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Compared to Incandescent Lamp

Advantages:
1. Colors
- Comes in soft white, bright white and daylight.
- Has a warm spectrum (yellow light) to a cool spectrum (blue light).
- Consumers have plenty of choices to match with their lighting needs at home. For example, warm light for the living room and dining, cooler light for reading lamps and hallways and the coolest light for closets, basement and work shop.

2. Shapes and Styles
- CFL comes in different shapes, giving the consumer more choices depending on the purpose of the lighting. The spiral one is great if you want to really brighten up a room. There are also versions where the light is diffused by encasing the spiral tube in a special glass so you get good lighting and at the same time the light is soft to the eye.

Disadvantages:

1. Only a very few of them can be dimmed with a dimmer switch. So far here in Cebu City, I’ve checked with Handyman in Robinson’s Department Store and True Value in Ayala and they don’t have a CFL than can be dimmed. I only see them in the internet.

2. They don’t work well with applications that require frequent switching between on and off. This process actually shortens the life of a CFL. Turn off your CFL only if you leave the area for atleast 10 or 15 minutes. Although some manufacturers now claim that their CFL has been improved to allow frequent on/off. But I have yet to try this for my self.

3. Very sensitive to temperature changes. Not advisable for applications where temperature can change from high to low frequently. This shortens the life of a CFL. My father tried to use CFL to light the area near the big oven in our bakery and the CFL didn’t last long because it gets exposed to the very hot air vented from the oven and temperature cools down so fast after bakery operation.

4. Probably the biggest issue right now for CFLs is the mercury content in the bulb. Although the amount of mercury in each CFL is so small, this can still lead to a major problem if these CFLs are not disposed of properly. The government is pushing for the use of CFL in every household including utility providers like Meralco and VECO. No problem in convincing people about that. Just show them figures of how much one can save every month if they use CFLs and they’ll switch immediately without complaints. Telling people to dispose them properly is a different story. The government is never successful in implementing garbage segregation. Even if you’re being responsible and segregate your own garbage, they still end up in the same dump site. Well, this is at least the situation in Cebu City. I don’t know about other major cities here in Philippines.

Overall, CFL can really give you savings in the long run. Hopefully, solid solution can be made in dealing with the mercury content. Better disposal system to be implemented? CFL with no mercury? Mercury poisoning is not a joke. They can easily seep down to our underground rivers and contaminate our water sources and surrounding sea.