Re: Fluorescent lght

[nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Dave Houston)]

No one has said CFLs _have_ to be noisy but many people have posted here and
in Smarthome's Insteon forum reporting that their CFLs _are_ noisy.

No one has said that CFLs _have_ to have high premature failure rates but 30
years of experience shows this to be an ongoing issue.

Having majored in economics and having run a multimillion dollar
international company, my calculations reinforce my opinion that market
economics will reward the low cost producer. Noisy, short-lived CFLs
probably cost less to produce than quiet, long-lived CFLs.

27W vs. 100W is a big difference but it depends on how many hours per day
you'll leave them on, on your electric rates, on how long they last and on
whether you need to add the cost of a filter to the equation.

The Department of Energy has figures on electricity end uses at...

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/recs/recs2001/enduse2001/enduse2001.html

They show that 8.8% of residential electricity use is for lights.

Another DOE page shows that residential use accounts for about 1/3 of US
electricity use.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/mer/pdf/pages/sec7_19.pdf

If you do the calculation, that means residential lighting accounts for less
than 3% of US electricity use.

If you replace _ALL_ residential lights with CFLs that use 1/3 as much
electricity, you reduce total electric use by less than 2% (while adding
mercury to our landfills). It's not practical to use all CFLs so the total
effect will be much less than 1%.

And electricity represents only a fraction of our total energy use (~30%) so
the reduction in greenhouse gasses attributable to the use of residential
CFLs is nearly unmeasurable and certainly inconsequential as regards global
warming.

The people pushing CFLs with slogans like "Change a light bulb, change the
world." are CFIs. (Determining the meaning of "CFI" is left as a reader
exercise.)

A quick glance at the tables in the first DOE link I gave above will reveal
several residential energy uses that make much better targets. (Replacing 35
year old refrigerators might be a good place to start.)

And, if you have a quart of single malt handy to drown your sorrows, take a
look at this...

http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/independent_reviews/stern_review_economics_climate_change/stern_review_report.cfm

"Tim Dolan" <tims-pool-leagues@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

>I'd  like to thank of you for your cfl x10 infiormormation. I did not
>realize the short life of cfl bulbs. ( read that link that was indicated)
>I'm still tempted to try them in the higher watt situations. 27 watts is
>heck of a difference vs 100 watts. Unfortunately mine are base up
>installations.
>I am going to try the Phillips r40 cfl marathon classics in our kitchen...\
>Thanks again,
>                    Tim fm CT
>
>"Marc_F_Hult" <MFHult@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
>news:l127t2hqg5lu6qkj3btqa5n4qerpqcaae2@xxxxxxxxxx
>> On Wed, 14 Feb 2007 21:48:34 GMT, nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Dave Houston) wrote
>> in
>> message  <45d38213.2195091671@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
>>
>>>"Dimbo Spams" <cuervojose(remove)@jps.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>>One thing I have noticed though, is that when I have cfl equipped fixture
>>>>turned on the bulbs cause interference with the rest of my x10 modules.
>> they
>>>>do not respond to on off commands, as soon as I replaced the cfl bulbs
>>>>with
>>>>regular incandescent, the problem went away, Is mine an isolated case?
>>>
>>>It's not an isolated case. There have been an increasing number of reports
>>>of CFL noise blocking X-10 and Insteon communication. You can add a filter
>>>but that substantially changes the economics (already iffy IMO) of using
>>>CFLs.
>>
>> If you don't do the calculations, you can still have opinions, however
>> iffy,
>> but they don't have much 'transfer value' (euphemistically speaking).
>>
>> See the thread that Jeff Volp cites:
>>
>> http://groups.google.com/group/comp.home.automation/browse_thread/thread/d1f3bde6e5e0e30d/69c6dabcfddab8c3
>>
>> and look for the quantitative calculations.
>>
>> I also have CFL's in the basement of new  (not 10-year-old CFL's or El
>> Cheapos)  and INSTEON works flawlessly. Time to get out the scope again,
>> this
>> time to look for something that may not be there. There is no reason why
>> CFL's _have_ to put excess line noise on the powerline.
>>
>> As with the issues of hum, color rendition, and premature failure, years
>> of
>> work have made for better CFL's.
>>
>> http://web.mac.com/proteusmd/iWeb/Live%20Sustainably/CFL%20Bulbs.html
>>
>> 'Course one needs to identify and buy quality products that perform well
>> enough for _your_ purposes. If you buy incandescent bulbs at Bubba's
>> Bargin
>> Basement that burn out prematurely -- damaging electronics as they go --
>> the
>> CFL's from the same source are also likely to be junk.
>>
>> ... Marc
>> Marc_F_Hult
>> www.ECONtrol.org


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