On Sat, 30 Apr 2011 03:18:52 -0700, "William Sommerwerck"
wrote:

Suppose a 100W-equivalent CFL that draws 25W lasts only 1000 hours. In that
time you save 75kWh. At 10 cents per kWh, that's $7.50 -- three times the
cost of the bulb.

$0.10 per kw-hr is subsidized (baseline) electricity. A tolerable
average for domestic electricity is about $0.19 per kw-hr and about
$0.28 per kw-hr for commerical electricity. The highest rate for
commerical power shown is about $0.45 per kw-hr
http://www.pge.com/about/rates/

Throw in the cost of manufacture, cost of packaging, cost of replacing
the heat produced by the incandescent lamp in winter, and CFL looks
even worse. Light reading:
http://www.greenmuze.com/blogs/guest-bloggers/1031-the-dark-side-of-cfls.html
Some of the above is more than a little alarmist and paranoid, but
still interesting. For example, it takes 16 times as much energy to
produce a CFL bulb, but at $0.17 per kw-hr, the difference is cost is
negligible.

On the base of all my CFL bulbs, I scribble in pencil the date it was
installed. I've been doing this for about 10 years. I have yet to
see a CFL bulb that I use every day last more than about 3 years. CFL
bulbs that point down last maybe a year. However, I still have one 40
watt desk lamp bulb that is about 30 years old. Unfortunately, the
piece of paper that I was scribbling the results has disappeared. If I
find it, I'll post my numbers.


--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558