Like I said, it’s not a big deal, and I like CFLs, but a half second is more than I’m used to. When I’m fumbling for the light switch at night, there a set of three very close to each other. I often hit the wrong one, so my technique is simply to turn it on and if I don’t notice the light immediately, I turn it off and fumble for another switch. Maybe I just have super fast reaction times, but with the CFLs I just installed in the bathroom, there have already been several times I’ve turned the correct light switch on and off because I thought I had hit the wrong switch as I didn’t see it turn on immediately.
In the scheme of things, it’s not really significant, but it is noticeable and has caused me to mentally hiccup a bit.
Half a second is unacceptable, fortunately CF’s no longer have this lag and are pretty much all instant on (because 1/2 a second is totally unacceptable), however the full brightness delay is still a issue.
OK sure, but reducing your the power you use for lighting will have little to no effect on coal-fired power plants emissions but mass producing a new environmentally hazardous product along with a whole recycling/clean-up industry to deal with it is definitely not any more ecologically friendly.
As for the heating load, I was merely offering one simple explanation as to why someone’s electric bill may be unchanged that is consistent with the laws of physics.
What I have started doing in locations where there is room is buying one of these splitters and screwing in two 60-watt equivalent LED bulbs. Two 60-watt equivalents give you the same light as a 100-watt equivalent and the whole combination is cheaper than any 100-watt equivalent now available. Sadly, this won’t work in all fixtures because of the extra space required.
By the way, Switch LED has released a new line of bulbs that they say are suitable for enclosed fixtures. The new line is called Infinia and is available in 40 and 60 watt equivalents. They are comparable in price to the Cree bulbs. (They are also available at homedepot.com (but at not stores) and at amazon.com.)
Still haven’t had a reason to use CFLs. Dad just grabs a case of incandescents from work and brings them home. We have an almost full case of 40 W and the same for 60 W. I don’t know how long they will last.
LEDs are, in principle and in good fixtures, much faster than incandescents. (I work in entertainment lighting and dimming curves and speeds are a big fat deal to us.) An LED doesn’t take anywhere as long to heat up as an actual tungsten filament. However, I’ve seen cheap LED bulbs that do have a short delay, maybe as long as half a second, before they snap to full brightness. It’s not a warming up, slowly getting brighter problem like it is in old CFLs. There’s just a short delay before it jumps straight to full power. My best guess is that there’s a relay inside that needs to trip before the light turns on.
I think that people are talking about CFLs that take a few moments to come to full brightness. I’ve never seen a CFL that doesn’t give some light immediately, but some CFLs can take as much as a minute to get to full brightness.
We have a few - like three or four - 40w and 60w left. Not because we have been hoarding; we just bought them sometime and haven’t used them yet. Most of our house is CFLs now except for a few odd halogen bulbs.
My wife likes lamps; we have several in almost every room.
I entered ‘no incandescents,’ but by that I mean we have no stockpile. I suspect that there are a few fixtures that don’t get used often enough to have burned the last incancescent out. We’ve used up all of the spare ones, though.
They can’t build power plants and upgrade the grid so easily in built up areas.
They have incentives in the rate setting process that makes it worthwhile for them. They sell each customer 150kwh for $2, instead of 300kwh for $3. (I’m making up these numbers to illustrate the point). The utility makes more profit, the customer pays less money and there is less carbon put into the atmosphere.
More mercury in the groundwater though, because most CFLs end up in landfills.
The company I work for gets a rebate if we use less electricity during certain times. Effectively the rate goes up as usage goes up.
I have a half dozen. I use them for places where I need to maintain some low heat in the winter. For example, I keep a lit incandescent bulb strung at the end of an extension cord inside a washing machine that’s in an outdoor closet. Other people use them in places like kennels, and so on. What we’ll do when they’re completely unavailable, I don’t know.
My issue with Compact Fluorescents and Halogen bulbs is they’re still very expensive - last time I replaced a CFL it was something like $5. I know they’ve come down in price but a 40w or 60w incandescent was about 60-85c by comparison, and for a light in the toilet or the under-stairs cupboard that was all you needed.
I change maybe 2 incandescent bulbs a year, so though I haven’t consciously stockpiled any, the few boxes I have will probably last for another year or two. I did buy one box of CFL bulbs last year to try out - didn’t care for the light, and I burned through both bulbs within a month. So I don’t know if I had a bad brand (can’t remember - it was generic) or just bad luck, but it did put me off the things a bit. When the time comes in another year or two to get new bulbs, I’ll probably try LED’s and see if I like that light better.