Drop the Hammer

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In the past the ‘on-time’, or the time it takes for the light bulb to light up completely, was a problem. Today, this is still somewhat of an issue. CFLs require pre-heating of the electrodes, which could take up to a second in the past. When people would flip the switch it would take a second for the bulb to turn on. That second of no light was a lot of time when you had already flipped the switch and expected the light to shine.

In order to minimize this start time, there are two options. The first and quickest way to do this is called Instant Start. By putting a slightly higher voltage in the ballast, the light will turn on when the switch is flipped. At this point it is still not stable because the lamp is not at equilibrium, but at least some light will come on in the beginning. In approximately the first minute the light will probably continue to increase in intensity.

The Rapid Start System had an average startup time of about 750-1000 milliseconds. Now, with the new electronic ballasts and the program start it can be done in about 200 milliseconds. The light will come on faster and is better than the original Rapid Start. This amount of time is pretty much unidentifiable by the human eye, the light comes on essentially instantaneously.

There have been so many enhancements to CFLs over the years including no flickering, faster start time, good light output, more shapes and sizes, it is difficult to understand why people still worry about them. What about safety? The use of high frequencies have good and bad qualities in CFLs. High frequencies help start the lamp easier, however when the lamp fails it does not go out as easily – the lamp is not extinguished right away. This is referred to as the ‘end of life’ problem with the latest version of electronic ballast. In the past the ballasts did not have the ‘smarts’ to know when they were failing, continuing to strike the fail lamp which could cause them to overheat. Today when the light begins to fail, it will simply shut off and there is no safety issue associated anymore.

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According to Ed, a lot of work was done by GE in 1970′s, specifically by a man named John Anderson. He patented an electronic high frequency ballast which was technically successful, but not commercially successful because of very high costs. Therefore the technology was there at the time, but the cost made no sense to make them.

In 1973-74 the oil crisis took place and lamp companies needed to reduce wattage in their linear (tube) lamps to compensate. Many people had four bulb fixtures and were removing two bulbs, to save energy, therefore dropping sales by half. This forced lamp companies to create energy efficient solution.

Ed worked on creating lamp with reduced wattage by adding krypton and a conductive tin coating inside. This helped lower the wattage from 40 to 35 watts but he wanted to get down to 30 watts. He continued to work and finally the wattage went from 35 to 34 and eventually 32 watts!

Ed explains the different types of linear lamps – T8, T12, T5, T17. The conversion is 1 inch = 8/8 diameter. Therefore a T12 = 12/8 =1.5 inches in diameter, or a T8 = 8/8 = 1 inch in diameter.

The new lamps created a reliable start and higher range of ambiant light, using less energy.

In 1975 companies were still using old electronic ballasts which were failing, while the lamps were still good. This posed a problem for extending the life of the whole package. It was pointed out that the ballast and lamp have to be a system – the ballasts needed to catch up with technology the lamps had already reached.

Ed realized they would need a CFL for residential use. He came up with the idea to make the linear tube into a spiral. He was told that it would be too expensive and the reflection loss would be too great, basically that he should NOT waste his time.

He went ahead and made the spiral, and as long as he optimized the spacing between the spirals the reflection loss was minimized (at the most 3 lumens per watt). This still made the CFL lamps much better than the incandescent bulbs.

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