Suzy sent around an interesting piece from Salon.com: should you discard your still-working standard incandescent bulbs and replace them with compact fluorescents, or wait until they die a natural death and then replace them?
It turns out that there are a number of reasons why you shouldn't wait for those old bulbs to burn out. For instance:
"Incandescent bulbs turn less than 5 percent of the electricity they use into light; the rest is wasted heat. Besides being annoyingly inefficient, this can increase summertime air-conditioning costs and present a higher risk of fire. CFLs, on the other hand, are over three times more efficient, meaning they put out the same amount of light but use one-third as much electricity; they also put out much less heat."
We often field questions on overall resources required in manufacturing CFL bulbs, as compared to the old-fashioned kind. This is also taken into consideration:
"Compared with the amount of energy wasted by incandescent bulbs, the energy used in manufacturing the bulb is minimal. Likewise, the amount of money wasted in purchasing additional electricity for the inefficient old bulb is easily greater than the relatively minor cost of incandescent bulbs."
Click through for the full article. And if you have more questions about CFLs, you may find other installments in our Q&A series useful:
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throwing away incandescent bulbs?
Send them to me.
They're made with more environmentally friendly materials (no mercury for one).
That energy they waste? It's actually heat, not waste. In Canada that's a good thing.
And... tell me how well the new low watt bulbs are working on your front porch these cold nights.
Send them to me.
Throwing away incandescent bulbs
Ditto that, anonymous. I will take the old bulbs also, the heat is a good thing in my 100 year old, ineffecient house.
In the summer most Canadians use the lights much less because it gets darker later so the strain on air conditioning is not a strong argument.
The incandescent bulbs take longer to warm up and light up, and sometimes I only need to go into a dark room for a few moments, in which case the incandesencts are preferred.
How about we go to LED's much more effecient, no heat loss, extremely long lasting, very bright, instant on, and NO mercury! Inconceivable to me that we are pushing for legislation of the CFL's when we have a much safer, and more effecient option.
How about we hand out LED's, instead. CFL's have come down a lot in price and LED's will too, soon if we show manufacturers that we prefer them and production is increased.
Light wars - Maclean's article - In a cold country, CFLs may not
This article in the most recent Maclean's supports what I and other anonymous poster said earlier about heat being a good thing from the bulbs in Canada (and in generally not very green).
AND they don`t do well in the cold, so as a porchlight, it all sounds like a good thing, but is it?
Also putting them face down is problematic because of the heat collecting at the ballast. (best in lamps where the bulb is up and the threads are at the bottom)
- disposal is a problem, due to the mercury - how many people actually know how to do that and where?
- cold weather is a problem
- turning them on and off kills them faster
- interfere with other electronics
We have one in the basement, a light that is always on... lasts about a year.
Bring on the LED's! Now I would love a project porchlight with that much more green option!
Maclean's article
Here is the link to the Maclean's article, I don't think it showed up on my previous post
Date: Friday, August 15, 2008
http://www.macleans.ca/science/environment/article.jsp?id=0&content=2008...
:-)
heat
Actually, in Ontario our energy crises actually come about in the summertime, when everyone's air conditioning their homes...
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