wattwatt - community for individuals interested in electrical energy efficiency - Compact fluorescent lamps and power quality

wattwatt - community for individuals interested in electrical energy efficiency - Compact fluorescent lamps and power quality: "Compact fluorescent lamps and power quality
Peter Van den Bossche on February 27, 2008 | 3012 Views | 9 Comments

One aspect that is rarely touched in the discussion about compact fluorescent lamps and the ban of incandescent lamps: power quality.

Have you ever seen the shape of the current absorbed by a compact fluorescent lamp? It just looks horrendous, far away from a nice sinus, thus loads of harmonics!

If the use of such lamps is generalized, power quality may suffer, and addtional energy losses will occur.

One should also take this aspect into account. Proposed ban of incandescent lamps never seem to mention it, and also neglect several other aspect such as the overall cradle-to-grave LCA of the lamp. For light fixtures which are very lightly used (such as in domestic cellars, storerooms, etc), the energy saving of a compact fluorescent will never offset the cost of the lamp, and the overall environmental cost will likely be higher than when using an incandescent for such purposes."


Link