When thinking of improving our societies’ energy profile, and therefore also our carbon emissions profile, there are at least two images which are very likely to immediately come to mind, and which have become symbols of our struggle to improve our relationship to our planet. One is that of a wind turbine (which symbolises renewable energies).
The other one might very well be the humble Compact Fluorescent Lamp (CFL), also known as Savings Lamp (symbolising improved efficiency in our energy usage).
There are, of course, many other things which may very well have a larger impact when it comes to energy and emissions. Examples, some of which have been approached here before, are how much more we travel these days, how much more meat we eat, how we tend to heat up and cool down our houses more than before, and more spaces within our houses, and how many more devices we own and how we use them less and less efficiently.
The reality is renewables are not able to supply all the power we need if we live like we do now, and working just at the level of improving efficiency of the things we use does not compensate for the extra amount of (more efficient) devices and machines we make use of. That is why in Europe, emissions and energy usage have been going up since the 70s despite efficiency improvements of 30% or more. We need to actually also change our lifestyles, instead of only changing the way we engage in these lifestyles. But that is something for other posts.
Regardless of what we do elsewhere, working on being more efficient in the way we use our energy will always be an important component of decreasing our environmental footprint. One of the areas where this has been most visible is the way we light our buildings, with the humble savings lamp becoming a symbol of where we need to go.
After all, when it comes to lights, everyone agrees that incandescent bulbs should be changed to fluorescent or compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs or savings lamps) as quickly as possible. These lamps offer up to 80% savings in the amount of electricity used in comparison to incandescent lights because they avoid wasting most of their energy producing heat (only about 10% of the energy used by an incandescent is turned into light. The remaining 90% is wasted generating heat).
But then there are two myths which need to be put to rest.
The first one is that halogen lamps are another type of Savings lamp, i.e., that they are also efficient. This is wrong. It is true they are more efficient than incandescent bulbs, but they are still 3 or more times less efficient than CFLs. As it turns out, halogen lamps are pretty much a tiny incandescent light bulb. They warm up a huge amount (wasting energy), in fact more than incandescents (in some countries they are even obliged to hold warnings about the danger of burns and fire hazards) and add to this the fact that they often burst because of the huge heat they generate accumulating too much. Since this leads to us needing so many replacements, the production of all of these limits the ‘greeness’ of halogen lamps even further and makes them virtually as bad as incandescents.
I personally also find them annoying, as they tend to be way to bright for comfort and it is mind boggling to me how so many people use them for ambiance purposes. Perhaps it is because they are so small in comparison to CFLs and incandescents.
But that is my personal taste. And tastes can’t be argued. So, if you are one of those people who do like halogen lamps, I have a piece of good news for you. There are now in the market, at a reasonable price, halogen size CFLs. They fit into the normal halogen mount and provide the same general look, but with much lower energy consumptions and less risks derived from excess heat.
The second myth is that CFLs should not be switched off when you leave the room for a while, because they supposedly use most of the energy when they switch on and use very little after that. God knows where this came from but it is again wrong.
The reality is CFLs do need a short burst of energy to start, and only then do they go to their nominal power. But this is a very short and limited burst. On www.lightingdesignlab.com they explain it as follows:
“When you turn on a fluorescent light bulb (correctly called a "lamp"), there is a very brief jump in current when the ballast charges the cathodes and causes the lamp to start. This inrush of current can be many times greater than the normal operating current of the lamp. However, the spike of current draw normally lasts no longer than 1/10th of a second, and draws the equivalent of about 5 seconds of normal operation. So, if you turn your fluorescent lamp off and on more frequently than every 5 seconds, you will use more power than normal. So, normal switching of fluorescent lamps has very, very, very little effect on a power bill.”
As a result, you’re pretty much wasting energy from the moment you leave a room longer than a few seconds without switching off.
You should also not worry too much about decreasing the bulbs operating life. Although there is some truth to this (since switching the light on and off will use up a tiny bit of the coating of the lamp decreasing its life) switching off a CFL every time you leave will still leave it with a much longer life than any incandescent, and definitely longer than any halogen lamp.
Most authorities, researchers and organisations recommend making a calculation balancing out the cost of lamps and the cost of electricity to find out from how long an absence it is worthwhile switching off. The results they come up with tend to vary between 5 and 15 minutes. Of course, this is regarding only how much one is able to save moneywise. If one is more interested in reducing energy usage per se, it is worthwhile switching off pretty much any time you leave a room for any amount of time longer than one minute or two.
Here’s an example of a good article on the subject.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=turn-fluorescent-lights-off-when-you-leave-room
Just as a side note, many present other reasons to avoid switching to CFLs. They complain about CFLs taking a long time to reach full brightness, about the colour and about them not being dimmable. Well, all of that is now in the past. I have plenty of CFLs in the house that become bright pretty much immediately. True, certain lamps use a type of amalgam that takes a long time to warm up, but there are now other types of lamp build that avoid that problem. The switch to electronic ballasts has also cut down the start time to as little as 0.2 seconds, which goes almost unnoticed by our eyes. Here’s an (enormous) webaddress on the subject
Also, there are now a couple of brands offering dimmable CFLs and changes in the coating and external coating of the bulbs has allowed CFLs to come in a variety of different shades.
Since there are even halogen-like CFLs, there are really no more excuses to not change :-)
A more recent development is that of LED lamps. These give out directional light (i.e. Light goes out in the direction the lamp is pointed in a beam, without lighting the space outside the beam). Perfect to replace some of those halogen lights or to use in desks for instance but horrible if you want to light a room because you’ll end up with shafts of light and spaces of darkness. They are insanely efficient (more than CFLs) turning as much as 90% of the energy into light and do not have mercury which complicates disposal of the other lamps. They also have a longer life and don’t mind being switched on and off. They come in a variety of colours. The problem so far is the cost and some need for extra development. They are also still somewhat harder to find. Low wattage LED bulbs are already available here and there, but these are only meant for ambiance, and not for actual lighting. LED bulbs of a higher wattage are still a rare commodity, at least around these parts, probably because LEDs do lose in efficiency the higher the temperature, meaning higher voltage LED lamps are more of challenge to produce.
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All said, of course, the best way to save energy in lighting is to switch off the lights whenever they are serving no purpose. I get the impression that often people switch to fluorescent lamps and think that all of the sudden they can leave all the lights on. This is clearly defeating the purpose. A CFL will be more efficient than an incandescent, but clearly, if the CFL is running for 5 hours lighting an empty space while the incandescent would have been on for only half an hour, you end up using more energy.
The same goes for the number of lamps. Especially in offices, I often see CFLs packed in twos or even more. Add up the wattage, and it turns they are not much of an improvement on the single incandescent that used to be there before. In living rooms too, one sees that often there are several lamps on for no other reason than habit.
So, like in most things, start by thinking about how many lights you actually need on and switch off all of those not fulfilling a purpose. Keep the lights off in all the rooms (and areas within a room) that are not in use. This will be even easier and it might save more than changing to more efficient lamps. And then invest on more efficient lighting, getting rid of all those incandescents and halogen electricity guzzlers
