Pros - They use less energy and last longer.
Cons - The upfront cost is higher and it’s doubtful that people will actually dispose of them as hazardous waste. So mercury will end up in the dump and eventually in ground water. Also, incandescent bulbs generate heat; fluorescent bulbs not so much. Might this mean your furnace will run a tad longer? Might be insignificant: might not.
The mercury thing bugs me a little, but there’s still a net gain from using compact fluorescents. From the government’s EnergyStar site: “A coal-fired power plant will emit 13.6 milligrams of mercury to produce electricity required to use an incandescent light bulb, compared to 3.3 milligrams for a CFL.” You can see a few more details here (pdf warning).
A typical cfl contains about 4 milligrams of mercury. Multiplying that by the global bulb production rate of about about 10 billion per year yields a mercury consumption rate of about 40,000 kg per year. Now that figure is for a situation in which all incandescents are replaced with cfl’s, and the bulb production rate remains steady, neither of which is a realistic assumption, but still it’s a lot of mercury to spread around.
The first link I gave suggests that cfl bulbs may reduce the major point source of mercury pollution:
Of course, Hydro-Quebec generates nearly all (99%) its power hydro-electrically, so no Hg is released in that. Apparently a substantial amount is released by the flooding that accompanies the construction of a dam. On the other hand, they sell their excess power to Con Ed thus reducing the amount of coal they burn. I don’t have air-conditioning so the extra heat from incandescent bulbs is not a problem in summer and is irrelevant in the winter (where we heat electrically until the temperature goes below -12 C, when we are switched to oil).
Well, if you guys in Quebec all used compact fluorescents, you’d have more hydropower to sell to the American Midwest, let’s say, enabling them to get less power from coal plants. At least theoretically.
But if you ask me, CFLs are just a bridge technology until we get to something much better – maybe LEDs?
Older CFL’s weren’t recommended for locations colder than freezing. Current ones are OK down to -20ºF, which will cover most locations. (And the old would work in cold locations, just not as well. They would come on dim, and flicker for a minute or so until they warmed up enough to work properly. Presumably, during that first minute they were using more electricity (maybe as much as 1/2 as an incandescent, instead of 1/3rd or 1/4th) and probably are wearing out faster. This winter, I had to replace one that I installed in an unheated barn in Minnesota in the summer of 1999. Possibly using it during cold Minnesota winters wore it out early – it only lasted 6 years instead of the expected 7 years. Still saved a whole lot of incandescents!)
Most CFL’s have a fair amount of plastic parts, so I expect they’d melt inside an oven. So I wouldn’t try one there.
But really, oven & fridge bulbs are pretty minor users of electricity. Even if they all stayed as incandescent bulbs, that would be fine. Replacing the other incandescents in your house will be the big energy savings.
Another comment on cold use for CFLs-the newer ones work just fine. I replaced all of the exterior lamps at my fire station with CFLs, and have had no problems.
The bit about turning them on & off making them die isn’t true. I replaced all the bulbs in my apartment with CFs over a year ago and not one of them has burned out yet.
I’ve been using them for about 10 years in any fixture that gets substantial use (admittedly not many given that I’m in a 1bdrm apt), and I’ve had a whole 3 burn out on me. They get switched just as much as incandescents would be.
I live in Montreal. A compact fluorescent bulb has been burning outside every night for the last year. Needless to say, conditions have been harsh, so whoever wrote that doesn’t have his/her facts right.
:dubious: My experience is different. I installed a compact flourescent light outside by the enterance of my home. In cold weather the light will only glow dimly when first switched on. After it warms up, it looks fine; but before that it’s quite dim. So if you plan on leaving it on for long periods, it’s likely not an issue; but if (like me) you have it on a motion sensor and only need it when you go in and out of the house, it’s less than ideal in cold weather.
And the off-brand ones I bought (made in China, but I forget the company name) buzz loudly. From now on I’m only getting name-brands that I recognize.
My motion-detector near the garage has CFL spotlights, and works like that – they are dim for the first 30 seconds or so. But that dim light is still plenty for me to go up the back steps.
I could spend the money to buy the more expensive CFL’s that are rated for cold temps, if it bothered me. Or just put 1 CFL and 1 incandescent into the motion-detector fixture. That’s what we did at my mothers; at her age, we wanted to make sure she has good lighting.
Ditto on the motion detector outside. One blew immediately ( water ran into the wiring… :smack: ) and the other still works fine as of this morning.
I did The Big Swap about 3 years ago. So far, exactly one bulb has blown. I use anything from the 60w ( comparable to incandescent ) to 300 w. In the bathrooms I use the enclosed pretty smooth ones, otherwise they’re bare.
I love em. The mercury thing is news to me and truly worries me. However, the recycle rate is SO low that I wonder where I should be sending the few that will fail over the next few years.
See, I see it as false logic to say, well, the world blows 1 million incandescent bulbs a year and has replaced 100 million with CFL’s so we will still have 1 million a year to deal with, mercury wise. The lamps last longer. Period.
I started using CFLs here and there a few years ago. One or two have burned out and I’m pretty sure I just tossed them in the trash.
With CFLs being talked about so much lately by Oprah, Gore & Wal-Mart, etc, it’s finally entered my consciousness they contain mercury and I shouldn’t throw them away. But, I know my recycling company doesn’t want fluorescents of any kind, and I’m sure neither does the trash company.
I’m stuck with “dispose of properly” but don’t know what that means around here. A distant hazardous waste facility? I’m supposed to burn a gallon of gas to take one bulb there?
Maybe I’ll just toss this one bulb. That’s not much mercury. I hope 10 million other people don’t do that, though. But if they do, that’s a lot of mercury eventually making it into the landfills, the watersheds, and eventually the oceans, isn’t it?