Compact Fluorescent Lamps [RE-wrenches]

[Jeff Yago]

Boy is this timely. I just submitted an article last month that will be on the new-stands in September in BackWoodsHome magazine on the very poor performance of the newer CFL being made in China.

I tested over 12 different name brands (Phillips, Sylvania, Westinghouse, GE) and found that ALL were now made in China, and these were not lasting anywhere long enough to justify their higher cost over a standard light bulb. Yes, I know wrenches only care about the lower watts which allows a down-size of inverter loads and battery size and I agree in off grid application that is needed regardless of cost or lamp life.   But these are being pushed by state governments and the industry as having a $30 to $40 energy savings if replacing an incandescent bulb of higher wattage.

When we built our solar home in 1994, Almost all were CFL made by Oshram from Italy and Germany except for a few 40 watt halogen PAR 30 recessed lights. All lights were installed at the same time and all new in November 1994 when we moved in, and we had almost no lamp failures until last year (12 years of operation!) for a typical residential hours of operation. But many of the failed CFL's we replaced last year have already failed. As research for this article, I contacted owners of grid-tie systems we have installed in the past 2 years where we also installed CFL's instead of incandescent bulbs and most indicated a 50% failure rate of the CFL's in less than one year of use, also having documented install dates.

Also according to my research, "Lights of America" is now the only manufacturer still operating in the US that is making CFL's and they are an independent (small) - so you have to really search to find their "made in USA"  CFL's in the stores.

Why this is a big deal, California is about to outlaw most incandescent bulbs and require CFL's in all new construction, three other states are considering this legislation, and incandescent bulbs have already been banned in Canada and Australia. You say, so what if they only last 6 months instead of 10 years as advertised?  These things contain mercury and are about to fill up our land fills. Wal-Mart has already announced in a public news release this spring that they have purchased from China and plan to sell 100 million CFL's by 2008, thats 100,000,000 mercury containing bulbs that have a failure rate almost 10 times their advertised life. With their volume buying power, and no doubt a large discounted price, I think we can assume these will not be the Oshram brand that lasted 12 years for me!

Finally, I realize China does make some really good products, but I believe the US distributors are trying to get the price of CFL's much lower to make it easier for joe 6-pack to switch from a 50 cent light bulb to what has been a $5.00 CFL, and this pressure on drastically lowering manufacturing costs no doubt is affecting quality and burn time.  

In closing, I hope none of you live near a landfill and if you do, don't drink well water!

Jeff Yago



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