CFL - Alarming failure.

Which'll probably only last 10 minutes!

Welcome to the future. An energy & material intensive solution to, erm, using less energy.

But it can also burn your house down, so at least you can stay warm without turning the heating on.

: : I have replaced the bulb with a 23w Tesco 10 year 10p one. :

You might have only paid 10p directly but you will have paid a dammed sight more via the stealth taxes/utility bills that subsidise these abominations.

A component failed, the circuit drew too much current, and the fusible safety resistor went o/c. Whats alarming about that?

NT

Perhaps it is to much to hope that George Osborne will do something about that.

What really annoys me is having to pay 40p/unit for electricity that comes from people who install solar panels.

That and people who describe wind farms as being capable of producing enough electricity for so many homes, when they can't produce enough for any homes when there is no wind..

To make it look occupied?

That may or may not be what actually happened, I would have to cut the lamp up to find out.

I would class what happened as an 'offensive failure mode', something which efforts have been made to avoid, especially in CFLs that use electronic ballasts.

snipped-for-privacy@j19g2000vbh.googlegroups.com...

So that you don't have to wait for proper light when you turn it on..

The circuitry contains nothing to prevent sizzling failures, the one & only safety device is the fusible safety resistor. Its pretty effective. Its certainly an improvement on the more dramatic filament lamp failure modes, namely extreme current draw and explosion.

NT

Don't know how you could bear to look at a 23W one: even outdoors the 20W ones are dazzling! Not surprised it melted. The ballasts get quite hot even on the ordinary 7-11W ones, and most of the failures I have had have been when a too small 470muF capacitor melts (for a while I replaced them with physically bigger ones, but can't be bothered now the lamps are cheaper). If you want that much light, get a strip light or several smaller cfls. I have 5X7W ones outside, on a photoswitch, and they have lasted for years, and are plenty bright enough.