"David Hansen" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 8 Sep 2010 02:38:49 -0700 (PDT) someone who may be
ScrewMaster wrote this:-

I fitted CFLs throughout the house in the mid 1980s. They were very
expensive then but the maths still worked in my favour regarding cost
(energy consumption + cost of bulb) over their lifetime compared to
incandescent bulbs.

That was my opinion too, in the days when the lamps cost £10 or so,
when that was a lot of money. Soon paid for themselves.


Interestingly the people who rail against them tend to be the same
people who rail against sustainable electricity generation, quoting
the book "Sustainable energy - without the hot air" in support. They
can't have read the book very much, or they would have read the bit
in it about energy saving light bulbs
http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/c9/page_58.shtml

"Generally I avoid discussing economics, but I'd like to make an
exception for lightbulbs. Osram's 20 W low-energy bulb claims the
same light output as a 100 W incandescent bulb. Moreover, its
lifetime is said to be 15 000 hours (or "12 years," at 3 hours per
day). In contrast a typical in- candescent bulb might last 1000
hours. So during a 12-year period, you have this choice (figure
9.3): buy 15 incandescent bulbs and 1500 kWh of electricity (which
costs roughly £150); or buy one low-energy bulb and 300 kWh of
electricity (which costs roughly £30)."

Even if one believes, like I do, that the equivalent ratings quoted
by manufacturers are "optimistic" they are not as "optimistic" as to
change the balance dramatically.


Which is all jolly nice if you only address the situation from the end-user
point of view. Things would change dramatically against the CFL argument, if
the hugely different energy and monetary costs of manufacturing, shipping,
and correctly disposing of them over the humble and simple incandescent
bulb, were genuinely factored into the equation. However, I suspect that
this would be so complex to do, that it's never going to *actually* get
done, so there will never be any true comparative figures. The general
public does not understand what is in a CFL, so has no genuine understanding
of what goes into making them, which is why the green mist brigade can get
away with only pushing the *apparent* end user power savings. As for them
being cheap to buy now compared to 10 years ago, they're not. They are being
hugely subsidised by money being collected from us all, as part of our
electricity bills.

And on the subject of sustainable electricity generation, the ugly noisy
windmills that are sprouting up all over the countryside to distract drivers
and cause more deaths on the roads have, I believe, been the subject of
studies which show that at best, each one will only just about pay the
energy costs used to build it and maintain it over its lifetime. A much
better solution would be to just build some more nuclear stations. If people
don't like the idea of building them on land, then build them out to sea,
instead of the wind farms. Nuclear power is by far and away the most
sustainable form of electricity production, whilst wind and solar are about
as far the other end of the scale in terms of practicality, as you could get
....

Arfa