Achieving Mood Lighting And Saving Energy – Are Fluorescent Lights Dimmable
Dimmer switches can provide a more relaxed really feel to your home, and save you energy as well. But with the increasing prevalence of compact fluorescent lights or CFLs, many people are questioning what options they have for utilizing a dimmer with these lights – or whether or not it saves more electricity to make use of a regular CFL, or to use incandescent or halogen bulbs on a dimmer switch.
Let’s begin by placing to relaxation some misconceptions folks have over the relative power use of fluorescent, incandescent, and halogen bulbs.
Many householders put in halogen bulbs, starting within the 1990′s, on the mistaken idea that these lights are more efficient than incandescent lights. In reality their energy effectivity is pretty much the identical as that of incandescents. So don’t think you’re saving energy by utilizing them.
CFLs, meanwhile, are very efficient – it takes about one fourth as a lot electricity to light up a CFL as to mild up an incandescent or halogen lamp with the same light output. They also occur to final about eight times longer than incandescent lights.
So in case you are using a dimmer primarily to save lots of power, you is perhaps better off just switching your incandescent or halogen lights to CFLs, and holding the dimmer swap on full, or going back to a typical on-off switch. That will provide you with more gentle for much less power.
If you want a more mellow lighting all the time, a technique is to put in light bulbs that are not as bright. Whether you go down from, for example, a a hundred watt incandescent to a 60 watt incandescent bulb, or down from a 100 watt incandescent bulb to an 18 watt CFL, you may still get much less light and you may use much less electricity. Of course, the CFL answer will save you much extra electricity within the long run.
But chances are high you want the very best of each worlds: the low running value and better sturdiness of CFL bulbs, with the flexibleness to dim them when you do not need their full light.
You might have heard that you simply cannot put a daily CFL on a daily dimmer switch. In truth you can, but it is not recommended, because it will possibly really cut back the lifetime of the bulb. There is not any increased risk of explosion or fireplace from installing a regular CFL on an ordinary dimmer switch – you may only increase the risk of shortened bulb life. And for the reason that higher worth of CFL bulbs is offset by the truth that they outlive incandescent bulbs by a ratio of 8 to 1, putting common CFLs on a standard dimmer destroys that price advantage.
If you choose to dim CFLs, you might have two real options: buy a special dimmer switch that’s compatible with CFLs, or purchase dimmable CFLs which are designed to work with customary dimmers.
Both choices leave you with the energy-saving advantages of CFLs, as well as the means to dim those CFLs. But for now at least, dimmable CFLs appear to be the more reasonably priced option, because fluorescent-compatible dimmer switches are prohibitively expensive, while the value difference between commonplace and dimmable compact fluorescents is miniscule.
Let’s consider the entire cost for each options, for a fixture with three 60-watt light bulbs. Let’s assume you have already got a normal dimmer switch and common incandescent light bulbs. If you need to upgrade to CFLs, your choices are:
1. Installing three 13-watt standard CFLs at $3 a piece, and a $49 fluorescent dimmer switch. Total cost: $58.
2. Going for three 13-watt dimmable CFLs at $3.50 a piece, and use the prevailing dimmer. Total cost: $10.50!
As you’ll be able to tell, using an existing dimmer change is a more affordable alternative. Since both choices use the identical amount of energy, by way of payback period the answer with dimmable compact fluorescent lights is certainly much shorter.
Even if you have to buy a dimmer change because you don’t have one, it still is sensible to go with a regular switch and dimmable CFLs. You can get a regular dimmer swap for below $10. Even a modern one for $25 is more inexpensive than a fluorescent dimmer at $49. And with the price gap between customary and dimmable CFLs so small, the only way a fluorescent dimmer switch will probably be cost competitive is if its value drops substantially, which it in all probability will over the coming years.
If your solely motive for using a dimmer swap with CFLs is to save lots of money, and you do not already have an everyday dimmer switch, I would counsel you stay with basic CFLs and forego the dimmer switch. Use the money you save on the dimmer switch to purchase more CFLs for different areas of your house. Dimmer switches resulted in major savings for incandescent or halogen fixtures because the bulbs had been so wasteful. For example, my rec room has six 50-watt bulbs on a dimmer switch. By using the dimmer at about half power, we use one hundred fifty watts as a substitute of the full 300 watts. Assuming an hour on every day, that might save 150 x 365 watts, or 55 kilowatt hours a year.
But if we were to change those halogen bulbs to 13-watt dimmable CFLs, we would save 81 kilowatt hours a 12 months at their full strength. By turning them all the way down to half, we might only save an additional 13 kilowatt hours a 12 months – that’s about $1.30 value of electricity. Not really enough to make it value considering this alternative.
Consumer response to dimmable CFLs has been less than overwhelmingly positive. There were certainly some teething issues with these lights – early burn-out, flashing light, and loud buzzing noises. These issues have been just about resolved in the more recent dimmable compact fluorescents. But if there isn’t a strong motivation for you to dim your CFLs, I would suggest sticking with customary compact fluorescents for a year, until the market offers a wider vary of selections for dimmable fluorescent lights. Who is aware of – in a year or two, fluorescent dimmer switches may very well be as low-cost as commonplace dimmers.
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