Tom,
        I understand your point of keeping the wasted heat down. Who
wants to pay twice for inefficiency?

        But your point of the power co's offering coupons for free
fluorescent bulbs tweaked something that has been bothering me for
some time.

< caution long rant >

        I was in Germany about a year ago, and a store there was
selling compact fluorescent bulbs for iirc around 8 DM ($ 6 CND,
$4.50 US). Since it seemed to be the type of consumer store that
sells excess inventory, I'm not sure if these were normal prices or
deeply discounted ones.

        If this was the normal price then either this product was
being subsidized, or bulb suppliers in Canada/US are gouging us.
Since here, in Canada, similar bulbs are being sold for $11 - $13
CND, or about twice as much. I'd be interested to hear from someone
who has more insight into the true situation in Germany. These were
manufactured by Kess in Essen.

        Since compact flourescents are so much easier on the
environment why does the government not step in and provide an
incentive to the consumer to buy or the manufacturer to supply these
by providing subsidizes to lower the cost to the consumer. I feel the
market for these is suffering from the chicken and egg thing. No one
wants to buy at the present price, so manufacturers don't want to
build massive quantities because no one wants to buy them at their
present price etc. etc. etc....  So the subsidizes can be seen as a,
temporary, priming the pump, sort of scenario to be removed once more
bulbs are bought and they become cheaper to mass produce.

        Why does it take a crisis to have people, who are in a
position to do something about it, focus on a solution? Surely the
value of saving energy exists before the crisis, perhaps even helping
to avoid the crisis in the first place.

< /caution long rant >

        Now for the [EE] portion; It was interesting that these bulbs
had a standard N/A (I'm not sure about Mexico) base, and that they
would work at 120 VAC, but I'm sure this over stresses some of "the
small parts". I haven't used it a lot. But it does seem to make a
good portable garage light (trouble light) since it doesn't have a
filament to break.


Heinz


At 5:41 PM -0700 7/3/01, Tom Handley wrote:
>    Olin, due to the power crisis here in the West, the two local
>Portland, OR power companies are giving away coupons for free
>compact flourescent bulbs. I've been using them for quite awhile
>to not only cut down energy and get longer life, but to keep the
>wasted heat down during the hot summer nights.
>
>    - Tom

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