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I think a very good report is can be found following this link: http://randd.defra.gov.uk/Document.aspx?Document=EV0429_8060_FRP.pdf
Almost every aspect is studied there and analysis is very thorough.My vision “through crystal ball” is that organic leds will be more successful than leds in the future.
How green are the CFL & Should the incandescent be banned?
Valid points have been raised about the “Green” ness of the CFL. Proliferation of the use of fluorescents will lead to greater problems due to uncontrolled disposal of mercury and other toxic heavy metals.
CFLs produce white light; but the white light is not the full spectrum white light. the spectral distribution from two CFLs from two different manufacturers could have the same color temperature, but have intensity distribution at different wavelengths.
Human body requres full spectrum lights and there are a number of illness associated with inadequate exposure to sunlight or alternative full spectrum lights already, even before the CFLs became popular.
While the heat from the incandescent may be a negative feature in the tropics, in all areas where room or space heating is required there is nothing wrong in using the incandescent. What is the difference between heat coming from a heater and that coming from the light source. In tropical contries where there is no requirement of heating and when the requirement is for cooling we have to avoid or minimise the use of incandescent lamps.
As such banning the incandescent is not the prudent solution. We would ban the incandescent for general use and then bring it back as necessary for medical or theraputic applications!!!
This can happen in all areas other than the tropics.Banning is not desirable. Market forces can guide the proper choice as it develops. Today the CFLs are un-naturally priced. Keeping the contents, process, research cost that has gone in, it should be cheaper and the Chinese have demonstrated by bringing in the cost reduction. CFLs should not cost more than twice that of the incandescent for the equivalent replacement from the costing done by experts in the field.
There should be a mechanism for retrieving and recycling mercury, fluorescent coating powders etc., so that the real cost of CFLs decreases.
Fluorescent lights produce ultraviolet, and use fluorescent coatings to convert this to visible light. Color compensated fluorescent lights are widely available. These produce a natural balanced spectrum that is quite easy on the eyes. These also work great for photography and video.
As already mentioned, electronic ballasts eliminate flicker by converting 50-60 Hz to a much higher frequency.
Incandescent lighting is no less flawed unless you use color compensated bulbs such as GE Reveal.
For video, normal fluorescent lighting has a bluish hue, and normal incandescents have a yellowish hue.
I seriously doubt that CFL’s will ever be as cheap as incandescents. CFL’s are rather complex. Incandescents are just a wire in a glass bulb.
We had an interesting study looking at the effects of replacing incandescents with CFL’s and found that during winter the reduction in radiated heat from CFL’s required an increase in the heating loads. Also the light output from CFL’s varies in proportion to the ambient temperature so cold applications such as storage areas, hallways etc. do not always yield good light level results. The issue of fire risk has to be examined also as an incandescent light will most likely fail open-circuit whereas a CFL containing many electronic components could suffer from a high resistance fault that could generate enough heat to cause a fire. Flourescent ballasts and low voltage transformers have been known to catch fire.
I wholly agree that LED is best option available in the market.When big organisation promotes CFLs as better than incadescent is basically a marketing gimmick.They didnt show that esp that CFLs contain mercury vapour and also can indirectly contribute to migraine due to exposure.
Currently there are concerted moves in EU contries to ban incadescent and most likely Aust and NZ will follow suit.
Even for current 60W household incadescent light bulb is inefficient but the promoted “better off” CFLs contains mercury vapour.So neither is really better off.However LED even 3.3W can generate same output as the two previous lights but with longer life and less carbon.
LED is the technology that will revolutionise the Energy Efficiency on lightings globally and relevant info should be disseminated esp to third world countries before they run the risk of being dumped with banned incadescent and or CFLs thats bannd from developed countries.
Pere,Redcarbon,Fiji Islands
Led lights are great because they are long lasting and consumes less electricity.,~*
Incandescent light bulbs will soon be phased out because they waste a lot of energy.-,.
we are supplier of fluorescent ballast, just everyone saied that LED is good, but the price is high, so many people can not afforad. so now days the fluorescent ballast is the best chioce for poor people.
One really cannot conclude that CFL are better that incandescent light bulbs as both have pros and cons in it. Both are context driven where and when they might be needed. Now LED lightind has come into picture which have a lot of advantages over CFL & incandescent light bulbs.
I would not agree with you that CFL is for pure people. We can´t compare LED and CFL, because those two light sources are not so similar as it seems.
LED is constructed of three spikes(red, green, blue) and in our eyes or brain it becomes white light.
The colour rendering factor is not so high as in case of bulb lihght or fluorescent, because it does not contain full spectar of colours.
Another fact is present, the shadow is so sharp and straight that it makes “its own” shadow.
There is a lot of things to talk about it, but the fact is, a few years ago, LED was five times less effective then fluo, but now it is very close to fluo, even price is now acceptable if we calculate the life of lighting(10 years minimum) but can we know what is the progress of new inovations and improvements for cca five years. Also CFS has imrovements, so it depends of us to choose it LED or CFL(energy consumption, life of lighting, benefits, and the most important thing – for what purpose) we still can not make the same and unique calculation. It is still to choose according to purpose and our expecting!
Refering to the question of “Cost of CFL and cost of Incandescent”, let us look at the cost of a Tubular Fluorescent Lamp” (TFL) and compare it with the “Compact Fluorescent Lamp” (CFL). The CFL has about 1/6 of the glass, about 1/12 of the coating material and mercury, (on a broad average across different wattages mix), but still cost about 3 times of the TFL, as the manufacturer is pricing it not on production cost but on opportunity & salability. Even now as the volumes have grown and there should be the pricing based on production cost. Should such a change take place, then the CFL would be only about 35% to 50% more than the cost of the incandescent lamp.
Another issue is about the power factor of CFL. The PCB has components to increase their PF from about 0.45 to about 0.8. If these components are dropped the cost can come down by about 20%. The PF of a set of lamps can be improved by addition of just one large capacity capacitor common for all the lights in a house or office installation at a cost of about 4% of the amount saved in the individual CFl.
Refering to the other comment that some components in CFL’s have caused fire – it is generally noticed that the capacitor in the CFL PCB has blown off mostly. If we go to low PF CFL these capacitors and the attendent problem of blowing will also be avoided.
Larger common capacitors compensating the PF for a set of CFLs not only costs less but they also do not have any problems of bursting or causing fire.
in Europe, bulbs lamps with more than 70W were take out of market and replaced with CFL. Indeed, these CFLs have some drawbacks, but with time these problems will be solved.
The first example is their power up time wich has been reduced very much by serious companies.The advantages of a bulb light like directional beam have been regained with some “ecological” light bulb wich acts like CFLs and look like a bulb lamp.
There are many valid and good comments here. CFL’s in Asia, there is no disposal for it and most ending up in local landfills. And CFL’s and tubes are widely spread here. Said to see. And i researched on mercury, amazing how many people in China died because of poor manufactoring process and handling.
LED’s have done a tremendous progress in the last two years. A CFL and tube has about 50-60 lumen/Watt. LED in these days already at around 100 lumen/Watt. LED’s from my manufactorer come with 2 years warranty (you wont have any warranty on Halogen, CFL or incandescent). They save about 40-90% on electricity and about 6 times replacement (lights plus labour) compared to CFL and tubes. And yes, they are more expensive, but putting in above benefits into dollars, the LED will usually have a return of investment within 1-2 years. For Halgen and incandescent its usually below 1 year. I havent found any stock how gives this return !!! Surely they will get cheaper over time, but how long do we want to wait ? I could have still waited on my to computer to get cheaper, I would be sitting and waiting for the last 20 years. Everytime is the right time. So we should make a start now.
Cheers Horst
Marina.li said:
we are supplier of fluorescent ballast, just everyone saied that LED is good, but the price is high, so many people can not afforad. so now days the fluorescent ballast is the best chioce for poor people.
expinsivness will takeplace a passage of time ,after that LEDs are the best.
Horst Droege said:
There are many valid and good comments here. CFL's in Asia, there is no disposal for it and most ending up in local landfills. And CFL's and tubes are widely spread here. Said to see. And i researched on mercury, amazing how many people in China died because of poor manufactoring process and handling.
LED's have done a tremendous progress in the last two years. A CFL and tube has about 50-60 lumen/Watt. LED in these days already at around 100 lumen/Watt. LED's from my manufactorer come with 2 years warranty (you wont have any warranty on Halogen, CFL or incandescent). They save about 40-90% on electricity and about 6 times replacement (lights plus labour) compared to CFL and tubes. And yes, they are more expensive, but putting in above benefits into dollars, the LED will usually have a return of investment within 1-2 years. For Halgen and incandescent its usually below 1 year. I havent found any stock how gives this return !!! Surely they will get cheaper over time, but how long do we want to wait ? I could have still waited on my to computer to get cheaper, I would be sitting and waiting for the last 20 years. Everytime is the right time. So we should make a start now.
Cheers Horst
Me agree with your point of view.
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