> The relative cost of lighting on the monthly electricity bill is tiny so those savings are pretty small. Getting a more efficient fridge, washing machine, TV or (in our profession) computer typically has a much bigger effect on electricity expenses. And that is assuming your heating and cooking is done with gas.
The switch from using tiny space heaters for light to using LEDs that consume a tenth of the power was a huge savings. It only takes a few 100w bulbs to equal or exceed the energy consumption of a modest desktop computer.
I don't know about you, but I had long switched to CFL's before LED bulbs came around. CFLs are definitely not as efficient as LEDs, but at least they're still a fraction of the power that incandescent bulbs use.
Modern fluorescent lamps are surprisingly efficient and the electric ballasts seem to be more reliable than any LED bulb I've seen so far. The tubes do fade eventually, but the tube itself only costs 1-2 Euros and the environmental impact is pretty low of these where the mercury cycle is closed.
>"we asked to more than 1,000 people at the end of 2009. Then, 68% surveyed threw their last energy saving light bulb in the bin." (Which? [0]) //
Bit out of date but indicative of the UK situation I imagine.
The best I could do for the USA situation was that [1] shows about 1.5M recycled CFLs in 2010, vs [2] shows about 300M sold in 2009, 0.5% recycle rate ...
The problem here is that no one knows where to recycle them. There's only a few locations in the US that recycle them and they don't accept consumer drop offs. Local recycling centers and waste centers generally don't accept them separately and just tell you to put them in the main trash. I had 15 years of bulbs stashed in a box in the garage because I didn't want to dump mercury in the landfill even though they told me that was perfectly fine, which I knew was wrong. Eventually an acquaintance told me that they had seen small tube collection boxes near the customer service desk at Home Depot. This is not advertised and is not known to the recycling centers. So the experts just tell people to landfill them when asked. If people knew where to take them it would be more than 0.5% doing it. It wouldn't be 100%, but maybe 50%.
They never became decent. They were always loaded with toxic mercury that became a hazard if the glass broke, and they had short life and though some good one existed, the market was overrun with bulbs with long warm up times, bad color, and buzzing.
Yeah, I switched a few bulbs to CFLs 10 years ago when they "became decent", and then switched them out every 6 months (i.e. when they burned out) until LEDs "became decent"... Haven't had as much trouble with LEDs as CFLs, but I'm definitely not paying $10+/bulb like I did with CFLs.
those $10 CFLs burned out almost as quickly as I could replace them. Kinda spoiled me on the whole "spend more for something that will last longer" theory.
They were decent 20 years ago. In my experience, the quality dropped sharply around 10 years ago or so. I've seen at least one CFL fail within a few weeks of buying it.
LPT: Don't buy the globe ones that go over your bathroom mirror. They are practically pre-burned-out for your convenience.
CFLs are everywhere, but came with a lot of downsides. My personal observation was that they were never more than 50% of the bulbs in a house (that I ever saw).
Even a moderate desktop with no dedicated graphics would idle at around 30 Watts. I tried taking this further a couple years ago with an i5 and a 200w PSU that was targeting low loads and got to 18w idle.
They're basically at the same level if you don't use high end CPUs and gaming GPUs. Also see here: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/135719-5-9-watts-the-worl... - tldr: 30w idle for an unmodified average system.
Mind you this was 2012, mid range systems surely haven't gotten more power hungry since then.
That's an order of magnitude more than an idle laptop.
And they're not talking about any sort of "average system" they're ballparking a "reference desktop" which tops out at 150W under load, that's not just "don't use a gaming GPU" that's "don't use a GPU at all". And if you're building a "desktop computer" with an APU and an SSD… why are you building a desktop computer?
I have to admit that I have used only CFLs for decades (with a few exceptions where the produced heat was a positive side-effect, not a negative) and had not considered there are plenty of households that still use incandescent light bulbs.
The switch from using tiny space heaters for light to using LEDs that consume a tenth of the power was a huge savings. It only takes a few 100w bulbs to equal or exceed the energy consumption of a modest desktop computer.