In article , Tegger wrote:
"HeyBub" wrote in
om:
"GE says the new bulb uses just 9 watts and provides a 77% energy
savings while lasting 25 times as long as the 40-watt bulb it's
intended to replace."
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/...b-lasts-years/
Assume a 40-watt bulb lasts 1000 hours.
40w x 1000 = 40 kwh x $0.15/kwh = $6.00 operating cost over life of
bulb.
The new bulb uses 9 watts. So for the same period,
9w x 1000 = 9 kwh x $0.15/kwh = $1.35 operating cost.
And the difference in purchase price between the two bulbs?
The one lasting 25 times as long is not a CFL but an LED bulb.
A 13 or 14 watt CFL now often comes in 6-packs for $10, and appear to me
to now actually last usually 5,000 hours or more in most home use.
A 60 watt incandescent may cost 80 cents, or 30 cents at home centers,
and at the 12 cents per KWH that I think is current or very-soon USA
national residential rate average consumes $7.20 in electricity over its
1,000 hour life. So maybe it costs $7.50 to acquire and operate over its
1,000 hour average life.
A 14 watt CFL costing $1.67 and lasting 5,000 hours costs $10.07 at this
rate to acquire and operate over its life that is 5 times as long. Which
translates to costing $2.02 to use over the amount of time that a 60 watt
incandescent costs $7.50. (.502 cent per hour of operation.)
My problem with the CFLs is that the amounts of money they save, over the
time they save it, are exceedingly trivial. Not worth it, to me.
$5.05 for each 60 watt incandescent over the amount of time it lasts is
trivial? A smaller number for 40 watt incandescents and a bigger number
for 75 and 100 watt ones?
A 100 watt incandescent rated to last on average 750 hours can be
replaced by a 26 watt CFL, and 130V 100 watt incandescents and Philips
"Double life" 100W incandescents as well as any lasting even longer can be
replaced by a 23 watt CFL. At 12 cents per KWH, this amounts to .888 to
..924 cent per hour.
Acquisition costs of $3-$4.50 CFLs likely to last 4,000 hours or more
(especially 23 watt ones that overheat less easily than 26 watt ones) will
reduce these savings to around .77 to .84 cent per hour. Add to these the
acquisition cost of incandescents, anywhere from .02 to .11 cent per hour,
unless they are superlonglife ones dim enough to be replaced by an 18-20
watt CFL rather than a 23 watt one. So a 100 watt incandescent costs on
average .79-.95 cent per operating hour more than a CFL replacent.
How many bulbs do you have, and how many hours per month do you use each
one?
For most people, difference between incandescent and CFL for all of
their light bulb uses where CFLs make sense adds up to a lot more than
some mere pennies per month.
It's not worth it to most consumers either, which is why the bulb
industry has to lobby the government to ban incandescents in order to
create a market for their CFLs.
Can you cite how it is the "bulb industry" (electric lamp industry,
in large part GE and Philips and Sylvania) rather than environmental
groups lobbied for the incandescent ban? It appears to me that GE,
Philips and Sylvania would rather oppose it, now that I am seeing CFLs
with lower ratio of price to life expectancy than most incandescents.
I have heard of the lamp industry working with Congress on the details
of the ban. I suspect the results of that were a large range of
exemptions, many of which actually make sense to me to lack of suitable
non-incandescent replacements. The exemptions all together appear to me
to amount to a set of loopholes wide enough to reroute the Mississippi
River through. I mention those in:
http://members.misty.com/don/incban.html
- Don Klipstein )