Arfa Daily wrote:
Yes. This is kind of my point. And when I was saying that
'background' items like shipping costs are politely ignored, I was
referring to the multiple shipping operations that are required for
the many components in a CFL, and the many raw materials contained
in those components, just to get all the bits and pieces from the
individual specialist manufacturers, to the places where the lamps
are assembled. In the case of an incandescent lamp, we are talking a
few components, simply made from a few raw materials. With a CFL, we
are talking semiconductors comprising silicon, dopant chemicals,
plastic, metal. Capacitors comprising metal foil, plastic, rubber,
maybe paper, metal leads and other chemicals in the electros. Coils
comprising processed iron powder, copper wire, insulation, copper
foil, epoxy adhesive, steel leadouts. Then there's the complex glass
tube, and the chemical phosphors and mercury vapour inside it.
Tungsten electrodes. Then the pcb material that its all mounted on.
Lots of soldered joints. And then the plastic enclosure for the
ballast. And then the 'normal' bits that an incandescent has anyway.
Every single one of those components, and the manufacturing
processes for *their* component parts, involves energy input for
the process. They all need workers who have to be moved from their
homes and back again each day, They have to be heated / cooled, fed
and watered, and then lit as well. And when they've made their bits
of the lamp, these have to be shipped on somewhere else. These are
the energy costs that the general public are never made aware of.
If they were, they might start to question the perceived wisdom
that they've been fed, that these things are actually 'green'.
**Indeed. I just did a little research and found that some of these
issues HAVE been examined. The total manufacturing energy input for
a typical CFL is around 1.7kWhr. The total manufacturing energy
input for a typical incandescent is around 0.3kWhr. Considerably
less. Or is it?
The thing is, there are so many components to a CFL, and so many
processes to make those components, and so many processes to
extracting, refining and making appropriate the constituents *of*
those components, that I think it is probably an impossible task to
analyse the total energy budget of making one of these things, with
any accuracy.
**I believe that may well be an over-statement. At some point, we have to be
able to place some trust in those who do their investigations into such
things. Anyway, let's assume that the investigators have made an error
amounting to 100%. Even with such an error, CFLs leave ICs in their dust.
Let's assume that the investigators are completely inept and they have made
an error amounting to 1,000%. Even with an energy input figure of 17kW, CFLs
leave ICs for dead.
There will probably also be a degree of deliberate
distortion downwards to those figures by the greenies that would
produce them, to make them look better.
**You're making the assumption that those who have investigated the matter,
have an axe to grind either way. Bad assumption. If you can supply your
alternate data, please feel free to do so. Here is my reference:
http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directo...L)_Downs ides
On the other hand, an
incandescent bulb uses - what - seven, eight maybe components, each
of which could be totally accurately pinned down on their production
energy costs. Bear in mind that the processes to produce the
components are also very simple and straightforward, unlike the
processes required to make the components of a CFL.
**Your point being?
It's not impossible to pin down the cost of manufacturing the relatively
small number of components in a CFL. Car manufacturers routinely do just
that, for what is a dramatically more complex device.
Let's put that into some kind of perspective:
A typical 100 Watt IC lasts for 1,000 hours (at best).
A typical 15 Watt CFL lasts for 5,000 hours (I've certainly
exceeding that figure quite comfortably).
I have to say that in my experience, you have been extremely lucky to
get that sort of life from CFLs.
**Luck has nothing to do with it. I only buy quality CFLs and I have 19 of
the suckers in service. If I had (say) 2 in service and not experienced a
failure, then I might agree with you. I have NINETEEN of them in and around
my home. And, FWIW: several of them are not installed according to
manufacturer's instructions. They are surviving nicely.
I have used all sorts over the
years, from cheap to expensive, and have never obtained anything like
that length of service from any of them, with the exception of some
very early ones that I installed in a day nursery that we once owned.
They were Dulux globe CFLs and very expensive. We owned that nursery
for twelve years, and most of them were still going when we sold it,
so I don't dispute that it is possible to make long-lasting CFLs. I
just don't think that overall, taken across the whole raft of
qualities and costs, they are doing it any more.
**I confess that I have not purchased a CFL for several years, so I can't
confirm. The damned things are so incredibly long lasting that I simply have
not had to purchase replacements. In fact, I fully expect LEDs to be
appropriately priced by the time I need to make any changes.
However, I have a
lot of low voltage halogen downlighters in my house, that I put in
more than ten years ago. Of the eight located above the stairwell,
and the further five along the upstairs corridor, only one has failed
in all that time, and that was only a few months ago. Maybe, like you
with your CFLs, I have been lucky with these halogens.
**Perhaps. I swapped out all my iron transformers for SMPS some years ago,
to increase efficiency. The SMPS seem to deliver a pretty accurate Voltage,
so I doubt that is an issue. As an aside, my mother has a number of 12 Volt
halogens in her kitchen. I receive at least 2 calls per year to replace
blown lamps. I believe that low Voltage halogen downlights are an utterly
evil blight on society. They are OK for directing light into specific areas,
but are hopeless at lighting a space, relatively inneficient and they don't
last very long.
Here in the
UK, there have been governmental drives to push CFLs, by heavily
subsidising the cost of them, and in some cases, almost giving them
away in supermarkets, and in others *actually* giving them away.
**There are no subsidies in Australia for CFls, though the government did
give the things away for a couple of years. I snagged a few, but found the
colour temperature horrible and the lamps were clearly cheap rubbish. The
Philips lamps I buy are regularly sold for around $5.00 each. That's for a
23 Watt lamp, that, IME, has a life of AT LEAST 3,500 hours (I expect at
least double that figure) and, after 6 years of operation, is registering
less than a 5% fall in light output. Whichever way you slice it, that is
exceptional value for money.
With
the best will in the world, these are cheap crap, so that is what the
general public are having foisted on them as a result of the drive to
try to get people to actually want them, and is probably why the
general experience is that they don't last anything like as long as
the figures that they would try to have us believe. Also, those
figures are only good - if at all- when the ballast is properly
cooled, which means having the lamp in service the 'right' way up.
Unfortunately, many lamp fixtures that they go in, don't do this, and
luminaires enclose them completely. Incandescents didn't care about
this, of course.
**Perhaps. In my last home, I used a 150 Watt IC lamp and managed to do
serious damage to the plaster ceiling in the process. The fitting survived
fine, as it was designed to cope. The plaster was not. A CFL solved the
problem.
Over 5,000 hours of use, the CFL has consumed 75kWhr + 1.7kWhr =
76.7kWhr. IOW: The energy cost of manufacture is almost
insignificant, even though is a little higher than 5 incandescents.
Over 5,000 hours, the IC lamp has consumed 500kWhr + 1.5kWhr =
501.5kWhr. I would argue that the energy cost of manufacture is a
spurious
argument.
Only possibly, if you feel you are able to trust the figures for
manufacturing energy budget.
**Do the math with a figure of 17kWhr. The CFL is STILL ahead by a country
kilometre.
As I have said, I do not because of the
complexity of arriving at a figure. Plus you also need to factor in
the full energy cost of recycling the toxins contained within it at
the end of its service life. There is zero cost for this with an
incandescent, as it does not contain anything potentially harmful to
the environment.
**Not entirely true, but you point is well made. CFLs MUST be properly
disposed of. Again, this is not an impossibly costly exercise. Thos whacky
Swedes managed 75% recycling back in 2007.
http://www.enerlin.enea.it/outcomes/rep_recycling.pdf
Like all such things, the rates of recylcing will increase and the cost will
decrease over time.
The pollution cost is another matter entirely. During operation, coal
fired generators (like those here in Australia) emit mercury. A
typical 100 Watt lamp will cause the emission of around 10mg of
mercury over it's life. 5 lamps (5,000 hours) will cause the release
of 50mg or mercury. By comparison, CFLs will cause the release of
around 7.5mg of mercury + 4mg of mercury contained within the
envelope. If the lamp is disposed of correctly, then the total
mercury release will be 7.5mg. Far less than that of IC lamps. Other
nations, that employ different power generation schemes will see
different results.
Again, these figures are only meaningful if you genuinely achieve a
figure of 5000 hours across the board. And that is the important
thing. *All* CFLs need to achieve that figure for the calculations to
be valid, and that ain't never gonna happen, as long as there are
cheapo Chinese ones flooding the market. In any case, in Europe, coal
fired power stations have been on the decline for many years. Most
are now gas or nuclear
**Philips cite 6,000 hours for their lamps. Most manufacturers of IC lamps
cite an average of 750 - 1,000 hours for their standard IC lamps. These can
be made to last longer, but at the cost of efficiency. Fundamentally,
however, I take issue with your constant reference to cheap, crappy lamps. I
have CONSISTENTLY stated that I refer only to quality lamps (like Philips).
It would be like you trying to argue that automobiles are fundamentally
unsafe, unreliable and uneconomical, by using ONLY Tata automobiles as your
reference. You should be using Toyota, Honda, Mecedes, Hyundai and the
others as part of your reference.
No more talk of cheap, ****ty lamps please. Whilst they are are available
and fools will buy them, they are not representative of state of the art in
quality or longevity.
And this does not take into pollution created at the point of
manufacture. That is an issue that should be dealt with locally.
If people want to use CFLs in the belief - mistaken in my opinion -
that they are in some way helping the world to use less energy, then
that's fine.
**It's not a mistaken belief. It's a fact. CFLs use FAR less energy
than incandescents. From cradle to grave. Vastly, hugely less energy.
On the face of it, they appear to, and as I said before, that is the
*only* angle that's been exploited by the greenies, to try to gain
them widespread acceptance.
**Incorrect. ALL green groups have expressed reservations about the proper
disposal of CFLs.
Personally, I believe that the situation
is far less clear than this rather simplistic assumption, when you
factor in the *true* costs.
**Fair enough. Cite these "true" costs you speak of. Numbers please.
Almost certainly, they use less energy if
you accept the simple picture, get the projected life from them, and
believe the equivalence figures for light output, that they put on
the boxes. And again, on this score, I understand that they are now
trying to legislate over here, to mark the boxes in lumens or some
such, probably because users are starting to doubt the quoted
equivalence figures. In reality, if you have a genuine like for like
in terms of light output, factor in the *real* costs of producing,
transporting, and disposing of properly at the end, and get the more
typical average service life of 2000 hours from them, then the saving
becomes much less significant, and for me, insufficient reason to ban
me from using incandescents.
**My CFLs are averaging far more than 2,000 hours. Do you have any data to
supplort your notion that QUALITY CFLs manage an average of 2,000 hours? Are
you aware of any consumer legal action against Philips? After Philips cite a
6,000 hour life for their product. Here in Australia, the penalties are
severe for companies engaged in misleading advertising of that nature.
Recently, LG was penalised several hundred thousand Dollars for making
misleading claims about the efficiency of their refrigerators. I'm certain
the legislators would be happy to tackle Philips, if you can supply solid
supporting evidence to back your claims (about QUALITY CFLs).
If it's really the case, then CFLs will win out the day
in the end.
**By a massive margin, in fact.
Distorted by the fact that CFLs are effectively government sponsored,
**Not in Australia. They compete in the market, like any other product. They
cost approximately 5 times as much as an equivalent IC lamp. They last 5
times longer and use 1/5th as much energy.
his might prove an intgeresting read for you:
http://www.choice.com.au/consumer-ac...ightbulbs.aspx
and that I cannot buy the bulbs I want any more, because they have
banned them to make sure that I can't. If it was still incandescents
vs CFLs on a level playing field, the take up of CFLs would be much
less, which was the reason in the first place that they found it
necessary to legislate to force people to use them.
**I agree with that. Most people are, fundamentally, greedy, self-serving,
fools. They'll choose the cheapest, upfront solution, without regard to
longevity or running costs.
But I think that it is utterly wrong that the existing
technology has been banned completely on thin evidence and a less
than truthful declaration of the energy required to make and dispose
of the things, the only factor being pushed, being the lower energy
consumption when they are in use, as though this is the be-all and
end-all of their right to exist, and to be forced on us.
**Your opinion is duly noted. That comment is a political issue. I
recall EXACTLY the same arguments were made, here in Australia, when
leaded petrol was legislated out of existence. I susepct that, in 20
years, when we look back at this whole discussion, it will appear to
be a non-event. More efficient lighting will be the standard,
incandescents will be relegated to specialised applications (oven
lighting, etc) and the whole issue will be viewed for what it really
is - a storm in a teacup.
I fail to see how you equate leaded petrol to the situation with
CFLs. It is a different issue entirely, with very clear motives and
outcomes. You would have to be brain dead not to understand that
putting huge quantities of lead into the atmosphere at ground level
and in a form that people could breathe, is bad in every way.
**As is feeding excessive CO2 into the atmosphere. Too much CO2 is causing
excessive warming of this planet.
Removing lead from petrol had little if any impact on the general
public, because it was already possible to build engines that had no
requirement for lead in their fuel, without compromising performance.
**That was not the case here in Australia. Manufacturers had to alter their
production systems, costing millions of Dollars to cope. Most automobiles
suffered a performance fall when switched to unleaded fuel. Those who
retained their leaded fuel autos have to use expensive additives to
compensate.
It was, unlike CFLs, a classic example of a genuine *replacement*
technology, which suffered no disadvantages over the technology that
it was replacing.
**Not here in Australia. Costs rose for buyers.
There was not even any need to challenge this bit
of legislation, because the advantages were very clear to see in
large cities the world over. Even if you clung on to your car that
needed leaded petrol, this was still available at the pumps for some
years after unleaded came in, and after it was finally removed from
sale, there was still LRP (lead replacement petrol) available for
some long time after that. Finally, if you still wanted to run your
vintage engine, this could be achieved in most cases by the simple
expedient of altering the ignition timing, and in the worst case,
reducing the compression ratio a little, by fitting a thicker head
gasket.
**Incorrect. Leaded fuel vehicles require an additive to allow correct
operation of valves (seats). The simple expedient of altering timing is only
for making up for differences in octane, not lead.
CFLs are nothing like this. They are a substitute technology
which is unable to replace incandescents in a number of areas - such
as decorative light fittings - and having many other shortcomings in
comparison to incandescents, in exchange for the dubious possibility
that they in some way help to save the planet.
**Specialised IC lamps are still available in Australia. I don't know about
Europe. Fancy lamps, oven lamps and others are still available. For those
who refuse to change, halogen replacements are still available.
The point that Trevor makes about aircon to mitigate the heat output
of incandescents, holds no water here in Northern Europe. Unlike in
Australia, it seldom becomes hot enough up here for more than a few
days a year, that aircon is needed. And that is only in the summer,
when it's light for 16 hours of the day anyway, so there's not much
lighting being used. OTOH, for much of the year, it is cool or cold
enough to require heating in houses, and in this case, the complete
opposite of Trevor's premise, is true, in that the heat output from
the incandescent light bulbs, serves to mitigate heat input
requirement, from the central heating system.
**So? Northern Europe is not the whole world. Vast swathes of this
planet consume vast amounts of energy for air conditioning. Northern
Europe is a small player in that respect. Worse, CO2 emissions from
Northern Europe impact on those regions where a small amount of
warming will lead to serious problems. We only have one place that
we can all live. We all need to work together.
I'm having a bit of trouble picking the bones out of that one,
Trevor. You made a very clear statement that a disadvantage of
incandescents was that they generated heat that needed the use of
aircon plant to remove. I merely stated that this is not the case in
Northern Europe, where aircon is not common in the first place, and
where the exact opposite of what you contend, is true. In the case of
what you are stating, we are talking a double whammy in that the
lights waste energy in producing heat, and then your energy-thirsty
aircon plant has to be used to waste a bit more removing that heat.
Here, the heat is not 'wasted' for much of the year, as it partially
mitigates the required heating input from the central heating. 50
watts of heat pouring off a lightbulb into my living room, is 50
watts that my heating system has not got to put into my radiators. I
fail to see what your point is regarding Northern Europe against
'vast swathes of the planet etc'. The population density of Northern
Europe is much higher overall than that of many of these vast swathes
that you refer to, so the fact that we don't use huge amounts of
energy for aircon, equates to a much lower energy requirement per
person, taken overall.
**Apart from those places where geo-thermal energy is common, or
temperatures are too low, heat pumps (aka: air conditioners) are a far more
efficient method of heating a home than resistive heating.
And, just to reinforce the point: I do not consider lighting to be a
major problem in power consumption (and, therefore, CO2 emissions).
Nor do I consider appliances that use auxiliary power to be a major
issue either.
So why do you support the banning of a proven simple technology,
which did the job of providing even-intensity pleasing-quality light,
to everyone's satisfaction ??
**Points:
* IC lamps are NOT to everyone's satisfaction. I have ONLY used fluoro
lighting in my workshop for the last 40 years.
* IC lamps are unreliable and wasteful of energy.
--
Trevor Wilson
www.rageaudio.com.au