The Down Side of Flourescent Bulbs and CFL's

I have not found a problem like this. I think it is an "urban legend" spread by incandescent light manufacturers. I have been using CFLs in my closets for 5 years, they have yet to burn out.

Bob Waldrop,
OKC www.energyconservationinfo.org

I can't find any reference to an 85% reduction in life expectancy for CFLs with short cycle times on the energy star program website. But the site does say this: "Turning a CFL on and off frequently can shorten its life. To take full advantage of the energy savings and long life of ENERGY STAR qualified CFLs, it is best to use them in light fixtures you use the most and are on for at least 15 minutes at a time. Good locations include outdoor light fixtures, indoor fixtures in the living room, family room, kitchen, bedroom, recreation room, etc. This is not to say you should leave your lights on all day if you use ENERGY STAR qualified CFLs. It is still a good habit to turn the lights off when you leave the room for an extended period of time. You may also have heard that CFLs use a lot of energy when turning on and off. While there is a brief surge in energy use when a CFL is turned on, with today's starting technology, that surge usually lasts about a tenth of a second and consumes about as much energy as five seconds of normal operation. So, even when turned on and off frequently, a CFL uses less energy than its incandescent equivalent. But because turning a CFL on and off more frequently can shorten its life and CFLs are more expensive than incandescents, we recommend consumers use CFLs in applications where they are on for at least fifteen minutes." The site also says that manufacturers of energy star compliant CFLs are required to offer a two year warranty against defects for early failure. This seems to indicate you can be assured of at least 2 years even with short cycles.

Dear Friends

I think that the public is being better informed than they used to be on how to deal with a broken CFL and how to handle them for disposal. Many state and local agencies care disposal and clean up information on their Web sites. Home Depot takes back the CFL of an brand. Home Depot states that there is a retain store within 10 miles or less of 90 percent of the US population, so the concern about using lots of gas to dispose of a CFL is no longer really a concern. Besides, my local Solid Waste site, which also takes CFLs, is as close to our local urban population as is the local Home Deopt, so we have two "always open" sites for CFL disposal. I really don't think this is an issue of the magnitude that should discourage consumers from using CFLs. I have prepared a document to assist our local population in the disposal and clean up of broken CFLs. This is in the process of being distributed in our area (Tompkins County, Ithaca, Upstate NY). I can provide a web link to the document in a couple of days. Please feel free to crib if you care to do so. (I didn't attach it to this e-mail as I'm not sure if the list accepts attachments. If it does, I can send it as an attachment.) See my additional comments below. Have a wonderful day.

Tom

The E Source Technology Assessment Service addresses many questions like this in Tech FAQs. It is true, CFLs are not the best solution for all applications-yet. The technology is improving.

Q: When leaving and returning to a room, what's the shortest time interval at which it's cost-effective to turn off fluorescent lights?

A: If you're going to be gone more than 15 minutes, it pays to turn off fluorescent lights. This is based on the trade-off between increased energy costs for leaving the lamps on, and decreased lamp life from frequent switching. This calculation was based on energy costs of $.06 to $.08 per kilowatt-hour and equipment costs for a 4 foot T8 lamp ranging from $1.50 to $3.00. The Lighting Design Lab has a good explanation in "Should I Turn Off Fluorescent Lighting When Leaving a Room?" which can be found at www.lightingdesignlab.com/articles/switching/switching_fluorescent.htm [cid:[email protected]]  However that's strictly a technology/economics perspective. From the standpoint of human behavior, it's probably best to encourage people to turn off the lights whenever they leave the room so that they'll get into the habit.

Q: Do you have any data on potential problems with landfills if CFL sales increase dramatically?

A: CFLs last about ten times as long as incandescent lamps, so overall there should be less material entering landfills. However, there are concerns about mercury contamination if lots of CFLs are simply tossed out with the trash, so most manufacturers and many utilities are encouraging CFL recycling. That said, the amount of mercury in a CFL is very small-typically only 4 to 5 milligrams (mg), and even less in the newest products. In contrast, a typical watch battery contains about 25 mg of mercury, and some home thermostats contain as much as 2,000 mg. In addition, as lighting consultant Victor Roberts points out, even if a large number of CFLs end up in landfills (which we hope will not be the case), they won't represent a big increase in mercury content. The United Nations Global Mercury Assessment report [cid:[email protected]] estimates that about 145 metric tons of mercury entered the solid waste stream in the U.S. in 2000. If 200 million CFLs, each with 5 mg of mercury, were thrown away, that would add only one metric ton-less than 1 percent of the mercury in the waste stream. Because of their greater efficiency compared to incandescent lighting, CFLs can actually reduce the amount of mercury introduced into the environment where electricity is generated in coal-fired power plants. For more information see our Question of the Month from Tech News, March 2006, "Net Environmental Benefit of CFLs."

- Gwen

Gwen Farnsworth
Manager, Research
E Source
www.esource.com
303-345-9111

I put all new (and some used) CFL's in our house when we finished it in 2001. We have replaced two bulbs and broken none. They have reduced our lighting costs by over 75% and helped keep the house cooler. It's just BS that they don't last a long time unless coddled. Also, I have not broken any thermometers, my car engines have not exploded releasing toxic materials, our gas lines in our home have not ruptured realesing toxic gas, I have successfully kept my Roundup out of our food supply, my paint thinner is still in the container (I haven't spilled much over the years), my fiberglass insulation is properly installed so the cancer-causing fibers are not allowed into our indoor air, and additionally I have been up on my roof many times for maintenance reasons and have not fallen off. Home Depot will accept old CFL's.

Mark

Most stores that sell CFLs here also accept burnt out bulbs, including Walmart, Menards, Home Depot and other large chains, so proper disposal is as easy as using cloth bags at the grocery store. You just have to remember to take the burnt out CFLs with you when you go to buy new ones. I see a lot of people doing it, but don't have any data to cite on how many bulbs are actually returned.

Marcia Hartwig
Madison, WI

Hi Laura,

The life of CFLs is not determined by them being left switched on for long periods of time. CFLs should be switched off if the area they illuminate is to be unoccupied for more than 10 to 15 minutes. Although frequently switching a CFL on and off does cause a minor reduction in its operating life (as it will with most types of lamps) the calendar life of a CFL (total operating time plus switched off time) will be several times longer than the calendar life of the equivalent incandescent lamp. Like Rob, I use several CFLs in my house. I have found them very reliable and they last several times longer than incandescent globes. I have heard complaints about short CFL lamp life from people who purchased very cheap CFLs, but that is probably a matter of the quality of the CFL.

Cheers
John

John Osborne 
Renewables, Sustainability Victoria
T: 03 8626 8783 
F: 03 9663 1007 
Level 28, Urban Workshop,
50 Lonsdale Street, Melbourne 3000 
www.sustainability.vic.gov.au

In Australia, even in a regional area such as where I live, there are recycling collection points at our municipal dumps. if these are no collection points in an area, that's a problem to address with civil authorities because they're not doing their job. As for the size of the problem of disposing or dumping fluorescent bulbs, firstly remember that fluoro tubes have been widely used for decades and they have mostly been dumped to landfill all through those years. We are now entering an era when there is a far wider understanding of the problem and also when there is likely to be far fewer fluoro tubes and CFLs (same device only smaller) needing disposal because of longer service lives. A lot depends on education but it needs to be *correct* and not based on myths and extreme reactions, which this list-server has seen fair evidence of lately. On the service life question - this is a lot of mischief. Where fluoro tubes are used with electronic controls (not magnetic ballasts) *and* those controls are dimmable , it is well understood that new fluoro tubes must not be dimmed for the first 100 hours of running time otherwise their service lives will be shortened significantly. But that is all about DIMMING the tubes. Many CFLs are not dimmable anyway. So let's look at the science first and see if there's any rational scientific reason for this reported phenomenon, and from my view of it, there seems to be none at all. What I have found personally in the 13 or so years that I have been using CFLs is that there are good brands and there are rubbish brands. So guess what? I stop buying a particular brand if I find it performs poorly. I haven't had to replace a CFL for some years now and I switch them on and off often, and well within 15 mins.. if I'm only in a room for a short time. So can anyone tell us where this advice quoted by Laura came from? I'm fairly dubious about Energy Star suggesting that way of dealing with it. It really does sound like urban myth or the work of mischievous conventional bulb makers.

regards
Lisha K.

James Cook University,
Australia

I have another interesting dilemma with CFLs. I have put them in recessed ceiling cans that have heat sensors in them. I thought, that as they burn much cooler than incandescents do, I would never see them turn off to cool down. However, they do turn off and it is quite distracting. My next step is to disconnect the sensors.

Regarding your 1st question:

If homeowners continue to use incandescent bulbs a greater amount of mercury will be released to the air, water, and soil due to coal burning and large hydro projects. According to Environment Canada "Coal-fired electricity generation represents one of the largest sources of atmospheric mercury emissions to the Canadian environment. Also, hydro-electric dams increase mercury levels in the water reservoirs that result from their construction. Therefore, the use of fluorescent lamps, which are far more energy efficient than incandescent bulbs, can reduce energy consumption and may, as a result, decrease overall mercury releases" And that is assuming CFLs are all thrown away and all of their mercury content is released to the environment. It is true that recycling CFLs is difficult in many regions. I save mine and take them to our eco-station twice a year. Perhaps you could organize something with your neighbours as I have done where everyone brings their eco-station materials to one location in the neighbourhood and does a bulk run. As education about the proper clean up of broken bulbs and disposal of burned out bulbs increases and as more and more facilities accept them, this will become less and less of an issue.

And for question 2:

I have always turned off CFLs on leaving a room and have rarely had a bulb last less than 5 years (I replaced most bulbs in my home with CFLs about 15 years ago). I am not sure where Energy Star got their data, but I have heard that while it is correct that the lamp's life is shortened by frequent switching the effect is negligible compared with power savings. From the Scientific American article "Does Turning Fluorescent Lights Off Use More Energy Than Leaving Them On?" (see link below) "According to Francis Rubinstein, a staff scientist in the Building Technologies Department at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Environmental Energy Technologies Division...the slight reduction in lamp life is a small effect relative to the energy savings" And from the same article :"Mary Beth Gotti, manager of the GE Lighting & Electrical Institute in Cleveland, agrees. For all practical purposes, "it almost always makes sense to turn the lights off" http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=turn-fluorescent-lights-off-when-you -leave-room

Hope this helps.
Bill MacKinnon

Archie,

Are you using CFLs that are designed for recessed fixtures? They are designed take the heat better. http://www.edf.org/page.cfm?tagID=633&fixture=0&shape=0&feature1=1&brightness=0&color=0 From an E Source article: "CFLs do work in enclosed or recessed fixtures, but are likely to suffer shorter lifetimes due to higher temperatures at the ballast-especially with CFLs above 20 watts. This is another reason to go with dedicated CFL fixtures: they use a separate ballast with a pin-based CFL, so the ballast isn't exposed to the higher temperatures." You could try LED downlights. It's a new application, so it may not be perfect either. This manufacturer makes them: http://creelighting.com/index.aspx

- Gwen

For Those who are interested,

Mythbusters did an episode on the energy consumption and lifespan of a variety of lights and came to the conclusion that unless you were to exit and re-enter a room faster than you blink, then it is more cost effective to turn off the lights in a room regardless of what type they are. They did an on off test of a variety of lights as well finding no significant loss of life with cfl's.

Here is the episode if anyone would like to look into it further.

Episode 69: 22,000-Foot Fall

Get ready! Jamie and Adam take the plunge on a myth that originated in World War ll and detonate the biggest explosion in MythBusters history. The incredible and seemingly impossible myth: A WW ll turret gunner falls 22,000 feet, only to be saved by the explosion of a 1,000-pound bomb beneath him that cushions his fall. Can this be true? Meanwhile, Grant, Kari and Tory spark into action and visit a bulb that has been burning for 106 years; in a moment of enlightenment, they conclusively turn the lights off on this myth.

Premiere: Dec. 13, 2006

Danny Lewis <><
Education Coordinator
Raven Recycling Society
(867)667-7269 ext. 23

"I have heard complaints about short CFL lamp life from people who purchased very cheap CFLs, but that is probably a matter of the quality of the CFL." Billions of the damn things are shipped from China, packaged every which way by any dumb corporation that comes along. Sometimes they're given away for free by a local utility, sometimes they're armored in almost impenetrable plastic, sometimes they're decorated with pink poodles for $10 apiece (just kidding about the latter). How does one determine what's a "very cheap" CFL? (Please don't blame people who may be acquiring CFLs from a disrespectable source which one cannot possibly determine - BTW, the CFLs that failed for me has "General Electric" stamped on them, for $6 apiece.) Here's the bottom line: these CFLs are a mountainous plague because we are unwilling to face the facts of our unsustainable way of life. Not only are we committing global suicide, but we're driving ourselves crazy in the process (e.g., war, economic injustice, environmental illness, tyrannical work schedules, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.). Perhaps there's something to nature's diurnal cycles after all. Maybe we should rethink the whole tortilla (if we can afford one, now that our vehicles run on tortillas).

Cheers,
Adam in bubbular Massachusetts, USA where tortillas are still cheap but gas is not (and it's about time)

Dear Adam,

You'd better migrate to Australia. None of us are crazy; we just open another stubbie and throw an extra prawn on the barbie! More seriously, sustainability is a journey and, in the absence of an intricately detailed road map, we have to map out our route as best we can. This will mean that we try out lots of different tools such as CFLs which I'm convinced are proving to be useful, even if they're not the complete answer to all of our lighting issues. As we produce more CFLs, people will devise ways of making them more efficient, cheaper and less polluting when they break. So I assess quality by a combination of newness and price (all things being equal, the newer they are and the more expensive they are, the better quality they should be). My wife and I converted our house to CFLs over 15 years ago. We've broken one in that time, had to replace maybe 4 or 5 and are saving heaps in our electricity costs. CFLs are the only way to go in our view.

Bernie