Compact Fluorescents - Yet To Make A Difference

One of the most important energy saving innovations of recent times has been compact fluorescents. They have tremendous scope for reducing electricity consumption and there is an increasing number of houses that have at least one compact fluorescent light bulb in their house. Unfortunately, it seems that any reduction in energy use from compact fluorescent light bulbs is being outweighed by an increase in the number of other light bulbs in the house as well as the wattage of the bulbs.

Energy-efficient light bulbs are gaining market share around the world, but if you take the UK market as an example, around 9 million compact fluorescents are sold each year compared to around 180 million ordinary incandescent bulbs. The good news is that compact fluorescent light bulbs last 10 times longer and so, as they are being fitted into bulb sockets, the demand to replace them will take 10 times as long to arise. The creep to CFLs over ordinary bulbs is crawling.

To put things into a little bit of perspective, a typical incandescent light bulb lasts for around 1000 hours which roughly equates to 3 years of use if used for 1 hour every day. No evidence has been found that when an incandescent bulb burns out it is being replaced by a compact fluorescent.

And it’s this point where the public needs to be reminded about the importance of using the compact fluorescents over the traditional incandescent.

It is estimated that only 20 per cent of the light in UK homes comes from compact fluorescents which is pretty low considering they have been promoted for almost 10 years.

If electricity use for lighting is going to drop, and it is yet to show signs of falling as yet, there has to be a greater take up rate of compact fluorescents.