Arfa said:
The thing is, there are so many components to a CFL, and so many
processes to make those components, and so many processes to
extracting, refining and making appropriate the constituents *of*
those components, that I think it is probably an impossible task to
analyse the total energy budget of making one of these things, with
any accuracy.
**I believe that may well be an over-statement. At some point, we have to be
able to place some trust in those who do their investigations into such
things. Anyway, let's assume that the investigators have made an error
amounting to 100%. Even with such an error, CFLs leave ICs in their dust.
Let's assume that the investigators are completely inept and they have made
an error amounting to 1,000%. Even with an energy input figure of 17kW, CFLs
leave ICs for dead.
There will probably also be a degree of deliberate
distortion downwards to those figures by the greenies that would
produce them, to make them look better.
**You're making the assumption that those who have investigated the matter,
have an axe to grind either way. Bad assumption. If you can supply your
alternate data, please feel free to do so. Here is my reference:
http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Compact_Fluorescent_Lighting_(CFL)_Downsides
On the other hand, an
incandescent bulb uses - what - seven, eight maybe components, each
of which could be totally accurately pinned down on their production
energy costs. Bear in mind that the processes to produce the
components are also very simple and straightforward, unlike the
processes required to make the components of a CFL.
**Your point being?
It's not impossible to pin down the cost of manufacturing the relatively
small number of components in a CFL. Car manufacturers routinely do just
that, for what is a dramatically more complex device.
I have to say that in my experience, you have been extremely lucky to
get that sort of life from CFLs.
**Luck has nothing to do with it. I only buy quality CFLs and I have 19 of
the suckers in service. If I had (say) 2 in service and not experienced a
failure, then I might agree with you. I have NINETEEN of them in and around
my home. And, FWIW: several of them are not installed according to
manufacturer's instructions. They are surviving nicely.
I have used all sorts over the
years, from cheap to expensive, and have never obtained anything like
that length of service from any of them, with the exception of some
very early ones that I installed in a day nursery that we once owned.
They were Dulux globe CFLs and very expensive. We owned that nursery
for twelve years, and most of them were still going when we sold it,
so I don't dispute that it is possible to make long-lasting CFLs. I
just don't think that overall, taken across the whole raft of
qualities and costs, they are doing it any more.
**I confess that I have not purchased a CFL for several years, so I can't
confirm. The damned things are so incredibly long lasting that I simply have
not had to purchase replacements. In fact, I fully expect LEDs to be
appropriately priced by the time I need to make any changes.
However, I have a
lot of low voltage halogen downlighters in my house, that I put in
more than ten years ago. Of the eight located above the stairwell,
and the further five along the upstairs corridor, only one has failed
in all that time, and that was only a few months ago. Maybe, like you
with your CFLs, I have been lucky with these halogens.
**Perhaps. I swapped out all my iron transformers for SMPS some years ago,
to increase efficiency. The SMPS seem to deliver a pretty accurate Voltage,
so I doubt that is an issue. As an aside, my mother has a number of 12 Volt
halogens in her kitchen. I receive at least 2 calls per year to replace
blown lamps. I believe that low Voltage halogen downlights are an utterly
evil blight on society. They are OK for directing light into specific areas,
but are hopeless at lighting a space, relatively inneficient and they don't
last very long.
Here in the
UK, there have been governmental drives to push CFLs, by heavily
subsidising the cost of them, and in some cases, almost giving them
away in supermarkets, and in others *actually* giving them away.
**There are no subsidies in Australia for CFls, though the government did
give the things away for a couple of years. I snagged a few, but found the
colour temperature horrible and the lamps were clearly cheap rubbish. The
Philips lamps I buy are regularly sold for around $5.00 each. That's for a
23 Watt lamp, that, IME, has a life of AT LEAST 3,500 hours (I expect at
least double that figure) and, after 6 years of operation, is registering
less than a 5% fall in light output. Whichever way you slice it, that is
exceptional value for money.
With
the best will in the world, these are cheap crap, so that is what the
general public are having foisted on them as a result of the drive to
try to get people to actually want them, and is probably why the
general experience is that they don't last anything like as long as
the figures that they would try to have us believe. Also, those
figures are only good - if at all- when the ballast is properly
cooled, which means having the lamp in service the 'right' way up.
Unfortunately, many lamp fixtures that they go in, don't do this, and
luminaires enclose them completely. Incandescents didn't care about
this, of course.
**Perhaps. In my last home, I used a 150 Watt IC lamp and managed to do
serious damage to the plaster ceiling in the process. The fitting survived
fine, as it was designed to cope. The plaster was not. A CFL solved the
problem.
Only possibly, if you feel you are able to trust the figures for
manufacturing energy budget.
**Do the math with a figure of 17kWhr. The CFL is STILL ahead by a country
kilometre.
As I have said, I do not because of the
complexity of arriving at a figure. Plus you also need to factor in
the full energy cost of recycling the toxins contained within it at
the end of its service life. There is zero cost for this with an
incandescent, as it does not contain anything potentially harmful to
the environment.
**Not entirely true, but you point is well made. CFLs MUST be properly
disposed of. Again, this is not an impossibly costly exercise. Thos whacky
Swedes managed 75% recycling back in 2007.
http://www.enerlin.enea.it/outcomes/rep_recycling.pdf
Like all such things, the rates of recylcing will increase and the cost will
decrease over time.
Again, these figures are only meaningful if you genuinely achieve a
figure of 5000 hours across the board. And that is the important
thing. *All* CFLs need to achieve that figure for the calculations to
be valid, and that ain't never gonna happen, as long as there are
cheapo Chinese ones flooding the market. In any case, in Europe, coal
fired power stations have been on the decline for many years. Most
are now gas or nuclear
**Philips cite 6,000 hours for their lamps. Most manufacturers of IC lamps
cite an average of 750 - 1,000 hours for their standard IC lamps. These can
be made to last longer, but at the cost of efficiency. Fundamentally,
however, I take issue with your constant reference to cheap, crappy lamps. I
have CONSISTENTLY stated that I refer only to quality lamps (like Philips).
It would be like you trying to argue that automobiles are fundamentally
unsafe, unreliable and uneconomical, by using ONLY Tata automobiles as your
reference. You should be using Toyota, Honda, Mecedes, Hyundai and the
others as part of your reference.
No more talk of cheap, shitty lamps please. Whilst they are are available
and fools will buy them, they are not representative of state of the art in
quality or longevity.
On the face of it, they appear to, and as I said before, that is the
*only* angle that's been exploited by the greenies, to try to gain
them widespread acceptance.
**Incorrect. ALL green groups have expressed reservations about the proper
disposal of CFLs.
Personally, I believe that the situation
is far less clear than this rather simplistic assumption, when you
factor in the *true* costs.
**Fair enough. Cite these "true" costs you speak of. Numbers please.
Almost certainly, they use less energy if
you accept the simple picture, get the projected life from them, and
believe the equivalence figures for light output, that they put on
the boxes. And again, on this score, I understand that they are now
trying to legislate over here, to mark the boxes in lumens or some
such, probably because users are starting to doubt the quoted
equivalence figures. In reality, if you have a genuine like for like
in terms of light output, factor in the *real* costs of producing,
transporting, and disposing of properly at the end, and get the more
typical average service life of 2000 hours from them, then the saving
becomes much less significant, and for me, insufficient reason to ban
me from using incandescents.
**My CFLs are averaging far more than 2,000 hours. Do you have any data to
supplort your notion that QUALITY CFLs manage an average of 2,000 hours? Are
you aware of any consumer legal action against Philips? After Philips cite a
6,000 hour life for their product. Here in Australia, the penalties are
severe for companies engaged in misleading advertising of that nature.
Recently, LG was penalised several hundred thousand Dollars for making
misleading claims about the efficiency of their refrigerators. I'm certain
the legislators would be happy to tackle Philips, if you can supply solid
supporting evidence to back your claims (about QUALITY CFLs).
Distorted by the fact that CFLs are effectively government sponsored,
**Not in Australia. They compete in the market, like any other product. They
cost approximately 5 times as much as an equivalent IC lamp. They last 5
times longer and use 1/5th as much energy.
his might prove an intgeresting read for you:
http://www.choice.com.au/consumer-a...fficiency/compact-fluorescent-lightbulbs.aspx
and that I cannot buy the bulbs I want any more, because they have
banned them to make sure that I can't. If it was still incandescents
vs CFLs on a level playing field, the take up of CFLs would be much
less, which was the reason in the first place that they found it
necessary to legislate to force people to use them.
**I agree with that. Most people are, fundamentally, greedy, self-serving,
fools. They'll choose the cheapest, upfront solution, without regard to
longevity or running costs.
I fail to see how you equate leaded petrol to the situation with
CFLs. It is a different issue entirely, with very clear motives and
outcomes. You would have to be brain dead not to understand that
putting huge quantities of lead into the atmosphere at ground level
and in a form that people could breathe, is bad in every way.
**As is feeding excessive CO2 into the atmosphere. Too much CO2 is causing
excessive warming of this planet.
Removing lead from petrol had little if any impact on the general
public, because it was already possible to build engines that had no
requirement for lead in their fuel, without compromising performance.
**That was not the case here in Australia. Manufacturers had to alter their
production systems, costing millions of Dollars to cope. Most automobiles
suffered a performance fall when switched to unleaded fuel. Those who
retained their leaded fuel autos have to use expensive additives to
compensate.
It was, unlike CFLs, a classic example of a genuine *replacement*
technology, which suffered no disadvantages over the technology that
it was replacing.
**Not here in Australia. Costs rose for buyers.
There was not even any need to challenge this bit
of legislation, because the advantages were very clear to see in
large cities the world over. Even if you clung on to your car that
needed leaded petrol, this was still available at the pumps for some
years after unleaded came in, and after it was finally removed from
sale, there was still LRP (lead replacement petrol) available for
some long time after that. Finally, if you still wanted to run your
vintage engine, this could be achieved in most cases by the simple
expedient of altering the ignition timing, and in the worst case,
reducing the compression ratio a little, by fitting a thicker head
gasket.
**Incorrect. Leaded fuel vehicles require an additive to allow correct
operation of valves (seats). The simple expedient of altering timing is only
for making up for differences in octane, not lead.
CFLs are nothing like this. They are a substitute technology
which is unable to replace incandescents in a number of areas - such
as decorative light fittings - and having many other shortcomings in
comparison to incandescents, in exchange for the dubious possibility
that they in some way help to save the planet.
**Specialised IC lamps are still available in Australia. I don't know about
Europe. Fancy lamps, oven lamps and others are still available. For those
who refuse to change, halogen replacements are still available.
I'm having a bit of trouble picking the bones out of that one,
Trevor. You made a very clear statement that a disadvantage of
incandescents was that they generated heat that needed the use of
aircon plant to remove. I merely stated that this is not the case in
Northern Europe, where aircon is not common in the first place, and
where the exact opposite of what you contend, is true. In the case of
what you are stating, we are talking a double whammy in that the
lights waste energy in producing heat, and then your energy-thirsty
aircon plant has to be used to waste a bit more removing that heat.
Here, the heat is not 'wasted' for much of the year, as it partially
mitigates the required heating input from the central heating. 50
watts of heat pouring off a lightbulb into my living room, is 50
watts that my heating system has not got to put into my radiators. I
fail to see what your point is regarding Northern Europe against
'vast swathes of the planet etc'. The population density of Northern
Europe is much higher overall than that of many of these vast swathes
that you refer to, so the fact that we don't use huge amounts of
energy for aircon, equates to a much lower energy requirement per
person, taken overall.
**Apart from those places where geo-thermal energy is common, or
temperatures are too low, heat pumps (aka: air conditioners) are a far more
efficient method of heating a home than resistive heating.
So why do you support the banning of a proven simple technology,
which did the job of providing even-intensity pleasing-quality light,
to everyone's satisfaction ??
**Points:
* IC lamps are NOT to everyone's satisfaction. I have ONLY used fluoro
lighting in my workshop for the last 40 years.
* IC lamps are unreliable and wasteful of energy.
