Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs…
March 5th, 2007, 7 Comments »
There’s a lot of talk, these days, about compact fluorescent lights. Australia, for example, has taken the impressive step of banning traditional incandescent light bulbs. In three year’s time, you won’t be able to buy them in shops across the country.
Today I happened upon Lighter Footstep’s big guide to CFLs, and learned a bunch of stuff:
Speaking of efficiency, modern CFLs have almost immediate startup time. That means that when you flip the switch, there’s very little lag before the bulb turns on. But to achieve the sort of power efficiencies advertised on their packaging, CFLs must warm up to their operational temperature. This takes anywhere from 30 seconds to three minutes. During this period, they’re not much more power-stingy than incandescent bulbs.
One way in which CFLs have improved is the tone of the light they can produce. I used to really dislike them, because the light was far too white, and quite close to traditional flourescent lights. They seem to have made some progress on achieving a warming, yellowed light.
Of course, most sci-fi films portray the future as cold and white, so I might just have to get used to it.
UPDATE: Here’s a great video my friends made on the benefits of switching to CFLs:
