm to ride the "Green" wave has combined with enthusiasm to make a buck, leading us down a path that gets our actions way out in front of our brains. Reference my thoughts on insulated windows.
There has been a lot of attention focused recently on political moves to outlaw the use of traditional incandescent bulbs in favor or more energy efficient solutions, particularly compact fluorescent bulbs (CFL is the common abbreviation, which I will happily use). This effort took an interesting twist early in 2007 when Wal-Mart decided to promote the sale and use of CFL's, as reported by the New York Times. It has gotten even more interesting lately as congressional efforts to ban the incandescent bulb have brought this issue into the partisan political arena. It seems to have been a popular topic with such diverse sources as NPR and Rush Limbaugh. It may be time to take a breath.
Without getting caught up in the rhetoric, it seems pretty clear to me that CFL's work well, but that they have real limitations that make them only a stop-gap measure. Of more concern are the claims being made that seem ill considered at best and perhaps even disingenuous.
First among these are claims for savings. It seems to be accurate that a CFL will emit the same amount of light as an incandescent with about 1/4 of the power usage. 60 watts for incandescent, 14 for CFL. Not a lot of wiggle room here. But there is wiggle room in claims for savings. I looked at one source which suggested a savings to homeowners of more than $19,000! That was, however, for 30 bulbs simultaneously over 60,000 hours, the expected life of a single CFL. That's almost 7 years, burning continuously, but their estimate is based on 5 hours of use per day which translates into a whopping 33 year period. C'mon. It is also based on burning 30 light bulbs for five hours a day. As I write this, it is a weekend morning, we are all home and there is a single bulb burning in the house, a night light that had not been turned off. How many of us have 30 light bulbs burning continuously the entire time we are home at night, and that would have to be on a Winter's evening as the sun sets about 9:00 pm here in the Summer. Then there is the projected 60,000 hour life of the bulb.
Yes, there will be savings, but none of this is realistic. I don't have the stats, but what percentage of your home electric bill do you think is attributable to light bulbs? When you consider your air conditioning system, which we all know to be a very big electricity user, to your refrigerator which is constantly running, to your washer and dryer, which seem to be constantly running at my house and which uses electricity to dry the clothes, or even your electric oven. I suspect it is less than half, if even that.
The appearance of the light from CFL's and their color rendition index performance is camoflaged by terms like "warm white" and "daylight". In truth, they can't provide the softness, warmth or color accuracy of incandescents and halogen bulbs, so this is rarely mentioned. Neither are economic concerns stemming from the fact that more of these bulbs are made overseas than their incandescent counterparts, so a conversion to CFL's could impact some American jobs.
The big issue currently debated, however, is mercury, a useful but dangerous neurotoxin. CFL's use it in small quantities, incandescents don't use it at all. There is enough in CFL's, however, to cause some states to require that they not be simply thrown away, but disposed of as hazardous materials. Have a look at this article that appeared in the Boston Globe on cleanup of broken CFL's. It's a little over the top, perhaps, but it makes me wonder if we're not just trading problems and getting a poorer appearance in order to save a few dollars.
The environmental advantages seem really to be a stretch. Again proponents claim that the power generated by coal fired power plants needed to run incandescent bulbs emit more than enough mercury to more than offset that found in the CFL's. Now there is some spin for you. So if we switch to CFLs are we going to shut these coal fired plants down? Hardly, they will continue in operation unabated to power the CFLs, the air conditioners, the refrigerators, golf carts, computers, plug-in electric cars and what-have-you. And if we're worried about that, why have we just recently approved the construction of still more coal-fired plants? I should also note here that coal fired plants only provide about 50% of the power in this country. The other half is hydroelectric, natural gas, nuclear, solar, wind generation and others. Whatever their individual issues might be, none of these contribute mercury to the atmosphere.
This is getting long, so I'll make suggestions in my next post on this subject.
Good points.
Also, you can never replace the incandescent blubs in your oven, because no other type of lamp can work at those high temperatures.
I also can't find any CFL's that will fit in the limited space of my refrigerator. The bases are all too big.
Posted by: Powerwise | March 15, 2009 at 07:23 PM