DIYbanter - View Single Post - CFLs

kreed

On Sep 25, 11:52*am, "Arfa Daily" wrote:
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.