Quote:
Originally Posted by hamid_1
When compact fluorescent bulbs first appeared, they were not popular even though they lasted longer and used less electricity. People thought they cost too much to buy. It was only when they were virtually given away by government subsidy, and filament bulbs were banned, that people changed their habits..
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First/Second-generation CFLs were truly horrid: they were slow-to-start [a real pain if you need to switch on the light at the top of the stairs and then want to walk down to the toilet without waiting a minute for the CFL to struggle-towards-full-brightness]. They were also invariably "Dim White" colour-spectrum - which lit everything with a horrid sub-candlelight-yellow meaning everyone illuminated by such monstrosities appeared to have Jaundice.
The utility-companies were happy to push these horrors onto their customers because they could claim-back the cost from some obscure-but-Taxpayer-supported 'eco'-fund.
They were truly unpopular - both with their target-victims and with us utility-company investors. Holding-back a decade, by which time LEDs had become the only sensible energy-efficiency option, would have made far greater economic- and environmental-sense.
[I have a personal theory that a proportion of the recent mental-illness/depression thing is due to exposure to poor artifiical-light-spectrum; if you live your life in gloomy-light your mindset will become gloomy! I'm certainly much more upbeat since I fitted-out my house with 6500K LEDs delivering 800-1200Lux light-levels everywhere [and 2500Lux in work-focussed spaces].