ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade Non-US Electrical Systems & Trades Australia to phase out standard light bulbs

Dave, No Way!!
That's just far too simple.
With all the computer gear used in offices these days, you'd think that there would be a Master switch at the door that could be turned off by the last person leaving.
I'm with you Paul regarding this "isolation" thingy, sounds like snake oil to me.
Does Simon know something that we don't?.

{Message edited for a typo.}

What about all the places that use UPS battery backups, that are constantly trickle-charging their batteries? Must admit, I'm guilty of that one.

The mercury in a CFL can be recycled, and many municipalities have already invested in the vacuum equipment to do this. But even if the user throws the old bulb in the trash, it releases less mercury into the environment than an incandescent, nearly anywhere in North America and most other parts of the world.

Why? Because coal power plants release mercury into the air. The amount of mercury emissions prevented by the CFL turns out to be more mercury than the amount contained by the bulb itself.

As for the comment about CFLs using much more energy to manufacture, I doubt it. The most energy-intensive part is forming the glass, which shouldn't take a lot more energy than forming the glass of an incandescent.

What they are is more labor-intensive. Those spirals, I've heard, have to be formed by hand.

Just costed out the difference in price at the hypermart. 100W incandescent bulb = 50 centimes.
Energy saving bulb 7.50euro, 1500% more.
If the savings are 80W @ 9c per kwh, when's the breakeven? 962 hours.
OK, it's worth it, eventually, given the long life of ES bulbs.
I saw on the BBC that if we all changed to low energy bulbs, that would be the equivalent of taking 70% of all the cars off the road. Food for thought there.

Now for a question. If we all use a lot less electricity, will the price go up?

Alan

7.5 euro for a single CFL? Well, heck... You can get a 6-pack at the orange box store for that here in the states.

BDC trade catalog, Micromark 11W BC CFL
£1.69 each or £1.29 for 10+, exclusive of VAT.

Another thought about the embodied energy of CFLs:

I've never actually taken a dead CFL apart and weighed the glass to compare it to an incandescent. (Let's just agree that the glass is the most energy-intensive part.) The CFL has to have more glass mass, since the spiral has more surface area. (In fact, for any fluorescent, the light output is proportional to the surface area.)

So, let's say the CFL takes 4x as much energy to manufacture. So what? They also last 6x to 10x as long, so it's still not a false economy.

You can buy 10k hour CFLs at the big orange store for $10 US per six-pack. At that rate, they are an economic no-brainer for the consumer (~$0.09/kWh) even if they last no longer than 1k hour incandescent.

The hour life expectancy, btw, is MTBF (mean time between failures, or more plainly, the average). So after 1k hours, 50% of A-19 incandescents will have failed, and 50% will still work. After 10k hours, 50% of CFLs will have failed, and 50% will still work. Remember that the next time a customer asks you to explain why his bulbs don't last very long!

So even if your CFL only lasts half it's advertised lifetime, it still used 25% of the kWh, and cost the consumer less, and I very much doubt that the increased embodied energy negated these gains.

I went back and rechecked the prices in the Hyper mart and 2 builders-merchants, one national big store the other a small local business. The cheapest cfl [coiled] was [ = to ] US$10 each, but they went up to over US$12 each for a 22W 'traditional bulb shape' version. Incandescents varied from $0.75 up to $1.50 each depending on brand.

Even at these prices, I'll admit a low energy bulb is paid for in less than 1000 hours use.

My objections are: delayed start; slow build up to full power, the color quality of the light, and that they can be dangerous to us users of rotating machinery. From my own perspective, is it me getting old, or are the 'equivalent to' wattage ratings on these bulbs a bit optimistic? They never seem to throw as much light out as an incandescent.

My other objection is being pontificated at by some fourth-rate smarmy gummint parasites on my right to choose my light bulbs, as if we had no other pressing problems to deal with. These are the very same morons who intend to waste best part of $20,000,000,000 on a bunch of losers who can run fast in the London Olympics in 2012. How much carbon that utterly boring fiasco will dump into the atmosphere, God alone knows.

That's a good point. If the filament bulb is to go out of production completely, what's going to happen for workshops? Is everyone going to have to use 3-phase to minimize the stroboscopic effect? Or will incandescent bulbs still be available, but perhaps only with some sort of "special" base so that people won't be tempted to buy them for regular home use? (If so, can we then expect workshop users to have to fork out more money for replacement holders/fittings?)

What about theatre/studio/TV use? I guess filament lamps will still be available in these sort of powers/styles.

I'd say so. Those 11W CFLs which are supposedly equivalent to 60W GLS don't look anywhere near as bright to me, unless it's just the different spectrum of light who makes them appear that way.

My sentiments exactly!

Most electronic ballasts nowadays operate at 20kHz or so. There is no perceiveable stroboscopic effect.

I agree that some sort of filament lamp is necessary for studio camera work. I'd guess that the oddball bases used for these applications would continue to be made.

For that matter, what about your oven light, or your fridge? Do LEDs even work at oven temps? I know CFLs don't. They don't work very well at fridge temps either, and aren't very well suited to being turned on and off repeatedly.

The apparent brightness of a CFL varies according to the direction of the light. A CFL burned base down will send less light downward than an equivalent incandescent. As CFLs become more common, fixture designs will evolve to compensate for this.

15W, not 11, is equivalent to a 60W incandescent, at least in the 120V world. I've read that incandescents are less efficient when designed for higher voltages, so 11W may be equivalent in the 240V world (that's why Edison and others initially fixed lighting voltages at 100-110V).

Here is a site with spectrographs of various fluorescent and incandescent lamps.