Compact Fluorescent (AC)

Compact Fluorescent lamps are becoming very popular for household use and is fast replacing the typical screw based incandescent lamps. The main reason of their popularity is that they use one third of the energy of incandescent lamps and deliver the same amount of light.

Though the Compact Fluorescent lamps cannot be a replacement of incandescent lamps in every place, they can be replaced according to the lightning requirement of each room. This concept can be applied in any home or office.

A 7-9 watt CFL is equivalent to 40 Watt incandescent lamp and 23-25 watt CFL is equal to 100 watt incandescent lamp. From this simple data, you can easily understand how much savings in your monthly electricity bill you can incur by using a CFL lamp. Experts claim that you can save up to 80% of the energy by using the CFL lamps in your rooms.

The lamp has become a favorite to many because of many other reasons. As the bulbs are of high power, there is less distortion on the electricity network. As their life is much longer than the other bulbs, they save a lot of fossil fuel and reduce green house gas emissions to a great extent. The packaging of the bulbs is recyclable and mercury content used in the bulb is less than 1.5 mg. The light output varies according to the wattage used. For a 15W CFL bulb, the light output is 950 lumens and for a 23 watt bulb, the output will be 1650 lumens. The average life of a CFL bulb is 10,000 hours and the power factor is greater than 0.9.

There are many companies which manufacture Compact Fluorescent AC lamps. They are Energy Mad Eco Spiral, AC Electronics, Getics, etc. The price of this product is not much when compared to the amount of energy you are going to save in the long run. The price varies from $4 to $7 and the variation is due to the wattage used and the brand of the manufacturer.