Bob Jones on light bulbs

You’ve no doubt seen MidWeek columnist Jade Moon, in commercials for Hawaiian Electric, selling us on compact fluorescent (CF) bulbs because the incandescent bulbs might go out of existence in 2014, and because with CFs we’ll use less electricity.

Well, only maybe the latter. California utilities spent $550 million subsidizing CFs and discovered that electricity savings fell 73 percent short of what studies had estimated. And CFs contain mercury.

Some of us don’t like the CFs. It’s about the quality of light.

Incandescents give off “warm” light. CFs still do not. That’s because of our eyes. The natural outdoor light we see is actually our brain taking in many colors from our eyes’ receptors and giving us what we perceive as white light.

CFs give us too much blue-end light and not enough red-end. So our brains tell us the light isn’t very “warm.”

But here come LED light emitting diode bulbs. They’re on the right wave length to give us “warm,” but you’re unlikely to pay $30 per bulb. You’re set on the since-1870 technology of the incandescent light bulb.

I’m betting that new light bulbs will get better and the price will come down to about $5. Not too bad if you consider that the latest-invented LED may last 20-plus years and use little electricity.

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Bob Jones’ “Shedding Some Light On New Bulbs” is valuable, but does need a few tweaks.

First, compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs, not CFs) needn’t deliver “too much blue-end light.” The color given off by fluorescent lamps is determined by the mix of RBG (red, blue, green) phosphors. Add more red, and you’ve got warm lamps. Light color is measured by degrees Kelvin (K). Incandescent lamps deliver about 2,800K. You can buy 2,700K CFLs.

Mr. Jones didn’t mention economics. If you have 20 60-watt incandescents in your home burning an average of 1,000 hours a year, you’re paying $372 a year, based on 31 cents per kWh.

(That’s Oahu the Neighbor Islands pay much more.)

Replace the lamps with 15-watt CFLs and you can redirect $279 a year to your family. (By the way, incandescents burn at 450 degrees hot enough to cook steaks. Do we need more heat in our homes?)

Finally, most of Hawaii’s electricity is generated by oil imported largely from countries that don’t like us and are costing us many defense dollars.

If you want to be supporting your family instead of those countries, shift to CFLs or LEDs.