Consider the rap that is currently being given to ordinary, incandescent light bulbs (by groups including one co-recipient of this year's Nobel Peace Prize): They're so wasteful, 90% of their energy goes into heat instead of light! Replace all your bulbs with compact fluorescents - you will be helping to save the Earth and, on top of that, your electricity bills will go down enough to pay for the new bulbs 10x over by the time they wear out!
All true, of course... unless you heat your house. If you heat your house, then the "wasted" heat from an incandescent bulb isn't wasted at all - instead it, umm... heats your house. Replacing incandescent bulbs with more-costly fluorescents may make you feel better, but for those months when you have the heat on, your electric bill will not decrease one iota - nor your carbon footprint.
Something to think about, especially for those living at high latitudes...
(N.B. This point is not original with me, but I forget where and how I first saw it made.)
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3 comments:
We're not going to settle the incandescent vs. CFL debate here. Sure, the heat is not wasted while you heat your house. Especially if you don't mind sitting under heat-lamps while you read. Me, I like being heat-treated like a Denny's breakfast.
My main motivator for switching to CFLs: with ~15 bulbs around the house, and a typical lifetime of 1 year for incandescents, I'm changing bulbs all the time. I have better things to do. I moved in, replaced everything with CFLs, and it's been a year since I've had to replace any (except for the spotlights above the mantle; but, I'm replacing those with CFLs as they go out). I'm dying to find diode lights, which I expect to be buried with.
Another anti-CFL meme, which I haven't seen resolved: CFLs use mercury, which ends up in landfills when they're spent. Unsettled is precisely how much they use relative to other inputs into landfills -- like household thermometers.
Plus, CFL-users are were-wolves. With gnashing, pointy teeth.
I have no problem with treating CFL's as a luxury item... like satellite radio or HDTV. My issue comes with the "save the Earth" claim, because frankly, I doubt it. After all, the CFL has to overcome the raw cost differential (more $ = more economic activity = more CO2) versus incandescent. The fact that many people heat their houses for much of the year adds more weight on the skeptic's side of the scale.
On the other hand, CFL users, up until about February 2007, were uniformly h4wt. It's the PETA-effect.
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