Do New Bulbs Save Energy if They Don’t Work?
By LEORA BROYDO
VESTEL
But a lot of people these days are finding the new compact
fluorescent bulbs anything
but simple. Consumers who are trying them say they sometimes fail to
work, or wear out early. At best, people discover that using the
bulbs requires learning a long list of dos and don’ts.
Take the case of Karen Zuercher and her husband, in
“Here’s my sad collection of bulbs that didn’t work,” Ms. Zuercher
said the other day as she pulled a cardboard box containing defunct
bulbs from her laundry shelf.
One of the 16 Feit Electric bulbs the Zuerchers bought at Costco did
not work at all, they said, and three others died within hours. The
bulbs were supposed to burn for 10,000 hours, meaning they should
have lasted for years in normal use. “It’s irritating,” Ms. Zuercher
said.
Irritation seems to be rising as more consumers try compact
fluorescent bulbs, which now occupy 11 percent of the nation’s
eligible sockets, with 330 million bulbs sold every year. Consumers
are posting vociferous complaints on the Internet after trying the
bulbs and finding them lacking.
Bulb makers and promoters say the overall quality of today’s compact
fluorescents is high. But they also concede that it is difficult to
prevent some problem bulbs from slipping through.
Experts say the quality problems are compounded by poor package
instructions. Using the bulbs incorrectly, such as by screwing
low-end bulbs into fixtures where heat is prone to build up, can
greatly shorten their lives.
Some experts who study the issue blame the government for the
quality problems, saying an intensive federal push to lower the
price essentially backfired by encouraging manufacturers to use
cheap components.
“In the pursuit of the holy grail, we stepped on the consumer,” said
Michael Siminovitch, director of a lighting center at the
Compact fluorescents once cost as much as $30 apiece. Now they go
for as little as $1 — still more than regular bulbs, but each
compact fluorescent is supposed to last 10 times longer, save as
much as $5.40 a bulb each year in electricity, and reduce emissions
of carbon dioxide from burning coal in
power plants.
Much of the credit for that sharp cost decline goes to the Energy
Department. The agency asked manufacturers in 1998 to create cheaper
models and then helped find large-volume buyers, like universities
and utilities, to buy them. That jump-started a mass market and
eventually led to sales of discounted bulbs at retailers like
Costco, Wal-Mart
Stores and Home
Depot.
Consumers are supposed to be able to protect themselves by buying
bulbs certified under the government’s Energy Star program. But
experts and some environmental groups complain that Energy Star
standards are weak, permitting low-quality bulbs with too high a
level of mercury, a toxic metal contained in all compact
fluorescents.
“The standard essentially establishes a floor, which sorts out the
junk, with the expectation that the rest is good,” Mr. Siminovitch
said. “It’s not.”
The government, which will begin enforcing tighter specifications
this year, says it must seek a balance between quality and
affordability to achieve its goal of getting millions of additional
consumers to install the bulbs.
“Something that is perfect but not affordable wouldn’t serve the
broad interests,” said Peter Banwell, the Energy Department’s
manager of product marketing for Energy Star.
Alan Feit, vice president of Feit Electric, says he does not think
the problems experienced by the Zuerchers indicate an overall
quality problem with his bulbs. But he acknowledged the difficulty
of keeping tight quality control on a cheap, mass-market item.
“There are 40 to 50 components that go into these things,” Mr. Feit
said. “While manufacturers try to inspect all incoming materials,
one little mistake may cause a performance problem.”
Victor Roberts, an independent expert in Burnt Hills, N.Y., who
conducts failure analysis testing on compact fluorescents, suspects
that some suppliers — many of them in China — are using substandard
components.
“Somebody decides to save a little money somewhere,” he said, “and
suddenly we have hundreds of thousands of failures.”
The Program for the Evaluation and Analysis of Residential Lighting
at Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute in
In the 2007-8 tests, five of 29 models failed to meet specifications
for such categories as lifespan, luminosity and on-off cycling and
were removed from Energy Star’s list of qualified products. Because
of performance concerns, the government is expanding the watchdog
program, vowing to test samples of 20 percent of the thousands of
certified bulb models each year.
In
The effort aims to address the most consumer complaints: poor
dimming, slow warm-up times, shortened bulb life because of high
temperatures inside enclosed fixtures, and dissatisfaction with the
color of the light.
“Because of the aggressive goals in
Experts and bulb manufacturers say that consumers need to play a
role in solving the problems by learning more about the limitations
of compact fluorescent bulbs. The Federal Trade Commission has begun
to study whether it should force improvements in the labels of the
bulbs.
Better labels might have helped the Zuerchers, the
But some of those applications require specialized, more expensive
bulbs, something the Zuerchers say was not made clear on the label
of their Feit bulbs or on any sign they saw posted at Costco.
“We’re both college-educated and pay attention to labels we read,”
Ms. Zuercher said. “It feels like someone forgot to put a place to
find the information.”
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