CFL down lights are not what they seem to be apparently...

I was speaking to a mate that used to be an electrician and i asked him do you think of replacing all my down lights with CFL down lights is a good idea?

He said its all crap.. advised me that the amount of power to actually power them up initially takes up so much power its the same as having a normal down light on for 4 hours......... anyone here of this ?

He said thats why the government were giving them out at one stage so u have to pay more - apparently its nothing to do with cost saving in the long run

To power up one room is 50w x 4 plus transformer power so 220w a room.

Anyone heard of this that CFL's take so much to power up ?

Not sure..but we have them everywhere and with siz of us in one house I havent noticed any difference in power bills...

I think he is being a bit pessimistic.

I have them in my house. While I would say that part of the issue is getting used to them as they take some time to get really bright.

I had 11 watts since then they had come out with 13watt so i replaced all four in one of my rooms (study) this time i got more of a yellow light and after a few minutes it would be acceptable. The trouble with the 11watts thati had is they were a bit to white and they changed the color of the walls etc.


Yes 50 halogen are much more easier to like however, they waste more electricity so it is a trade off i guess.If you plan on getting them make sure you don't have you downright to far apart.

Next thing i will be looking at is LED lights for my external feature light.

So your bill ended up the same after u changed them to CFL's ???? did u have normal 50w halogens before?

just keep in mind other variable. Like increases in electricity prices.
Without a doubt running downlght is expensive.
Flick all your lights on and then run outside to see how quickly the meter spins.

The lights arnt to far apart, rooms are not big.

But with CFLs u dont get as much quality light as 50w halogens.

Im at work now but Ill check when I get home....Ill get a bill out to compare.

Thank you

Maybe my friend is right in a way

Junk Science people:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... leave-room

Misconception #1: It takes more energy to start a fluorescent that it does to run it, so leave the lights on all the time to save money on your electric bill.

Reality: When you turn on a fluorescent light bulb (correctly called a "lamp"), there is a very brief jump in current when the ballast charges the cathodes and causes the lamp to start. This inrush of current can be many times greater than the normal operating current of the lamp. However, the spike of current draw normally lasts no longer than 1/10th of a second, and draws the equivalent of about 5 seconds of normal operation. So, if you turn your fluorescent lamp off and on more frequently than every 5 seconds, you will use more power than normal. So, normal switching of fluorescent lamps has very, very, very little effect on a power bill.

Hi Domenic,

I'm afraid your mate has been told a myth and believed it.

As gpearce said, the CFL's, like all fluoro's, need a small zap to get them going - hence the short delay in turning on - and then they heat up a little to get to the full light output - hence a little more delay before they're at full brightness. The small zap is very short duration and in no way, no how, does it use the same as 4 hours worth of light - under no circumstances. Then at full brightness they use up the 13watts or so that the lamp is rated to. It is true that you need a few more CFL's than halogens to get the same light level in a room. So you can't say 4 x hals = 220W but 4 x CFL's = 52W so CFL is better, but even if you need double the CFL's, it's still closer to half the wattage of the Hals....

2c worth from an engineer..

SK

Just as well your mate USED to be an electrician. As his/her understandng on how CFL lamps work is completely wrong.

Even the understanding that fluro's start with a spike in current (or a power surge if you like) is outdated. That applied to an entent to the older iron-core wire wound ballasts used before the change to electronic ballasts. And even then it was neglible in terms of extra power consumption.

CFL downlights will save a bucket load off you power bills.

Thank you gpierce, Eskay40 and rubber_noggin for your comments – Its cleared it all up for me

The reason the savings are not very visible would be that energy consumption on lighting at home is only about 7% of your bill. http://www.yourhome.gov.au/technical/fs61.html

So in summary, assuming all your energy is electrical and you are a typical household, if you pay say $100 monthly energy bill then your rough outlook is as follows :
- lighting is $7 ("old" incandescent lights)
- with CFLs would be $2 (if not used as down lights)
- with low voltage tungsten halogen lamps would be $20 maybe more, maybe less depending on how many of them.

But, on another hand, with CFDs you would help Australia to stop being the worst (per head of the population) CO2 polluter in the world... that might be worth something to you.

Suggest read an excellent "Residential Lighting Control" paper here on the Australian Building Codes Board web site:
http://www.abcb.gov.au/download.cfm?downloadfile=EEEF6DDD-6B83-11DE-9357001B2FB900AA&typename=dmFile&fieldname=filename (parent page before that: http://www.abcb.gov.au/index.cfm?objectid=7384D70B-28B9-11DE-835E001B2FB900AA)

In a nutshell what you may find/conclude is (amongst other things):
- Low voltage tungsten halogen lamps - a house using them would use 3 times *more* energy compared to use of the old incandescent lights - last paragraph on page 6. Who would like 3 times higher energy bills (for lights part) than using the old incandescent lights just to look pretty considering electrical energy will be perhaps much more expensive in the not too distant future?
- If old lights are just replaced by CFLs the lights part of energy use drops 3 times - page 8.
- "Some new houses at the upper end of the market have in excess of 100 of these dichroic reflector lamps (low voltage halogen) - page 2
- most energy efficient are "Linear Fluorescent" at 94 and "Compact Fluorescent" (CFL) at 68 or 58. Everything else is marginal - page 5
- Japan has 100% of residential lights (for decades by the way) on "Linear Fluorescent", Europe have already replaced more than 50% of incandescent lights. Seems Australia... is "either lagging the world in trends in residential lighting or heading in a different direction."
- LEDs are not viable, reliable yet and provide large, inconsistent energy saving range - due to manufacture process used to produce LEDs
- regulations/standards in Au hmmm ... what regulations... - page 7 etc

So if CFLs are efficient... then a remaining issue would be using them as down lights
as narrow nature of these lights require more lights to be installed.

My research brought me to the same conclusion as Rudy....if only something like 5-8% of my power bill is from lighting, then changing over to CFLs isn't going to have an enormous impact on my wallet. Since we put masses of halogen downlights in our house and I loathe fluouros, I feel much better about that.

All that aside, I still swapped most of the standard globes we did have for CFLs - they either have shades or are in places that don't matter (like the pantry and laundry), so the ugly light isn't an issue.

Electricity savings can be made in lots of other ways, especially by not having all lights blazing at the same time.

added a summary to my previous post

Me for 1. You will also find it isn't quite 3 times, closer to double averaged out over table 2 in your reference. They also seem to base everything on 50W DLs. Nearly all builders are providing 35W DL as standard nowadays providing a 30% reduction to this straight away. It also assumes the total house is 100% down lights, which I believe is becoming less common. Downlights through living areas and CFLs in other areas seems more popular. Assuming this is 50-50, the numbers would be closer to 1:1 or better.

The way interior lighting is used is equally as relevant to power consumption. 4 DLs may be required to replace 1 battern fitting however generally these lights will be run in pairs and in most instances only one pair need be on at any one time.



Aren't we regulated enough? I have read we are the most regulated country in the world! Instead of regulating lighting specifically I believe lighting should be considered as part of a new house energy assessment. That way if you wish to have 100 down lights in your house you will need to offset this with perhaps a 2kw solar array on the roof. That way all the good or bad choices made when constructing are considered and balanced fairly.

The original pilot programme previous to the distribution of free CFL's was conducted in an inner western sydney suburb. this was due to the fact that it was a radial feed line from the substation and therefore easy to analyse recorded data.

What that programme determined was that there was very limited benefit from running CFL over incandescant globes. Firstly the electrical demand from domestic lighting is very small. Secondly, incandescant globes produce more heat than CFL (by function of the energy they use), therefore in winter the lack of heat produced by the incandescant globe is required to be added via room heaters.

Sometimes energy producers and distributors will promote "clean" or "green" energy for marketing and corporate image, rather than real environmental benefits............just sometimes.

Downlights I'm not sure about, but for regular light bulbs, buying an incandescent instead of a fluoro will cost you $100 more over the life of the fluoro. And in that time you will have replaced the incandescent 3 or 4 times.

I was just talking about the CFL's to a bloke at work just now!
He also said they take a bit of time to "charge up" to get full brightness. I'm worried about this as I was going to have them all through the place, now, I am having second thoughts.
But what can I do? By law, 80% of my house needs to be CFL, noooooooo!

It's not that long - I would be surprised if you would notice after a minute or two. If lighting power is a worry you can get HWCFL - I've got a 48W (240W Equiv) one and it shines like the sun (hurts to look at it) in under 30 seconds!