Some time ago I wrote about the advantages of compact fluorescence lamps (CFL) and a life cycle analysis (LCA) of these devices described in the literature[1]. Basic outcome was that CFL’s indeed do give overall resource savings[2]. In an LCA you have of course to assume an average lifetime of the CFL, typically taken as 5 times[3] that of a regular incandescent lamp (ICL). Because CFL’s are so much more complex to make than ICL’s, the resource savings benefit would fall apart if the CFL does deviate substantially from the assumed lifetime.
The positive LCA outcome convinced me to replace many of the ICL’s in my house by CFL’s and accept the high upfront cost (which is easily 5 times as expensive as ICL’s). I bought about 15 lamps. Much to my surprise and frustration within a year I had 3 failures. Note that I bought the CFL’s from a top brand but that the manufacturer gives no guarantee whatsoever in case of an early failure.
Therefore, I did a quick and dirty web search to see what one can find about reliability of CFL’s. Well not too much. Two interesting leads I found though.
The first one is a study from the Energy Federation Inc., published in 2002[4]. Over the period 1994-2001 four big brand and four little brand manufacturers were tracked for sales and returns. The big brands had a return rate of 1.4%[5]. Much more detail is in this report such as relation between return rate and wattage of the lamp so I recommend you go to their website and read the report [6].
Based on this you can expect on average one early failure out of 70 CFL’s that you will buy[7]. Clearly, my failure rate (3 out of 15) is much higher. And what is most frustrating is that there is no warranty on these lamps. If they fail after 6 months or so what can you prove? Nothing.
But I am not the only on suffering from this problem. See the kiloxray.com blog (http://www.kiloxray.com/blog/?page_id=8). The author is actually logging the number of failures (there are many!!) he is experiencing and has a good tip: note down on the lamp the date that you put the CFL in operation and……. hold on to the original receipt. You may have a chance to get your money back from the manufacturer although don’t have to high expectations on this. If you have similar experiences or recommendations to share please put in a comment.
© Copyright 2010 John Schmitz
[1] https://secondlawoflife.wordpress.com/2008/10/05/compact-fluorescence-lamps/
[2] Parsons, David. “The Environmental Impact of Compact Fluorescent Lamps and Incandescent Lamps for Australian Conditions”, The Environmental Engineer 7(2): 8-14 (2006).
[3] Actually numbers vary, you can find numbers as high as 10!
[4] Bradley Steele, The Performance and Acceptance of Compact Fluorescent Lighting Products in the Residential Market; Energy Federation, Inc
[5] Little brands were running slightly higher at 1.5%
[6] http://www.lrc.rpi.edu/programs/lightingTransformation/pdf/bradSteele.pdf
[7] This should be a worse case return rate as you may expect that the CFL manufacturers would have improved the reliability of their products since 2002
The Second Law of Life 
July 2, 2010 at 3:21 pm
[…] also my earlier blog on CFL’s: https://secondlawoflife.wordpress.com/2010/04/06/reliability-of-compact-fluorescence-lamps/ […]
May 1, 2012 at 7:54 pm
I replaced my incandescent bulbs everywhere I could about 5 years ago. While very few of the 13W lamps have failed, the higher wattage and lumen output bulbs have been failing repeatedly. I have recessed sockets in the kitchen, and in the past five years I went through about three sets of bulbs. After the first few failures I began keeping track of install dates, keeping receipts as well as UPC codes for potential returns. I didn’t have to wait long–first bulbs began to fail after just six months. I’ve been sending them back to the manufacturer and receiving $10 or $20 coupons, which has been helpful in replacing the bulbs, but not helpful at all in shredding the lies that are put on each and every box these CFLs come in, claiming 5, 7, and sometimes 10 year life spans.
June 4, 2014 at 1:31 am
I found out the dirty little secret: CFL bulb lifetime is proportional to the number of times you turn them on and off. LEDs don’t care.