$10.80 for a CFL?

My local light department rents them for $.10/month (We do it because they replace them if they stop working.)

"The PUCO has not approved these additional dollars nor have we received a request by the company to do so."

Call me skeptical on that. But kudos on the quick halt of the program.

Again, this was pure and simple a case of government regulators saying "Yes, you can send unsolicited items to your customers and then charge them for it, at an exorbitant rate."

If they REALLY wanted to save energy and reduce overhead on their grid by having customers replace incandescent with CFL, they would allow customers to drop off used, burnt out (or working, who cares) incandescent bulbs at the local offices and trade them for new CFLs.

Oh, come on. It was only potentially evil. Why not implement it and find out if it is actually evil?

In totally unrelated news, everyone keeps talking about how bad the Necronomicon is, but I'd like to find out for myself. Ash?

Ash?

Stores practically give CFLs away here. About a week ago I saw three 2-packs of dimables for $2. Yes, just 33 cents each.

@nakkypoo: Yeah, sometimes there are really good deals. I bought a 5-pack for $3 and change.

@nakkypoo: Dim-able CFLs?

I must go find the dimmer switch from my kitchen and get some of these magical inventions.

Instead of forcing CFLs to their customers, maybe they should follow what I've seen other energy companies do here in Washington and California.

They subsidize any purchase of CFLs with either instant rebates or mail-in rebates.

Seems to work well.

WTF

Wow someone still knows how to screw the public!

@twophrasebark: I suppose it IS possible that the electric company was ordered to provide CFLs to customers, and simply passed on the "savings".

It's possible. But I doubt it.

You all seem to be missing the part that the state legislature passed a law that mandated that the electric company attempt to reduce consumer electrical use by 22% by 2025. If you were an electric company, how would you go about trying to comply with that law? How do you force your customers to use less electricity despite the fact that since the beginning of civilization humans consume an ever increasing amount of energy?

The government here isn't the good guy, they're the ones who caused the problem to begin with.

@ShortBus: Right, they're terrible people for wanting to reduce our ridiculous energy consumption. Oh, what monsters!

The energy company is the bad guy for forcing you to pay such a ludicrous amount of money for a CFL.

@Difdi:

"Although the PUCO allowed FirstEnergy to implement its program, we did not approve the charge that will appear on monthly bills as a result."

I'm saying that maybe they didn't pay very close attention to the fine print.

But who knows...

Not to mention the issue that CFL bulbs cause with the power factor. Basically having a high power factor (which is caused by having inductive loads rather than resistive loads...which CFL lights are) means the power company has to generate more electricity to provide the same amount of electricity to the customer (this is due to the fact that inductive loads cause a shift in the phase). For plants/refineries that have large inductive loads (electric motor/ motor starters...etc) they actually require the plant to be designed with AC capacitors to bring the power factor down (restoring the phase).... if the power factor of customer's homes keeps going up, I see a day where power companies will start requiring homes to keep their power factor within certain ranges.

Hardly an excuse to charge 10.20 a lightbulb without asking though.

@ShortBus: I don't have an MBA, but I'm pretty sure there's a way to distribute CFLs to consumers that doesn't involve marking them up by 500%.

@ShortBus: If they weren't marking it up so high, maybe. Also, there's nothing that says that the consumer has to use those bulbs - it's up to the utility to figure out how it's going to come up with the reduction and implement it - they shouldn't have the power to force people to pay not only 4 times the value of the bulbs, but also a fee related to the energy they'll be saving (see the previous article about this)

@ShortBus:

"You all seem to be missing the part that the state legislature passed a law that mandated that the electric company attempt to reduce consumer electrical use by 22% by 2025."

You seem to be missing that when that doesn't happen, the state government will say "Oh well."

Seems like the utility decided to enrich themselves while pretending to make an attempt at lowering energy usage. They could have provided rebate for solar panels. They could have rewarded customers who lower their usage during the summer. They could have done any number of things.

Instead they decided to send some fluorescent bulbs to customers and actually charge them. This is called "pathetic."

@ShortBus: The problem here is that they tried to turn a measure to decrease energy usage into a cash cow. A better, much more acceptable choice, would have been to offer CFLs in exchange for incandescents at cost. That is if they wanted to focus on CFLs in the first place.

My energy company offers free home efficiency inspections. You get a full report and tips on how to fix the problems easily, and sometimes cheaply. I think that's subsidized by the county though.

@MaarekElets: A very good point. That being said, I don't thing a CFL provides enough of an inductive load to shift the phase that much. Every machine I've seen that required capacitors (admittedly, only a few) was the at least the size of a small bedroom.

@AreYouConfusedYet?HowAboutNow?: That makes more sense, certainly. Have you needed any replaced yet?

@nakkypoo: Dimmables at that price? The only reason I keep buying incandescents is because I only see the dimmables at super-high prices. I'll have to reevaluate the market next time I'm in the need of bulbs.

(My entire house is X10 wired, and even for fixtures that I don't care about dimming, the cheap CFL's don't have continuity 100% of the time that the controller requires. Dimmables, though, do have continuity at all times.)

@ShortBus: Ha! Lofty goal. First we replace our natural gas furnaces with super-high efficiency ground source heat exchangers (a good move, but uses more electricity), and then we replace our Expeditions with Volts (a debatable good move, but uses more electricity), and then a few new iPods charging every night, larger and larger plasma screens, a new beer fridge for the garage, global warming causing increased A/C use.

Seriously, I turn off lights that I'm not using. Replacing my bulbs with CFL's is /not/ going to cause a 22% reduction in consumption!

@MaarekElets: Most industries just pay the added cost for the non-unity power. I know we do. The only time we add cap banks is if the electrical consumer is phase sensitive (think, huge friggin' welding transformers).

Your house is full of inductive loads. Furnace fan, HVAC compressor, fridge compressor, your electric drills, old fashioned power supplies. Unless you have a 10,000 foot house and keep every room lit up all the time, the CFL's will be insignificant.

My wall switches and even the rotary switch in the bulb socket of some of my table lamps seem to be buring out after 2 years of CFL use-the first symptom is having the bulb flash a couple of times when its turned on. Anyone else?

MaarekElets- technically the power company does not have to generate more energy, but must increase voltage or provide thicker wires and heavier transformers or provide even remote controlled reactive loads that can be switched in and out.

I do not think the power factor change caused by the bulbs will be very significant given the low current consumed by the bulbs.

@balthisar: I've tried the dimmables and I am not impressed. All the dimming is in about 10% of the dimmer switch range. Anything below about the 20% position on the switch is "completely off"; anything above about 30% is "completely on."

I really like CFs, and I use them wherever I can, but the dimmer problem has yet to be fully solved, and there are some situations where a CF is just not the right choice. For instance, my kitchen is dark: black countertops, dark wood cabinets and floors. When I hit the light switch I need bright light right away, not four minutes in the future when the CFs finish warming up. So I put CFs in four of the six ceiling lights and left incandescent floods in the other two. The two incandescents are enough to make the kitchen navigable at night while the CFs come up to full intensity.

Looks like some power company exec's relative working at a CFL distributor just had to cut back on their Christmas plans.

10 dollars a bulb? There's got to be a kickback in there somewhere.

Leave it to the unholy alliance of a regulated utility and a clueless governmnet to actually make a CFL uneconomical (actually close to the price of solar) over its lifespan if you figure the cost of the bulb under this program AND the energy it will use.

Glad somebody here called screeching halt to this madness.

The surest way to get customers to save energy is raise the price. Remember when gas hit $4.50 a gallon last year ? Did you use more or less gasoline ? Even wife bartering savages know this ,but it seems lost on the power structure in Ohio.

@ShortBus: There might have been point to doing this, IF the charge per bulb weren't exorbitant. $10.80? A consumer can buy CFLs one at a time at a fraction of that cost. Surely FirstEnergy could buy a couple million of them all at once ... at a far lower price even than a consumer could get ... and charge consumers only their cost. The $10.80 price CLEARLY shows this to be attempted profiteering, NOT a genuine effort to comply with that law.

At least the regulators did something once they were caught, that translates to great government these days. If only Washington were so responsive.

@SybilDisobedience: I've replaced a few in my place. Sometimes they're just defective and they fail prematurely.

@Laura Northrup: I have an MBA, and I can tell you, that's not the way to do it. (it does make you a lot of money if you can get away with it, however!)

@SybilDisobedience: So far, just one or two. Not many, but the ability to walk over there and get a new bulb instantly pretty much makes the plan worth the cost.

@Parapraxis: Klaatu, Barada, (mumble mumble mumble)!

@krunk4ever: We have a similar program in NH. Not sure if it's just a thing with Home Depot, or all retailers, but they have coupons for X amount off based on how many bulbs are in the package for New Hampshire residents.

@InThrees: Or send massive amounts of mind-bogglingly awesome coupons for CFLs to all the hardware stores. In the Seattle area, it's easy to find a buck a bulb with all the coupons and rebates on them.

@dwasifar: In my last house, I actually replaced dimmers with standard switches so I could use CFLs. Dimming isn't worth the extra energy.

@MaarekElets:
1) You mean that CFLs have a lower power factor than incandescent bulbs, which have the maximum power factor of 1. Higher is better.

2) Even if you use a low power factor CFL, say 23W CFL with PF=0.55 (VA draw=42), it's still better than a 100 W incandescent with PF=1 (VA draw=100).

3) Alternative to your future, I see one where we simply ban low power factor CFLs. CFLs with power factor >0.90 already exist.

@AreYouConfusedYet?HowAboutNow?: I bought 3 three four-packs on "last chance" for $1 a pack. It's been two years, and I haven't had to replace a single bulb.

I'm more worried about the hassle of disposing of them than having to buy new ones.

@InThrees: No, it probably started out well-intentioned. The follow-through was just ridiculously incompetent.

Your idea is much better.

@JennQPublic: *whistles innocently while pushing his garbage can with a CFL in it back under the desk*

@dwasifar: You must be using CFLs from about 5 years ago. Mine (bought in June when we moved into this apartment) have no delay.

@balthisar:

More efficient power distribution networks are a good start. Replacing older power meters saves the electric company a fair amount of cash over time.

So does burying the electric lines. In high-wind or adverse weather condtions, you often encounter frequent brownouts and fluctuating power conditions. When the lights flicker, you can bet that half of the CE devices on the grid power-cycled, eating up more power than they otherwise would have used all day. Additionally, in burying the lines they can upgrade older equipment - again netting a cost savings (reduction in power lost due to inefficient distribution equipment).

Note that plasma TVs are on the way out, and larger LCDs are on the way in, as are OLED displays. Both of these use substantially less power, and newer equipment features much greener standby modes. Most people are still using 20 year old appliances, as well. Replacing them can net a *MASSIVE* power savings. It would be easy for the eletric company to partner with local electronics stores (or national chains) to offer discounts for exchanging older appliances for newer, more efficient ones. At very little relative expense.

In the end, whatever the power company spends on working out a solution also nets them lower operating costs, as they no longer have to produce the same levels of electricity, meaning they purchase less fuel.

@whs_consumer:

I assume there's a dimmer circuit somewhere in there.

CFLs don't get along with dimmer or multi-position switches. One reason I can't use them anywhere in my apartment.

@Snarkysnake:

The math (and psychology) don't work when you're talking about electricity, though. Most people already do a pretty good overall job of saving electricity where they can.

The only ways I can *really* start saving on power involve shutting down PCs, for example, and I can't do that for business reasons. Increasing the cost of electricity doesn't make me stop using as much, it means I have to cut back on spending.

When the gas prices go up, people stop making frivolous trips (once a week to the grocery store instead of three times, eating-in or eating closer to home), the same can't always be said for electricity.

@gStein:

Oh, they have special disposal procedures? I've thrown a few away in the trash.

@ShortBus:

The energy company should have either been buying these in bulk to sell to their customers at cost, or giving them away. $10 per bulb is ridiculous...you can buy like an eight or ten back for that much money.

@Dondegroovily: No but dimming is worth the ability to dim and adjust the light levels. My entire house, sans three closets (which have CFLs) dims. And it's going to stay that way.