"P E Schoen"

It starts to light at 50 VAC and
reaches full brightness at 100-120V, at which it draws about 100mA. That's
close enough to 12 watts for me!


** You are mixing up "watts" and "VA".

CFL inverters, like most simple SMPS, have a PF of about 0.6 due to the
peaky current wave shape drawn from the AC supply - so VA and watts
numbers differ by about a 2:1 ratio.

You did use a wide band "true rms " meter to measure the AC current -
didn't you ?



.... Phil