How much power does it take to start a low energy light bulb? Someone told me they need so much energy to?

Question

power up when first switched on that it is cheaper to leave them on than to keep turning them off and on, as you would do normally.

Sounds dubious to me.

Answer 1

Dubious, yes.  

Both fluorescent and incandescent (traditional) lamp types have an inrush surge when you first turn them on, but after a minute of being on, this becomes negligible.  You would have to seriously be flicking the lamp on/off every few seconds to make it worse than just leaving them on.

Answer 2

virtually no difference with an ordinary bulb and a cfl on start up, however the starter inside the base will burn up if your turning it on and off several times an hour. so instead of 5 year life it will die in 1.

Answer 3

So little for the single CFL, or even a bank of 5 or 6 CFLs, that your electric meter isn't even sensitive enough to measure it.

Just for the sake of putting numbers to this let's make a few ridiculously generous assumptions:

$0.50 per kilowatt-hour

50 watt CFL bulb

CFL bulb using 200% of rated power for 12 seconds in order for the bulb to ignite to full fluorescence.

Operating the bulb for one hour would cost $0.025 cents

(50W) / (1000W per kW) * (50 cents per kWh) * (1 hour)

The turning on of the light would cost $0.00016

(100W) / (1000W per kW) * (50 cents per kWh) * (12 seconds) / (3600 seconds/hour)

It would cost 15000 times more to leave the light on for one hour versus turning it off and back on this hypothetical situation. You'd have to flip the switch off-on 15000 times in one hour to cost the same as leaving it on.  Good Luck!

In actuality electric prices are closer to 15 cents per kWh, CFLs only use about 125% of rated wattage to ignite and only take less than 2 seconds to ignite.

In summary, turn off the light when you are not using it.