Why LEDs Don't Beat CFLs Even Though They Should

TaeKwonDood writes "LEDs don't beat CFLs in the home yet, but it's not simply because PG&E is getting rich making people feel like they are helping the environment buying CFLs made in China that are shipped to the US using a lot more fossil fuels than they save. It's a problem of indication versus illumination. However, some new discoveries are going to change all that."

Comments

Riiight

[Valdrax]

CFLs made in China that are shipped to the US [use] a lot more fossil fuels than they save.

'Cause incandescents are all made in the US and don't share nearly the same shipping costs.

Re:Riiight

[rolfwind]

But what if you had to ship 6 lights for every one due to lifespan differences?

Re:Riiight

[CheshireCatCO]

They don't have to make such claims. If the incandescent bulbs involve the same shipping overhead as the CFLs (as the grandparent is sarcastically suggesting), then the claims that CFLs are more environmentally friendly stand up. That's the point, period. The shipping costs mentioned (without any sort of supporting data, I might add) in the summary is only a valid issue if incandescents are made locally.

Re:Riiight

[pherthyl]

As other's have mentioned, you must be fantastically unlucky to be getting those failure rates. I haven't had to replace a single one of the 10 bulbs I put in 2 years ago. Maybe your power is unstable? I've heard that CFLs tend to not like uneven power.

Also you mention rising electricity bills, but of course that has nothing to do with CFLs. They use less power, so you're doing something else to make up the difference. Not "probably" as you say, but absolutely certainly.

As for shipping, it's incredibly unlikely that the weight is a factor in comparing traditional bulbs to CFLs. Volume is going to be a limiting factor for both of them. No way would a cargo ship have to load fewer containers of CFLs because of some weight limitation. They ship containers of steel for crist's sake.

Re:Riiight

[philipgar]

Without even doing any calculations of the amount of fuel needed to ship the CFL, it's obvious that this environmental cost is more than offset by the savings in power of using a CFL vs an incandescent. The simple way to figure this out is to look at the price, and the cost savings of the bulb over a couple months time. A new CFL only costs a couple dollars to buy. That means (unless companies are selling them at a loss) that it costs less than this amount to ship the bulb to you. Assuming for a minute that the cost of energy in fuel and coal powering a power plant are the same (with the same efficiencies etc, in reality the power grid powered by coal is generally cheaper per watt, but that's okay), if you can make up the cost of the bulb in a matter of months by lowering your electric bill, you have more than made up for the cost of shipping.

I always laugh when people start talking about carbon footprints and all that. Currently the simplest and only real way to drastically reduce your carbon footprint is to spend less money. Things that cost more in general have a greater carbon footprint (there are exceptions to this rule, but it often holds true). So the footprint of manufacturing a new stove is roughly proportional to how much the stove costs (obviously if you're buying a gold plated stove with platinum racks this won't quite hold true). So the quickest way to halve the US's carbon footprint is to cut the US's spending power in half. Of course, with the steps the government is taking to reverse the current economic crisis, they could easily accomplish this.

Phil

"using a lot more fossil fuels than they save"???

[PontifexPrimus]

Errr... could we have some actual numbers for that? Are we seriously asked to believe that the energy saved by a metric ton of CFLs over their lifetime is less than the cost of a one-trip transport on a freighter? Or is that just another bitter remark aimed at those silly little hippies who want to save their pwecious planet and their breathable atmosphere and their clean water?

Seriously?

[ergo98]

You're seriously trying to claim that the savings of CFLs are offset by shipment? Really?

I would go into the obvious math or the economics, but honestly this is just simply too stupid to even deserve further comment, except that it is a completely asinine, baseless statement that I'm sure will be picked up and repeated by a lot of ignorant contrarians.

Re:Seriously?

[Goaway]

It's the hip new anti-environmentalist meme. Anything that is supposed to lessen emissions actually increases them because you have to build it!

Re:Not just cost, but optics

[BlueParrot]

Sorry but I don't buy the optics issue. It really can't be THAT hard to put a lens or reflector in the armature and point multiple LEDs in different directions. If anything LEDs should be preferable to incandescents because it is easier to take something very directional and spread the light than it is focus the light from a divergent source. I think the main reason LEDs are not popular yet is cost and "it's not what I'm used to". Seeing the type of crap people will buy even when there are better alternatives I simply don't believe that something as sophisticated as the beam profile of an LED will be a huge issue.

Uh

[nightfire-unique]

Wow. Way to sneak in that lie under the radar. Politically motivated, or just simple ignorance?

In any case, no, the manufacturing and transport of CFL bulbs absolutely does not generate more CO2 than that saved by using them (assuming coal/natural gas powered, the only logical comparison in this case). Let's run some simple numbers.

Assuming an average 60-watt equivalent (12 watt nominal) CFL bulb with a lifespan of 10,000 hours, it will draw 120kWh over the course of its life. The 60-watt incandescent, if it lasted as long, would draw 600kWh. Of course, it doesn't last as long, but rather an average of 1/5 as long.

So the savings are roughly 480kWh for an 800lm fixture. That's the equivalent of over 400 liters of gasoline burned in an internal combustion engine, and that doesn't include the fuel used building, shipping and shopping for replacement incandencents, which as mentioned burn out far more frequently.

Now for some logic. How is it that a bulb which apparently requires >480kWh of energy to build/ship ($48 at $0.10/kWh) sells for a few dollars? Hint: it doesn't require >480kWh of energy to build/ship, or anywhere near that.

CFLs offer a massive net efficiency gain, and by extension, a net reduction in CO2 emissions. Even factoring in disposal costs at 5 times the manufacturing cost (silly), CFLs are a net win. So please don't spread that tripe!

same thing!

[dj245]

If it burned a lot more fuel to ship heavy containers, heavy containers would cost more.

Re:15 years.

[roc97007]

> You're doing it wrong.

Have you done it recently? The CFLs I bought in the nineties are still working. The ones I bought last year aren't measurably any longer lasting than the few incandescents I still use. I suspect that now everyone has jumped on the bandwagon, there are a lot of crappy cut-rate CFLs being made. And I'm pretty sure that this isn't being taken into account in figuring overall real-world environmental impact.

Contributing to this, as Fred and Ethyl Mertz buy eight-packs of CFLs at Costco, they're certainly using them in situations where they don't work well -- like areas where the lights go on and off frequently. (I made this mistake initially -- couldn't figure out why CFLs were lasting months rather than years in the bathroom.) Which, as you point out, really is doing it wrong. CFLs work well in narrowly-defined environments -- they're not a replacement for every bulb in the house. The general public doesn't appear to realize this, and the retailers are in no hurry to correct their misunderstanding.

Re:Not just cost, but optics

[lessthan]

A glass of cloudy water would do what you ask, quite easily.

Re:Not just cost, but optics

[ppanon]

For something more compact and less wet (a consideration around compact electrical devices): a diffraction grating. Add a glass frosting on top of a couple of layered diffraction gratings to make the light more evenly diffuse.

Re:LEDs == Frustration

[Belial6]

so using a 14W (75W equivalent) for reading lamps is probably a minimum.

There is one of the big problems with CFL acceptance. I don't know how they rate the lumens, but the human eye doesn't get a 75w incandescent equivalent amount of light in it from a 14w CFL. You need something more like a 27w CFL to match a 75w incandescent. So, when people buy a CFL that is 14W and claims to be a 75w incandescent equivalent, they feel like the CFLs are too dark. Better labeling would go a long way in improving CFLs reputation. Of course, they wouldn't be able to claim as great of energy savings, but 27w is still way less than 75w.

Re:15 years.

[ppanon]

Which, as you point out, really is doing it wrong. CFLs work well in narrowly-defined environments -- they're not a replacement for every bulb in the house. The general public doesn't appear to realize this, and the retailers are in no hurry to correct their misunderstanding.

Agreed. The general public also doesn't seem to be the only ones when you hear about legislators considering legally phasing out incandescent bulb production and sales over the next N years. That may be more feasible if LED lighting can start working in the situations where incandescent lighting stumbles.

Re:Not just cost, but optics

[lgw]

Does either company make a 5-pound 4 DCell flashlight built around a sturdy pipe that you would *not* want to be hit with? MagLites double as nightsticks, which is half their appeal. SureFire's "self defense flashlight" looks specifically built for security guards that are forbidden to carry anything useful as a weapon.

Re: light a room

[Dare nMc]

Thats definitely per cost, not per watt preventing room lighting. I suspect it is the same as CFL, many manufactures overstate the "equivalent light" factor causing a perception of dimmer. I bought led lights for my aquarium, just the 4 watt night lighting lights up 2 rooms ( not reading wise, but way too bright for a night light, the water diffuses the light nicely)
The directional nature also means to be truly efficient you would want more locations, the lasts (nearly) forever nature would tend to lead to a permanent mount.
So saving the cost of running thicker wires, fixture boxes, fixtures, 5 amp switches, etc should make LED lighting affordable for new houses/additions/remodels fairly soon.
(Especially for warm locations where you pay for all heat sources double, with AirCond)

Re:Not just cost, but optics

[Danse]

It was a bit off-topic, but it's not viral marketing, I'm an actual customer of theirs.

You are a customer talking about a product you use. That is one of the forms of Viral Marketing.

Back since I was a youngster, we just called it "word of mouth". Worked pretty well for good companies.

Re:Not just cost, but optics

[Rei]

That article repeats a bunch of CFL myths. I find it amazing to watch some in the geek crowd glob onto any "science" related conspiracy ("global warming is fake", "the Hindenburg didn't burn from hydrogen", etc) the same way tin-foil hat people glob onto the "moon hoax" or "there was no plane crash at the Pentagon on 9/11".

We even were treated to one in the header of this article:

"CFLs made in China that are shipped to the US using a lot more fossil fuels than they save."

Oh, really, is that so? Shipping cargo takes about one gallon of gas per ton of cargo per 500 miles. Shanghai is ~6500 miles from LA. Thus, 154 pounds can cross the Pacific per gallon of diesel. A gallon of diesel contains 130MJ. A CFL weighs perhaps a quarter pound. Therefore, it takes 211kJ of fuel energy per bulb. If we assume the big diesel engine is roughly as efficient as a power plant's electricity generation, we can compare them directly. 211 kilojoules is 0.05 kilowatt hours. If usage that bulb reduces 60 watts down to 15, thus saving 45 watts, it'd take barely over an hour to pay off the energy used in shipping it.

Of course, you also need to include train shipping energy consumption to get it to and from the ports, which is more like one gallon per ton per 300 miles, but that too is trivial to pay off.