Letters
CFL Quality vs. Quantity
In the editor's corner of IAEEL Newsletter 3/96 it is stated that CFLs "have been around for about a decade". In fact, the first CFL - and it is still available at a very low price - was launched in front of the world press 20 years ago, on 7 November 1976.Secondly, on page 3, line 7 we read that "China has now overtaken the USA as the world's... largest producer of CFLs". This may be so; however, in the UK one of the largest DIY stores has had to take Chinese CFLs off the shelf because of the very bad quality. In this technological age, quantity is as nothing compared to quality.
Please keep your newsletter coming. It is much appreciated.
I F Davies
Chartered Engineer
Wallington, Surrey, UK
Reply:
Yes, you are definitely right about CFLs being around for two decades, not for one! What we wanted to say is that CFLs started to make a significant impact on the market about a decade ago. This is clear when looking at global sales figures. But it was, of course, not clear to our readers!
As for your second comment, you raise a very important and interesting issue: We have discussed the issue of quality in several articles. This is true both in terms of lamp quality, as well as for the claims about real light output vs. nominal light output.
The point of the article was simply that the global market is expanding extremely quickly and that production is shifting towards Asia. As a parallel, Japanese products were regarded as low-quality goods in the sixties, but nowadays the opposite is true. Today, the place of origin says less than the specifications upon which lamp production is based.
In the guest article about CFLs in the same issue, the Danish CFL quality-testing project is mentioned, and we think this is a splendid example of how the problems you refer to could be avoided, regardless of the origin of lamps.
Editors