What brand of CFL's is the best?

[bud--]

Not all power generation uses coal. The percentage of coal is likely to go down and non-carbon-producing go up.

Plug-ins can charge when the grid use is low so new power plants are not required.

Last I heard the overall efficiency of energy conversion is higher from power plant to plug-in battery than gasoline car engine.

A Prius is not a plug-in. It uses a smaller higher efficiency Atkinson cycle gasoline engine and is rather effective at recapturing energy through regenerative braking. Miles per gallon is well over 40.

I am not aware there are particular pollution issues with lithium ion rechargables.

[dpb]

...

Can't have both no new plants and reduce coal significantly. Significant generation from the non-fossil sources (other than nuclear) proposed so far have availability issues that are limiting in their ability to replace much over 20% or so of baseload generation.

There seems a lot of "wish for" and other pie-in-the-sky replacement "hope fors" in rhetoric (including Boone P's foolishness of using up natural gas for vehicles) but keeping a 24/7 function grid is going to require more realistic generation mix for foreseeable future, anyway.

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[KLS]

I second the recommendation for Sylvania, and I also have had very good results with Phillips (I've got one that's going on 7 years of service now, and several others surpassing 5 years). Also agree on assigning CFLs to locations where the bulbs will remain on for extended periods of time, not on and off like in closets or bathrooms.

[Anonymous]

I broke open the base of a failed CFL. There were over a dozen electronic components packed in there.

I'm guessing that many of the premature failures occur because the lamp enclosure isn't vented enough. and is running too hot. The heat must be hell on the components in a CFL.

They don't have to worry about this in incandescant encloures.

It would be interesting to measure the temp near the base after the lamp's been on a while.

[Steve]

The ones that have gone bad for me have just been in a socket out in the open in my basement. They don't seem to actually burn out but the electronics in them must go bad because all of my bad ones will eventually light up if I leave the switch on for a long time (up to an hour). I have a couple locations where the lights are on and off frequently but they are some of the longest lasting CFL's that I have. Go figure.

[Zootal]

Most of mine appear to be some sort of bulb burnout/damage. The base of the bulb itself is usually discolored. I'm guessing, of course, I don't know if that was why it failed. A few also show signs of getting hot - discolored bases, mostly, even though they are in a well ventilated location. I suspect that the electronics aren't ventilated properly and can't take the heat, and the manufactures haven't all figured that out yet (or don't care).

Remember back in the late 1970s and 1980s when car makers were playing with electronic ignition and electronic engine control? At first they put the control box under the hood. What idiot figured that you can take electronic components and put them in a place that gets up to 150 degrees or more? Needless to say, they went bad right and left. Then some genious (wasn't VW the first, followed by the Japanese?) figured that if you put the control box in the passenger compartment, it won't get too hot, and now they last

20+ years instead of 2 or 3.

Eventually the makers of CFLs will figure out that, duh, you have to keep the electronics from getting too hot...