"Phil Allison" wrote:

Dimmable CFL's are available in enough different wattages to be
useful in a wide variety of applications.

** Shame they are prohibitively more expensive and hard to find.

I've so far only seen the 3-way variety. Not the ones dimmable by triac
(the normal infinitetly variable dimmers we are used to, that only work
with incandescent bulbs).

True that disposal is more critical especially because of the the
mercury. However, I've seen situations where CFL's outlast
incadescents by 20:1.

** Non sequitur - most folk have seen the reverse far more often.

Most folks? I would suspect infant mortality if the fluorescent has
anywhere close to as short a life as an incandescent. Mine have lasted
for years and years in every case.

Only surely true in the winter. Even in the winter, space heating
generally comes by a more efficient path that was detailed above.

** More example selecting.

Well, heating a room, in summer, even at night, is not generally a good
thing. And it's certainly true that electic resistive heat is not very
efficient. So on both counts, the heat from incadescent bulbs is hardly
a "feature."

Reducing night time electricity demand by a few percent ( all changing
bulbs to CFLs can manage ) has no effect on coal usage or CO2
production.

There is no overall economic or CO2 advantage to be had by making CFL
use compulsory.

So far, compulsory is only in Australia. But I'd say that light bulbs
constitute a large load, especially in homes that use gas for their
furnace and kitchen. In such homes, only heavy appliances or hair dryers
require more than 100 watts or so, yet for light bulbs, that's common.
And there are many light bulbs.

At night, with bulbs lit, a typical home probably uses the equivalent of
one or two hair dryers, kept running constantly for hours and hours.
Hardly a trivial load. Makes a lot more sense to clamp down on that
load, than to get all compulsive about DTV set-top boxes, as the EU has
done.

Bert