One other issue that is not being talked about in regard to self-ballasted CFL's.
Are power systems going to be able to handle the harmonic content that these lamps put back into the mains?
Sure, changing the odd lamp here and there (as has been the case up until now)is probably not going to be much of a problem, but, if you have a compulsory up-take of these lamps, where every house in a given area HAS to have them, is this going to cause problems with the loading of cables and transformers?
What percentage of a typical home's power usage is lighting? That percentage would have to fall with CFLs, in theory. I guess we need to know just how much harmonics are involved.
I'd be worried about harmonics even on single phase when most of the load is the same kind of harmonic mix (e.g. a single current spike all at the same time in the cycle, 100 or 120 times a second). The I2R losses are increased with more narrow and higher spikes of current (because the averaging of the loss is figured after squaring the instantaneous current).
