While working in a normal office setting, most design engineers became familar with the saying..."Don't re-invent the light bulb". But that is exactly what some have done and I have to say with some degree of success! I recently purchaced about $400 of new CFL bulbs and started replacing my infastructure.
Recently I read an article on the new generation of CFL bulbs and tried a few. The Compact Fluorescent Light bulb. They screw into a regular incandescent socket but are a fluorescent light. Because of my engineering background I am hung up on efficiently and the article touted how great these are and one of the stores were having a sale for one day for 99 cents you can purchase them. So I said what the hell and bought a dozen. The .99 versions were 60-watt replacement bulbs. You might have seen them they have a curly tube attached to small ballast that screws into an incandescent socket.
Well I found a place for them but was not happy with the quality of the light they produced. But this got me researching these things. There are some better quality light bulbs now! I am finishing off my basement into several new rooms about 2500 square feet of space...a spare bedroom, bath, workshop, office, home theater, pantry a computer room and a reading room of sorts...anyway I counted 37"cans" of recessed lighting. ) On average say 70 watts of floodlights and a few specialty lights.
I got further interested in these things because the other night my son asked me to help him with his homework and while I was sitting there his desk lamp was cooking me. I looked at the bulb and it was a halogen light that was hot as hell. I could not touch it. Also there were several 100 what bulbs in my workshop that was so hot it was cooking the fixtures and starting to bake the material around it.
I replace the shop lights and a few lights that had thick glass shades with these curly things and they seemed fine. Slightly harsh light color but cool and allot less power.
When looking into these things I found several sources of dimmable and 3-way CFL bulbs as well as decent flood lights with colors close to that as incandescent. I need up buying a range of bulbs to test them out. Then I placed an order to completely use these things in the new space.

I have to say I am pleased. I computed the cost savings will exceed $350 per year and the quality of the light is " almost" as good as the incandescent but definitely worth it. The cost savings will pay for the bulbs in the first year. Also, I put them in my office where I read and after using it I am really happy. I first thought ...oh it is not the same but after a few days it is actually better.

I went on to replace a few of the general household bulbs to see what the rest of the crew thought. IN the laundry room I replaced the fixture bulbs that had two 75 watt incandescent bulbs in a glass dome with 23 watt CFLs that produced about 100 watts per bulb with a lot less heat and more light. The color was a warm white 2700K which is similar to classic light bulbs.
My wife said...Hey did you do something in the laundry room? It is much brighter in there and I can actually see what I am doing now. (And it is saving me about 100 watts!)

Down the basement I did the math and the savings is dramatic. I have to say I spent a bunch of time finding the bulbs I wanted and over all the light is slightly different then the standard colors but IMO it is MORE then worth it.

I don't have to worry about the kids leaving the lights on and walking out of the room (a common occurrence). I plan on replacing the rest of the house lights with these over time. I expect when I am done my savings will be about $1000 per year. (About the cost of the light bulbs...but they last about 5-10X longer then the standard bulbs)

Anyway, try one of these out.... Make sure you get the right "color" light or you will be disappointed.

I can't replace every bulb yet because some fixtures are designed with the standard bulb in mind but 95% of the lights can be replaced with these things.

have you come up with any prefered brands....or the type that produces more light than others? I've been wanting to do the same.

have you come up with any prefered brands....or the type that produces more light than others? I've been wanting to do the same.
yes good thread sandman
wondering on brands as well

I actually self tested a bunch of them one right next to the other (I have a whole shopping bag of these slightly different bulbs) and it is hard to pick a single brand. What you need to know are the specs you prefer. The same manufacturer makes many brands under different names in some cases. If you check out 1000bulbs.com or do a goggle search for CLF bulbs you will find a few other sites that sell them, some of them at very good prices. Some sites have lots of info about them. Home depot has the basic ones but they didn't have any dimmables or 3ways or some higher end floods or real powerful lights. Pick a few up and try them.

I was confused with the web site pricing and call them up and they said the less expensive ones (which have the exact specs as the more expensive ones) are exactly the same as the name brands except it comes without the name on them in a white box. I purchased both and that seems to be right. They look and work exactly the same.

They are still not perfect like an incandescent lighting and the incandescent give you more choices in lighting options but this CFL stuff has come a looong way. GE makes a good CFL bulb that is a soft white light and it is almost perfect and no one has noticed the difference in my house in the main bathroom and the bulb is exposed. IMO it is better looking then the IC that was in there. It is an excellent light but it is almost $8 for a 60-watt bulb. You can get a less expensive one in the $1.00 - $5.00 range. You need to pick bulbs with the specs and go with that. Again not perfect but worth it. I would seek out CFLs that have a 2700K temp (color) and produce the wattage you need. The dimmables and 3ways work but are costly, try the standard ones first.

The CFL floods come on instantly but take a minute to come up to full brightness when they are cold. For my office, it does not matter because they are on all day but when you walk into the home theater and hit the lights it seem a little dark for the first minute or so. The dimmables work but have some memory lag when they are on for a while. But I know the kids will have the lights on for hours this has savings all over it. That said they are not as responsive as the classic IC but IMO it is worth it the small hassle. The savings is huge and the bulbs more then pay for themselves (and then some) in the first year, no question. Not to mention the heat factor.... think about the heat 37 85-watt floodlights put out and the AC required removing the heat. These things have reduced my entire lower level lighting load from 2500watts to 620 and I have brighter light now then before, not to mention the reduced heat produced and the longevity of the bulb. It is not as soft as I would like it but after a week you don't even notice it, it is only when you compare next to each other that you pick up the differences.

The floods are not cheap but on the net I found some in the $4-5 range for the standard R30 and R40 fixtures but some of the dimmables can run upwards of 20 bucks depending on what you like.

I hope to have my entire house converted in the next year but right now I have about 40% or so with these.

The perfect applications for these are lights that are on most of the time...the savings will be dramatic. In our laundry/mud room, which seems to be active I replaced a fixture that had 2, 75 watt IC bulbs with 2 23 watt CFL curly bulbs that put out the same light as 100 watt bulbs. It is noticeably brighter and you cannot tell the difference by looking at the fixture (it has a glass dome on it) and saves me about: 20-30 bucks per year on this single light fixture. Count your light bulbs and it adds up fast. This does not count the heating from these either.

Long term I think these will take over the market until even lower power LCD lighting moves in and starts the process over. But for now having kids that leave the lights on and walk away (I swear all I do is walk around the house and turn off lights) at least I will not feel that bad.

I tell you who could really benefit from these is the Ernie Bock estate, in the summer he must have a 1000 lights on…it looks like a big hotel, you might have seen it while taking the Chappy Ferry at night.

Wow Jim wicked funny you posted this. I am in the midst of a whole house conversion to fluorescent and just got the rest of the bulbs today. I thought and still think the same way as you posted. The newer small size bulbs are pisser for ceiling fixtures etc. I am waiting to see the National Grid bill next month with just half the house done. I think I'll save about $30 a month on electricity and maybe more. My house is a 3200 sq ft colonial with ALOT of lights in it. We have been wicked satisfied with the quality of the lights, especially for places like halls and closets etc that get used all the time. I did the downstairs bathroom which we wanted to see before we did the upstairs and the light is a little bit less, but two 100w fluro lights use 48 watts of electricity where 2 100 watt bulbs which were in there have a total of 200... 1/4 the electricity is worth the drop in light as it's more than acceptable. Lots of green in the lights though on the cheap one's so you have to watch out. Keep us posted how you do on the bills.

Lots of green in the lights though on the cheap one's so you have to watch out.

I agree, I have a few of the really cheap ones too and they tend to be a bit greenish but they do make a few that are very close to IC.... I had another deliver today as well. When I get the entire house done I will monitor the bill for the same month. I want to see what the lower level feels like when it is all done with this lighting. When you add it up the energy savings is very impressive...for closets you can beat the bright white bulbs, the 100 watt bulbs put don't even get warm. The ballast gets a little warm but nothing like a 50 watt halogen or even a 40 watt IC

In the master bath we have this stupid fixture that has 4 of these halogen or Xeon bulbs that I swear you could toast bread with. It is like the sun when you turn it on. They only last a few months then they burn out, and they are very costly. I want to rip out the entire fixture and replace it with a high end CFL set up.

Also, I am thinking of replacing some of the outdoor lighting too. I came home the other night and I thought my house was on fire they had so many lights on. I went over to the meter and the dial looked like a blur it was ready to take off thru the glass.:sick:

Thanks for the extensive post. I have been thinking along these lines but had yet to do any research. Thanks Sandman for solving that end of it.

Jim we took the cheapies and put them in all the closet fixtures and anything that didn't get used all the time, figuring we'd still save on electricity and get decent light in the closets, hallways, washroom, basement etc. All of the bedrooms have ceiling fans in them and I too could see the meter spinning with 240 watts of power on each one plus the fan...now it's 96 watts and that's a pretty major improvement just for one fixture....and like you say the bulbs look pretty decent not stupidly huge like the old one's did. I was surprised at some of the wattages in some of the fixtures. Some even got a net increase in light, we used one bulb in the kitchen eating area that gave us significantly more light we were both impressed and went from 100 to 23 watts.

Jim I would hate to see your electric bill if you are figuring on saving $ 1000.00 a year, heck I think we only pay $ 1500.00 total a year:cool:

thanks for the info sandman

Hey Jim I just got the latest bill from National Grid. The average of the bills from the last two Decembers are 1100 kwh per month. This months bill was 880 kwh so I saved 220 kwh...granted yes the boiler hasn't been running as much because of the warm days but it's still a pretty significant savings. I saved $9.59 in the delivery charges and $23.58 in the generation charge for a total of $33.17 savings. Not bad for the first month!

Salty,
Looking good. You are about a month ahead of me. I am just getting most of the lights switched over. As of 2/1 I had about 60% of the lights moved to CFL's of some sort. My goal is to have 90-95% cfl by 3/1. There are some lights I just cant change. There are some small halogens spots that I can't replace (yet) and a few that I would like to keep as IC.

The amount of floods I have on dimmers is insane and these are all getting replaced. Also, I have some several fixtures in the kitchen that are tightly closed around the IC bulb. These get hot as hell and if you put the maximum wattage bulb in there as suggest on the fixture, the wires will melt. (they have and I got a free replacement fixture). I have an order for a bunch of "cold cathode" CLFs that are the exact size of a regular 60 watt bulb and produce 60 watts at 2700K and are dimmable...they use 5 watts! They are expensive (18 bucks each) and are hard to find. They last forever and are designed to go in a closed fixture like a sign.

I have so many bulbs being delivered to my house these days my wife thinks I am nuts. She told me "that is my birthday present for this year...all these light bulbs".

I have learned a lot by trial but made a few mistakes in trying out a few things that did not work out perfectly, some I will live with for a while until get a better bulb for that here-and-there spot where it is not working out as I would like, but overall I am getting use to the differences in lighting now and in by the end of march I should see a difference in my KWH usage. From then on out I plan to tweek the bulbs until I am satisified with the lighting in each area.

Below is a graph of my KWH usage for 2005. I plan to track it in 2006 (red dot) to see the difference. Clearly the AC last year was the biggest part. The year before I think it only kicked on for a few weeks, last year it was on a lot it seemed.
So far have only had a few bulbs in for the last couple days of the month so there is no improvement in my bill yet. I averge about 1400 KW without AC. My april bill should show something better. What I am anxious to see is if I can compute how much heat my AC was removing due to the bulbs alone...I have a plan to do this.

The cost of power here is (IMO) high compared to elsewhere in the country too. If you add up all the charges you get:

Supplier charges: .12919 cents/KWH
Delivery services: .04585+.02858+.00641+.00049+.0025=.0866for a total cost of $0.2185 KWH !!!! (You can get power in some parts of the country for 10 cents per KW)

What is your current total cost over there per KWH for supplier + deliver and all the other BS?

Anyway look foreward to seeing the savings.

we're paying dist .02377, transistion .00862, transmission .00819, energy cons .00250, renewable energy .00050 and generation of .10718

Total cost .228/kwh

I may try and graph that too if I get some time, they give you the previous 13 months on the bill every month. My highest was july at 1706 that's with ac, lowest was April with 767.

We have been adjusting to the new stuff very nciely, everyone doesn't seem to have any problems with any of the stuff converted. I left the main bath upstairs undone and that has 240 watts in it. Wife wanted it bright so I left it. Did the downstairs bath and we both agree that the baths need to stay IC so I'm going to change it back. The rest seem pretty decent though and am very happy with the results. The bulbs will pay for themselves in savings over the next several months which I think is fantastic.

Have you guys experienced any interference caused by the cfls? I have read that they can interfer with wireless devices like remote controls.

Not yet but I can imagine if the blub is right next to a wireless device it might cause a problem. I found my cell phone produces interference...put your cell phone next to your FM radio and listen to the noise it makes.

The amount of UV radiation produced by FL lighting is so small it is not funny. I read a report a week ago that showed if you stayed in an office lit only by flour. lighting (and plenty of it) for all day (8 hours) the amount of radiation (UV) you would recieve is equal to 1 minute of being in the daylight in July. I think the ballast might produce some interfereence though with other electomagnetic and IR devices but it would have to be close I would think. It is not a big deal as far as I can tell.

If you are an N-Star customer they continually have lighting rebate programs going on for small and large business's. Small business solutions is the one ongoi9ng right now where they will have a vendor come into your facility and change out all the old ballasts and lamps and update then to electronic ballasted and t-5 lamps in Fluorecent tube fixtures and replace all incandescent with compact fluorescent biaxial lamps tt's or quads. Good deal and the payback is realized quickly.

law of conservation of energy staes ====> energy cannot be created or destroyed; it can only be converted from one form to another.

Example:
Give a incadesent light bulb and uv light rated at 100 watts. The incadesent bulb uses the energy for both heat (hot bulb) and light. The UV light uses less heat with most of the energy for visible light. That is why the UV is more efficient. The incadesent (regular bilbs) may be good in the winter because it heats up the air a little.
Just for the record I also have a electrical engineering background

IC light heat is a by broduct of the filament heating up from the energy being given off. Anytime you have heat driven from electricity it is waste. CFL saves money on electricity because it's a more efficient technology and doesn't produce the heat by-product. Major drawback to cfl....every bulb contains mercury to light the bulb off so they are considered hazardous waste.

I had these 3 "problem fixtures" in the kitchen that I could not replace the bulbs in. They had a several 60 watt IC bulbs closed in a SS and glass fixture. It would get hot as hell, even with a 60 watt. You could not touch the fixture near the bulb encasement it was so hot. I took the glass off and let the bulb be exposed so I didn't have a melt down. But this is what it was designed for. It is a brand new fixture and my wife really likes it. ActuallI like it too except for the heat)Since it is on most of the time I was sniffing around to find a some kind of CFL that would fit. Most of the curly bulbs did not fit and the ones that did were not dimmable. (all were on dimmers).

Check this out... A bulb slightly smaller then a 60 watt IC, that produces the same number of lumens as a 50 watt IC and uses only 5 watts of energy. It is dimmable too 0-100%. Cold Cathode technology. Oh 25,000 life too. I replaced them all and closed up the fixture...it is room temp now even after the fixture is on for several hours. These are pretty new and new models are expected shortly, I hope they come out with a 75 watt replacements as they are not quite as bright as the IC's but they are pretty close. Also the color is perfect, they look exactly like a IC that was in there. Below is a clear one but they come frosted too. Since it was behind a frosted glass shade so I got the clear ones.

Most of the lights install now...so far the results look pretty good! The lowest monthly KWH usage ever for me last month. The red in the graph below indicates usage in 06, the black 05. I have been phasing in in 06.