Ravi's Blog

I haven’t calculated this earlier, but am going to calculate on this post. Don’t really know what the outcome would be. Here goes.

The terms that I would be using would be easily understood by Indians as I am an Indian. If google brought you here from USA or elsewhere, read on if you must as I am not sure what values apply in your country.

The Tube Light is a tube filled with some florescent vapor and when electrons pass through the tube, the vapor glows. The cost of making this vapor glow is 40 watts of power.

This costs Rs 50 in Pondicherry, a Union territory in India were almost everything is cheap. Power in Pondicherry costs from Rs 0.55 to 1.75 per KWh.

So with a tubelight’s life of 1000 hours,

Time run per KWh = 1000/40 = 25 hours.
(want me to break this down for you? 40 watts = .04 KW, and to get the value for H, you invert .04 and you get 25, so the answer is 25 hours)

Total power consumed in Lifetime of a tube light = 1000 / 25 = 40 KWh.
(1000 hours of lifetime and 25 hours per KWh)

So the total cost of usage of a tube light in Pondicherry for its lifetime is Rs 50 for buying it, and Rs 70 to run it at the cost of Rs 1.75 per KWH for 40 hours, the total comes to Rs 120.

The CFL has a lifetime of 5000 hours. Thats 5 Tubelights, which cost 250 in total at Rs 50 each, and a 22 Watt CFL costs only Rs 200.

Whoa, there were have it, I guess I have the answer. Do your math for the CFL power consumption guys. Yes, I guess CFL is cheaper

Time run per KWh of CFL = 1000/22 = 45.45 hours.

Total power consumed in lifetime = 5000 / 45.45 = 110 KWh

Total cost of power = 110 * 1.75 = Rs. 192.51

Total cost = Rs 192.51 + 200 = 392.51.

Comparing with the Tube Light,

Rs 120 per 1000 hours is Rs 600 per 5000 hours. And CFL comes to about Rs 400 only. Yes, looks like the CFL is a bit cheaper.

The production costs of CFL bulbs should be really low, I am sure these Philips and Wipro guys are making a big bunch of money selling these. These should be available in the markets for Rs 50 as I don’t think the cost making a CFL would be any more than making a Tube light, of course the CFL has a built in choke and starter setup.

So guys, go get CFL, consume less power, save the planet.

By the way, is there a better air conditioner that consumes lesser power as well? As I don’t think saving 22 watts is really going to save the planet while my AC is drawing 2000 watts non stop for about 20 hours a day :p.

My blog is a big bag of bullshit. And I don’t promote it much. People who read my blog often know that very well. I write complete bullshit. Nobody cares. I know that. But my blog does manage to get visitors once in a while because of the few tech stuff that I have in here. Linux buffs like my blog. Select posts if not the whole blog.

Well, Im not the worst. I do know a lot of people who write more bullshit that I do, and keep their blog on the top of the searches. How is that done? SEO. Search Engine Optimization.

Doing it manually is a tough job. It would take a lifetime to optimize one blog manually. And I have 27 blogs, and only 1 life. How do I still stay in business? I have a huge array of seo tools installed in my computer and servers, without which I would have been just another stupid software engineer working at some stupid company making a few hundred thousand rupees a year.