E.ON to pay customers £2.5million after energy efficiency errors

This makes me laugh. So EON are supposed to send free lamps ( bulbs grow in the garden) to their users who are paying for them through the energy price tax set by the government. Then EON sell them to another country and make a good profit as the users in the UK have already paid for them! Capitalism is such a success you cannot believe the ways you can be fleeced. Anyway CFL is old hat . Time to go the LED route as they are instant and give a good white light while using even less enegy than a CFL. Still quite expensive to buy but Aldi have had good offers this year on various models but the BC soon sold out in my local store and left the more obsure lamps behind SBC,SES GU10 etc. IKEA also have good LED ,called LEDERE actually, but is again a ES not a BC . Their light fittings seem to be all ES as geared up to the continental users.

CFL uses inductance rather than resistance to create the glow, so is governed by a tiny little ballast to limit the current draw when warm. Like all ballast controlled lights, such as metal hallide or sodium, they draw a higher current during start up and warm up, then once they are warm, draw a much lower current. This means you need to leave these lights on for five or ten minutes to benefit from the lower power consumption. If you use these lamps in rooms where you turn the lights on, then off again within a minute or two, they are not so efficient. Still, when you consider that an 8 watt CFL will draw about 14 watts during initial start up, and a low powered tungsten probably draws around 45 to 60 watts continuous, they are still much cheaper to run. We have to remember that a CFL is nothing more than a miniature fluorescent tube, such as the ones found in offices and factories across the globe, and even they are prone to failure, but you can change the ballast and starter in those packs. Also, tungsten won't completely disappear. Road vehicles will still use tungsten if not fitted with LED, as will the large variety of trailers, such as caravans. Also, specific uses such as oven lamps will remain tungsten, as it would be impossible to install CFL in an environment that can heat up to 300 degrees Celcius. There are alternatives to CFL, such as halogen, and these lamps are ideal for locations that use dimmers, such as your home theatre room. CFL cannot dim, so is useless for this use. In fact, halogen are becoming more efficient as the technology develops, so they could end up replacing CFL as a cheaper option. The only drawback with halogen is that they only last about a year or so. I have CFL lamps that have been running for four years or more, although I have also had lamps that have failed within a year, one quite dramatically, when the ballast failed and the lamp exploded. Oh, and if a halogen explodes, you'll end up with tiny shards of glass everywhere. I was still finding shards a week later, which isn't good considering I had two dogs.

CFLs do save energy but less than stated. They save the user power consumption but without going into too much physics the energy cost to the supplier is higher. If you're interested, look up Power Factor for CFLs. A typical 11W CFL will load the grid with about 14W and really consume 9W. But even then they do consume less. What we don't hear much about is the energy involved in making them compared to old style bulbs!