Home › Electrical Engineering Forum › General Discussion › How green are Compact Fluorescent Lights (CFLs)? › Re: How green are Compact Fluorescent Lights (CFLs)?
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.