For CFL bulbs, reality can't match the hype

They cost 10 times as much as a regular incandescent light bulb.

They're supposed to last 10 times as long, and save energy in the process.

But now that the results are in, it turns out the hype over Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs was wrong, and wrong, and wrong again.

They don't last:

One hitch was the compact-fluorescent burnout rate. When PG&E began its 2006-2008 program, it figured the useful life of each bulb would be 9.4 years. Now, with experience, it has cut the estimate to 6.3 years, which limits the energy savings. Field tests show higher burnout rates in certain locations, such as bathrooms and in recessed lighting. Turning them on and off a lot also appears to impair longevity.

And, the energy-saving claims were specious:

Energy savings attributed to PG&E were pegged at 451.6 million kilowatt hours by regulators, or 73% less than the 1.7 billion kilowatt hours projected by PG&E for the 2006-2008 program.

But other than that, they're a great value!

Um, not really.

From personal experience I can say the DOA rate is completely unacceptable too. About 1/3 of the CFL bulbs I've bought were dead out of the box. That's probably because all the energy saving and relability studies were done using American made bulbs, not the cheap Chinese junk which populates the shelves in Home Depot and Ace Hardware.

Can you remember the last time a regular incandescent bulb was dead out of the box? Me neither.

Not to mention that the quality of the light is awful. That "CFL glow" is unnatural, unappealing, and unacceptably harsh. If you like the industrial look, great. Most of us don't.

The whole CFL scam reminds me of an old National Lampoon (or was it SNL?) skit, "You get less than half the value at more than twice the price!"

But, leave it to German ingenuity to find a way around the 100 Watt incandescent bulb ban — heat balls!

You gotta hand it to German businessman Siegfried Rotthaeuser, who came up with a brilliant run around the European Union ban on conventional incandescent light bulbs — he rebranded them as "Heat Balls" and is importing them for sale as a "small heating device."

Heh.

Posted at 12:36 by Chris Wysocki   [/agw]   Comments | Perm Link |
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