mapawatt » incandescent

What is the Best CFL? Buyer Beware!

pmapawatt — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 01:55:59 +0000

CFL Bulb for Recessed Lighting

I think one of the best ways I can help you know which brand of CFL bulb to buy is to share with you my experience with buying CFLs at the lowest price. I made this mistake in a very large way and hope that this will help others avoid a similar mistake.

Last year, I decided to upgrade the lighting in my home from incandescent bulbs to CFLs. This was a challenge since I have recessed lighting, chandeliers and outdoor lanterns. Altogether, this is close to 100 bulbs to upgrade.

I started with the recessed lighting. The incandescent flood lights in my home were rated at 65 watts. I made a trip to a large discount retailer and found a great price on Lights of America CFL recessed flood bulbs rated at 16 watts that should be the equivalent lighting output of an incandescent 65 watt bulb. (this was actually printed right on the package) Even at discount retailer prices, buying dozens of CFLs is not for the penny pincher at heart!

When I got the bulbs home, three were DOA and didn’t work at all. I exchanged them and finished the installation. After a few weeks, I moved on to replacing all of the candelabra-style bulbs with the same Lights of America brand CFL but shaped like a candle and rated at 7 watts. I purchased around 40 of these bulbs and two were also DOA and didn’t work at all. I made an exchange trip and installed the last two in one of my chandeliers.

After about 3 months of use, one of the 16 watt recessed lighting bulbs burned out. Shortly thereafter, two of the candelabra bulbs burned out; one on each chandelier. This time, I replaced them both with Philips brand CFLs since this is a trusted brand.

Today, less than a year after the original retrofit, I now have three recessed lighting CFLs and two more candelabras burned out. I just made a trip to a different big box retailer and bought three General Electric Energy Smart 15 watt recessed lighting flood bulbs and installed them. I discovered that one of the dead bulbs was the new Philips EL/A R30 bulb I had just purchased a few months ago!

An important note to make is that several of the incandescent bulbs I replaced were at least 4 years old and a few had never been replaced since I bought our home in 2003! I have since spoken with a friend who is an engineer at another large lighting manufacturer and he told me that CFLs don’t do well in recessed cans due to ballasts overheating. If this is true, I question why any trusted brand would carry a CFL bulb built to be placed in a recessed can.

Right now, I have a stack of bulbs for which I will attempt to get warranty replacements. The Lights of America warranty is two years and the Philips is 7 years. However, they all require that you have a register receipt and proof of purchase. Don’t ask me if I saved the bar code from the packages. Who does this for light bulbs? Who will keep a light bulb register receipt for 7 years?

I’ll do a follow-up post with the results of my warranty replacement quest. Until then, here are the brands and models of CFL bulbs that failed:

Lights of America Model 2915 L 15W 280mA (397) China

Lights of America Model E12 Mini-Decor 7W China

Philips Model EL/A R30 16W 225mA China

So what is the best CFL? At this point, I can’t answer this question. All I can do for you is provide some advice when purchasing bulbs:

Check the warranty on the bulbs before you buy
Cut out the bar code from the packages and save them with the store receipt in a folder
Consider contacting the manufacturer before buying recessed lighting CFLs. You may be better off waiting for LEDs to come down in price before replacing these bulbs.

Tell us about your experience with CFL lighting upgrades on the Mapawatt Community.

- The Mapawatt Team

It’s not the type of bulb, it’s how you use it

Chris — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 20:59:46 +0000

Green, Inc. (the NY Times Green blog) had a great interview with lighting designer Howard Brandston recently. His main point being that CFLs do not put out the same quality of light as incandescent, and when picking a lighting solution for your home or business, you need to view the system as a whole. Believe it or not, I agreed with him on most points.

As I mentioned in CFL Strategy, it doesn’t always make sense to use CFLs, and when you do, you want to target lights that are on the longest amount of time. This helps with their lifespan (they don’t like being switch on and off) and helps with the payback period. But like Mr. Brandston says, there are some situations where incandescents just work better.

The part I agree with him the most came at the very end of the interview where he says:

Control the amount of time you have the lights on, and you will do well. People leave the lights on all the time. We’ve got to get new habits. We’d be better off promoting occupancy sensors and dimming controls and recommending all dimmers be set to only provide 95 percent of the power to the light sources. Then we would be making real headway.

Basically, whether you choose to use CFLs or regular incandescents, control how you use them! When you don’t need them on, flick the switch. A Negawatt (energy that is never used) is better than a more efficiently used KiloWatt!

If you have a lamp you keep on when you leave the house at night for security reasons, you could make that a CFL. If you have another lamp you use just for reading and you like incandescent light better, then don’t use a CFL. You don’t need an all or nothing approach! There is no one perfect solution in the marketplace yet, so all of us need to stay informed and make the best decisions for the solution that best fits our needs.

(If you want to stay informed and see an electricity cost breakdown, view my Lighting Cost Comparison blog!)

Control your Lights: Automatic Off

Chris — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 02:49:52 +0000

My Sensor

One of the first energy saving devices I installed in my town-home when we moved in last year was an occupancy sensor for my kitchen lights. The model was from Leviton and can be seen here.

The concept is extremely simple. When my Wife or I enters the kitchen the light comes on. When we leave the kitchen the lights go off (after a minute or two). The passive infrared sensor operates by measuring infrared light (heat) emitted by us as we enter into the kitchen. Basically, we alter the temperature when we enter the room and move around in it, and the device picks that up. If we come into the kitchen and sit down at the table to read the paper and don’t move for a few minutes, the light may go off because the temperature has stabilized. This requires the simple task of waving an arm.

The occupancy sensor has two settings:

How long the light stays on after no motion is detected: 15s-15m
How much incoming light it detects before it comes on

The first setting is obvious. The “incoming light” setting is pretty cool. It means that during the day, if the sensor senses enough light it will not turn on even if it senses motion. Once it gets a little darker, it will turn on when motion is sensed. Both of these settings are adjusted with little dials on the side of the device and may require some tweaking so your wife doesn’t get too upset when the light doesn’t come on!

But if the automatic setting is too much for some, there is a switch on the bottom to operate the light like a normal light switch.

I would recommend one of these occupancy sensors wherever you might have a lot of lights controlled by one switch (meaning it costs you much more whenever the light switch is left on) or you have a light your family members are constantly leaving on.

The sensor cost around $15 at Home Depot. The circuit I have it on controls 10 lights. Before I had changed some of the lights to CFLs they were all 60 watt bulbs. Therefore, if someone forgot to turn off the light and it was left on for an hour, I consumed 600 Wh (60 watts x 10 lights x 1 hr.) of energy. Which is a little over a nickel worth of energy (Let’s assume I pay 10 cents/kWh).

But if someone forgets to turn off the switch and the light circuit is left on an extra 5 hrs. a week, those lights will waste (5hrs. x 52 weeks x 60 watt x 10 lights) 156,000 Wh or 156 kWh. Remembering I pay 10 cents/kWh, and those lights that are left on cost me $15.60! I’d say a 1 year payback is pretty good!





The motion sensor is on the left.  The dimmable switch on the right is another blog!




My lights in the kitchen

Lighting Cost Comparison – Incandescent vs. CFL

Chris — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 03:58:26 +0000

***Update – 10/4/09 – I have an improving lighting cost comparison that includes a lighting calculator and includes a residential LED bulb. See the incandescent, CFL, and LED lighting cost comparison and calculator.

In the last few months I’ve heard this statement twice: “I want to conserve energy. I plan on changing out my incandescent bulbs to CFLs as soon as they burn out.”

While thinking of CFLs is a great start, there is no need to wait until your old bulbs burn out. If you do a life-cycle analysis (which I have done below) it makes much more sense to replace the incandescent bulbs immediately! This is not just from a “save the Earth” perspective, but especially a cost savings one.

Based on the cost of electricity at .09 cents/kwh, a regular old 60 watt light bulb would cost you $10.80 over its 2,000 hr life. The 14 watt CFL equivalent’s electricity cost would only be $2.34 over the same 2,000 hrs (plus the CFL will last another 4,000 hrs after that)! The only way it would not make sense for you to immediately change that old bulb is if the CFL cost $8.46 or more, which I can assure you they don’t ( I get mine for around $1.50 a pop). So what are you waiting for?

The figure below displays 3 different scenarios for a 10-year lighting analysis. The light is assumed to stay on for 4 hours a day, 365 days/year, for 10 years. The first case is all incandescent, the second case is all CFL, and the third case is you replace the incandescent after it burns out, and use CFLs after that. As you can see, immediately replacing the regular bulbs with CFLs provides the best payback!

-click on the thumbnail below, then move it around the screen if necessary

CFL Strategy

Chris — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 19:18:25 +0000

Once you’ve decided to replace your energy wasting incandescent bulbs with CFLs, you need to develop the right strategy. Ideally, you would like to replace all your bulbs at once, but some people may not be able to tackle this expense all at once.

When my wife and I bought our townhome in Feb. ’08, I immediately starting looking for energy savings. Since we had to buy a whole lot of stuff (furniture, paint, Playstation 3′s, etc.) I didn’t want to buy all my CFLs at once. Therefore, I decided where I could have the most impact.

In my kitchen, I have 10 resessed lights that are all connected to the same swtich. The homebuilder put 60 watt bulbs in the sockets. So, when I spent an hour preparing dinner with the lights on, I consumed 600 Wh of energy (10 bulbs x 60 watts x 1 hr.)! Because there were 10 lights on one switch, I realized this was the area of greatest impact. I realized I could replace most of the 60 W with CFL’s and it wouldnt hurt the appearance. I replaced all but the front 3 (most visible) with 14 Watt CFLs, a total of 7 bulbs. Now, when I prepare dinner over an hour I use 278 Wh (7 CFL x 14 Watt x 1hr + 3 bulbs x 60 Watt x 1 hr). This is a 54% realization in energy savings!

I also changed our living room lamp (which we leave on when we’re gone for security), our main bathroom, my reading light and office lights, and hallway lights to CFLs. Basically, any lights that are on the most and longest should be the first targets for replacecements. When you do change out your incandescents, save them, and use them when other incandescent bulbs you are keeping for appearance burn out.

While changing all lights at once is ideal, taking little steps toward efficiency is your best shot towards substantial overall energy savings and a great way to help our environment!