I bought four more flourescents at Home Depot yesterday.  They are on
sale for $8.99.

Heinz Czychun wrote:

> 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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