Fluorescent lights: efficiency?

Factual Questions
1

I was looking in a camping store at portable fluorescent lights and I came across some that had amps/volts/watts specifications on the packaging. One stated that it consumed a whopping 5 amps at 12 volts, to run an 8 watt bulb! Some were better than that, but all were pretty damn inefficient. I suppose that has something to do with the ballast required for running a fluoro (although 60 watts (5A at 12V) to run an 8 watt bulb still astounds me) but I thought fluoros were supposed to be efficient? Or are they efficient at producing light, while being electrically inefficient (if that makes sense) or what?

What’s the story?

2

SWAG: It would also have to power an inverter of some kind to step up the voltage, as 12V won’t ionize the tube. I find the 60 watts hard to believe, too…

3

The 5 A may just be max current draw during startup.

4

I lost a bet with myself. I was punting on you posting something in under 30 minutes, Desmo. Wrong by a measly 11 minutes! :wink:

5

Sometimes I have to actually do real work, Princhester. :slight_smile:

6

It’s a bugger that, innit?

7

Reckon.

Here’s some specs for a low voltage fluoro:

http://www.kenital.com/category.asp?ID=1

That sounds more reasonable.