"we haven't sold one fluorescent fixture in over 4 years ..." Well, sure. Stores sell what they push. If you don't suggest that customers buy a product, most won't. (I'm the exception, as I usually know what I want long before I step into a store. :) "the difference between low voltage halogen and fluorescent in terms of energy use and life is nothing close to what the numbers claim." As the old saw goes, the plural of anecdote is not data. If you have your lights dimmed most of the time, you've probably chosen the wrong light. Curiously, low light output is one of the places where low voltage incandescents "shine" (sorry). For a given wattage, the filament is thicker for better life and durability. Compared to line voltage incandescents, they can run hotter (and whiter) for better efficiency at low light output. But that's when they're run at normal voltage. You lose that advantage when you dim them. As you dim any incandescent lamp, its efficacy in lumens per watt, already overall the lowest of modern lighting systems, becomes even lower. This is a natural consequence of the lower filament temperature. In other words, your energy use is low because you aren't producing much light, not because your lights are efficient. So you could use even less energy if you'd use even lower voltage lights running flat-out - assuming you could find such lights. (Practically speaking, this is where LEDs come in.) BTW, a dimmed halogen lamp also loses one of its other great advantages over a conventional incandescent - maintaining light output over the full life of the lamp. That's because the chemical reaction that keeps tungsten boiled off the filament from deposting on the lamp envelope doesn't run at the lower temperatures of a dimmed lamp. "most fluorescents can't dim..." There are some retrofit dimmable CFs that dim rather nicely. I'll admit that they don't dim as low as many people would like, however. "Mercury is one of the biggest contaminants in land fills." I don't doubt that it could be a concern, but I'd like to see your source for this statement. Here's what counts, folks. When you use a fluorescent lamp, you are releasing LESS mercury into the world. Period. Most people state that and let it go, but here are the hard numbers. The amount of mercury in fluorescent lamps has gotten drastically smaller in the last couple of decades. A typical compact fluorescent lamp has only about 5mg. There are even some full-size linear fluorescent lamps (Philips Alto range, for example) that contain so little mercury - less than 3.6mg per 32 watt F32T8 lamp - that the EPA has actually approved disposing of them in regular trash, though I still recommend taking them to a household hazardous waste (HHW) disposal site (and do this myself). Now, a coal fired powerplant will emit about 3.5mg of mercury powering a 20W CF for its lifetime, taking that as 7500h (a rough average). If you chuck the CF in the trash, you've just released 8.5mg of mercury into the environment. If you take it to the HHW center and they recycle the mercury, you've released only 3.5mg. Now let's say you use a 75W incandescent bulb instead. Since it lasts an average of 750h you'll need 10 of them to the one CF. This uses more landfill space and more raw materials, but we'll neglect that for now. The salient point here is that although those 10 bulbs contain no mercury, the powerplant emits 13mg of mercury powering them. And there's not a thing you can do about it. You can't haul any of that mercury to your local HHW center. So, here's the bottom line. Using an incandescent bulb releases at least 53% more mercury into the environment than using a CF, and that's if you junk the CF in a landfill. If you use a CF and dispose of it properly at a HHW disposal center, the mercury released is only 3.5mg. In that case, using the incandescent bulb releases 270% more mercury, or 3.7 times as much. "Again, this boils down to personal preference." Absolutely. Choice is good. Informed choice is better. That's why I take the time to write this stuff. :)

I recently tried 6 of the Dimmable CFL indoor flood light bulbs for my recessed kitchen cans but they did not live up to expectations for me. If I'm recalling correctly, they use 15 watts and promised 720 lumens (the box stated them to be equivalent to incandescent 65 watts). Priced at $$$$$12.95 EACH, at Lowe's, I took them back because they were not even as bright as the 45-watt incandescent floods I was using before!! Instead, I got GE's 50watt halogen bulbs at $7.96. Energy savers Halogens are not, but at least they provide the bright light I need for my dimming older eyes. (My dimmer can only go up to 300 whatchamacallits and I'm using six 50 watt bulbs so can't go to a higher wattage bulb.)

The halogen bulbs do have a hotter filament, which is why they're more efficient. This extra heat is not however generated by increasing the energy going in to the bulb - it's because they use a gas fill which insulates better, and also have a coating which reflects infared energy back in to the filament. Since some of the heat normally lost is captured and converted in to light energy the halogen bulb will release *less* heat than a normal bulb. A 100 watt halogen turns about 80 watts in to heat, but a 100 watt normal bulb turns about 90 watts in to heat. So it's quite safe to swap out your regular bulbs for halogens of the same wattage. The heat we associate with halogen lighting is more of an issue with other types of halogen fixtures, such as those floor lamps (aka curtain torchers). Their bulbs can be as high as 500 watt, which is so hot you can put a frying pan on them and cook! Our local fire department do this to show just how dangerous they are. Very bad for the electric bills and not very safe either. You can get modern floor uplighters now that take CLFs.

My neighbor switched to LED outdoor Christmas lights last year. What I didn't like was how puny the light was....toooooo dim. Big contrast between our C9 reds and his LEDs. We usually run four or five strands of outdoor lights 24 hours a day for the month. We turn off the regular outdoor lights for December. In the house, the tree and a lighted garland and a couple of small lighted things are the extent of it. Our electric bill doesn't rise that much...a couple of dollars from the lights. One of the keys is that we turn off our regular outdoor lamp post and garage light. Indoors one lamp doesn't get used during Christmas. It's a trade-off. We are slowly replacing all our incandesent bulbs in the house. I'll miss the warmth of the old bulbs, but the new energy savers are looking better and better each year. For now, the LEDs are staying in the stores. Someday....maybe..... Here is a link that might be useful: Creative Soul