Focus on Energy: Dedicated Fixtures For Compact Fluorescents

For most people, the term “compact fluorescent lighting” (CF lighting) evokes images of those bulky, retrofit screw-ins — the ones with the built-in ballasts that always seemed out-ofplace when screwed into a traditional light fixture. A few years ago those were the only CFs available, but choices have expanded greatly since then. There is now a whole world of hard-wired fixtures specifically designed for CF lamps (in the lighting business, bulbs and tubes are called “lamps”) that consume only a fraction of the energy used by comparable incandescents. Although a CF fixture costs $25 to $50 more than a comparable incandescent fixture, utility rebates may offset the price difference. Some, in fact, will pay the difference between the cost of the