I first got into Home Automation for one simple reason, because I always forgot to turn off the lights. Lighting makes up a large part of my system, and I want to optimize the efficiency of the lights as much as possible. I want to not only produce the right amount of light in the right color, but reduce their energy use at the same time.

At first, I used Compact Florescence all over the place. They are a obvious choice for reducing energy because they use a quarter of the wattage of incandescent bulbs for the same amount of light output. But as I have found out, they don't mix well with the PLC (power line communication) switches that I use. You have to find specific dimmer compatible switches (or don't buy dimmers). The CF bulbs produce noise, sometimes for no apparent reason, that interfere with the signals being sent by the switches. The dimable CF bulbs seems to make even more noise than non-dimmable bulbs!

So far my experience with dimmable CFs has been mixed. About 6 months ago I bought some LightWiz 75 watt equivalent dimmable CFs from ebay pretty cheap, around half as much as anywhere else (right now you can get them for about $7 a piece). I had put one in the garage upside down, one in the front porch vapor proof fixture upside down, one in the back porch simple fixture upside down and one in the halway on it's side. [Update] The lights I had outside were not the Lightwiz brand. 4 of the 6 I bought are still installed and working (Haven't installed the other two yet). Including the one mounted upside down in the garage.

One reason I wanted the outdoor fixtures to have CFs is because because I have all the outdoor lights on from sunset to sunrise. Birds tend to rest on the fixtures because they are warm in the winter. Initially they did not produce enough powerline noise to interfere with my Insteon switches. Last week I was unable to get any the status of any switch on one leg of my circuit. Turned out to be one CF bubls producing too much noise, because it was about to die. I would have expected the back porch light, which has the least amount of protection, to be the one to die. It was the one at the fount porch, which is in a vapor proof fixture.

The bulb in the front porch was replaced with a 60 watt halogen, because of the fixture, not much heat is making it out of the fixture. I also have a 100 watt equivalent GE CF dimmable bulb in vapor proof fixture above the garage and so far so good for that one. The CF bulb I have in the halway has since been replaced with a track lighting fixture that has 3 50 watt halogen spot lights.

Don Klipstein has a excellent website on everything you would want to know about bulbs and good advice on when to use bulbs. Based on my experiences and what I read there, I will probably not use CF bulbs as I did before.

[Update 01/08/07 2:21 PM] I forgot to mention some other bulbs. I bought three, pretty pricey, approx. 9 watt, dimmable florescence for a kitchen ceiling fan. These bulbs were incased in a glass bulb so they looked closer real bulbs instead of the spirall-y things. At the time they were hooked up to a X10 switch. 2 of the 3 burnt out within 2 months. I've since replaced these three bulbs with 60 incandescence bulbs. I've heard that X10 can actually kill CF bulbs so this might be more evidence to this fact.

[Update 02/23/07 8:24 PM] Two Westinghouse 20W "mini-twist dimmable" bulbs that I bought last year have died. A MaxLite 15W bulb that I bought several years ago died. This was 1 of 2 that I have, the other one still works fine.