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CFLs Causing Utility Woes
dacut writes "We've seen compact fluorescent lamps start to take over shelf space at the local hardware store. Replacing a 60 watt incandescent with a 13 watt CFL seems like a great savings, though many consumers are disappointed with the slow warm-up times, lower-than-advertised lifetimes, and hassles of disposing the mercury-containing bulbs. Now EDN reports they may use more energy than claimed due to their poor power factor. Mike Grather, of Lumenaire Testing Laboratory, 'checked the power factor for the CFLs and found they ranged from .45 to .50. Their "real" load was about twice that implied by their wattage.' The good news: you're only billed for the 13 watts of real power used. The bad news: the utilities have to generate the equivalent of 28 watts (that is, 28 VA of apparent power for you EEs out there) to light that bulb. Until they fix these issues, I'll hold on to my incandescents and carbon arc lamps, thanks."
If they had just gone with Edison's DC instead of that dope Tesla's AC, this would not be a problem.
Besides, AC is far more dangerous than DC. There's a reason why they use it in electric chairs.
Now let's see, who disagrees with me?
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
More expensive and shorter life is a real problem. Getting rid of them isn't, they fit into the regular garbage bags just fine.
CFLs are penny-wise and pound foolish. Some day there will be a report of all the damage to the environment being caused by discarded CFLs and people will wonder what the hell we in this century were thinking, replacing low-pollution cheap lights with mercury-containing costly electronics gizmos. By then, they'll be using LED lighting for everything.
Would you be willing to break a CFL right next to your face and take a deep breath?
If you received a $145billion bail out - you wouldn't fail either!
Crack one open, you will find a couple of power transistors, an IC, some capacitors, and a rectifier bridge.
Crack one open, die of mercury poisoning.