snip
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.
But we're not talking cost here. We're talking energy budgets and planetary
pollution from industrial processes. Any fool can say "this transistor costs
us 20 cents. This capacitor costs us 5 cents" and so on. But it's an awful
lot more complex to start looking into the energy budget for refining the
silicon. For turning the silicon into P and N types. For refining the
plastic from the oil. For getting the oil out of the ground. For getting the
iron ore out of the ground. For refining the iron out of the ore, and then
converting it to steel. Transporting all the constituents. Manufacturing
them into a transistor. Then shipping that transistor to the CFL maker. And
on and on. And that's just one component out of a considerable number - see
http://www.pavouk.org/hw/lamp/en_index.html
My point obviously being that in comparison, an incandescent has a very few
constituent parts, all of which are simple, and have simple well defined
manufacturing processes, that could easily be energy budgeted.
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.
Well, good luck with that one. As long as they have to keep putting any kind
of control electronics in them to make them run from AC line voltage, then
as long as they are not subsidised, they are never going to get as cheap as
incandescents, or have as low an energy budget to produce. Whilst there have
been some major advances in recent years in the light output and efficiency
of LEDs , they still have relatively poor colour rendition qualities for
home use, and still struggle to produce even omni-directional light as is
required for general lighting, due to the fact that the light is produced at
a flat surface. As to not experiencing the same longevity as you with my
CFLs, I thought that I carefully explained that I have purchased all
qualities of the things, and have not found the expensive 'quality' names to
be any longer lived than the cheapos. This seems to be the findings of
others on here, as well.
snip
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.
Well no. That is an unfair slant in favour of the CFL argument. As long as
cheap crappy ones are available, *most* people - not just "fools" as you so
disparagingly refer to them - will buy them over the expensive quality ones,
because they don't understand the difference, as we do. It's human nature to
buy cheap, which is why the Chinese are doing so well on the back of
world-wide sales of cheap - and often crap quality - electronic goods,
offered for sale through all our nations' supermarkets. This is where the
whole thing breaks down as an argument about the eco validity of any of this
technology. The manufacturers of the cheap CFLs are in it purely to make
money. They have no concern at all for the 'green' credentials of their
products, except in as much as they will sell in their millions,
irrespective of their quality, just because the *are* CFLs. So whilst it is
true what you say in that the cheapo ones are not representative of the
state of the art, unfortunately, they *are* representative of what is being
sold in quantity to the general public, and their contribution to the
validity of the discussion, cannot be ignored until *all* CFLs that are
offered for sale, are indeed representative of the state of the art. I'm
sorry if that offends your sensibilities, but it *is* part of the overall
equation. In fact, your analogy with the cars, is self-defeating, because
you could look at it from the other angle, and say that if you take say BMW
as your reference, then all other cheaper makes are invalid because they are
not 'state of the art', and people who buy them are fools. The cheaper makes
will always be bought by the general public, because not everyone can afford
the safety and performance of a BMW, just like not everyone can afford to
pay £5 or whatever for a bulb to replace an incandescent that they are used
to paying 50 pence for. If there is a CFL costing 50 pence on the shelf
alongside the £5 one, you tell me, which one are most uninformed people
going to buy ? And it is for precisely this reason that the whole CFL thing,
taken on a world-wide basis, falls apart.
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.
But that is actually another comparatively minor issue. Important from the
pollution point of view, yes, but insignificant compared to the
manufacturing energy budgets and pollution-causing manufacturing processes,
that are NEVER mentioned by these groups, because they never even consider
these 'hidden' aspects.
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.
I cannot give numbers, because there are none that FULLY analyse ALL energy
inputs and pollution outputs for the hundreds of processes involved. And
when I say "costs", I am not talking monetary ones, as I explained earlier.
As I said, I am sure that it is just too complicated a situation to ever be
able to arrive at a real figure, but no matter how much you don't want to
believe it, you have to accept that there *are* many hundreds of process
steps and transport steps involved in CFL manufacture, compared to
incandescent manufacture, which *must* add up to a very significant amount,
that is being totally ignored in making the 'green' case for the things.
Whether it can be accurately quantified or not, if you stop and think about
it, it is common sense.
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).
See my earlier comments regarding quality CFLs versus the reality of what
people *actually* buy ...
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.
I don't understand this. By saying that, you make my case for me, and
utterly destroy your own ...
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.
That is by no means proven in science. Only in the media. There are many
reputable scientists who believe otherwise.
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.
There is little difference between engines that burn leaded and unleaded
fuel. For sure, there had to be some modification to the production and
design processes, but these occur for the manufacturers every time they
bring out a new model or engine. The monetary costs of doing this are
factored into a new design, so will actually not have been any particularly
burdensome problem for the manufacturers. Drops in performance of existing
engines when converted to run on unleaded fuel were actually fairly minor,
and most people here, at least, did not even bother converting because
leaded petrol was available alongside unleaded, for a reasonable time
period. Back when all this happened, cars were not that long-lived anyway,
so unless you had only just bought a new one, it was no great shakes that
the next one you bought would be produced with an unleaded petrol engine,
already designed in. The manufacturers knew this was coming, and had plenty
of time to carry out the required design alterations, and actually to
amortise the costs in their existing production, in readiness for the
legislation.
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.
The lead was in the petrol as an anti-knock agent, as I recall
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.
Nope. Pretty much all outlawed here. You can't get a proper golf ball or
candle any more. You haven't been able to get pearlised bulbs of any
description for a long time. Truly specialised ones for ovens etc are still
available, because it is simply impossible to replace them with anything
else. Halogen 'Apollo nose-cones' are still available at the moment, and
capsule halogens still are, but only in clear envelopes, which are pretty
useless compared to frosted ones. I was looking around the other day to see
if I could still find any halogen replacements (the type where a halogen
capsule bulb is incorporated into a 'traditional' shaped incandescent
envelope), and the only ones of those that I could find were clear. These
give a very harsh light, whereas the pearlised ones, gave a very nice even
light
Arfa